"We should never let ourselves be persuaded except by evidence of reason."

René Descartes.

It was cold, a cold that bothered, soon followed by an infernal heat, but what tormented him the most was thirst. He felt an irresistible urge to drink water, but his body did not weaken with its absence, as one would expect to happen. Despite the dry mouth and the malaise that had lasted for a long time, he remained in full physical condition, but useless in that hostile environment.

The place, gloomy and dark, conjured to make everything very conducive to a horror movie story. Igor looked around, in the dim light, and only saw black-reddish spots, some moving in a very sinister way in an environment that was very open and deserted to the horizon. A low, but disturbing sound, sounded like a deep buzz reminding of the distant coming of a swarm of hungry insects and eager to eat us alive, devouring everything around, showing that silence did not exist in fact. He tried to walk, but it seemed that he was glued to the ground. With great effort he moved one leg and managed to walk slowly, trying to see if he was stuck in a very viscous thing, made of some product that resembled tar. He tried to run, when he saw a black shadow approaching him, a shapeless shadow, but humanoid and frightening that gave a macabre scream, sharp and unreal; however, as much as he tried, he could not get out of the place. The shadow approached too fast and brushed him, ending with a shrill and out of tune laugh while Igor felt in his touch the cold and frightening breath of death.

"Dead, dead, dead, dead, they are all dead and it's my fault!" His screams of pain echoed through the cabin. "Bring them back, please!"

With a jerk on his shoulder, Igor woke up to see Ezequiel by his side, shaking him with one hand while, with the other, he kept a bright sphere of light above his head.

"Calm down, Igor," said the elder. "It was just a nightmare."

Igor got up, sitting and passing his hands over his face all sweaty.

"Was it really a nightmare?" he asked, getting up slowly. A strong light formed above his head, made without even thinking or moving his hands. Slowly, Igor walked to the bathroom, followed by the strange light, while the old man muttered, astonished:

"By the heavens, Saci, he doesn't even need to invoke things consciously that he wants. In two thousand years I have never seen such a powerful being except when we met, but I am not convinced at all. However, it can only be him and now there is no mistake. Only he could do this, but eighteen hundred years is too long to remember in detail!" he murmured. The big dog looked at the elder who smiled, adding. "Yes, we need to wait for the right moments, otherwise we will have chaos. I know you don't forget easily."

Ezequiel turned off the sphere of light that he had created to wake up the young man and lay down on his bed.

Igor, after rinsing his face, opened the door to the street and sat for a while on the porch, thinking about his unknown past. The dog went to the bush to relieve himself and returned shortly after, sitting next to the young man.

Seeing him still and looking at him, he stroked his snout and Saci leaned against his leg. Igor looked up, seeing thousands of stars twinkling in the firmament, as if they made rhythm with the noise of the crickets. He looked back at the dog and, without waiting for an answer, asked him with a sigh:

"What happened to me, boy?" he got up and returned inside.

He looked at the sphere of light, making it break into fragments, as if the light were a broken glass in hundreds of pieces, a multicolored luminous kaleidoscope. He liked the effect and smiled for the first time, going back to bed.

― ☼ ―

The next morning the young man woke up, but the memory of the nightmarish nightmare seemed to have completely disappeared from his memory. Asked by Ezequiel, he did not know how to answer what happened.

The boy's training in the higher arts, as the old man called magic, did not evolve, seeming that Igor suffered from a strong psychic block that only disappeared in emergencies, when he acted unconsciously and, soon after some of his always phenomenal acts, denied everything as if he received a hypnotic command to forget. This gave him an idea to force the young man to use his gifts, but, considering that Igor was too powerful for certain things, he chose to wait a little.

They had been trying and training in various ways for over a week and the wizard felt that he had never had such a difficult apprentice as that one. If it weren't for the fact that he had already seen demonstrations of his magic, the wise man would say that he had been mistaken in evaluating him, because even an apprentice of the tenth degree would be better and nothing they tried was successful.

Sitting in two comfortable rocking chairs on the porch of the house, chairs made of wicker in an oval structure, lined with green cushions of a fresh fabric and suspended from the ceiling by steel chains, the elder tried to help him regain conscious control of his power.

