It has been over a year since I have become Kenneth's apprentice, and yet it feels like it has only been a few months. So much has happened since it all started.

I still remember vividly the first time I could sense magic. It was only a month ago. I woke up one morning, and I thought I had suddenly gone blind. Then, when I called Kenneth into the room to help me, I realized he shone like a bright light.

Kenneth has been a strict master, never satisfied unless I do exactly what he says, and work and study as hard as he does. He makes sure my studying is not easy, and that I figure out my questions by myself. Sometimes, in the evenings, he explains the theory behind an advanced spell, or teaches me about his research on ideas and the mind. I am always in awe of its complexity.

Yet, even though I am now officially Kenneth's apprentice, and Kenneth has strict expectations for how I spend my time, I feel I can bend the rules every once and a while. After all, the things I do outside his awareness are none of his concern. Right?

I just need to make sure I never get caught.

I tiptoe over to the door to Kenneth's studies, knock on the door nine times as I usually do, and count to sixty. When I hear no sudden movements coming from Kenneth's side of the door, I conclude my master is too absorbed in his study today to notice that I knocked on the door. And that means he will be too busy to keep track of my study time!

I smile with satisfaction. I tiptoe across the room again, this time toward the foyer. I do not bother packing anything, since Sarah has plenty of food, and unlike most of Kenneth's food, Sarah's food is actually edible. I open the door, breathe in the cool morning air of the mountain forest, and walk briskly over to Sarah's house, cautious of any remaining creepers and skeletons in the shadows.

I open the door to Sarah's house and look around. She is not in any of the rooms. This must mean Sarah went down into the mines early. Usually I go home when this happens, to avoid the risk of descending into the mine alone. However, this time, I feel I should go beyond that. I know her mining passages well enough, and have been itching to test my spells in combat.

As I walk down the stairs and through the basement toward Sarah's mines, I hear strange noises echo, and stop still. I look around me at the many chests and furnaces, crates piled high and racks full of tools, utilitarian as a miner's workshop generally is. Then, my eyes fixate on the sound behind the crates. It is like a scratching and hissing sound. I tiptoe into the maze of storage, ears alert, but then my eyes fall upon... questionable things. A table is piled full with strangely-shaped tools and blood-stained rags. To the right, barrels are stuffed with severed limbs.

Wait, severed limbs?! Wouldn't those all have to be from bodies that have not despawned yet? Sarah must be some sort of dark mage.

Just as my mind starts to wrap around this realization, I hear the strange noises echo again, this time closer. I tiptoe toward the source, and find myself in front of rattling cages concealed with brown-stained cloth. I consider lifting up the cloth to see what creatures are inside them, but restrain my mind against it. The creatures could scratch, or bite, or worse. I also do not know how the creatures would react if I were to expose them to the light. Sarah might need them for an experiment, therefore I should leave them alone.

I walk toward the stairs which descend beneath the basement and into Sarah's tunnels, following the echo of Sarah's pickaxe. I am still amazed that Sarah could be a dark mage.

Down at the end of a final tunnel, Sarah stands facing away from me swinging her pick. I walk up behind her and watch her tear into the rock for a moment, until my curiosity becomes too much to bear.

"I noticed there is blood and body parts in your basement," I point out to her.

Sarah's digging sounds stop and she turns around to face me. She smiles.

"Yes, Iris, I do have blood and body parts in my basement," Sarah says, completely confident in herself, as if this is a common thing to do. "I extract the blood from the body parts and then store it, then I use it for writing spells and notes," she explains. "Flint works alright, but human blood just gives it that... extra special something."

My arms get a bit colder as I hear Sarah say that last phrase so casually, as if she is talking about a recipe for a cake. And yet, the fear I feel that Sarah is possibly evil, not the simple mage friend I thought she was before, makes me even more curious about her than ever.

"How could you take the limbs off of people while they were alive?" I ask.

Sarah bursts out laughing. "Oh no, Iris! I never had to hurt anyone on purpose! I just got some limbs from Bellsound. Or to be more accurate, Kenneth got them for me."

"But how did Kenneth acquire the limbs?" I ask.

Sarah shrugs. "He just asked for them. They come from freak accidents... mostly. You'd be surprised how many spells can amputate a limb if cast incorrectly."

"So the magic school was just willing to hand over two whole barrels of human limbs?" I question, at this point starting to wonder if Kenneth is involved in something just as dark. Perhaps his collection of weapons is more than just for show. "It sounds hard to believe."

"Well... you're right," Sarah admits. "I don't know for sure where they come from. But that's the price I pay for my work."

I nod in acknowledgement. Perhaps Sarah and Kenneth really are evil. Somehow this does not frighten me, or make me morally repulsed. They are nice people, after all, so can their magic truly be wrong? Perhaps every mage has a dark side. I am still an apprentice in magic, so there is still much I need to learn. Perhaps I have a dark side of my own... or perhaps society does not understand magic, and mistakes certain parts of it for evil.

Then I remember the strange creatures concealed in cloth-covered cages, which made such strange noises, and I restrained myself from disturbing.

"What about the creatures in the cages in your basement?" I ask. "What are those?"

