edited: 19/07/2017

Maksim grimaced at the sound of his mother slamming the door. He didn't doubt that Annika had already told her about their argument yesterday. She would not be happy.

She was not happy. Her green eyes were narrowed and piercing, looking more like a cat's than ever, and her frail arms were tensed on her hips the way they always were when she was about to scold Maksim. Even after four hundred years, she treated him as though he was a disobedient child. Her red hair seemed brighter and more striking than usual, as though it was on fire. Perhaps it was. He would not put it past her when she was in one of her bad moods.

He decided not to acknowledge Hilda's attitude as he sat on his armchair and ran a hand through his hair. It was still knotted from the rain, or perhaps it was just from the amount of times his fingers had tugged at it today.

"Bad day, Mother?" he questioned in a bored tone, though dread was bubbling in the pit of his stomach. He was tired of disappointing her, but he could not help being himself.

"Do not test my patience, Maksim," she huffed, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. "Annika told me how rude you were to her. I thought we had made it clear that you are to prove your worth to her so that she can accept your marriage proposal, not drive her away with your cynicism and contempt! This is after you left a portal to the Mortal World open, might I add!"

Maksim rolled his eyes. "I recall it was you who decided that, not me." He was tired after his almost death, and the more his mother looked at him acrimoniously, the more his chest felt heavy and confined against his rib-cage. Hilda was chipping away at him, piece by piece, and soon, there would not be enough of him left to argue with her or have any say in his own fate. One would think that warlocks would have more control over their own lives, what with them being immortal, but it seemed she wouldn't allow him to have eternal life unless she was sure he would be absolutely miserable throughout every minute of it. It was obviously not enough that he was visiting the Mortal World on a regular basis and putting himself in danger in order to get his brother back. It was not enough that instead of going on his own journey, he stayed on his mother's so that she would not have to be alone. He would never be enough for her, and the thought made his throat ache. "Besides," he added as an afterthought, "I took care of the portal...eventually."

"Do not be difficult," she responded coldly. "I have done everything I possibly can for you, Maksim, yet you still disobey me."

"Why? Because I do not want to marry somebody I do not love?" he spat back, rising from his chair with his hands balled into fists. "How despicable of me!"

"Annika is an honourable witch. You would be lucky to have her as a wife."

"If her father was not the Principle Warlock, would you say the same thing?"

Hilda hesitated, her eyes darkening in both anger and the knowledge that he was right. Still, it was unlike her to admit her defeat, and Maksim was not surprised when the next words spilled from her mouth. "Of course I would. Annika is beautiful, and it is clear she loves you. You may not get another chance at that again."

"You seem to have forgotten I can use magic and am immortal. If I wish to marry somebody, I have all the time and ability in the world."

"Not completely immortal," she reminded in a superior tone. "If you had not reached Astracia in time earlier, you would have bled to death without ever having found someone."

Maksim sighed. Arguing with his mother was pointless and every second of it drained him of his energy, but he could not seem to stop. Perhaps he had the silly little hope that she might listen to him someday. "As opposed to bleeding to death knowing that I am married to somebody I hold absolutely no interest in?"

Without warning, green sparks flew from Hilda's hands, and a framed piece of art that was hung on the wall behind him fell to the floor, leaving shards of glass scattered around his feet. He looked at her with wide eyes, and for a moment, failed to recognise that this had once been the woman who he could tell anything to, who had held him when he cried out for his father as a naïve ten year old, who had taught him more about magic than the Foundation ever could, who had smiled so warmly and so proudly at him when he had cast his first spell. This person in front of him was not her; she was cold and willing to sacrifice his son's happiness for her own, willing to sacrifice his life to bring her eldest son back.

"When will you stop being so selfish?" she muttered through pursed lips. "I am tired of you, Maksim."

Maksim averted his eyes to the floor, to the damaged photo frames and broken glass. He could not look at her. He could not allow her to see how his eyes reddened when they stung with tears, or how he gulped to swallow the lump in his throat.

She stepped closer towards him so that her cold breath tickled his ear. "I expect you to apologise to Annika, and then I expect you to return to the Mortal World and find your brother. You will not return here until you do. Is that clear?" Her voice reminded Maksim of knives being sharpened, of cold biting at one's cheeks on a particularly cold and bitter day. He remembered a time when that same voice had reminded him of warmth and safety. The thought made every fibre of his being ache dully.

Maksim slumped in defeat and nodded slightly. He did not have enough energy left to fight. He had never known his mother to be so harsh, and he was not sure what she would do if he was to argue further.

"Good." The corner of Hilda's mouth rose with a hint of a smile, and she left Maksim in the living room in order to pick up the cat, which was now ceaselessly meowing. "I have decided to call it Gale," she murmured as the same hands that had just destroyed the wall behind Maksim now stroked the cat's black fur gently.

"Let's hope you treat it better than you have treated me," Maksim retorted, though his voice did not hold anger or malice. It was resigned, knowing now that he would not get a rise from her. "Perhaps I will see you soon. I would tell you not to wait up for me tonight, but I am sure you would not anyway."

