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.”

“Bravo, colleagues!” Orion snapped his fingers. “You are both right! Let us proceed!”

Scientific lingo mixed with ordinary clowning around did the trick, making everyone involved in the discussion laugh.

Juel and Irin didn’t join in the fun. They sat on the opposite side of the long table and talked about Faizul battle tactics. Orion wanted to comment on the topic by describing said tactics as “Smash them with da ax!!!” but restrained himself. It was neither the time nor the place to add fuel to the fire.

The library had a tall, arched ceiling made from a single dark crystal, black on the inside and transparent on the outside. A balcony going around the crystalline structure offered a great view on the hall below that looked like a deep, sunlit well to the observers. Thanks to the wonderful acoustics of the place, the observers could perfectly hear everything that happened in the library.

Not a single word escaped the ears of ten Kangassks and their father standing on the balcony. They heard Juel’s cruel joke and Jarmin’s crying; Milian’s emotional lecture and Pai’s arguments; all the anger, all the laughter, everything.

Everyone had learned something while watching their own and their siblings’ apprentices that day. Sainar learned even more for he was keeping track of his children’s reactions as well. He saw Abadar frown at Juel’s actions and Lar grin at Orion’s. He saw Eugenia clench her fists when her Jarmin started to cry.