Max, Androcas, and their army of fire elementals were teleported to the grounds of the Wizard Council's Headquarters – a large, fortified castle. They weren't able to teleport to inside it, but that was fine with Max. He was fairly sure of his own victory.

"OK, Androcas," Max said to the skeleton to his right. "You take half the elementals and go around back, I'll assault them from the front," he explained. Androcas nodded. Despite his hatred of Max and all that he'd become, he hated the Wizard Council as well, and with excellent reason.

Long ago, all his people practiced magic. They invoked the spirits of their ancestors, leaving them offerings, and asked for peace and prosperity in return. But the Wizard Council did not like people who were not associated with them. The Wizard Council sent wizards to destroy anyone who used magic in their tribe, which was most of them. A few escaped and kept the secrets of magic alive and passed it down among the broken tribe. Androcas was the spiritual successor to these men.

Max can read the auras of anyone just by looking at them. As it was said, Androcas' aura is that of a largely good man. Despite this, his current anger at the Wizard Council, buried for centuries in a sort of magical tribal memory, was marring the edges. He felt righteously justified in his current mission. After all, if he bothered to stop and read the auras of those he was prepared to kill, he would find out that they were, in fact, more evil than he.

* * *

"Magic has a few inherent rules," Justin was saying to Alex. "First of all, mana, that is, magical energy, cannot be created or destroyed, much like mundane energy."

"Then how do they generate it with dragons in a magical power-plant for wizards to use?" Alex asked, blowing some hair out of her eyes.

"They don't literally generate it, they just use the dragons' natural ability to coalesce mana into a usable form in order to provide for wizards, since most of the background mana dried up many years ago."

"Then how does mortal ritualism work?"

"Well see, mortal ritualism taps requires elevating your consciousness to be in tune with the planes themselves," he explained. "It manipulates things directly."

"So why isn't it more powerful than our magic?"

"Well, not mine anymore," Justin said, frowning slightly. "But anyway, it's because mana is very powerful and elevating your consciousness is very difficult. Mortal ritualists can rarely achieve a fraction of what we do, or did anyway, and even then they usually do it by nudging certain things into place and letting them fall. The magical equivalent of dominoes, or maybe a Rube Goldberg machine."

The reference went over Alex's head with a nearly audible whoosh. "OK... so why is this important to know?"

"Glad you asked!" Justin said, perhaps too excitedly. "You see, a soul is a type of magical energy. This means that, as a corollary to the first principle, a spirit cannot be destroyed."

"That's comforting, I suppose," Alex said. "But doesn't that mean it can be changed into another kind of energy? Wouldn't that mean that the me-ness that makes up me wouldn't be, well, me anymore?"

Justin blinked. "What?"

"I dunno, it just feels strange to me... if you can manipulate energy, and spirits are energy... I mean, you know that you can change people's thoughts and feelings with magic, easily," she said, grinning slightly at the memories that brought back. But then she frowned again. "But doesn't that mean that a spirit could be effectively destroyed by molding it into a different enough pattern?"

"I... I don't know," Justin admitted. It was rare that Justin didn't know something, but Alex was bringing up very difficult questions, even for him. "Maybe we should ask dad?"

"Ask dad what?" said their father, who happened to be walking down the stairs at the time.

"Alex has a question about our spirits, or souls, I suppose," Justin explained.

"Is the question the difference between the two? Because a soul is a higher vibratory frequency," Jerry began to say.

"No no, it's not quite that. I think that's confusing enough," Alex said. "My question is, a soul can't be destroyed, but can it be changed in form?"

"Theoretically yes," Jerry said. "But it would take someone of immense, and I mean extraordinarily immense power to do so."

"Oh, I guess that's also comforting," Alex said. "But isn't Max that powerful?"

"I really don't know the extent of his power," Jerry admitted. "It would be best to use caution when dealing with him."

"Speaking of Max, what is he up to right now?" Justin asked.

"I don't know, why don't you check on the crystal ball?" Jerry replied.

Justin went over to where the crystal ball was stored and brought it over to the table. He set it down and waved his wand over it to activate it. "Demonstre Max!" he cast. "Oh crap!" he cried. "Max is attacking the Wizard Council with his army of elementals like he'd planned. What should we do?"

The crystal ball indeed showed Max leading an army of fire elementals, attacking the Wizard Council. He didn't have any anti-detection up, so apparently he didn't care who knew it.

"Oh my God, what do we do?" Alex cried, reiterating Justin's question.

"I don't know if there's anything we can do," Jerry said. "The Wizard Justice department is probably already alerted and there's nothing more we can do now, especially with Alex's powers gone. We don't really have the time to prepare any useful spells with Ritualism, either."

"There has to be something! Don't we have any magical object things around?" Alex said, fretting and beginning to pace around the room.

"We have a scrying wand with about 10 charges left and apparently a staff that creates feathers," Jerry said, rummaging through some junk in a corner.

"Wait, a staff that creates feathers! Justin, didn't you say that a feather was a symbol of air?"

"Yes," Justin said slowly. "That is true, but I really don't see how that helps us here."

"What is mortal ritualism good at? Like I mean, really good at?" Alex said.

"What, you didn't even answer -"

"Just answer, you'll get it," she said.

"Well, extremely subtle spells, communicating with spirits, that kind of thing."

"And how do you communicate with spirits?"

"You raise your consciousness to be in line with the planes on which they live," Justin said. "Or you bring them down to our plane. Wait, is that what you're talking about?" It began to dawn on him just what Alex was suggesting here. "You mean to summon your own army of elementals? I'm not sure we could do that even if you had your powers, let alone through Ritualism! We're nowhere near progressed enough."

"We have to try!" Alex cried, grabbing the staff from Jerry's hands and running through the door to the portal. Justin and Jerry ran after her.