Louise had been quick to pack her bags. At the academy she had rather few possessions, only her clothes, her pride and her wand. Two of those things would be of little use to her from now on.

She wasn't leaving a single thing behind.

To everyone's surprise, including Professor Colbert and Headmaster Osmond, she hadn't fought against her fate. She hadn't thrown a tantrum, she hadn't insisted.

Instead she had resigned herself. She'd silently accepted it.

Was this growing up? Well, it didn't sit very well.

"Louise!" A familiar voice.

A very irritating voice. Louise gritted her teeth. Although she would never admit it out loud, she knew she wasn't the only one who had crossed the line more than once. She'd given as hard as she'd gotten. But really, did that woman have to come and make fun of her even now?

She had been so proud that she had made it back to the dorms without crying after her failure at the summoning ritual and the talk with the headmaster.

She wanted to leave the academy, at least, with some dignity.

With her head held high.

But apparently the Zerbst bitch wasn't going to allow her even that. She stood in her way for surely the last time, but that was no consolation. She had stopped him from closing the carriage door, forcing Louise to face her.

She sighed deeply.

Okay, if I have to do it, then I'll do it.

Not only had Kirche come, but she had also brought her little friend. The little weirdo who always went around with a book in her arms, as if she wasn't an exceptional student and a skilled mage, as if she really had to try so hard. She had spent many sleepless nights so that she wouldn't take away even the single thing she could be proud of: her excellent grades as far as theory was concerned. If she had been surpassed even in that, she wouldn't know if she would have been able to continue so long at the academy.

You don't have to worry about that anymore.

"What do you want, Zerbst?" Her voice lacked the usual heat, it was barely more than a whisper. The girl was like a bucket of water with a hole in it. No matter what she did, the water would gush out and she would be left empty.

Kirche didn't scoff, didn't laugh at her.

She frowned.

"What are you doing?"

Oh, was that why she'd come so far? Did she want to force her to admit it? All right, what did it matter, she had nothing left to lose. Her pride had been crushed in front of all the first-year students. Who would be second-years from now on. Without her.

"I've been expelled."

"You can't be blamed because the familiar ran away. Even the teacher couldn't catch it. I mean, he looks like a clueless old man all the time, but there's a reason he's a teacher. They can't blame you."

She said it as if she could make it true if she repeated it enough times.

"Of course I'm to blame. It couldn't have eaten that familiar or escaped if the smoke from the explosion hadn't covered it up."

"That's not..." Kirche stuttered for some reason. She was weird today. Well, today everything was strange. Or rather, this was the natural result of the painful past year. No, even further back, all her failures at home, in front of countless tutors. In front of her mother's eyes. In front of her entire family. It was the natural result. She was paying the price for her arrogance, that was all. So it was only natural. "That's not what I mean, Louise. You summoned something. I have no idea what it is..."

Of course.

Not her, not the teachers, not even the headmaster.

No one had any idea what it was, which should have been exciting. She had summoned a new species, she wasn't one of those who had to settle for ordinary animals like toads or birds, even if she had secretly begged the Founder to give her anything, as long as it was something, as long as it legitimized her as a mage! Only it had flown the nest. And now she had nothing.

"But it's something. They can't say you're not a mage, that you don't have some kind of elemental affinity."

"My failures proved that, too. You can't give a wand to a commoner and expect them to blow up the kitchen at work or the fields they plow. But I'm still a failure. And I can't stay here."

Louise explained calmly, as if it had nothing to do with her. To her surprise her eyes weren't wet, not even an eyelid trembled.

Wow.

Quite a thing, huh? At least she was going to leave the academy with her pride. At least the Founder was granting her that. It was cold comfort, but she'd gladly take it.

"Are you done yet? Okay then." She got into the carriage, closing the door behind her. "Driver, I'm so sorry to have kept you waiting."

But Kirche didn't give up, she hadn't had enough yet. Of what? She didn't even know why she was here, why she was saying those things.

Why she was talking like she gave a shit about what would happen to her.

She kept up with the carriage, clinging to the edges of the window and pulling her head as close as she could.

"Louise, I... I'm sorry."

The girl thought about it, but not too much.

"So am I."

The plain and simple truth. What else could she say?

The carriage silently continued on its way back to... home?

Home is where they want you to stay longer, she thought bitterly.

—

Alex Mercer was pretty sure he knew what had happened to him. Not how or why, just the end result. The only problem was that it was madness straight out of some science fiction book. Something strange had happened one way or another, he had found himself from one moment to the next in a completely different place. But "that" was just too far"fetched. So he decided to avoid coming to a conclusion until he devoured some of the local wildlife.

By which he meant a human being, of course.

An animal would be of very little use to him, and otherwise he would already have all the answers, since he had eaten that bird.

Like a predator, he advanced into the shade of the trees until he found the perfect victim. Some farmer going to plow the fields, hoe on his shoulder, humming some song that didn't ring a bell.

"What the heck?"

He didn't have time to scream or to try to run. The mass of tentacles engulfed him and devoured him without leaving even the bones. But it didn't kill him. It couldn't be said that it had killed him, at least not completely, because the most important thing, what makes a person what he was, remained inside Alex. Memories.

The answers he sought.

He wasn't in Kansas anymore. Probably because he was a farmer, he didn't have all the answers, but those kids had been doing magic and one of them had summoned him here. Brought to another world, evidently.

The discovery didn't perturb him, quite the opposite.

Alex smiled, excited by the future that stretched out before him like a blank page covered in warm sunlight at dawn.

He was free at last. Free in every sense of the word.

A new world.

A world where the sins of his creator wouldn't haunt him. A world without Blackwatch, without Blacklight, without the necessary technology or knowledge to carry out the experiments that had nearly wiped out New York.

Perhaps a world to call home.

In any case, he was now truly free and the taste of freedom was sweet.

—

Miles away, floating in the field where the Springtime Familiar Summoning took place, still floated the portal through which Alex Mercer had come to this world. It reflected nothing at the moment, at least, it was nothing more than a green oval, but it was still there, as if...

As if waiting.

As if this had only just begun.

Next Time:

Chapter 3: Alex Mercer, Hardworking Husband (1)