Oh my. I haven't updated for a while now. I'm sorry for that ^^; I've already written one and a half chapter more, but only released it in two communities and completely forgot about the version here. *falls down on the knees* I'm soooooo sorry!! ^^"" Umh. anyway. enjoy. it's not as good as the last two ones, but.

*** A teacup clattered as it was put down onto the saucer.

"Hey, Orphen!" A blonde girl turned around on her chair as the black sorceror opened the door and got in.

The three, Cleo, Majic and Orphen, were in an inn in a small town in the north of the continent. Orphen was searching for the Sword of Balt Anders, which had disappeared again after Volkan had stolen and lost it.

"Where have you been?", Cleo asked. Orphen walked through the room past the table Cleo and Majic were sitting at, straight ahead to the wooden stairs which led the guests of the inn up to their sleeping rooms. "That's none of your business.", Orphen said a bit teased.

On half of the stairs, he stopped.

"By the way, I'll be out tomorrow morning. You two will wait here until I'm back. Understand?"

Majic nodded, but Cleo didn't agree to Orphen's plans. "Hey, you can't do that! I want to come with you, so where will you be then? Come on, tell me!"

But Orphen was already gone.

'What's on with him?', Cleo asked herself, 'He looked so. sad.'

The next morning, only a few minutes before eleven o' clock, the time when the funeral should start, on the graveyard of the Tower of Fang.

Slowly a crowd of students and teachers came together around the excavated grave for Hartia. There were much pupils there, talking and murmuring, discussing about the cause of Hartia's death.

Suddenly, some of them stepped aside to build an open strip for the person who was coming there.

Whisper ran through the crowd.

"Killiranshelo."

"He has changed much, hasn't he?"

"He's back?"

But then, someone shouted through the crowd.

"Murder!!"

Orphen did not look up. He walked past the crowd of irritated and whispering students straight to the place Hartia should be burried in. He sighed. He hadn't been often in this place in the past. And the last time it was at Azalea's funeral.

Not saying anything, Orphen looked around and found a grave whose tombstone attract his attention. He read the letters on it from a distance.

'.Komikron.'

Was he dead? It seemed so...

"Killiranshelo!" Orphen looked around. He knew this voice, but didn't know where it came from.

After some seconds, Leticia appeared in the still murmuring crowd.

"Oh, you're here, Killiranshelo!" Leticia tried to smile, but the situation was too serious to be happy.

"Tish." The brown haired woman looked at the place where Hartia's tombstone already stood. She tried to say something, to break the silence between her and Orphen.

"Well, it was. terrible to find him there. lying on the ground. not moving. dead." She looked onto the ground; she couldn't stand looking into her brother's eyes, not now, not in this situation.

Orphen sighed. "Did you find him?"

Leticia closed her eyes and nodded haltingly. "I was sent out to look for the sword of Balt Anders with some others. Then we found him two days ago in the woods. One of us saw straightaway, that it had to the same murder like in the last two cases."

Orphen was silent until Leticia opened her mouth again.

"The signs were so glaring."

Orphen swallowed, looked around. He and Leticia were surrounded by curious pupils which wanted to know if the rumours were true and Orphen really killed Hartia.

The brown-haired sorceror said nothig, only bit his teeth together.

"Killiranshelo?"

A hand was placed on his shoulder. Orphen turned around and finally looked into Forte's face.

"Killiranshelo."

Orphen was not very happy to see him.

". would you please make a speech for him? It's your duty, you know. I hope, you know."

Orphen was not shure. He was here. That was enough, wasn't it? But as Orphen looked into the waiting faces of the others, he knew that it wasn't.

He hated to decide this. If he would go, he would be Killiranshelo again, like at the time when he stood there, on the graveyard, at Azalea's funeral. And he didn't want to feel similar things like then, he just didn't want it. But if he wouldn't go, the suspicion that he was the murder, would grow. It was not true that he had killed Hartia and the two others, and Orphen wanted to prove it.

But making a speech was too much.

"Do it."

Orphen looked around. Where did this voice come from? Leticia was thoughtful, too. She knew this voice. But whose was it?

Finally, Orphen found someone in dark brown robes at the edge of the crowd around him. But he couldn't see the other's face, because this figure looked down and a hood was over it's head. Everybody was staring at the unknown, but this mysterious person did nothing.

But then, from the one to the next second, the figure disappeared, teleportet away.

Orphen nodded. "Ok. I'll do it."

As he walked off with Forte, Leticia was still loking at the place, where the person in the cloak had been standing some seconds before, smiling. 'Ha, I know why this voice remembered me of someone', she thought, 'Am I right.

...Azalea...?'

***

Pfew. one of the most boring chapters of all. but in the next, there will be a small surprise (I hope) ^^