Jalen stood upon the top of a grassy hill and looked down on Vermil’s students as they sat in a circle and practiced Formations like it was the most natural thing in the world. Even though they were only in the earliest stages of a proper Formation, it was nearly enough to make him burst into hysterical laughter.

Not a single one of them understood the extent of the power Vermil had handed to them. Formations were difficult enough to learn the normal way. The most common way mages learned them was by reviewing other Formations and practicing for years upon years until they’d ingrained everything to memory.

Only once that had been done did a normal practitioner even consider trying to make a proper Formation of their own, and even that Formation was little more than an inspired tweak from an existing one.

The more talented mages could muster the skill to make a Formation unique to their current runes after dedicating their life to the craft. That usually happened when a mage recognized they’d reached or were about to reach the peak of their power and their runes would be unlikely to allow for further combinations.

It only made sense. Why spend years learning a Formation when the runes that went into it would change in just a short while? It was far easier to focus on normal Runic advancement and then top everything off with Formations at the end.

Vermil took all that logic, crumpled it up into a little ball, and ate the damn thing while flipping me off. Smug little shit. Not only does he skip out on our agreed-upon game. Not only does he guilt me into taking care of his little snotlings. Not only do I have to do that together with the big oaf who’s still so torn up about Vermil going missing that he’s barely registered the magnitude of what these little goblinoids are doing, but I’ve got to do all of it without ripping the secret out of their heads.

If Vermil had just taught the kids Formations normally, Jalen wouldn’t have been quite so irate. That alone would have been an impressive and respectable feat. But this — Jalen wasn’t even certain this was a proper way to cast Formations.

Not a single one of the brats sitting on the grass even knew how to form a proper Formation. They hadn’t studied years of research or practiced steadying their hand for years on end.

From what Jalen had gathered — as all of them were remarkably wary about revealing even the slightest bits of what their actual process was — they were literally just free-handing it. The thought alone made Jalen’s eye twitch.

Vermil had been preparing them to cast Formations on the fly. A skill reserved for the absolute peak of even the most talented Formation Masters, and it was what he got them started on.

There was only a single logical solution to how that was possible, and it gnawed at the back of Jalen’s mind like a beaver.

All the research was wrong. The path every single Formation Master was taking to learn their craft wasn’t just flawed. It was complete and utter shit.

“That nifty little shit,” Jalen said. He kicked a rock on the ground, sending a pulse of space energy into it, and watched the stone rocket into the air in a gray blur. It let out a shrill whistle and struck a particularly unfortunate bird the size of his head.

The bird exploded in a puff of white feathers and plummeted to the ground, splattering at the top of a hill across from him.

Brayden, who he had half-forgotten stood on the hill overlooking the students beside him, sent Jalen a glance.

“That was a spy,” Jalen informed Brayden. “It was planning to commit subterfuge.”

“Understood, Magus Jalen.”

Jalen glared up at the large Space Mage. Brayden was the absolute epitome of boring. Worse, he couldn’t even hold it against the big man. The flat tone and expressionless features weren’t there by chance.

They were a survival mechanism.

Brayden might have been boring, but he was no coward. He’d stood his ground against Jalen when it had mattered, and that was more than most did. To Jalen’s displeasure, Brayden had also refused his suggestion to toss the kids off a cliff to simulate some real-danger settings.

All the assurances that he probably would have caught them before they hit the ground fell on deaf ears.

Stiff necked giant. Completely spoiling my fun. Fortunately, some more of that should be coming soon. Otto’s little informant is going to be coming to a class soon. I’ve given her enough time to get those runes. The King family aren’t at the peak for no reason, so she’ll be able to give the brats something new to work on as well. Maybe a fun new technique. She probably won’t want to give anything up, but I’m sure she can be convinced.Stolen novel; please report.

“Are you okay?” Brayden asked. “You look a little… ah, constipated.”

“I am plotting,” Jalen said primly. “Something that you should consider taking up if any proper thoughts could manifest themselves in your brick of a head.”

“Shouldn’t you be overseeing?” Brayden countered. “You’re supposed to be helping me watch over the kids, not blasting birds. They specifically said they needed to avoid being disturbed while they practiced.”

Talking like that to me as a Rank 4 from my own family? Perhaps I judged this walking rectangle too hastily. I admire the balls.

Jalen didn’t get a chance to respond to Brayden’s challenge. He went to shift his footing and his foot caught on something that definitely hadn’t been there a few seconds ago. He — Jalen, Family Head of the Linwicks, Rank 6 at the peak of his power — tripped and fell flat on his face.

