Chương 30: 27. Arrival

Marcus sat in the new lecture hall, tapping his finger against the table and pretending to read a book while he waited for the last few students to make their way inside. He chose a good moment to build the lecture hall. He had returned to the lands of the Silver League at the start of summer, but it had been six months since then. It felt like less to Marcus, but the passage of time didn't care about how Marcus felt. A few days ago snow had started falling, and it had yet to stop.

Winter was upon them, and having a nice spacious building with good insulation for everyone to meet in was nice. Without it… well, they would have managed somehow, but this was better. Most of the students were already inside, with a book of their own in front of them, and unlike Marcus, they seemed actually absorbed in their reading material. That was probably because they were actual spellbooks, and not boring theory, but it was still impressive to see most of his students enthusiastic about reading anything.

Marcus wasn't surprised by this burst of enthusiasm, though. They may be his first students ever, but he too had been in their position once, and had observed other students since then as well. In Marcus's experience, new mages tended to be very motivated when they reached this stage. The initial steps involving learning a foundational technique required a lot of work for no immediate gain, so even if the student was driven, it usually took a fair bit of prodding to keep them working hard.

Though in truth, Marcus was pleasantly surprised by their diligence, even in this early period – not that he would ever praise them much for that, of course. In any case, once students became actual apprentices and could cast their first spells, they finally had magical powers within their grasp, and were almost invariably eager to seek out every spell in their vicinity so they could attune themselves to as many of them as their soul could bear. In most academies, this actually took quite some time.

Getting spells, even beginner ones, was difficult. There were only so many spellbooks, and most academies took in as many students as they could handle, creating constant shortages. Even if one had a powerful backer, they might not want their students to learn spells on a whim – there was a common belief among mages that it was better to learn a handful of spells really well than to dip one's toes into many different things.

As such, students would typically have to prove sufficient mastery of their chosen spells before being granted permission to learn more. In this regard, Marcus intended to stray from common wisdom. It was in the nature of the Soul Tree Technique to basically grab anything interesting that you encounter. He had given his students a lot of spell books, more than they could possibly learn for now, and given them permission to learn anything they found interesting. He did have to put his foot down in a few places.

Claudia initially didn't want to learn any combat spells. Cassia didn't want to learn anything but combat spells. Things like that.

"It's a bad idea to just learn combat spells, at least for now," Marcus told all of them, not just Cassia.

"In order to grow as an apprentice and eventually grow into true mages, you need to cast spells. That is a bit of an issue if you only have combat spells at your disposal, since we are not at war right now, and you're not a soldier or a monster hunter. What are you going to use your combat spells at?"

"The training dummies?" Cassia tried.

"It's winter. Between the snow and the cold, they will be inaccessible a lot of the time," Marcus pointed out.

"You should learn at least a couple of utility spells that you can practice in your free time without having to damage something. Pick something practical, so that you will want to use it even outside of training – lighting spells, spells of repair and material shaping, maybe an arcane sigil to mark all your belongings with… you can also consider heating spells, considering the conditions outside.

Even if you make a mistake, you can always un-attune yourself from a spell and pick something different to replace it with. One of the major advantages of mages compared to martial paths is that you can change your magic to suit your needs very quickly."

"Is there any point in learning any of the wood spells?" Renatus asked, flipping through the spell book in front of him. It was one of the copies of Shamshir's wood spell collection that Marcus had made, arguably the most valuable of the spell books they were perusing.

"I know our foundational technique is compatible with them, but a lot of them require tree roots, leaves, and plants to be around in order to do anything."

"At the moment, probably not," Marcus admitted.

"Leeching Seed and Seed Trap are probably fine – I'm pretty sure we have suitable seeds to use in the store room. Shape Wood is a good one, since you can use it on some of our firewood without much issue. But most of the others are probably best left for spring. You can always switch out some of your spells for these when the time comes."

Marcus assumed that there were more spells once that allowed wood mages to compensate for this seasonal weakness, but the only spells he had access to were those Shamshir had gifted him when he had taken Iris in as his student. Most of them required access to living roots, leaves, grass, or flowers… and virtually all of them were combat spells. He had hoped to find some more wood spells in Sacred Oak's collection, but the tree didn't have anything other than the three spells Marcus already found in the past.