He didn't give her a chance to respond. He shrugged his jacket on and left, forcing himself not to shatter the crystallised door on his way out.

* * *

Maksim was not impressed to find himself back in the miserable little town he had visited far too many times recently. He was even less impressed to find that it was still raining, particularly since he had only just gotten warm again. The only difference was that now it was daylight, though the sun was still veiled behind black clouds. A glance at his timepiece told him it was just after midday.

He covered the portal behind him using a storage bin, cringing as his fingers wrapped around the no doubt rotted plastic, and wiped his hands down on his pants immediately after. He would never understand how mortals lived under such unhygienic circumstances.

He stepped out of the alleyway, disappointed at how familiar he had grown with it now, and seconds later noticed a cloak of black whip around the next street corner. As always, the portal had brought him exactly where he needed to be; close to his brother's associates.

Despite his instincts, he held back a second, biting his lip as he thought. He couldn't mindlessly run into another fight—that would get him nowhere. He needed to be clever and cunning. He needed to know what he was up against before he went up against it. Calmly, he snapped his fingers, the familiar rush of magic coursing through his veins as he changed his clothing to suit the Mortal World. If he was lucky, the man who he had just seen turn the corner would not recognise him; he barely recognised himself as he glanced down at his attire and found a black V-neck t-shirt accompanied by tight blue jeans and peculiar shoes. He scowled at his own body, but began to walk anyway, unsurprised when he rounded the corner and found the man he had seen before.

He had to jog slightly to catch up with him at first; if he lost him at the next corner, he would not know where to go. The streets all looked the same here, lined with red-brick houses and faded brown doors. He inched close enough to hear the man's footsteps, and then walked slower to keep from being noticed. When they turned again, they were brought out onto the seafront, where a road bustled with traffic that Maksim had only ever seen once before, and then it had been quiet. It caused his head to spin for a moment; he had spent hundreds of years doing magic and spells, but he had never seen so much chaos. He jumped as a horn blared, unused to such noise, and paused behind a wall as the man in the cloak crossed the road. When he was sure that he would not be killed by the moving frames of metal before him, he did the same.

His shoes sunk into the sand as the two stepped onto the beach. Last time he had been here, there had been a large expanse of it, but now, the sea was almost covering the entire thing. He shuffled closer to the wall to keep from getting wet, glad when the man finally turned into a small alcove beneath a wooden walkway.

Maksim pressed his back to the wall, not daring to peer around the corner and look for himself. His clothes were damp and the cold gnawed at his bones, but he didn't care. He narrowed his eyes in focus, finally hearing the low rumble of voices that echoed out of the cave.

"There's still no sign of it," one of the voices said, and Maksim immediately remembered what Elthar had said earlier on. They were looking for a key—evidently, their skills at finding it were not working well for them.

"It has to be in this town," another said. "Ackmard said his magic lead him here."

"Perhaps it was a false lead.  We've looked everywhere in this dreadful town. If it was here, we would have found it already."

The voices continued, but they became more muffled as though they were moving further into the alcove, and Maksim dared to inch closer to the entrance. It was a bad idea. His shoes scuffed a rock carelessly—he knew that wearing Mortal clothes had been a terrible idea—and the rock trundled against the opposite wall of the alcove, which rather inconveniently jutted out further than the wall Maksim was stood against, creating a louder crash than one would expect from such a small stone.

He froze, ignoring the instinct to run and urgently hoping that they had not noticed the movement. That was also a bad idea. A second later, Elthar appeared from the alcove with several other men of whom Maksim knew well from being forced into altercations with before. Each of them had the same pitch black eyes, and each of them wore an expression that Maksim roughly translated into one that said: you are going to die.

He smiled despite himself, holding his hands up as if in surrender. "Hello, gentlemen. I was just popping in to  see if there was any update on this key you are looking for. Obviously, that is not the case, so I will be leaving now. Lovely seeing you."

He shuffled back at the sound of each of them growling lowly in unison before falling into a sprint. He did not know where he was going; all he knew was that he was not particularly in the mood to be attacked by his brother's associates again any time soon. His legs burned as they carried him down a side street, and he was sure he would have been able to run faster if it was not for his ridiculously tight jeans.

He turned as many corners as he could, glancing behind him every now and again to see if the men were still following him. Of course, they were, but now there were only two of them; Elthar and another man he recognised as Bliviar, who had been Ackmard's friend even before they had both become Dark Ones. He relaxed slightly; at the next corner, he would be much further ahead, and two of them weren't as threatening as the entire group.

He rounded the corner with a smirk, but his confidence faded a second later at the sound of a familiar mortal girl calling out from behind him. He glimpsed behind him to confirm his suspicions and found that the blonde was running after him with another girl, this one brunette, following after her with a frown.

"What on earth do you want now?" he spat, coming to a halt and pulling her into a small space between two buildings. The other girl simply stared at them both, but Maksim chose not to acknowledge her enough to notice anything else about her.

Two mortal girls were not at the top of his list of priorities. He wondered why he had been forced to endure their presence so frequently in the last few days.