It was morning, and I was supposed to wait for the meeting, but I couldn't sit still. Theories about how and what happened raced through my mind and wouldn’t let me relax. So I decided to go for the one thing that could always distract me from other things.

  Magic.

  I made my way to the storage, but this time, I did not go for one of the books lying in the open bookshelves. I opened one of the coffers. Some books supposedly didn’t matter. Of course, my father still made me read them, but I never used them afterward.

  They were the books on summoning and dimensional magic, as well as a couple of tomes of magic of the fifth circle and higher. Achieving such a level, although theoretically possible, in this world was just a dream, with my almost third circle making me one of the best wizards alive. It was honestly pathetic when compared to mages of old, who were supposedly capable of leveling cities.

  I picked a magic book on summoning. During my teachings, I was made to go through the motions of all the rituals to understand how to cast them. During my lessons on contracting demons, I remember that one of the old servants was made to act the demon part, trying to trap me in an unfavorable contract. I lost many times because I couldn't take my old nanny calling me a ‘pathetic mortal’ seriously.

  Chuckling at the memory, I opened the book and started studying its contents with renewed interest, hoping to use the knowledge soon. Like that, I spent the next few hours until midday studying the arcane knowledge. Until the time for the meeting slowly came.

  ***

  I arrived at one of the wealthier apartment complexes. Nothing for millionaires, mind you, but the building was renovated recently, and I could see the garden taken care of and a security man reading a newspaper in the booth.

  Apartment 23, there it was. I knocked on the doors and waited as I heard shuffling inside.

  “Yes, honey?” Came the voice of an elderly woman.

  “Hello, Miss. I'm here to pet the cats,” I replied happily, like an excited teenager, cringing at the procedure I had to undergo.

  After that, I could hear lock after lock being opened, and focusing on the magic, I could sense several seals being deactivated. Finally, the doors opened.

  Inside stood an elderly woman looking like a stereotypical grandma slash old cat lady with a head of gray hair, glasses the thickness of glass bottoms barely holding for dear life at the end of her nose, and a hunched back. Behind her, there was the inseparable entourage of all cat ladies–the cats.

  Many of them, in different shapes and sizes, wandered about doing cat things. But an astute observer could notice that a couple of them always observed me, a spark of recognition in their gazes.

  I made my way inside.

  “Tea? Coffee?”

  “No thank y-”

  “I just baked cookies. wait, I will get you some”.

  “You really-” I started as the woman turned her back and went to the kitchen. “Don't have to, “ I informed the now-empty space.

  Sighing, I sat by the table, moving one of the cats from its sitting place, which earned me an irritated meow, and then waited, looking around the room.

  It was a typical grandma apartment, from the old wooden furniture to the mandatory old, gray, creepy photos and a sewing kit inside a cookie box, if you didn’t count a couple of the enchantments that would take my head clean off my shoulders if activated, that is. The place also had a massive number of pictures of cats that somehow posed for them like an employee for a badge picture.

  Shuffling announced the lady carrying a tray with cookies and tea. I knew arguing was pointless, so I took the tea and a cookie and devoured them to make this part as short as possible. The grandma just sat there smiling with a motherly smile as I ate and made some small talk.

  Finally, three cookies and a tea later, she stood up and went to the doors leading further into the apartment.

  “There you go, honey.” She opened the doors to reveal a lavishly decorated room with red Persian carpets on the walls and floor and a couple of distinctly Egyptian decorations, making it even more oriental.

  There were only a couple of cats present. In the middle was a small table with a comfortable-looking chair on one side and a stand with a massive pillow on the other. On the enormous pillow was just as huge, even by the race's standards, Maine Coon cat.

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  “Hello, Samuel. Long time no see,” said the cat.

  “Hello, Q’shar”

  “Shar is enough, as you know.” The tail, showing irritation, swung behind the cat. “I see you were already served some cookies and tea, she really perfected the recipe didn’t she? Do you want something more concrete? Wine, whiskey, beer? Blood of the innocent?” The cat purred, apparently happy about the joke, if you can call it that.

  “The blood’s only for special occasions, you know, dark rituals, world domination, the stuff,” I answer flatly.

  “Ah, yes. How could I have forgotten?”

  “Your priestesses are getting older and older, I heard you were once cared for by pharos and only the most beautiful of young priestess and now an old lady and her cookies?”