There were plenty of other spells suitable for his students, but none of them were wood aligned. They would just have to deal with this by using other types of spells when conditions were not suitable for wood ones. He didn't think it was really possible to be a pure wood mage on Tasloa, even with Shamshir's gift, so perhaps that was for the best.

"As for you," continued Marcus, turning towards Claudia, "you need to be able to defend yourself somehow. We had our tower besieged just recently, surely you haven't forgotten that? At least learn some restraining spells so you can run away more easily." He had a test of courage set up during the selection process, and still got a cowardly student out of it, Marcus lamented in his head. If he ever took students again, he should put two tests of courage instead… maybe even three.

Before Claudia could really acknowledge his statement, the last two students missing from the group – Cricket and Julia – entered the lecture hall. Cricket shook herself like a wet cat, scattering snow everywhere. It earned her an annoyed glare from Julia, which she either ignored or didn't notice.

"I hate winter," Cricket loudly announced.

"Why can't it always be summer?"

"A virtuous mage accepts things they cannot change, rather than raging at the world," Marcus told her calmly.

"Please sit down, you two." He empathized with Cricket somewhat. As someone who spent a fair bit of his life in Adria, where winters were very mild and snow rarely fell, and who had spent the last six years wandering around the place like a migratory bird, this winter was a bit of an unpleasant surprise. It had been a while since he had stayed in one place and experienced a winter like this. That said, didn't Cricket grow up in a place really similar to this, at the foot of the mountains?

She must have experienced this every year, so why was it her complaining instead of Diocles and Regulus, who both lived their whole lives in Adria and likely never experienced something like this until now?

"I wasn't raging," Cricket said, pouting. But she did sit down.

"Now that we're all here, I want to talk to you about what comes next," Marcus said.

"You've all become apprentices and stabilized your foundation, had time to calm down a little and browse all the spells to see what interests you… what follows is fairly simple and almost every mage can manage to do it eventually, but I hope it takes you a year of work at most. You have to hone your ability to sense and channel ambient mana, practice your hand motions and chants, and learn the basics of runes and symbols so you can perform rituals and more complicated spells.

It may sound complicated, but at the end of the day, all of this can be accomplished by simply casting lots of spells. Attune yourself to a variety of spells and try to use them as often as possible. Try to pick something cheap and harmless that you can practice easily in your room without hurting yourself or your belongings, a combat spell or two that you can use to defend yourself, and then something a bit more difficult and ambitious to push yourself to your limits during formal training time.

If you have trouble deciding things, I suggest Floating Light, Shape Wood, Fire Bolt, Mist Shield, Entangling Thread, and Locate Object. I won't dictate to you what spells to focus on, but if you pick something deeply strange, I will ask you to explain yourself."

"So we need to use magic constantly, on everything?" asked Renatus. Marcus nodded.

"Didn't you warn us we must be responsible with our use of magic?"

"By that, I meant you shouldn't use it to damage the tower, hurt your fellow students, summon otherworldly entities, or bully the non-magical villagers around us. I didn't mean you should minimize your use of magic," Marcus told him.

"Exercise your intuition. You're not little kids; you know what you shouldn't do." Marcus fully expected them to do foolish things with their new powers but, well, that was why he was here. Hopefully he would be able to stop them from going too far. After no one said anything more, Marcus continued.

"Starting from now, I will also be giving each of you more personal direction," Marcus said.

"I will regularly hold private meetings with each of you to check up on your growth and see if you have any questions for me. Thus far, the steps you've all had to take were pretty much identical, so there was no need for this, but from here on your paths will start to diverge in individual directions. Most apprentices have to fight tooth and nail to get this kind of personal help from an older mage, so don't waste it."

"Plus, you will probably be absent often," Volesus commented, a little snidely.

"Off in another world or something."

"Excellent point, Volesus," Marcus said.

"All the more reason to treasure these private sessions when you get them. You can also seek me out whenever you are having any issues, even outside of official training sessions. I'll do my best to help you, but I might get annoyed if you pester me too much, or if your concerns are stupid." Maybe he shouldn't have said that last part out loud… oh well.

"Anyway. Enough lectures for now – I have a gift for you," Marcus finished. He went to a small storage closet attached to the lecture hall and took out a large bundle of wooden sticks. Well, not just any wooden sticks – they were magical staffs. They were nothing special really, just a piece of wood with a small number of channeling runes carved into them and a small mana crystal embedded at the top.