In the clearing, in front of them, a stone of its fifty centimeters side floated two meters from the ground, a rock that would weigh well about eighty kilograms. Ezequiel looked at the boy:

"Try to do the same with the stone next to it, son," he asked, still keeping it firm in the air.

Igor tried in every way, but the rock did not even tremble a little. He insisted for about five minutes, feeling the sweat run down his face and nothing.

"I'm sorry, but I can't, dude!" he said, already frustrated.

"Igor, get closer to the stone," ordered the old man, sighing for the third time.

"Do you think these five or six meters would make a difference if I were really capable, Ezequiel?" he asked, getting up from the chair and walking to the two steps of access to the yard. "The truth is that you have never been so wrong about someone as you are about me."

Without losing his serenity, Ezequiel got up and walked to the clearing, going down the steps and moving away to a corner while the stone remained static in the air.

"I never make mistakes, son," said the wizard with a strong voice, rising more. He raised his left hand with a sudden gesture and the stone, which was kept just under two meters from the ground, moved towards Igor, accelerating hard.

The young man widened his eyes when he saw that the boulder was thrown at him. Reacting by pure instinct, he raised his left hand, which already shone in an intense red tone, and struck a strong blow on the small rock of solid granite.

It was as if hell had descended to Earth at once: first, a very loud thunder burst right there; the ground shook together and the old wizard was thrown away. At the same time, the rock exploded into small pieces that flew in all directions and emitted a red glow so strong that it blinded them for a while. The thunder still took about fifteen seconds to fade and, when it was over, the ground stopped shaking.

The silence that formed after that was abrupt and unexpected because even the animals of the forest fled, frightened. While Ezequiel rose, still stunned, Igor looked around with his jaw dropped and without believing, because the clearing had been cleared of everything in a distance of his ten meters, as if a cyclone had snatched things to the periphery. With wide eyes, the young man turned to the side and saw Ezequiel shaking his head and hitting his hands on his pants, taking the dust off his clothes.

"I'm... so... sorry," he stammered, still very scared by the stunt. "I don't know what happened!"

"It happened, my son, that I never make mistakes. You have a block imposed on yourself that only disappears in moments of danger and your powers are undoubtedly of a superior degree one."

Ezequiel entered the house and returned seconds later with his staff in his hands, saying:

"Let's take a walk in the forest."

"But I need to fix this whole mess," said Igor, observing the amount of objects that he destroyed unintentionally, a garden table with some chairs, a barbecue and several flower pots, not to mention the little house where firewood and gardening utensils were kept. "After all, this was my fault!"

"And how long do you think it would take to fix all this without using your powers?" asked the old man, laughing. He raised the staff, whose tip began to glow, and said in a strange language, but that the young man understood. "I invoke and order: tidy up."

It seemed macabre and at the same time fascinating when all things began to rise in the air and return to their rightful places. The most spectacular was the little house that had been completely destroyed to return to normal very slowly. The objects moved like a movie that ran backwards, but lacking the famous sound effect of the sounds flowing backwards. In a few seconds, everything was as it always had been, except for the stone, which remained destroyed.

"Let's go," commanded Ezequiel, "you are too dangerous to learn near home."

Both walked along the stream that passed near the elder's cabin, going relaxed by the dense forest that formed that formidable canyon and that separated Santa Catarina from Rio Grande do Sul. They walked in silence down a slight slope and, when the path became flat and the stream increased in size, the wizard changed direction and led the boy down a nearly hidden trail, continuing to walk.

Distracted, Igor enjoyed the rustic landscape very much because he had always been a lover of nature. His attention was diverted suddenly when he heard a low and hoarse roar that did not harmonize with the place. He looked at the clearing that opened a few meters ahead and saw two crouching pumas, watching him. He did not realize the fact that there were no mountain lions in South America, because he was scared to see the animals that had the clear intention of turning him into a succulent meal.

"Ezequiel, look at the animals, where the hell did they come from?" he commented, but got no answer. He looked around, without finding the wizard and grumbled. "What a big bastard; he ran away. I can't believe he left me alone!"

He turned to the animals, facing them. He knew it would be no use running because they would be much faster and there would be no time to climb a high enough tree to escape. On the other hand, he thought it was another one of his companion's tricks, but he did not dare to risk, staying passive.

