The gnome's voice exploded over the silence: "Linara!"  

He had a head that was easily half the size of his body. His chin hung down his chest like a stocking hung from a fireplace mantle at Christmas. His skin was punctuated with warts and carbuncles and even more exotic growths.  

He couldn't possibly be a day under six hundred, as there were six hundred year old trees nearby that didn't look half as gnarly. He looked like he belonged there more than the forest itself. As if the latter were but a distillation of him, the stones arising from his calcified and arthritic body, the trees from knotholes in his skin. 

Linara smiled in response. The gnome introduced himself to Raikin: "I am Pithius, God of sorrow. It is my job to take all depressed souls and reincarnate them as elements of the natural world so the magic of Hitara can nurse them back to health." 

"A fancy term for midwife if you ask me," Linara said, in some good-natured ribbing. 

"And who asked you?" Pithius barked in mock protest. He gave her a big hug and spit on her forehead as if it were the greatest gift anyone could give. "For good luck." 

"We came to you for schooling in magic, not for good luck," Linara said impatiently. 

"I assure you, good luck is worth more than all the magic in the world." He flopped down on a log as if holding up his mighty head on two feet was not something he was prepared to do a moment longer. "Take the good fortune of finding this fallen tree just when I needed it. Besides, if you perform magic in Bolotaire, it will age you, a couple years for each spell, at least. I heartily discourage it, being as you two look like such lovely youth. Pity to squander it in such a way."  

"Bolotaire! But I thought we were in Rimron," Linara protested. 

"'Fraid not, my dear. Rimron is over the county line thataway - about twenty klicks to be precise."  

She checked herself in a small circular mirror she pulled out of her waist pouch.  

"What's the mirror for?" Raikin asked. 

"I use it for my light magic. Though, right now it's for checking to see if I've aged any." She gave him a stern looking over as well. "We don't look any worse for wear, so we must have landed in Rimron, and just walked in the wrong direction. I thought for sure I knew the area well enough not to get turned around in the woods." 

She returned her attention to the gnome. "How is it I know you from Rimron?" Linara asked, perplexed. 

"Because at the time you were lost and had no idea where you were and I kind of let you think you were still in Rimron because honestly it's rare that I meet a new friend."  

"Nice way to treat your friends."  

"You will recall I did all the magic conjuring for you and wouldn't hear of your protests to the contrary. So in my own devious way I protected you from a fate worse than youth." 

"Is that why you look like you're at least six hundred?" Raikin said, realizing the comment was not likely to land the way he intended it.  

"Oh, we have a comedian amongst us. I'll have you know I'm at least eight hundred because I've cast at least four hundreds spells times two years a piece. Though I lost precise count at around three hundred and sixty."  

"So how old are you really?" Linara asked. 

"Oh, about twenty or so."  

"What do the extra years do to you?" Raikin asked, drawing dirty looks from Linara. "Well, you asked me to be more scientific about things! Seems like a valid line of inquiry." 

"And so it is. Aging in Bolotaire is a wondrous thing. Makes for very powerful magic. My farts alone can rob a valley of all life. Even the birds fall out of the air."  

Raikin laughed. "You are very funny." 

"I am not joking. I swear on my dead ancestors it's true. So I hold it in as long as I can to protect the innocents. And the trapped gas seeps into every pore of my body where it does even more harm. Once it's in my blood, should I suffer the smallest cut, the drop of blood will act like the strongest of acids and bore clear through Hitara to the other side. You can see stars through the holes, I tell you." 

Raikin laughed again. "You are possibly the funniest man I have ever known. Of course, I have known no other men beside myself. So I promise to come back when that boast shall truly mean something." 

"Oh, that's the least of it. If I pop one of these pus-filled sacks on my face - I could cause an enemy to go blind, or possibly recite his life story. It's never the same result twice." 

"But this kind of aging brings no knowledge and wisdom." Raikin rubbed the back of his stiff neck to get more circulation to his brain. "That being the case... In Bolotaire, age is power because of the more complex body chemistries it gives way to. The accumulated mistakes in the cellular machinery as the cells divide and replicate, the misuse of the body's own DNA and RNA to make rogue agents that enfeeble the body when they should be strengthening it... in Bolotaire, that decaying process has been turned on its head. But if that's the case, the aging itself is the ruse. Inside of you are the chemical cocktails that give you all kinds of powers a younger you could only dream of. Here, one doesn't cast spells with words of power, one casts them with unique chemical agents that open doorways for the mind to alternate realities. You're a walking Pandora's Box of demons and monsters and whatever else you'd care to set free on this world to do your bidding." 