The mana crystal was the real prize here – it would allow his students to have a source of mana to draw upon, even when the land around them became depleted. He started handing each student a staff, something that quickly resulted in a lot of noise and excitement among them. Marcus had heard plenty of horror stories about handing students valuable equipment too early – some students have been known to sell gifts like these for some quick cash, or gambled them away.

Older students sometimes bullied weaker students out of their belongings too, or stole them, if they had stuff they could not defend. However, Marcus and his students lived in the middle of nowhere and not in a giant academy with many different factions, surrounded by a thriving port city full of temptations. Thus, such things were unlikely to happen to his students. Hopefully.

"Err, why are you looking at me like that, teacher?" Volesus asked uncertainly.

"It's nothing," Marcus said, shaking his head.

"Let's finish this class with some practical study. Each of you, pick one spell and tell me about it, and I'll give you some advice for mastering it quicker…"

Marcus stepped out of the tower, and was immediately greeted by the sound of laughter and screaming, and the sight of many spells flying around. To his left, Claudia was using the Gust spell to blow large waves of snow at Cricket and Cassia – that was the source of laughter and screaming. He was momentarily surprised to see Claudia so aggressive, but then he realized that Cricket and Cassia had been throwing snowballs at her, and she was retaliating to make them stop.

To his right, he spotted two large snow forts – big walls of snow facing each other. His male students had separated each other into two teams, with Agron and Diocles on one side and the remaining three on the other. They were pelting each other with regular snowballs, as well as using a combination of Hurling and a Shape Snow spell to launch very large snowballs at the opposing team.

Off in the distance, Julia and Iris were slowly building a giant snowman with the help of the same Shape Snow spell, ignoring the commotion. It wasn't what Marcus had in mind when he told them to practice their spellcasting, but he supposed it worked. He raised his staff into the air and produced a loud burst of multicolored sparks from the tip, catching their attention.

"I'm going to one of the nearby villages to deal with a dread spider that set up a web in one of the abandoned barns during the winter," he announced.

"Who wants to come with me?" Marcus had not had a chance to really do a big tour of the various villages and towns in the region, but he had met some of the locals while upgrading the buildings around the tower, and occasionally handled some minor issues when they asked for assistance. They had nothing to pay him with, but they did promise to provide free labor if he had to do more building in the future.

So far he had repaired a ward stone that protected one of the towns in the region, hunted down a pack of dire wolves that were giving the villages trouble, investigated a supposed haunting on an abandoned shrine, and helped cure a young woman who had stupidly eaten a magical flower she found in the forest in the hopes it would give her magical powers. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

This was all trivial stuff for him, and Marcus accepted these more in order to give some experience to his students than anything else. Thankfully, he found that, after his adventure in another world, he always had plenty of volunteers for these expeditions. Alas, if they were hoping for a repeat of last time, they would be disappointed – there had been no world-hopping adventures since then. He picked Cassia and Volesus to accompany him this time.

Dread spiders, despite their fearsome name, were not actually that powerful… but they were not trivial opponents either, especially for newly-minted apprentices that had never seriously fought anything before. They were large brown-and-black spiders, almost the size of a man when fully grown, armed with powerful venom and capable of sudden lunges that let them compensate for their slow movement speed. One wrong move could result in getting bitten, which was usually deadly, even for smaller, juvenile specimens.

Finally, once the spider managed to fully mature and grow into its adult form, it gained an ability to induce supernatural fear – enough to paralyze weak-willed opponents, and unnerve the rest, possibly leading them to make foolish mistakes. Many low-ranked adepts had fallen to these seemingly simple foes over the centuries.

All things considered, while the villagers probably could have handled the monster on their own – especially with the help of fire, which the spiders feared – he wasn't surprised they preferred to have someone else deal with it if possible. When Marcus and his two students arrived at the outskirts of the village and checked on the dread spider, he found that it was a juvenile and didn't react much to their presence, barely stirring from the silk cradle it had spun in the center of the abandoned barn.

"The monster is sluggish and passive, Master Marcus," said the villager who called him here, a man named Quintus.

"It doesn't move or hunt, hence why we were reluctant to disturb it. We think it settled here to sleep through the winter, but we fear it won't leave even after the spring comes."

"Probably not, no," Marcus agreed. Dread spiders usually laired in caves, but they were happy to set up shop in abandoned buildings, or any other alternative that was big enough, had plenty of shade, and shielded them from harsh weather. They hibernated through the winter, but come spring, this thing would have likely woken up ravenous and, well… there was a village full of prey right next to it, so why would it move?

