Percival sat in his first magical theory class, the professor droning on and on about the theory behind magic in a monotone voice. Percival would have fallen asleep by hearing his voice for to long if it wasn't for him being so eager to learn everything he could about magic.

  “You see, the human body can not store much magical energy at all, and the ambient magic is simply too low for us to rely solely on that when we do any complicated magic. You might be able to cast weak magical projectiles with the help of the ambient magic but for anything more complicated than that, you will need to harvest magical energy into magical gems, so you can draw from that whenever you cast magic. To be a successful mage you need a lot of preparation, you can't just jump into any situation and hope you can cast enough spells.” Professor Dafaris explained in his monotone voice.

  Percival wanted to rip out his own hair in frustration. Everything the professor said was interesting, but having to hear that voice drone on just sucked the enthusiasm out of him.

  The professor’s voice continued. “ But before any of you first year students can have any hope in casting your first spell, you first have to make your own body compatible with magic, it is a long and often painful process. You see, the human body doesn't have any natural capacity to let the magic flow internally. What mages do to unlock that within themselves is to use magical artifacts to channel magic inside of themselves until they force open an internal lay line network. The process is time consuming and causes great amounts of pain when you do this in a timely manner. The benefits from creating your own lay line system is incredibly beneficial. The obvious is that you will be able to activate magical spells and as an extra boon your expected lifespan will be Increased by nearly twenty years.”

  Everyone in the room suddenly sat up a little straighter by hearing that last part. Percival almost fell out of his chair at the sound of increasing your lifespan.

  Professor Dafaris went to a cabinet behind his desk and found a large crate he placed on his desk before he pointed at a girl on the first row and said. “You there. Savannah was it? Can you come up front with me?”

  The girl replied with a weak “ yes professor” as she stood up and walked slowly up to the professor.

  Dafaris opened the crate so every student could see several long objects lying on rows inside the crate. Dafaris picked up a little stick furthest to the right in the crate and said. “ Here we have several magical artifacts. Simply holding them will make your body start absorbing magical energy. Holding even the weakest artifacts will make you feel a slight tingle running up from your hand into your arm.” He held up the stick to show everyone before continuing. “ This is the weakest artifact we got here, and it is made out of a Everspring branch. No one should struggle with such a weak item, but try holding it first, and you can advance to stronger items whenever you are comfortable with it.”

  He held the stick that looked like a wand to Savannah. The girl took the item in her hand and her eyebrows shot up instantly. She stood there making unpleasant expressions with the stick in hand for several minutes before she groaned loudly and put the stick on the desk.

  Dafaris dismissed the girl, cleared his throat and said.” Excellent. Even a weak artifact will cause strain when you hold them long enough. Now I want you to come down one by one, and hold an artifact for as long as you can handle it. The further to the left you pick an artifact, the stronger it is.”

  Percival watched as the other students went down to the professor one by one. They all picked an artifact from the box, most students picked among the three artifacts to the right. When it was Percival’s turn, he calmly walked down and took the artifact furthest to the left. It looked like an elaborate specter, with several gems lining the shaft, and a giant crystal sphere on the top.

  As soon as he held the item in his hand, he felt an electric current rushing up his arm and around his body. He tensed, doing his best to not show his discomfort to the other students. After nearly 10 seconds he put it down and asked the professor. “ Do you have anything stronger? I'm confident in this amount of unpleasantries.”

  Dafaris sighed with his whole body as he answered.” Every year, there is always someone that wants to show off how tough they can be. We do indeed have another item, this is rather special, and most third year students will even struggle with it after a few seconds. I will let you try it, and hopefully you can learn some humility in the process.”

  Dafaris went behind his desk again and took out an elongated box, put it besides the crate and lifted the lid off. Percival looked at a long wooden wizard staff with blue glowing runes engraved along the entire thing. The air around the staff got cold, and Percival involuntarily swallowed.

  “ Go ahead boy, you won't find any stronger artifact than this, and I will be incredibly impressed if you manage to hold on to this for more than five seconds.” Dafaris said with a smirk on his wrinkly face.

  “ Don't do it Percy. It is an evil item, and it will hurt like hell. Even great mages will struggle to hold that item.” Remy voice said loudly from the back of the classroom.

