"S-Severus!" Tristessa crouched down and reached out with her trembling hands. "What do I do?!"

In her desperation, she saw that the elf's legs were still made of flesh and bone, suddenly meeting a junction between organic material and the fabric of his trousers with minerals. A physical incompatibility that caused a non-stop bloodshed and muscles to unravel like strands of hair.

"Could you…hand me my…cane?"

Severus held back every spasm of pain that wanted to twist his face, to make him scream. What he couldn't avoid were the tears, liquid agony flowing from the paradoxical connection between his muscles, veins, and nerves against nothing but fragmented rock.

"Y-yes!"

Tristessa picked up the catalyst from the ground and handed it to its owner, who with trembling hands pointed at the ground and recited, filling the surrounding area with powerful, invisible energy:

"Myrulek…Illium."

At Severus's rocky feet appeared a blanket of glyphs with a different structure than what Tristessa had normally grown accustomed to seeing. They weren't concentric circles housing those mystical markings, but several phosphorescent green pentagrams nestled within each other, filled with straight lines forming hundreds of angles.

An ethereal sound, like the shattering of an invisible glass, reached the girl's ears as Severus's feet transmuted back to normal. Healthy skin replaced the gray surface, and all the blood that had begun to spread across the floor and torn exposed muscles vanished without a trace.

With the spell completed, the pentagrams vanished in a cloud of cosmic dust that existed just for a second, and the blood elf staggered forward, on his flesh-and-blood feet back in their original state.

As if nothing had happened... Except for all the pain that plagued the elf's face, which seemed here to stay.

"W-wait! I'm fine! I really am," he said right when Tristessa caught him in her arms so he wouldn't break his nose by falling straight face first onto the floor. "Seriously, I am. It was a malicious illusion. Typical of Urias, she has a terrible sense of humor."

"Are you insane? That bitch turned your feet to stone!" she bellowed, still holding him and helping him walk towards the fountain. Once Severus sat on the edge, she went to retrieve his alchemical purchases and, upon returning, continued to scold him. "Even though it was an illusion, you seemed to feel it as if it were real. That pain seemed real!"

His irrationality in justifying Urias, him being her victim, was so absurd it made Tristessa mad with anger.

"Y-yes, it was. The pain still lingers; I won't lie to you. That's the whole point of illusion thaumaturgy—to make you feel like what's happening is real," he explained, taking his shopping bag and letting out a long sigh. He leaned back, almost falling backward into the water, and closed his eyes. "Curses! It will take days before I forgot this pain."

"Why did she do that? She can't hate you just for using thaumaturgy as you please."

Tristessa sat down beside him, a little calmer seeing him smile again in that dashing way of his and wiping away his tears. Luckily, the people who had gathered around to watch were gone, each of them once again wrapped up in their own affairs and having failed to intervene to help the elf…

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"Urias is one of the most promising thaumaturges of her generation. She's so talented that I didn't even feel her magical power when she created the glyphs… Whereas I can't prevent that, and I'm left exposed as if my soul was about to explode," he explained, resting his chin on top of his clasped hands, over his cane. "What she did without even reciting the spell out loud is something I'll never achieve. I can only use the elemental side of thaumaturgy efficiently. It's the easiest and most practical. For spells as complex as the one I used to break the illusion, it required years of practice. Something Urias could accomplish in a matter of hours."

"A prodigy girl believing herself to be better than everyone else," she hissed, but Severus shook his head.

"No, she's right. When she says that people's imaginations, their dreams, are limitless… Unlike the magical capacity of our bodies and souls. That's the only barrier that exists; the entropy that scatters our ideas, that which marks the difference between the mundane and the divine."

Magical capacity. MP in the vocabulary Tristessa's used thanks to the memories of playing that RPG videogame.

That which she completely lacked and prevented her from considering walking the path of thaumaturgy.

"It is the goal of every thaumaturge to explore those endless horizons, as far as their magical skill allows. But I don't dream in the same way as my peers. That's why I am an outcast, beyond my lack of talent and skill."

Severus did not show it, but behind that mask of charisma he wore in a clownish manner, Tristessa was certain there was pain. There had to be. There was no one with a good heart like that of the elf impervious to public ridicule.

"Some dream of the world's prosperity, the common good, and times of peace… But others, those who try to manifest their darkest and most twisted dreams into reality, will find that thaumaturgy can be a gateway to an endless nightmare."

Then there was a brief period of silence. The two of them watched the bazaar customers, those who had only stopped by to check out prices and offers.

Laughter amidst anecdotes, shouts between negotiations, and children playing with not a worry in the world.

And over their heads, the skies were clear, the sun shining without any barrier in between. A beautiful day, after a rainy night.

"Do you know what my dream is, Tristessa? Did Jin tell you?" asked the blood elf, the other side of the coin representing the spirit of the bazaar. "Do you know the reason I almost murdered you back in my workshop?"

Tristessa noticed a veil of darkness typical of a Discord bearer over Severus, contradicting the nature of his Grace-blessed soul.

"My dream is to slaughter the Shadow Queen and watch her depraved, degenerate soul sinking into the timeless void."

"Yes… I know. In retaliation for the genocide of the elves."

Severus nodded curtly.

"My wish… My dream is to kill not only the woman who brought my kin to the brink of extinction, but displayed unprecedented thaumaturgy by creating the [Evil Dream]. An abomination that bastardizes Nekronomika's very creation… A cursed masterpiece, on the level of divine nature that mere mortals like us could never even reach."

As the blood elf spoke of the enemy of his people and the world, his anger boiled within his veins, his rage so evident in that ruthless countenance that Tristessa understood he cared nothing if Urias mocked him or attacked him with magic.

The focus of his fury was the Dark Lady and all those who worship her. No one else.

"That is the most desperate wish of my heart… The desire of a small man like me, to kill the greatest and yet vilest thaumaturgist to ever exist," he concluded. "What do you think? Do you see it as an unreachable goal?"

Tristessa found herself submerged in those oceans of crystalline waters that were his eyes, hiding an abyss of darkness at their depths that burned. The burning thirst for revenge that that elf felt every second of his existence.

"That depends on you, Severus."

At that moment, she saw a bird crossing the skies of Entrana, eclipsing a tiny slice of the sun for a moment.

"Killing the Shadow Queen sounds like something unreachable, yes. But in the end, it's you who decides if the sky is the limit."

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