"Very astute, dear boy," Pithius said, groaning and sounding every bit as old as he looked trying to get comfortable on his tree trunk.  

More lights went on in the back of Raikin's mind. "I guess that explains why it's so hard to make friends in Bolotaire. Everyone is determined to throw a spell over you as soon as they see you, so they can continue to age and grow more powerful. And it also explains why the results of your spells aren't always as intended, because you're not sure what doorway you're opening with the latest chemical cocktail." 

"It's true. We see into our physiologies, our mind's eyes like microscopes. Just meditating on a particular protein in the body is enough to unleash the magic associated with it. But it's a lot to keep track of. So sometimes, it isn't always a matter of testing out the latest chemical mutation; it's a matter of forgetting how the last one worked." 

Raikin paced excitedly and gestured. "I had often thought when I studied the junk DNA under Almadra's enchanted microscope in my youth..." 

Pithius chuckled over the "in his youth" part. 

"...with its near infinite abilities to magnify-the junk DNA, incidentally, comprises over seventy percent of us-that simply meditating on that could unleash monsters from our ancient past before we were fully human." 

"Oh, that's a different form of magic entirely. They practice that in Shiftly, one of the canyon lands. But in the junk DNA are not just creatures from our past, child, but creatures that can handle different worlds on which we find ourselves, breathe different atmospheres, handle different gravities. Very powerful stuff, shapeshifting."  

Raikin scratched the back of his head, trying to get at what was still gnawing at him from the inside. "Why would you have need of magic in a place such as this? The forest seems benign enough, if you can get used to it talking incessantly. Enough to drive you mad," Raikin said, again aware of the incessant whispering. 

"So you hear it, too? I thought I was the only one. Yes, though if you learn to sort out the voices, there's quite a lot of good knowledge there. The land will tell you what dangers approach long before your own senses will." 

"And what dangers are out there, Pithius? Pray tell."  

"The one who's coming to slay you, for starters, that's who. They call him Warnak, the Conjurer of Nothing."  

Raikin laughed. "Doesn't sound particularly scary." 

"No one in all of Hitara can manifest things from the void the way he can, pull something out of nothing, I tell you. And the somethings he pulls are about as lovable as a starving giant intent on garnishing his dinner plate with your entire family."  

"And what does he want with me?" Raikin said, still more curious than concerned. 

"He seems to sense you're the only real threat to him. Like you, he was sent to this world to apprentice in both science and magic for the day when he would rule over all the dominions of man." 

Linara had grown silent, listening to the conversation as she tended a fire she had whipped together from the fallen branches in the area, which she drew together the old fashioned way, with brute labor, afraid to unleash her magic. She was proving quite the fire starter even in the absence of spells, apparently every bit the nature spirit Raikin had imagined. He doubted she spent a night under a roof her entire life.  

"He won't get far with dark magic," Raikin said, rubbing his chin. "That path is ultimately self-defeating." 

"He's doing a very good job convincing himself and everyone else to the contrary. And he's a good five years older than you, this being his nineteenth year. And in Bolotaire that translates into extra powers. In all of Hitara, for that matter, if he's managed to combine extra knowledge and experience with those years. So if I were you, I'd stay clear of him." 

"Or grow up fast with a few well-targeted spells cast in Bolotaire that will also give us access to more experience and wisdom."  

"How do you plan to resolve that paradox?" Linara asked. 

"If I can forge a link to the Akashic records by opening my seventh chakra more..." 

"Ah, chakra magic," Pithius said, nodding. "Love the stuff. They practice that in Chakly, another of the canyon lands." 

His mind now racing along another track, Raikin said, "How is it you know so much about me? How is it everyone knows so much about me?"  

"Well, the wind talks, of course, as do the trees, the grasses. As you have discovered, everything in Hitara talks. And by the way, Warnak - the evil wizard in training - hears with ears like mine. So he knows more about you than you do too." 