  Dafaris eyes located the prince, and gave him a slight bow, before saying.” Your majesty. I am simply offering this young student the challenge he seeks. The worst that can happen is that he faints from the pain, there won't be any permanent injuries. You called this an evil item? Have you perhaps seen it before? There are only four of these in existence, and no chance to make more, I do know that your father should be in the possession of one of them.”

  Remy stood up from his seat as he replied.” Indeed, I have seen the one my father has, and to my own regret, I have held it. The problem isn't the power of the item itself, it is what it is made out of. No one should have their magic invade their bodies, we don't know enough about how their magic works.”

  Percival looked up at Remy, frowned and asked. “ Their magic? What the hell is this thing?”

  Dafaris cleared his throat, as he went into lecture mode.” The core of this staff was made out of the tail of a demon fox. According to our history books, about 300 years ago there was a powerful demon fox that attacked our capital, he did incredible damage to the city and killed hundreds of people. After the army finally managed to take him down, they removed his four tails and burned the corpse on a pyre at the liberation festival. That is also why people often burn demon fox dolls at the liberation festival these days. The four tails were made into four artifacts, the royal family have one, the royal academy have the second, the third were gifted to the elven royal family and no one knows the location of the last one.

  Percival instinctively took a step back from the staff, and asked nervously.” I thought the rebellion exterminated all the demon foxes, and now you are telling me they are still out there?

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  Dafaris shook his head and replied.” No need to worry. Except from that one instant 300 years ago, there haven't been a single sighting of them. If there were still any of them alive, we would have found them by now.

  Percival nodded and went back to the specter and held it for over a minute, all the time he stared at the ominous staff and the glowing blue runes, while thinking back on the stories of the notorious demon foxes all his tutors had told him about all through his childhood and shivered involuntarily.

  After class ended Remy, Roland and Percival meet up at the academy ground to eat lunch together. Between bites of his sandwich Remy mumbled. “ Don't forget that I ordered a carriage to being us to the palace after classes today. My father was rather enthusiastic this morning to learn all he could about your otherworldly knowledge.”

  “ And you are certain that this won't be a stuck up formal thing? The idea of standing in front of an entire court, being overly polite and remembering everyone's titles sounds like a nightmare.” Roland said, seeming to pale up from the thought itself.

  Remy just waved his hand in a dismissive gesture and replied. “ No need to worry, we can even take the carriage all the way to stables, and use the side entrance there. I already talked to my father and said you would prefer to keep things as casually as possible.

  __________________________________________

  Later that evening, Percival and Roland had accompanied Remy to the royal palace. It wasn’t their first visit to the palace, but all the previous times they had been much younger and been accompanied by their parents. Remy guided them through hallways filled with guards and elaborate paintings, artwork and rows of pedestals displaying objects none of them could ever guess the purpose of.

  After walking through endless hallways, Remy finally stopped in front of a pair of double wooden doors. He smirked at the sight of his two nervous friends, their twin faces mirroring each other in a hilarious fashion. He coughed into his hand and said.” No need to be so nervous, I told you both that this is only going to be good for you. You have everything to gain, and very little to lose.

  Percival swallowed nervously and answered.” It’s easy for you to say, we have kept this a secret our whole lives. Suddenly coming clean now, and to the king of all people. It’s just very intimidating.

  Remy chuckled under his breath and replied.” try to relax, I won't be half as bad as you think”

  Remy opened the doors and entered, his two friends in tow. Upon entering the large room they were met with dozens of candelabras with burning candles on each side of the walls, illuminating the entire room. In the middle of the room there was an enormous wooden desk with elaborate carvings decorating the entire thing and behind the desk itself there was a well dressed and groomed man, sporting a bushy beard and his short copper blond hair was partly hidden behind an golden crown sporting gemstones in several colors.

  Both twins tensed up by seeing the man and bowed to him, and in unison said. “ Good evening, your majesty.”

  The king took on an amused expression and in his stern and authoritarian voice spoke. “ Greetings you two, Remy has spoken of you two a lot, and it seems he was right in saying that you would be uncomfortable in my presence, you two are practically shivering.” The king slowly took his crown off, and put it behind the desk, out of view.

