Andrew Ognev - The Chronicles of the Elders Malefisterium. Volume 1. The Ordeal of Freya

There were two icons on a special shelf in the far corner of the room: The Virgin Mary and Nicholas the Wonderworker. There was also a bookshelf to the right from the God’s corner, filled with a dozen of various books. There were three more icons above the bed, including the icon of Saint Vladislav of Serbia, Vlad’s patron saint. A shabby Bible was lying on the bedside table.

Vlad looked around the place, where he had spent most of his life, for the last time.

There was nothing left to do but to write the letter. But how hard it was! Vlad felt such deep sadness that it made his heart shrink.

“All you have to do is say farewell,” the inner voice told him.

“I am scared,” Vlad admitted to himself and felt tears well up in his eyes.

“No wonder that you are scared,” he heard the encouraging inner voice. “And yet you have to do this.”

Vlad was about to ask himself what was going to happen when he left, but he didn’t dare. He felt that he already knew it.

“It will be hard. It will be really hard. But you can make it, Vladislav Viggin,” his inner voice whispered.

Vlad was still looking at a sheet of paper and a pencil in his hand. It all happened right here. The appearance of Freya, the invitation to the Academy, which wasn’t really an invitation, rather a statement of the fact. He realized he just didn’t have any choice, didn’t have any alternative. What was meant to happen would have happened regardless of what he felt or what he wanted.

Everything became clear.

“I don’t want to leave,” he whispered.

Tears flowed from his eyes, first slowly, and then plentifully.

He went on writing. He was writing in his neat handwriting, and the tears he failed to dash away were falling down on the paper.

He wished he could hug loving Father Konstantin, cheerful bell-ringer Mark, caring cook Anna, old Fedotya, and all his friends.

He had a gut feeling that they were going to disengage from his embrace, no matter how tight he would hold them.

“My dear Father Konstantin, I know that what I am going to do will please your heart, but my heart is breaking. Forgive me, father, and do not banish me from your heart, for I will see it as a bad sign discouraging from the journey.”

With his eyes cast down, Vlad walked along the village road unusually fast, almost running. He knew he would give it up and stay, if he spoke to a villager or even cast a glance back. He looked back only when he was outside the village.

Tears were still rolling down his face. But now, when he held the past tight in his heart, he could let it go.

Words can hardly describe what Vlad felt when he was writing the farewell letter. You can try to understand the twelve-year-old boy who had to leave home, his warm bed, a hearty meal, and most importantly, his loving and caring family. If anyone asked him about the reason for his doubts, he would easily find an answer.

The boy was always obedient to the priest who was like a father to him. Father Konstantin and the church were his only home and his only family. But there was something deep at the core of his loving heart that made him dream of the place the woman from the magical crystal had invited him to. In an inexplicable way, Vlad knew that the new world was the place where he would find all the answers. Old Fedotya’s tales, the utterances like “This is not the place where you should be” and “You’d better leave”, which he had heard repeatedly, the words of the sorceress calling herself Freya, all of that encouraged him to make that step. After all, he was still a child and subconsciously longed for mysteries.

Vlad traveled light. He set his heart on this: Either he enters the new world with nothing that would remind him of the past or…

Longing for Father Konstantin and his home, he made it to a small bridge over the river before he even knew it. A dark forest stretched beyond the river.

Vlad was standing at the edge of a big forest. With a heavy heart, he looked back at his house, the village, and the church rising above it… The boy was on the verge of tears.

He drew the crystal, which called him for the road, out of his pocket, and squeezed it hard with his hand. To his surprise, the hard gem crumbled into sparkling purple dust and slipped through his fingers.

Vlad thought that he messed everything up. He must have missed something in Freya’s explanations, and now he had to go back, disgraced. The few minutes he was walking from his house to the forest brought a dramatic change in him. Now he saw his involuntary return as a retreat, an unfair punishment.

“Keep your head up!” he said to himself. “Freya told me not to be surprised at anything! I just have to wait; something is going to happen.”

Vlad slowly turned around on one foot.

The surrounding landscape was the same, except for fresh colors that brightened it up: The same river, the village far away, and the dense forest. The wind rose and was now shaking the tops of the trees.

“Look at you!” he heard a mocking voice behind his back.

Where did it come from? There had been no one there a moment ago! And no one could get there without being seen! Vlad turned abruptly.

“Are you really from Molyobka?”

A boy of approximately fourteen years old was leaning against a thick tree, with his arms crossed on his chest, grinning.

“Who are you?” Vlad asked, startled.

“When you summoned me, I thought it must be some kind of joke. We haven’t seen anyone from this godforsaken place for more than eight hundred years,” the boy kept grinning. He stepped out of the shadow of the tree, and Vlad could get a good look at him.

The boy was lean and devilishly handsome. That’s right, devilishly, for that was exactly the word for his arrogant face. He was wearing blue jeans and dark-green long-sleeve plaid shirt. His face was oval, with regular features. He had dark green eyes and a chin proudly turned up. His thick dark hair was slightly disheveled, his pale pink lips were twisted into a shadow of a wry smile. The appraising glance of his vulturous eyes was fixed piercingly on Vlad.

When he came closer, Vlad noticed that the boy was almost a half-head taller than he.

“You look somewhat different than I imagined,” the boy narrowed his eyes, still having the grin that began to irritate Vlad. “I thought you were older and taller.”

Despite the provocative behavior of the stranger, Vlad kept calm. He gave a guileless smile and held out his hand.

“Vladislav,” he introduced himself respectfully. “You can call me Vlad.”

But the boy ignored Vlad’s hand. Instead, he stepped back and slowly looked Vlad up and down once again. Vlad was not a bit embarrassed by that.

“You are from the Academy. They’ve sent you for me, haven’t they?” Vlad realized. A sly smile was creeping over his face.

The stranger parted his lips in a smile, showing his straight white teeth. He clapped his hands three times, making pauses.

“Bravo, young man, well done! Only forty seconds!”

“Forty seconds of what?” Vlad was confused.

“It took you only forty seconds to understand where I came from. Others start asking stupid questions like ‘who are you?’, ‘where do you come from?’, ‘you were sent for me, weren’t you?’. But most of the time, they say: ‘Get out of here!’ At this point some problems tend to arise, but not at my end!”

His eyes flashed as if he was up to no good. He was hovering about Vlad just like a predator, preparing to attack.

“I understood it as soon as you appeared,” Vlad said with a sneer. “But asking point-blank would be inappropriate. I thought you were going to introduce yourself first.”