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Frey froze. Time marched on. \'I\'m sorry Elero. I don\'t know what to do.\' He thought. His indecision determined his decision

His vision flashed gold, and the cold night air swept past him. Whatever maneuver Alexander had enacted upon him, it was a little slower than the previous instances. The only reason he knew this was because he was able to peek out one of his eyes amidst the flash of gold and, in that brief moment of vision, he found himself high above the clouds. His eyes immediately watered up and closed.

\'We are going to die.\' Before he had even finished the thought, everything came to a stop. Solid ground tapped the bottom of his boots. Frey\'s knees buckled from the strain and he nearly faceplanted in surprisingly rich dirt. His hands and knees sunk a half an inch in the dark soil. Thomas didn\'t fare much better than Frey. The noble clutched at his stomach. A suppressed groan escaped his throat. Alexander walked past them with a hand on his sword.

Frey and Thomas got to their feet, having overcome the wave of nausea. Frey scanned the surroundings first, wondering how far Alexander had brought them. The Knight\'s Academy was nothing more than a dot on one of the many mountain peaks among the sea of clouds.

"By the goddess." Thomas said as he leaned over the mountain\'s peak. "I can\'t believe it\'s not magic which took us so far. It\'s like the higher stages are another realm entirely. I can\'t wait to become that strong but…" He shook his head. "It\'s not fair. Why does Elero have to be left behind?"

Another pang shot through Frey\'s heart. He looked around for anything to change the subject. He just needed time to think, that was all. He would think about this when he got the time. She\'s not going anywhere after all.

He soon found his excuse below the cloud cover, narrowed his eyes, pointed at it: "Do you see that?" Deep in the valley below was a massive structure: an empty, circular gate with dim reddish runes etched in its obsidian frame. Shadowy figures darted around it but he couldn\'t make them out because the clouds shifted, obscuring everything from view. The only thing he did know was that he wanted to be as far away from that thing as humanly, or inhumanely, possible.

"I don\'t see anything," Thomas shrugged. "But seriously, we owe her for both sparring with us, helping to break me out, and getting us through initiation. We can\'t just leave her."

"I just need time." Frey responded. "Doevm would think about situations like these and come up with an answer in seconds. I am not him. We\'re dealing with Jackal, our new mentor, Doevm\'s missing, and now Elero."

"Why are you here?" They heard Alexander growl, an obvious hostility underneath his calm tone.

"To deliver confidential information, sir." An unfamiliar voice replied. Frey and Thomas turned around. Standing a few feet away from the general was a mid-20s man with a short beard and the symbol of a skeletal arm holding an enormous light crystal engraved on his thick breastplate. The runes on his bracers and boots shone a pale blue light.

"Was this report necessary at this location?" Alexander continued, unfazed by the man\'s equipment. "I thought you Enforcers were resolute to harass people in the Capital, not in front of my home." He pointed over the Enforcer\'s shoulder to a simple white stone structure jutting out of the flat mountaintop.

The house\'s red tile roof, rectangular brick chimney which ran up the back wall, and the budding tree saplings strewn about the mountaintop added color to the building\'s bleak white and brown existence, yet Alexander\'s home somehow still stuck out like a sore thumb. If not for the light shining through the square windows and onto the surrounding vibrant, green garden Frey would have thought the building as more of a grave rather than a house.

The Enforcer let out a long sigh as he handed a letter to Alexander. "But it\'s almost high tide and the nobles don\'t wish to be caught unawares under the force of the current, if you understand what I mean."

"Leave." Alexander pointed down the mountain slope. "The nobles dictate a lot of things but not my free time, and especially not while standing on my own private property."

"But the tide." The man continued; however he took a step back, knowing full well who he was talking to.