  The now crownless king smirked, pulled out a bottle of wine and four crystal glasses before he continued speaking. ”There, the crown is off and for the rest of the evening anything you might say won't have any negative consequences. Feel completely free to speak your mind, argue and discuss with me as you would with anyone else for tonight. Please take a seat and have a drink. Remy told me a little about your world, but I would like to hear it all from the beginning.”

  The brothers and Remy sat down with the king, and slowly told their entire story. Everything from aspects from their old world up to their deaths in the plane crash.

  An hour and two bottles later, the king who had been following their every word closely said. “ The technology you speak of sounds too great to be true, it sounds like magic, but from what you say, there is no magic in your world. How can such marvelous things exist without the concept of magic.”

  Roland responded.” When there is no magic, you have to push the limits of science. A lot of things from our world would be difficult to implement here. We lack much of the needed infrastructure, and we never got enough education in all the right fields to recreate most of the infrastructure.”

  “I had hoped you could use some of your knowledge to push the development of the kingdom.” the king said, in a disappointed voice.

  Percival glared at his brother, and followed up. “What my brother didn't say is that much of the things from our world are complicated machinery, which we can not simply recreate. But we do pose a lot of the theory behind those ideas, and with a dedicated team I believe there are several things we can create that will be boons for the entire kingdom in the long run. But how can you just believe that we came from a different world, just like that? Back home we would be labeled as mad and delusional. At worst we could even be locked up as madmen.”

  The king took on a thoughtful expression, and kept thinking for several moments before speaking again. “I would say I’ve gone through great lengths gathering as much knowledge as possible, and during my research I learned enough that I'm certain that there is at least another world out there. Listening to your stories makes me believe there might be even more worlds out there. Knowing this I would say that your remarkable attention to small details, and quite a lot of foreign concepts are convincing enough.

  Percival opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again, deep in though. However, Roland bursted out.” Even more worlds? Parallel worlds, and multiverse theory were popular theories back home. But saying you are certain there is another world out there would be a crazy statement, even back home. What makes you believe the world you know of, and our world isn't the same?

  The king chuckled, took a sip of wine and continued. “ Several things, the claim that your world is without magic is one thing, but if they had been the same world, I suspect your stories would be focused on grimmer things. What I'm about to say is strictly classified and must not leave this room, but we have found a treasure trove of information from the days of the old empire, and from what we have managed to put together, it seems that the old empire, and their demon foxes invaded this world from another. They came to this world on an unknown task, and apparently they suddenly abandoned their main goal. Instead they started enslaving the races of this world and formed what we today call the old empire. None of the texts we have managed to recover says exactly what they came here for, but both the scribes working on this project and myself are worried that they might invade our world again to finish the task they once began.

  Percival, Roland and Remy looked at each other, shocked to hear about a potential invasion from the nightmarish creatures they grew up hearing about. Percival almost stood up from his chair and stammered. “B…Bu…But… That would be catastrophic, to stand against something like that, we would need to prepare, we need better weapons, we could use a damned nuclear warhead to drop on those monsters.”

  The king smiled at Percival's reaction and answered calmly. “ Exactly, that would be catastrophic. We would definitely need better weapons, I'm not sure what a nuclear warhead is, but if it can repel demons, I welcome it with open arms. Fortunately I recently heard of two men with otherworldly knowledge that can hopefully help to progress our technology to a point where we hopefully stand a chance against an otherworldly invasion.

  Percival’s face went from one of shock to realization. He drained his glass and smiled at the king as he replied. “ I know where this is headed now, things won't be easy. But with a dedicated team of researchers and enough funding, I believe we can accomplish quite a few things. Isn't that right Roland?”

  Roland perked up from being asked directly and spoke in a confident tone.” For sure, with the right team of developers it shouldn't take too long to figure out how to re-create several of the weapons from our world.”

  The king clapped his hands in satisfaction and spoke with a fixed smile on his face.” Then, are we in agreement? I will gather a few competent workers, and you can interview them and pick those most suited for your purposes. You can request anything you like, and we will meet here to discuss your progress on a weekly basis.”

  Both Percival and Roland agreed and shook the king's hand to seal the deal.