Slowly, he backed away step by step; but, for every step he took, the two animals advanced another, always crouching. Igor stopped trying to run away and assessed the chances of getting out unscathed in such an unequal clash with the pair of felines, concluding that they were nil. However, he did not intend to sell his life cheaply. He tried to imagine some power that would save him, but it was as if he had dulled his brain.

One of the mountain lions advanced more and, letting out a roar, jumped on the young man who until then thought that the animals had been placed there with some intention in relation to him. On the other hand, if that were the case, Ezequiel would not only have not run away but would not let him get hurt. Fast, Igor ducked to try to escape, but it was not enough and the puma's claws tore his flesh from one of his arms, causing a sharp pain. The feline landed two meters from him to give a spin, always crouching and with his tail raised, wagging it slowly from side to side like a kitten that was hunting a mouse. The only difference was the absurd size of the kitten and the fact that the mouse was nothing less than himself. The smell of blood made the mountain lion even more excited and aggressive, looking scary with the low roar and the slow and careless drag towards the prey. Feeling immense pain, Igor needed to pay attention to both sides at the same time, but only the first animal attacked, returning to the charge again. The feeling of imminent death and the sharp pains in his arm caused him a sudden change in behavior, awakening an uncontrollable fury that he did not know he was capable of having.

The puma approached in its mortal jump, very fast, but now Igor saw things as if time had stopped and only the young man moved at a normal pace, while the feline seemed to drag himself in the air. In that miserable half second, he saw every detail of that region of the forest, paying attention even to the most irrelevant things. He crouched down again as the beast flew very slowly towards him, but now it was a matter of taking momentum to strike a powerful punch in the animal's chest. When the opportune moment came, he threw himself up with all his strength, looking like a violent spring that hit the feline squarely, throwing him four meters in the midst of uncontrolled spins. The animal fell on his back behind his hunting partner, writhing. Despite the whole situation, he concluded that he could never have done that normally, but he did not have time to think much because the second villain gave a loud snarl and jumped. Still not knowing how he did that, Igor raised his left hand that already shone intensely in a red tone. At that moment, he thought he saw Ezequiel at the back of the clearing, clinging to the staff and wrapped in a bluish light that was radiated by its top, more like a thin smoke and that covered him all, watching, quiet. Once again things seemed in slow motion and the young man could evaluate every detail of the scene. From his hand, a sphere of energy formed and he threw it hard without even thinking, but missing the animal. He had barely launched the first one, with the other hand he had already created a new ball of plasma, which followed immediately to his target and hit the puma in full. Two simultaneous events occurred: the first sphere reached the clearing and the second the animal, exploding both at the same time. Igor's body became surrounded by a halo of green light and nothing happened to him, but, in the clearing, hell broke loose again. Those spheres of thirty centimeters each and made of some type of plasmatic element unknown on Earth contained a very large amount of energy, much hotter than magma.

The surviving feline had his advance interrupted and was carbonized at the same instant. The adjacent area, however, received the greatest impact and the explosion that formed caused a deafening noise, digging a huge crater and bursting many trees, almost doubling the size of the clearing while the ground shook as if plagued by a medium seismic shock.

When the silence returned, the young man looked around without understanding how all that destruction had happened, although he was aware that he was responsible for it. Of the animals, there was no more sign, but he remembered thinking he had seen Ezequiel on the other side of the clearing, one of the most burst by his action and that left the young man worried.

The protection he had created to protect himself from his own destruction, without even knowing how, was still active, but he did not realize it either. Carefully, Igor went in the direction of where he thought he glimpsed the old wizard, walking along the edge of the vitrified and still very hot crater. He kept an eye on the details, but all he found around was pure destruction. Arriving at the place, he advanced through the forest in its most damaged part and penetrated it, which became a new clearing somewhat long and tapered. At the end, about twenty meters from the crater, he found Ezequiel lying among four or five tree trunks of respectable size and even seemed very comfortable as if he were taking a nap. He, however, had lost consciousness.

