In the midst of the festivities, the young wizard discreetly left the central square because he wanted some peace and quiet and the people were so eager to please him that they did not leave him alone. The village was small, about three hundred meters in diameter, and there were other open places, being all very wooded and almost on the edge of a forest.

In front of Ailin's hut, the same one where he lived in that short period, he found a perfect tree for his intent, which was to lean against it and meditate harmonized with nature.

Sad, he tried to unravel how he could get out of that time and return to the 21st century. He had just made history, a very important history for the wizards and he never imagined such a possibility, but that was something that did not even bother him because all he wanted was to go back to Eduarda and save her from the creature, but, to his misfortune, he had no idea how to achieve his goal.

His reveries were interrupted by Ailin, who appeared and sat next to him, carrying a wooden cup full of fresh wine. Igor thanked her with a smile and she commented:

"You are more powerful than all the druids together, Igor, and not even my father has so much strength. Where did you come from, anyway? In the future are they all like this?"

"I was born very far from here, on another continent that is still unknown," he explained. "Many centuries will have to pass before it is discovered. By my calculations, I am displaced more than eighteen hundred years in the past.

"All that?" She widened her eyes, but then a new thought came to her mind, a thought that filled her with hope. "Does that mean you are stuck in this time?"

"Until I find out how to go back, I am yes," he replied somewhat thoughtful. "Despite all the science of my time, time travel is still not mastered. We have everything, even machines that fly through the skies and others that take us to the Moon, but there is no time travel. I still don't understand how he threw me into the past!"

She was silent for a while, imagining his world, until she said:

"If you can't go back... well... I..." Ailin stammered and Igor understood very well, smiling. She took courage and continued. "I would like to know if we could be companions, if you couldn't go back to her."

"You know, Ailin," gentle, he took her hand, "you are so beautiful and kind that I am sure I would be happy by your side. On the day I find out that I can no longer go back, I promise that I will be your companion: but, for the sake of humanity, I need to be able to go back."

"What is she like?" asked the girl. "Is she pretty? I would like to know."

"That is very easy to see. In fact, you and she could be sisters, so alike you are." Igor smiled and took his phone out of his pocket. He opened the photo gallery and showed her a picture of her at the university.

"What magic is this?" she asked, impressed, looking at the device.

"This is not magic, Ailin." Amused, he took a picture of her and showed it to her. "This device is an invention of my time and serves to do many things, including talking to other people through it."

Curious, she observed the images on the device's screen and commented:

"She is very much like me. The big difference is just the color of the hair!"

"Yes, you are very similar, except for the eyes and hair. If you dyed your hair, they would be almost the same."

"Dye your hair?" She wrinkled her forehead and, every time she did that, he drooled all over because she looked identical. "Is that possible?"

"Well, not now, but, in the future, anyone can do that. I could change the color of your hair. Do you want?"

"No. Show me her again," she asked. Igor showed her the photograph of the bride. "She is very pretty, only you wore strange clothes and even stranger houses. What is her name?"

"Eduarda," he replied, taking a sip of wine. "This is not a house to live in. It is a university, a place where people are taught all the knowledge of humanity."

The girl looked at the image for a while, until the screen slowly darkened and turned off. She raised her eyes to the wizard and made a decision.

"Igor." She turned to him and took his hands. "I wish with all my heart that you find your way back and be happy. Of course I would love to live with you and would give anything for that, but, if you find your way back, I want you to be happy. I just wish you would promise me one thing."

"What do you want?"

"First promise."

"Ailin," Igor smiled and caressed her face. "When a wizard makes a promise, he is obliged to keep it. This is something very serious, so I say this: if it does not harm anyone and does not prevent me from returning, I promise."

"Thank you." She laughed, clapping her hands. "How happy I am to know that now I will have what I most desire in my life."

"Well, since I promised, how about you tell me what you want?" he asked, drinking some wine.

"I will want a child with you."

In the first two seconds her words did not make the proper sense, but then he realized the mess he had made. As it was not possible to speak, breathe and drink at the same time, Igor choked and coughed until he could no longer stand it. With his eyes watering and Gwydion's mental laughter, he said, still panting:

"That was a low blow."