"Maybe you should catch me up so he doesn't have an unfair advantage." 

"Alas, if I do all your thinking for you, then he will have a most decided advantage. Have you not heard a thing Linara and Almadra have been telling you? You live in a land of spells within spells. Some of them have hung around so long, no one remembers who conjured them, or how to undo them. So they find ways to modify them, add on to them in some way, overlap them with other spells, layers and layers of spells I tell you, like a layer cake at a king's wedding. If you can't sort it all out in your head, sooner or later you'll fall victim to spells that were never even intended for you.  

"Take me. Do you know that I am an entomologist? Could care less about magic. I came here, you see, for the science, not realizing that this was a world all about magic. I guess I should have paid more attention to the hullabaloo about this place, but I didn't believe in such things back then." Pithius trailed off, losing his train of thought. 

"So do you still study insects?" 

"Oh, yes, yes, indeed. Of course, they are magic insects. And all anyone ever wants to know about them is what potion can be derived from them and to what ends." 

Raikin laughed. "You haven't made out so badly. An enviable life, all in all." 

Pithius was clearly getting ready to wallow in a pool of self-pity, and perked up at Raikin's kind remarks. He clapped his hands and said, "What's for dinner?" 

They both looked over at Linara tending the fire. "Oh no, this fire isn't for eating over, it's for seeing what our friend Warnak is up to." Then: "Alhandra nomisanti carnicious pranti," she said, waving her hand over the fire before Pithius could jump up to stop her.  

She aged two years, looking to Raikin's eyes even more fetching than before.  

And within the fire danced images of Warnak. He was a handsome, black-haired youth of fair skin and lean muscle. He cracked a walnut in his hand and stared at the insides as if reading tea leaves. Then, after eating the flesh, prepared to crack another, only to change his mind. He threw down the nut that was still whole on the ground, and said some words of magic that Raikin had to strain to hear over the rising whisperings of the enchanted land of Bolotaire. "Neemara Feshing Flysara Sindu." 

The nut grew in size until it was the size of a watermelon. And then it exploded. From inside sprang forth a baby dragon that grew to full size with each fluttering of its wings. Warnak jumped on the dragon and took to the air, flying as if out of the flames straight for Raikin. 

"If I didn't know better, I'd say he was coming for me," Raikin said, jumping back, ducking the illusory dragon leaping out of the fire.  

"But he is," Pithius reassured him. "Haven't you been listening to the forest?" 

Raikin tuned in the whipping sounds of the flexing blades of grass and the leaves rustling in the trees, the howling sounds of the wind. They were all singing one message in chorus now, no longer talking over one another, as if they couldn't settle an argument amongst themselves. "He's coming! He's coming! Warnak, the Conjurer of the Nothing is coming for you!" they screamed with urgency.  

"You must quick be on your way." Pithius pried himself off his log and gestured with urgency. "I forgot to tell you Warnak's other source of endless charm. He can fathom the magic of any region in Hitara faster and better than the locals. Has this way of putting his hand up to trees, of touching things and drawing their essence out of them. That, with his conjuring abilities with the void, makes him all but unstoppable. I wouldn't want him hunting me." 

"Interesting initiation into manhood," Raikin said. 

"As good as any," Pithius remarked, "being as the real defining nature of adulthood is that you are forever on the run from danger. And any safe place you must carve out for yourself. It is never handed to you." 

Raikin smiled warmly at Pithius. "You have been a great mentor and friend, Pithius, though I've known you but a few hours." 

"That is how it is on Hitara. Time is of no consequence here. We are soulmates or the worst of enemies in the instant we meet - and time alone will do nothing to change that." 

With that, he clapped his hands and he was gone.  

Raikin stared at the empty space where the gnome had been standing. "Apparently being soulmates means he trusts me to do what he cannot, fend off Warnak. Thinking so highly of me obviously goes with the territory." 

"That is exactly right, my boy!" came Pithius's voice, though he was no longer physically present. 

Raikin smiled warmly. Then he set his eyes on Linara, who let him take her hand. "I suggest we cast a few more spells on our way out of Bolotaire, so that by the time Warnak catches up with us, he will at least not be battling children." 

"Sound enough advice, if only we can think what spells to conjure." 

"If only..."