"What would you do if we hadn't come along?" Volesus asked curiously.

"Burn the whole barn," Cassia guessed.

"That… would be the quickest and safest solution," Quintus agreed.

"However, I'm hoping you have something less destructive in mind. I know it looks like a wreck, but we sometimes make use of this place… and I've heard dread spiders are trivial threats to someone of Master Marcus's capabilities, barely worth mentioning."

"They are," Marcus nodded. He glanced at his two students.

"How would you two handle this without destroying the barn?"

"Err… aren't these things highly venomous?" Volesus asked.

"Yes, lethally so," Marcus confirmed.

"Even a juvenile like this can easily kill you. I have the antidote and will save you if the worst happens, but for the sake of the question, ignore that. What would you do if I wasn't here, ready to step up if something went wrong?" Volesus and Cassia were silent for a few seconds.

"I don't think we can really guarantee that the barn would be unharmed if we tried to fight it," Cassia eventually said.

"We'd have to force it out somehow. Maybe light a fire outside and blow smoke in until it has no choice but to get out or suffocate. That's how Old Pliny solved a dire rat infestation in one of the houses in Willowhill."

"A solid plan," said Marcus.

"Though now the spider is wide awake and very angry at you. The cold will kill it eventually, but not quickly enough to save you. Can you guarantee you won't get bitten?"

"Maybe set up some kind of trap in front of the entrance?" Volesus offered.

"Do you have any traps? Do you know how to make any?" Marcus asked knowingly. He knew exactly what spells each of them had imprinted onto their souls, and neither of them had thought highly of traps.

"I don't," Volesus admitted.

"We can just bury it in a bunch of snow," Cassia said.

"And if it digs itself out, just pile more on top of it. Eventually it will freeze to death without us having to get close." They discussed various scenarios for a few more minutes after that. Quintus patiently waited by the side, saying nothing. He didn't seem particularly concerned, having trust in Marcus. Probably because he and his students had been doing these kind of minor tasks for some time now, and hadn't caused any issues for the locals. Marcus eventually dealt with the dread spider on his own.

While it was tempting to have Volesus and Cassia try to put some of their plans into practice, that had a high chance to go very wrong and end up as an embarrassment for both him and them. Besides, while he did have an antidote, it was never smart to tempt one's luck. His students should practice on easier monsters before trying to tackle something tricky like this one. He hit the dread spider with a very precisely controlled lightning beam – just enough to kill, but not enough to seriously damage the body.

Dread spiders were not especially valuable as far as monster parts go – especially not juvenile specimens – but they did have some value. He would show his students how to extract its venom and spinnerets after he returned to base.

The winter was shaping up to be a harsh one. Over the coming days, several of the small animals he had put soul seeds into died. This caused a regular stream of foreign memories and soul fragments to flow into him, causing constant disruptions. Even his students noticed there was something wrong with him, though they ascribed it to a simple illness.

His students picked up some kind of cold while visiting the nearby villages with him, and his reactions were assumed to be due to him having caught the same thing, just in lesser form. Marcus made them potions to alleviate the symptoms, but he couldn't fully cure them. He was not that good at alchemy, despite the Great Sea Academy being famous for it, and the common cold was a notoriously tricky disease to cure anyway. He wondered about the memories he was getting.

According to Sacred Oak, his soul would get gradually strengthened by the influx of returning soul seeds. He understood that part. But what benefit would he get from absorbing memories of a bunch of regular animals? Sacred Oak was being very mysterious about it, rambling about the benefit of alternate perspectives and 'myriad truths' and whatnot. It made Marcus suspect that part was just the tree's own philosophical nonsense. Still. A method that could strengthen the soul was extremely rare, almost unheard of.

Mostly, such things came in the form of priceless treasures or ancient relics. Even if what Marcus was doing took years, and only got him a modest increase in soul strength, that was still very miraculous, and having to experience starving or freezing to death as a pigeon or a wildcat was a small price to pay for that. If only it didn't cause such head-splitting headaches… He should try implanting a soul seed inside a magical creature next.

One day, while he was resting in his office, he got a pair of unexpected visitors. There was a knock on his door, and then Regulus and Helvran both came inside and requested a private meeting.