"I want a child, just that. If you can't stay, I'll have our child to remember. After all, if she doesn't even exist yet, it's not even betrayal, don't you think?"

"That is a question of semantics. Very well; I promised and I will fulfill, but it cannot be now because you are not fertile and I do not intend to do this every day. I would be betraying my principles, except if I could not return."

"My Goddess, how alike they are!" thought the young wizard. "They could even be the same person!"

Ezequiel approached and sat with the pair, happy.

"Igor, I haven't thanked you for your help yet," he commented. "Without you, I think we would have been defeated by the warlocks and the dragons, because the other druids are very weak."

"You don't have to thank me, Ezequiel. I was very happy to help."

"Can the dragon that stayed with me assume a discreet form?" asked the druid. "Like the bird?"

"Of course," Igor laughed, "ask him to turn into a dog and I think you should call him Saci."

"Why?"

"In about eighteen centuries, we will meet each other in another place and so it will be."

"Where?"

Igor got up and took the hands of both, father and daughter. A villager who passed by widened his eyes to see the trio disappear suddenly, as if they had never been there.

They appeared in the middle of the air and Ailin clung to him, screaming in fright. Ezequiel, who was able to do the same with his staff, was not scared. When fear was overcome by curiosity, the girl looked around.

They were in a green mountain range where in the valley more than a hundred meters below a dense forest filled almost everything, separated by the river at the bottom.

"In thirteen hundred years a people far south of your village will discover this continent and colonize it. Five hundred years after that, it will be when I will be born and here there will be a gigantic nation, but this valley will remain untouched and maintained as a huge natural reserve. It will be here that I will find you and you will save me, Ezequiel. Our lives are very intertwined."

"This place is beautiful," he said, "and I know I will live a lot, but considering that I am almost three hundred years old, does that mean I will have two millennia of life?"

"Exactly, Ezequiel, but now your mission is to lead the druids and unify them before the mundanes, as the common people will be called, kill them. From the next years, the Romans will become much stronger and the new religion will take over the civilized world. The Celts will almost cease to exist, they will be decimated or dissolved into other cultures and the Christians will declare war on the druids and various peoples, unless you lead them to another world and transform it into our homeland, the world of all the magicians, as the druids and priestesses will soon be called." Igor transported them back.

At the place where they were before they left, some druids tried to understand the strange phenomenon of the disappearance of the three when they reappeared, causing murmurs among the villagers.

Igor continued, raising his voice to everyone who appeared there:

"You listen well: Ezequiel will be your great leader and, for your own good, you must follow him without contesting or you will all be exterminated by the enemy." He raised his hand, pointing to the friend who was dressed like Igor, with the white cape and everything. "Now, Ezequiel, the Supreme Guardian is you. I will have to wait eighteen centuries."

Alone, just the two and their respective dragons, Igor told his story, omitting only the irrelevant or very personal parts, especially those that could generate paradoxes of time. He finished by saying:

"I need to go back to my time and save the world. Always remember one thing: if I die or fail, you have to try to hunt and destroy the black demon. The dragons will help."

Ezequiel looked at his daughter from afar and said:

"She is very much in love with you, but I see clearly that your heart already belongs to someone else."

"She is very beautiful and sweet," commented Igor, distracted, "but she is also very smart, impulsive and caught me in a beautiful trap."

"What happened?"

"She made me promise something."

"Yes, but what?"

"She made me promise that, if I didn't stay, I would give her a child of mine."

"Did she really do that?" Ezequiel gave a Homeric, thunderous laugh. "You, a great and powerful druid fell into that trap? Well, I believe it is not something so difficult. She dreams of a child for so long that I don't even remember when she started.

"Just like someone I know, which is even worse," replied the friend.

The druid left laughing a lot and Igor shook his head, looking at him and concluding that he would not change anything in the next sixteen hundred years.

"That's for sure," said Gwydion who heard his thoughts.

― ☼ ―