"Little critters from me and Kenneth's dimensional excursions," says Sarah, piquing my interest. "Kenneth doesn't like taking care of pets, so I look after them between our experiments. Ironic, considering he's the one who can read minds. By the way, guess what I found!"

I shake my head.

Sarah stretches her palms wide. Red sparks multiply above her palms, until the glittering red swarm fades into a pile of precious cyan gems.

My eyes widen in surprise and excitement. "You found diamonds!"

"You bet!"

Sarah brings her hands together and the diamonds disappear within them, with nothing left but a red glow emanating from between her fingers.

"Can I have some?" I ask.

"Sorry Iris, I can't give you any. I need them for spellbooks. Remember when you wanted to learn that stone-smoothing earth spell I used to build that hell portal for Kenneth's demonstration, and I told you how expensive they are?"

I nod. "I guess I will have to find a way to get my own diamonds."

"You could. Or you could find a job. But it's a bit early for that."

"Are you saying I am too young?"

"No," insists Sarah, "I'm saying you should focus on your studies."

"I do not need to study."

Sarah frowns and throws her pick upward a bit, re-adjusting her grip. "Well, I'm not your master, so I can't tell you what to do, but..."

"You could give me a pickaxe," I offer. "We could go down into the caves together."

I smile at the thought of this. I am sure that between Sarah's earth spells and my wind spells, the two of us would be unstoppable! We would find diamonds in no time. We could split the riches between the two of us. And throughout our amazing adventure, I could use my spells against the monsters that attack us. When I finally come home, my mana pool would be drained, as if I had practiced spells at home. Kenneth would be none the wiser!

"We could..." Sarah replies cryptically.

"Then it is settled, then. Stone or iron?"

Sarah grins widely. "For you, my friend, only iron."

She spreads her arms apart and multiple arcs of red lightning curve and spread from one set of fingers to the other. As the lightning dissipates with a crackle, iron bars and sticks appear floating in front of her, which coalesce and morph until the likeness of a pickaxe emerges from the mass.

I gaze in shock as Sarah nonchalantly plucks the newly-formed iron pick from the air and hands it to me.

"You can craft without a table," I state in amazement.

"Just one of the perks of being an earth mage."

I grasp the handle and feel the weight of it as Sarah pulls her hand away. The grip fits my hand surprisingly well, as if I had crafted it myself. I turn the pick, examining the head's gleaming, polished surface, and noting the curvature and sharpness of its tip. It is a beautiful, skillfully crafted pick.

"Thank you," I tell her.

"Are you ready?" asks Sarah.

I smile. "I am always ready."

"To the caves, then!"

Sarah walks past me and I follow behind her through a labyrinth of torch-lit stone hallways and downward steps, until the hallway walls give way to large and distant curved shale walls, whose true depth is masked by dark shadows. Torches stand on the ground upright at irregular distances from each other.

Sarah leads the way into one of these shadows, materializing torches from red sparks as she goes. I notice deposits of coal and iron in the walls, which Sarah does not even seem to notice.

"Should we mine that ore?" I ask.

"Nope," says Sarah. "I couldn't possibly carry it all."

"Even an earth mage like you?" I wonder. "Since you are able to store incredibly large amounts of material with a few red sparks just like a miner can, would you not be eager to mine all the ore you can so you can sell it?"

"When you're an earth mage and you've been mining as long as I have, you stop mining every ore you see. Sure, I could mine the ore and sell it, but that just takes up time I could be spending doing other things. Like writing spells and spending time in nature."

Suddenly, Sarah ducks and an arrow bounces off the wall. Sarah stares outward with a look of confusion. I turn toward the source of her gaze and see a skeleton with its bow drawn. My heart starts to pound.

"An arrow shot and not even a warning call? How rude!" Sarah exclaims. She presses her palm against the wall, and a big chunk of stone breaks out from the wall with no discernible force except an unknown magnetism from Sarah's hand. Sarah chucks the stone in the direction of the skeleton, and the stone hurdles toward the skeleton until it punches through it, and the bones of the skeleton fly apart in shattered pieces. The bow and arrow disintegrate before they even hit the ground. Then, she continues walking through the cave at the same pace as before, as if the attack never happened.

My heart is still pounding. I could have died! I take a spark of mana from my pool and draw it through my arm and into the bases of my fingers, ready to fight if another skeleton appears from behind a wall.

As Sarah guides me up the steps and through the halls back to her house, I only feel disappointment. Not only did we not find diamonds, but I hardly had a chance to fight the monsters. Every chance she could, Sarah slain the monsters as they appeared, leaving me only missed shots and fading dust clouds.

At least my mana pool is drained.

Sarah waves goodbye to me from her door as I walk down her forest path. I know the route back to Kenneth's house by heart well enough that I no longer have to think about where I am going.

Finally, I see the familiar cabin nestled against the cliff wall. I approach it, open its door, and sit myself at the table where I have my spellbook prepared open as if I had been studying.

Then, I hear a door open. I feel a warm pressure on my shoulder.

I turn around and look up, and see Kenneth staring down at me from beneath his grey hood. There is no humor in his eyes. I fear the worst, that Kenneth has discovered my fraud and will punish me for my disobedience.

"I don't need to read your mind to know where you've been," says Kenneth. "Believe me, if I wanted to punish you, I would have done it a long time ago."