"What can I help you with?" Marcus asked curiously. He glanced from one person to another.

"It's odd for the two of you to seek me out like this."

"It's about me," said Regulus, rubbing his hands together as a nervous tic. Marcus kept his office magically heated, so it probably wasn't due to cold.

"As you know, my attempts to resonate with a foundational technique before I met you did not yield any results. I just couldn't resonate with any foundational technique the Great Sea Academy had at their disposal."

"I remember that, of course," Marcus said.

"It was very odd."

"I asked Master Helvran for help in the matter, since Raven Temple is generally agreed to be the greatest expert on souls among the greater factions," Regulus said.

"I figured he might be able to help." Marcus glanced at the death priest, giving him a questioning look.

"And?" he asked.

"I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking at," Helvran said in his usual calm tone.

"His soul is unlike anything I've ever seen. I've noticed there was something odd about it the moment I laid my eyes on him, but it's only now, after being given permission to take a very close look, that I realize how abnormal it truly is."

"I noticed it was odd too," Marcus admitted.

"That said," Helvran continued, "while I don't know what exactly is going on with Regulus's soul, I do know why he couldn't resonate with any of the normal foundational techniques."

"Oh?" Marcus sat up straighter.

"His soul is strongly aligned with the concept of death," Helvran said.

"So strongly, in fact, that only a death-aligned foundational technique would do for him." There was a second of silence in the room.

"Ahh… that makes sense," Marcus said, nodding.

"Though, a death-alignment that strong cannot possibly be natural, no? I have never heard of a person so heavily aligned with an element that they cannot learn general foundational techniques."

"Umm, what? Teacher, what do you mean 'that makes sense'?" Regulus asked, confused.

"The Soul Tree Technique is death-aligned," Marcus told him. Even Helvran seemed visibly surprised.

"You didn't know? I thought this was why the Raven Temple was so interested in me."

"I was not told this by my superiors, no," Helvran said.

"I also didn't sense any logos of death in you, so I'm guessing you didn't absorb any into your foundation?"

"I did not," Marcus said. It was a hard logos to comprehend, and not something you add to your logos foundation on a whim.

"I thought it was a wood element technique," Regulus said.

"It is. It's also a death-aligned technique. It's not that strange," Marcus said.

"The Elemental Star is compatible with all elements simultaneously, as well as divination and other star magic. However, hardly anyone who practices The Elemental Star actually learns star magic, since it's so obscure and star logos is so hard to acquire. You don't have to make use of all aspects of a Foundational Technique." Now that he spoke that out loud, he realized that The Elemental Star was actually a pretty amazing foundational technique.

He didn't normally think about it, since every single major academy and quite a few smaller ones had it, but just because it was very common didn't mean it was lacking.

"Considering most death magic available outside the Raven Temple is unsanctioned necromancy, it would be next to impossible to find a death-aligned foundational technique in most academies," Helvran said, looking at Regulus.

"You are quite fortunate to have encountered Marcus." Was it really just fortune? Marcus wondered how much Cato really knew about Regulus's condition. It did seem pretty suspicious how he had sent him to Marcus specifically, even though he was an outsider and not someone Cato was fond of in the past…

"Still, this is highly unusual," Marcus commented.

"It is," Helvran agreed.

"Normally I would try to recruit someone like Regulus into the Raven Temple, but considering he is already your student and doesn't seem fond of the idea…"

"It wouldn't work," Regulus said, shaking his head.

"The Academies have always had deep rivalry with the three Temples, especially for recruits. You likely know this better than I, but priests and mages are extremely similar in what kind of people would make good recruits, and compete for the same pool of candidates. There is a complicated set of rules about who can recruit who, and a member of the Uticensis family is definitely off limits to any of the Temples. My family would rather have me fail to become an adept than join the Raven Temple."

Regulus paused for a moment, considering something, before he shot Marcus a worried look and cleared his throat.

"Also, um… I like Teacher Marcus and wouldn't want to go elsewhere anyway," he added.

"He is a great teacher and-""Yes, yes," Marcus said, waving him off.

"Don't worry, I'm not offended. Let's put Raven Temple aside for now. Do you think Regulus is a reincarnator?" It was one of the more likely ideas about Regulus's nature, in Marcus's opinion. He had never met a person who retained memories of their past lives, but he knew they existed, and it would explain how Regulus's soul could feel so very old, and be so powerful, in comparison to most people. However, both Regulus and Helvran rejected the idea.