"Son…" Alexander closed the gap with a single stride and put a hand on the man\'s shoulder. The man winced as part of his armor screeched, denting in the shape of Alexander\'s life essence reinforced hand. "The better part of a year. That\'s how much time we have. Don\'t pretend buy to into the propaganda they\'re spreading in the Capital whether it\'s about the internal or external threats. You and all the upper echelons of authority know better. Now tell me, does your armor have the rune for…" He removed his hand from the man\'s shoulder to rub his chin. "Slowing a fall. What was the actual name?"

The man regained a little bit of his former confidence as he gestured to the two matching runes on his boots. "It\'s called the Gliding Fall, sir. I got these right when Eugene Scoldheim first made them. I am not a mage but I certainly feel like one with this miracle of a suit of armor."

The man\'s eyes brightened as if he had been waiting years for someone to notice. "And I hear Eugene\'s working on making something similar to these gun thingies I\'ve been hearing so much about, which shocked me since he\'s been working on secret projects for a year or two now. All he\'s waiting on is the mages over at the Magic Academy, who need to discover how to make the bang powder. If you don\'t mind can you tell me when theeeyyyy-!"

His voice faded as General Alexander chucked him off the side of the mountain, becoming a distant echo before an inevitable thud, although the thud was much softer than Frey expected as he barely heard it. Just to make sure the man was ok, he walked back to the edge of the mountain and peered down into the valley below.

"Alright," Alexander said, clapping his hands together. "It is finally time to get training." He started towards his home but only heard one set of footsteps following behind him, Thomas\'s. "Frey, are you coming?" He asked without looking back.

The man had dispersed the clouds as he fell through, allowing Frey to once again gaze deep into the valley. At the angle of it, Frey couldn\'t see that black stone structure, only the streams and wildlife moving about. \'I have the mask,\' he thought as he rubbed Doevm\'s spatial ring between his fingers. \'I should trust the people besides me. I should but I can\'t. Goddess, I can\'t even pray to you anymore now that I know who you truly are. Maybe Elero can figure something out. She\'s smart.\'

"Frey, are you coming?" He heard General Alexander call, so he turned and followed.

"Are you nervous?" Thomas asked, gesturing to the building ahead. "Jameson never talked about how he was trained. Or maybe Jameson taught us what Alexander is planning to teach us." As he talked, he gradually grew closer. "It makes sense since they\'re master and disciple and all. If so, maybe the General will be impressed that we already know his entire training routine." He reached into his pocket, got right up to Frey\'s ear, and whispered: "I got another note from our informant."

Luckily the General wasn\'t looking at them because Frey\'s eyes went wide. "Are you sure?" He whispered back. "How do these notes keep appearing in your pocket?"

"I don\'t know," Thomas whispered. "I thought maybe it could be General Alexander, since he seems to fit the requirements, but then what\'s stopping him from telling us it\'s him? Whoever this is, they can move without us noticing."

"What\'s the note say?" Frey asked. By now the three had made their way to the building but they did not go inside. They walked around the back of it, where the rich soil turned to solid stone and the flat ground dipped at a ninety-degree angle into a massive basin.

Crudely made stone stairs cut into the circular wall spiraled down for a hundred feet into the strange oasis, which was bigger than the rose fields back home. Frey frowned as the sheer density and variety of the plant life dug up painful memories over at the front lines.

Grass and moss took up the rich soil around a center lake, which had a bright blue crystal lying at the bottom. Trees and vines climbed up by the cracks in the sheer stone walls, wanting to spread outwards but not having the handholds to do so. The calls of various small animals and crickets broke the dead air.

"Welcome to my master\'s garden." Alexander said, spreading his arms out wide. He smiled for seemingly the first time since they had met him. He pointed across the shallow lake to the wall opposite the stairs, where a pitch-black hole had been punched into the solid stone. "We train in there."

"It says she\'ll die if we leave her be." Thomas whispered to Frey.

"What?" Frey looked back to Thomas; whose face had drained of color.

"The note." Thomas held the note out to Frey. It read: "Who will weep for the fallen angel? Elero\'s death is imminent."