The Call to War

Chapter 1

A carriage made its way through the floating city of Xyrus, its destination, Xyrus Academy, its passengers, Arthur, Elijah, Lilia, and Sylvie. Today is the day for all returning Xyrus Academy students to make their return to the prestigious school, as the first years will be arriving in two more days. The last three weeks felt like they had passed by too fast, but they were far from a blur.

Unlike the others, Elijah didn't return home to spend time with his family. His guardian Rahdeas felt that he should stay in Xyrus, that the return back to Darv was too long and that the time there would be too short. Instead Rahdeas stayed in Xyrus for a week to spend time with his adopted son, even having dinner with the Helstea's and Leywin's a few times. Arthur had felt his behavior was odd, but just brushed it off as normal behavior for a dwarf his age.

Arthur had learned that Ellie was an augmenter, and the day after his return evaluated her current abilities and began to develop a training regiment. Much to Tess' delight, Ellie had chosen to become an archer, wielding the very bow she gave her for her eighth birthday. Despite Tess only being there till after lunch the day after their return, and for two days after spending time with her family, Tess did anything she could to help with Ellie's training, as did Lilia and Elijah. The end result of these three weeks, was Ellie breaking into the dark red stage. With the training regiment Arthur left her, and her coming for tutoring three days a week, Arthur was confident she would reach the light red, if not dark orange stage by the time she started at Xyrus academy.

One morning three days after their return, while Vincent and Rey were leaving for the auction house, they were greeted by a royal messenger as he was delivering ten arrangements of red roses. The messenger was under strict instruction to ensure that Lilia was directly given these flowers. So as he brought arrangement after arrangement a servant interrupted her training in the backyard, and brought her to the overwhelming amount of roses, and both of her smiling parents awaiting an explanation. The messenger hand delivered Lilia a letter with a single white rose. The letter essentially compared all the other girls to red roses, and Lilia to the white one, a rare beauty that Curtis never wanted to let go of. Lilia's parents were reading the letter over her shoulder, and immediately understood that not only were she and Curtis dating now, but that he was clearly head over heels in love with her.

The first evening following the council's week long break, Curtis arrived at the Helstea manor in his finest black suit to take Lilia out on their first date. From that day forward, Vincent would have always referred to Lilia as the future queen of Sapin, if not for the threat of Tabitha punching him in the head. Nearly every day after that Curtis and Kathyln would come to the Helstea manor to either spend time with Lilia, or to join the three teen mages in training.

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It had been a week since Tess left to enjoy some time with her family, and as she said before she left, an Elenoir royal carriage was arriving at the Helstea manor, presumably carrying Tess. She had promised Arthur that she would return after the council's week long break ended, to see him again before she once again had to leave and resume her training with Director Goodsky, as well as make preparations for the upcoming school year as the Student Council President.

The carriage came to a stop at the bottom of the stairs, and as the coachman made his way to the door, Arthur walked over with a box of Tess' favorite chocolates in his hand. The carriage door was opened to reveal Tess as he smiled at the sight. Upon seeing Arthur her eyes lit up and her lips curved up into a smile.

"Arthur!" Tess exclaimed as she jumped out at him.

Arthur immediately reinforced his body with mana, but that did nothing for his balance, as he caught her and she wrapped her arms around his neck while smashing her lips into his. He began to fall backwards, but Tess had already cast a wind spell to push him back up to his feet.