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Sainar and Vesperi thought long and hard what to do with the boy and finally decided to let him be. His self-made spells are too simple and weak to hurt his ambasiath potential anyway. All Vesperi has to do is to keep Pai away from serious magic.

There is always a lively, flickering fire in that boy’s eyes, the kind of fire a poet or an artist has when inspiration lends them wings.

Milian Raven. Or, rather, Corvus. He is twelve. They say the language his surname belongs to had been long dead even before the worldholders left the Primal World to create Omnis. Milian likes ancient languages but still prefers the modern form of his surname, because, in his opinion, it sounds better.

Young Raven is a bookish kid, so unlike his master Kangassk Marini, a talkative woman with a bubbly, cheerful character. She would prefer a noisy tavern to a cosy library any day. Her apprentice – quite the opposite. Milian prefers books to people and fantasies to the real world.

He doesn’t like the other nine boys being there. Oh how much he would give for them to go away, so he could look through all the library books in peace! But no, they are not going away. They keep talking, they keep arguing, they keep fighting over their places in the team.

Milian instantly disliked both the newly established leader and his rival. And Lainuver too.

Kosta Ollardian. He is twelve, like Milian – only Milian is tall for his age but Kosta is short. For some reason, he looks especially sad with a sword.

There’s a big purple bruise on his right cheek; Kangassk Ollardian is ruthless with his son… Yes, son. The boy inherited his grandfather’s magical chalice filled with transformed magic – ambassa – to the brim, so Kangassk Ollardian talked Sainar into accepting Kosta as one of the chosen ten. No one is happy about that, though.

Kind and obedient, this boy has no warrior’s spirit in him at all. There is light in his heart but this is the light of a fire burning very low.

Oasis. A feral child of the urban jungle of Lumenik. He has never had a surname, never had a proper first name as well, and never knew his exact birth date. Is he twelve or thirteen? Or maybe fourteen? No one knows. The boy is short and stout and wide in the shoulders. His master – Kangassk Adgar – is proud of him despite Oasis doing very poorly in all things science: he started learning too late.

Oasis’s cheerfulness is akin to Bala’s but it's not accompanied by clumsiness. Clumsy children just don’t survive in an urban jungle.

Jarmin Fredery-Alan. The youngest of the ten. He is only six. His little sword looks like a cute toy even though it’s rather sharp. His master – Kangassk Eugenia – hasn’t had time to teach her little apprentice much yet but she loves him with all her heart like her own son.

Things took a bad turn after Juel made a cruel joke about Jarmin. The little boy burst into tears.

“Hey you, boar! Leave the kid alone!” Orion stepped up. That was brave and rather reckless of him, considering the difference in size and weight between him and the Faizul.

Jarmin ran up to his protector, hid his face in Orion’s sleeve and started bawling even louder. Jovib gently ruffled the child’s yellow hair.

“No true Lifekeeper would hurt a child,” Lainuver joined Orion with a menacing sneer.

“Friends, friends, please, let’s not fight in the holy place!” Bala jumped from his seat and stood between the rivals with his hands widely spread in a pleading gesture.

Juel and Orion exchanged looks. Faizul was fuming; the pirate’s descendant was smiling; but neither of them was going to forget the incident.

Meanwhile, the unseen hierarchy was rearranging itself behind their backs, some sympathies shifting to Juel’s side, the others – to Orion’s.

The rivals did drop the matter, just like Bala was pleading them to do, but only for now.

“Wipe your tears, young warrior. It’s all right now,” said Orion to the crying boy. “Just wait until you grow up! Then you can beat all the shit out of this stupid boar. I bet he won’t be so brave when you’re his size. Do you like stories? Maps? How about we find the biggest world map in this library and make some plans for our future journey?”

That did cheer little Jarmin up. Several minutes later, he was sitting on the lap of his new friend and looking at the biggest map he had ever seen. It even included some territories that most other maps just ignored: Faizul lands, for example.

The other boys, Juel and Irin excluded, crowded around the map as well, pointing at various cities they had visited with their masters and sharing their stories. Bala’s and Oasis’s stories were the best.

Bala had even visited Kuldagan once. When he was telling about it, everyone listened to him with bated breath; in Bala’s stories, Kuldagan Desert seemed a wonderful alien world full of wonders.

Oasis’ adventures in Lumenik Hive made everyone laugh. Like any good storyteller, he knew which words to choose when he saw the audience. He could have easily told the boys very truthful horror stories from his past life if they were in the mood for that kind of entertainment. But for now, he just wanted to cheer everyone up. And he did. Even Kosta and Milian snapped out of their gloomy mood and looked genuinely interested.

When Oasis stepped out of the spotlight, it was their turn to shine. Two wide intersecting circles going through all the map prompted a question about Horas, the magical stabilizers, and there Kosta and Milian, the bookish boys, were the experts.

Excited, Milian even took a dried up diadem fruit out of his pocket and slashed it with his pen-knife to illustrate his story better.

“Imagine that this dry tail here is Hora Solaris and this bump on the side is Hora Lunaris and there is a stabilizing field around each of them. If you leave just one Hora in the world, its influence will cover all the planet…” Milian was explaining, his eyes full of lively interest.

“It’ll detonate,” said Kosta sceptically and rested his head on his hand, thoughtful. “I read that someone had tried that in the past. Things went boom.”

“I know! I was getting to it!” Milian waved the argument aside. “So – hypothetically! – if we leave just one Hora, its influence will cover the whole planet. But if we add another, the tension between them will create a nice belt of a border dividing the planet into two magically stable halves. Intersecting circles don't show that!” That said, he drew a perfectly straight border between the tail and the bump. A crunch followed; two sugary halves of the fruit fell to the floor.

“The canonic way to draw the border has its practical use,” Pai Prior, the only practising mage among the ten, joined the discussion. “The strength of a Hora grows weaker as we move away from it. On the opposite side of the planet, it must be so weak that it fails to stabilize magic at all. And there, between the Horas, their influences conflict with each other, creating anomalies. It’s always good to know where your spells may randomly start exploding.”