"Master Helvran already asked me about that, but I don't have any memories of a past life," Regulus said seriously.

"Not even isolated flashes or unexplained skills. I do have some odd habits, but I think that's just me being me. I can be a bit strange at times."

"Also, Raven Temple's records indicate that reincarnated souls are virtually indistinguishable from regular people's souls of the same age," Helvran noted.

"Even highly experienced death mages cannot tell them apart. Reincarnation is not, in itself, abnormal. A lot of souls are reincarnations of previous people, some even say most of them. They just lose their memories as they pass through Acheron. What you know as reincarnators are simply those who retain some or all of their memories for whatever reason."

"So they retain only their memories, but lose everything else like the natural growth of the soul and any magical abilities they may have acquired?" Marcus asked.

"Yes," Helvran nodded.

"Even if he were a reincarnator, his soul would be very odd. This cannot be a complete explanation."

"Why is there reincarnation if souls go to the Outer Planes after death to enjoy their afterlives?" Regulus asked curiously.

"Strange as it may seem, you can die on the Outer Planes," Helvran explained.

"You don't age, but many of these planes are not peaceful, and sometimes disasters and accidents happen. When your spirit body dies on your home plane, your soul flows back into Acheron and is transported back to the material plane and reincarnated into a new body. If everything goes well, the memories are erased by the passage through Acheron and the person starts their new life without being burdened by the regrets and grievances of the past."

"That's a funny way of putting it," Marcus pointed out.

"I'm pretty sure most people would prefer to retain at least some memories of their past self."

"There are people who willingly expose themselves to Acheron's energies as a mortal, in order to forget their life and start over," Helvran said.

"There are all kinds of people in this world."

"Hmph," Marcus said, letting out an indecipherable grunt. He didn't get it, but he didn't want to continue this conversation either.

"So if he's not a reincarnator, what are the other options?"

"It's hard to say," Helvran shook his head.

"I have some theories, but I don't want to alarm Regulus for no reason. Perhaps this is just how souls with such a heavy death alignment naturally look. His special condition doesn't appear to be hurting him, so for now I think we shouldn't do anything rash. I want to check up on him regularly, just in case something changes, but only that.

This meeting was supposed to be simply to inform you why Regulus was not compatible with so many foundational techniques and to try and figure out why the Soul Tree Technique in particular works for him anyway. I admit, I didn't think it would be this easy." Marcus was pretty sure Regulus was quite alarmed already with what he had learned today, but he got Helvran's point.

Floating the idea that he might be an old ghost who had stolen the body of a baby, or a secret homunculus constructed by the Uticensis family as an experiment, or something along those lines would be pure unfounded speculation, and might actually end up sowing doubt in the boy's mind and bother him for years. Best to keep such speculation to himself for now.

"Tell me something, Regulus," Marcus said, looking at the boy.

"If I talked to your uncle and your family about you, what kind of reception do you think I'd get?"

"Err…" Regulus hesitated.

"With Uncle Cato, he'd be suspicious, but he likes me. I think he'd mostly be concerned about if you were treating me well or not. As for the others, it would depend on who you're talking to, but I don't think anyone hates me… why do you ask, Teacher?"

"I want to talk to Cato when we come back to Adria," Marcus said.

"It's nothing urgent, so don't worry about it."

"I'm pretty sure uncle Cato would want to speak to you about me anyway, so that shouldn't be a problem," Regulus said with a polite smile.

A few days later, Zenith Academy received a familiar visitor. It was Beortan, his old friend. Marcus was extremely grateful for everything his friend had done for him ever since he returned to the lands of the Silver League – from informing him about what had happened while he was away, helping him find the very tower he was now inhabiting, and even defending his home against powerful invaders until Marcus managed to return and chase them off.

As such, when Beortan told him he had come to ask him a favor, he immediately agreed.

"You didn't even wait to hear what I want from you," Beortan pointed out.

"There is no need," Marcus said, shaking his head.

"Whatever it is you need my help with, I am willing to lend a hand."

"Hah! I admit, that's nice to hear," Beortan said, grinning from ear to ear.

"I hope you don't regret it."

"What is it?" Marcus insisted. Beortan leaned forward conspiratorially, his eyes glinting with excitement.

"I found traces of an actual living ice dragon," Beortan said.

"I want you to help me track it down."