  “Well I heard your family had a mansion and a vault instead of an apartment and a warehouse. Times change I guess”

  “I geass so” I locked eyes with the animal.

  “Well, then, let’s get to the point.” Now the animal's face turned serious. “Leave us.”

  At that firm command, the cats got up and left without any questions. The closing of the doors was accompanied by a couple of silencing and anti-spying enchantments activating. Some of them really strong, burning through any mana storage quite quickly, I imagined.

  “Ok, did you know about the veins?” I asked immediately.

  “No, the thing I said on the phone was true. We had no idea.”

  “Why send me to this case?”

  “Because it was weird.”

  “Look, I know you tend to speak in riddles as all members of frumentarii, but I didn't come here to solve them. I know you and my father knew something. And I want to know what it was.”

  The cat sighed in resignation. “Well, we don’t know much. Honestly, all we knew was that your father knew something.”

  “Oh, come o-”

  “Let me finish, and then you can whine. Look, the theory that the magic will return was just that, a theory. And after two thousand years without anything happening, the theory itself was practically forgotten. We thought that we were a dying breed. A couple of groups remembering the old ways” The cat paused, locking eyes with me “And even those that practice magic do it sparsely these days”

  “I know, every spell cast, every enchantment, every ritual brings us closer to oblivion. But it’s not like we are that close to the end tho. There are still thousands of people practicing the old ways, just to a much lower level, and not like all creatures need mana to sustain themselves, some are still on and about”

  “Yes, but I'm talking about the mindset. Even families with massive resources left were, well, how to describe that. ‘Deficitist’ would be the world. They practiced teaching their children a glorious history, knowing they were but a shadow of it. It’s more like a couple of old groups still holding onto old ways out of honor and melancholy.”

  “But you knew something, now that I look at it, you always gave me the strange requests. The more there was not explained, the more you insisted.”

  “We didn’t know anything. We suspect the only person who knew something more concrete was your father, and he was well…”

  “A madman. I know. With all my love for the man or what was left of him, you don’t have to sugarcoat it with me. He was a madman.”

  “Yes, a genius in the art of magic. But a madman. So the world of the old ways, which was slowly stagnating into death, shook 27 years ago when your father created you. He was around for over 1300 years, and with his condition, it was not an easy task to create an heir. But exactly 27 years ago, he did it. After 1300 years, he chose to do it. Not only that, but he burned through half of your family resources to train you. Your power rise was unprecedented, similar to that of a mage in the mythical era, meaning you got to cast spells daily, which is not cheap. Moreover, your family's financial resources were also spent, and unlike the artifacts, you did not have much money remaining. Your bank account was practically cleared for testing sites and travel all over the world.”

  The cat took a breath as I remembered my childhood. Magic, books, and traveling to distinguished groups around the world to learn about them and their ways. Old servants carried my father to be shown the ways of the dead of Egypt, the alchemy of English witches, the Japanese spirit arts, and many more. Those were the good times. The wealth needed for contracts and travel was massive, but my father burned through it without a second thought.

  “So when you came about and were raised that way, some thought that maybe it is a sign that something massive will happen if your father wanted a well trained apprentice. Some even started to prepare for war, but then what no one could predict happened.”

  “My father died.”

  “Yes, the man died after 1300 years, and for a couple of years, nothing happened. People thought that that was it. Whatever held him clinging to life was running out, and he made the decision to pass on the knowledge out of desperation.”

  The cat lowered its voice into a conspiratorial whisper.

  “But only a few people and I knew that made no sense. Only we knew the nature of technology holding him alive.”

  “You knew?” I asked, surprised.

  “Information is my specialty, and you father needed that covered up, so I was informed of the details to blur the picture better”.

  Still, the technology was a big secret, to reveal it to someone was a massive show of trust.

  “The tech holding your father was created by the great race of Yith, and such a thing as 1300 years is nothing to them. If your father's life support ran out, that meant it was supposed to. I assumed that when your father made the deal with Yith, they wouldn’t just let him live forever. He probably bargained for a specific amount of time or a specific event…”

  “You thought my father made a deal not to preserve his life but to live until the time of myth returns.”

  “No, the return of magic was such an impossibility that we just assumed something substantial would happen. Like god descending or something. So, ever since you started to work, I have had my eyes and ears open for anything unusual.”

  I chuckled at the thought. “You looked for some demon awakening or some spirit or artifact, and instead, we ran face-first into the impossible. Into the return of the age of magic.”