Of course, an instant before he smacked into the grass, his body rippled and vanished, teleporting to reform a foot to the side of where he’d been standing a second ago with a hiss and a pop. Tripping didn’t mean one had to hit the ground. That still didn’t change the fact that he’d tripped.

“What in the Damned Plains is stupid enough too…” Jalen’s words trailed off as he locked eyes with a white-furred cat holding a roll of paper in its mouth. Glowing horns jutted from its skull and there was a smug twinkle in the red motes nestled within the sea of its pitch-black eyes.

“Is that Vermil’s cat?” Brayden asked in surprise. He spun, grabbing a polished new sword from his back and holding it before him. “Do you see any giant monsters heading in our direction? I don’t sense anything.”

“I see something far worse,” Jalen said, his jaw clenched as he locked eyes with the cat. “A scraggly little creature with a penchant for hairballs and being an annoying shit.”

The cat tilted its head at Jalen. There was intelligence in its smug little eyes. Far more intelligence than anything that resembled a rug in any way, shape, or form should have had. Jalen lunged at the cat.

It vanished, and his domain prickled as he felt it reform above him. Jalen teleported as well, appearing midair above the cat before he could hit the ground. The cat vanished once more, this time reappearing on Brayden’s head.

I didn’t feel it arrive the first time. The little shitter has magic strong enough to slip beneath my senses — which means it’s intentionally letting me notice it teleport. It’s playing with me.

“You want to play?” Jalen asked, teleporting back to the ground and baring his teeth. Energy buzzed around his body as he drank from his Runes. “I’m not above it, you overgrown rat.”

“Could you possibly wait to do that until the cat is no longer on my head?” Brayden asked tersely. He reached up and tugged on the white-furred monstrosity, but it clung to his head like a hat with attachment issues.

“Just hold still,” Jalen replied, lifting a hand toward Brayden. “If you don’t budge, you might only lose a little hair.”

“I don’t have any damn hair to lose!” Brayden yelled, jumping back. “Don’t blast me!”

“Stop jumping around!” Jalen snapped. “I don’t usually miss, and you aren’t making things easier for me.”

Brayden didn’t seem to be in a cooperative mood. He continued trying to pry the cat off his head to absolutely no avail. That made it rather impossible for Jalen to perform any proper attacks unless he wanted to take Brayden’s hands off along with the cat — and the stupid cat would almost certainly dodge the attacks anyway.

Jalen’s attention focused on the scrap of paper in the cat’s mouth. It still hadn’t dropped it. If he couldn’t deal with the little furball, he refused to believe that he couldn’t confiscate its toy.

He teleported forward, his hand darting out. The cat vanished as soon as he reformed, appearing about twenty feet in the air above them. Out of the corner of his eye, Jalen spotted several of Vermil’s students watching him and laughing.

Funny, am I? I’ll show you funny.

Jalen clapped his hands together. Brayden’s eyes shot open in horror and he flung himself to the ground. Energy screamed out of Jalen’s body to the sound of the crashing roar of an enormous waterfall as he released his domain.

The air between Jalen and the cat warped. He extended his hand. Space compressed and crumpled around his fingers. Even though he was dozens of feet away from his target, his fingers snagged the piece of paper as if it were right beside him.

Jalen yanked his domain back. The cat fell to the ground, its payload confiscated.

“That’ll show you to screw with me,” Jalen informed the cat. “Smug little shit. Thinking you can flaunt space magic like that in my presence. If you weren’t Vermil’s, I’d figure out just what made you tick.”

The cat teleported back to Brayden as the large man stood back up, his face still slightly pallid. The students headed up the hill to join them, looking from the cat to Jalen with undisguised curiosity.

“Did you just unleash your domain?” Brayden demanded. “On a cat?”

“Who won?” Jalen countered, unrolling the paper. “I did. That’s who. Cat: 0. Jalen: 1. Who’s the victor? That’s right. It’s — oh.”

“What?” Todd asked. “What’s going on? Why’s Mascot here?”

Jalen stared at the words scrawled across the paper. Then he lowered it and looked back over to the cat. It was, without a doubt, even more smug than it had been before.

“You wanted me to take the paper?” Jalen asked, his eye twitching. It wasn’t just that. This was no mere cat. It had done something that even he couldn’t, and that irked him to such an end that he would never admit it.

“Of course he did,” Brayden snapped. “Why would Mascot show up with a piece of paper if he wasn’t delivering it?”

“I thought it was a cat toy! I don’t know what cats do!”

“What does the blasted paper say?” Isabel demanded. “What happened?”

“Oh, right,” Jalen said. He looked back to the paper, then let out a short burst of laughter as he turned it around so the students could read it. “Looks like you little brats were right on the money. Vermil says hello from the Damned Plains.”