The End of the Horizon

II - The Silent Shadow

The long night was finally gone and the rays of sunlight lit through the small leaves of the trees dancing with the wind outside a cave that Mello found to give him and Lizzie some shelter. The cold now was giving space to the morning warmth and the humidity of the forest. Mello noticed that Lizzie wasn't around, only her beautiful book of spells, the coat and the stuff her grandfather gave her were there by his side. He heard a voice coming from outside the cave, shouting. He got up from the ground, did a couple of body stretches, grabbed his katana, the book, and walked towards the voice.

Outside, by the small trees, he saw the girl trying her best to use magic that certainly was pumped up by his incentive. He leaned on the cave's wall and started quickly browsing through the magic book. At first, he only could make sense of some sentences and pictures, and all the rest was only gibberish to him. Maybe he couldn't read it because his knowledge on that topic was very limited. He only knew about magic because of his sister, who was an experienced magician. Maybe, someone with more knowledge about that subject in that world could read and understand all of the different forms and symbols that were written in the book. There were also pages with different colors and some pages blank. Maybe, the book only "activates" when some kind of magic power was near it?

Lizzie saw Mello looking at her book and decided to show him that she also could use magic, and was not a loser like he saw her yesterday.

"Hey, dude! Look here!"

The man focused his gaze at the girl. She clapped her hands above her head, making a small explosion of flames, and slowly put her hands down, making the fire dance around her, until the flames were extinguished.

"That's it, Liz!"

He gave her a positive hand sign and she came running happily towards him, almost tripping. He gave her back the book.

"I was taking a look at it and it seems to have other spells besides fire. Did you give them a try yet?"

"Yep." – Said the girl, opening the book. The pages now were a lot easier to read than before, proving his theory about the magic power near it. Its letters now made some kind of sense and the drawings were now clearer. – "I can use the elements of fire, wind, and water a little and tried to use the earth element, but it's very hard for me to even picture it being formed by my hands." – In between the talking, she showed him the pages with the respective descriptions of every element. – "But the most annoying one for me to grasp is electricity. I cannot understand a single word of it. I don't even understand how I could use it last night. Before, I couldn't even feel it when I tried to do the spell..."

"What an amazing book... When I was reading it before, only some of the symbols and pages were readable. Now, when you touched it, a lot showed up."

"...and what does it mean?"

"Well... I don't really understand magic, but maybe it's related to the user's capabilities on the utilization of magic. Maybe someone knows about it and can explain it to you better."

"Hehe... I can't wait."

*

Mello and Lizzie cooked something up with fruits and a rabbit that he hunted, and she roasted it on a small campfire made of leaves, sticks, and magical fire that she made. After breakfast, the two started going back to the way they were following by the forest. As Lizzie said, Ventus was "far as shit", so they still had a long way to go. They met an old traveler on the way, who gave them information on the nearest city: Steinturm.