Scared, he checked his vital signs, relieved to find that he was fine. Calmer, he sat on one of the trunks and looked at the injured member as if it were the arm of another person and not his own, evaluating for a few seconds the tear of almost fifteen centimeters from where a lot of blood gushed. The green light that protected him disappeared as soon as he regained a sense of security and began to look at the injury with all his attention. Slowly, the wound closed. Even after the arm no longer showed anything, not even a miserable scar, he continued a little longer, observing, thinking that he was responsible for all that madness, but also that he had no idea how to do it again. He looked around again, contemplating the state in which the clearing was and then thought of the stone that he had not been able to lift in the cabin. On the other side, maybe twenty meters from him, there was a very large one, a rock of about six meters that should weigh a few tons. He projected his mind on it and just wished it was in the air. Without any transition, the boulder hovered ten meters high, in the exact place where he wanted it to float. He did not know how long he stayed like that, although it should not have been much, when a voice took his concentration away.

"What the hell! Do you want to destroy the entire canyon?" asked Ezequiel, sitting still dizzy. "Did you need all this to dominate two kittens like that?"

Igor said nothing. He just looked to the side and saw the elder crouching and grumbling non-stop while looking for his staff.

"First you are not able to lift a miserable little stone and, then, you want to blow up the whole world!" He rose with the staff in his hands and looked at him. "Why didn't you raise a barrier or just tie the paws of the animals? And, being of the first degree, you could have sent them to another place or dismantled their essence. You could even have used a weaker form of energy, but no; you prefer to blow up the forest with me together. Are you going to stay there in silence without saying anything?"

Igor remained silent and staring at a point further away. Ezequiel approached him and also began to see the stone in the air that, shortly after, descended very slowly, landing in the same place where nature had dropped it thousands of years ago. Igor looked at the wizard and his eyes expressed total surprise.

"That's enough for today," said the young man, finally. "Let's go home."

The pair walked side by side in silence, as Igor wanted anything but to talk. Seeing that he reflected a lot and feeling that in a positive way, Ezequiel left him at ease. Due to the slope, they took about two hours to return, but neither of them was tired.

Igor remained silent and went to take a shower, while the old teacher took the opportunity to light the fire and roast a good dinner for both of them. When he returned, clean and renewed, he helped Ezequiel with things by setting the table. At nightfall, he projected a bright white light in the center of the cabin. They sat down to dinner and, afterwards, went to the porch to relax. Ezequiel lit his pipe, which caused a grimace of displeasure in Igor, and left only the illumination of the full moon, remaining silent while the elder smoked, relaxed. The young man was the first to break the silence:

"There is a huge danger and I fear that you will be hurt or even lose your life, Ezequiel. So maybe the best thing is for me to leave here as soon as possible."

"Did your memories come back, son?" asked the wizard, full of hope. "That was my intention."

"Ezequiel, I don't remember what happened, but I can reason very clearly and now I have recovered some of my skills, but not all of them," began the young man. "For example, who else do you think can create such a destruction without any effort?"

"Maybe no one else," he replied, "you are a level one superior wizard, maybe one of the great guardians, despite your young age, or their apprentice, but I have never seen one with so much power. Are you a pure left-handed?"

"I prefer the left, but I use both hands without difficulty, why?"

"Because all wizards are left-handed, son, and you are the second one I see being able to cast spells with both hands. That's why the church, in the past, persecuted the left-handed as spawns of the devil, because a left-handed could be a potential wizard."

"Second?" asked Igor. "And who is the first?"

"My granddaughter, but she disappeared a thousand and seven hundred years ago."

"You mentioned alternatives that I could have used to dominate the animals. By the way, I would very much like to know where they came from, since here there are only jaguars and they are very rare. Pumas are from North America" he said, presenting his reflections. "However, I used a radical method, but that makes sense, since I reacted by pure instinct."

"We are not in any danger because of the animals," confirmed Ezequiel, laughing, "because it was I who materialized them from an energy essence to try to awaken your powers. You don't have to worry about us running risks."

"I calculated that it was that and also concluded that your powers were not strong enough to sustain the protection against what I did to defend myself from the animals, as well as you did not expect such a violent reaction to that point."

"No one else could defend themselves from that, Igor."

"Then explain to me the reasons why you found me exhausted and in shock, probably after running away from something, something so powerful, but so powerful that I ran like a desperate trying to go to my house for some reason that I still don't know?"

"If your intention was to scare me, son, you just succeeded with flying colors and without making any effort."

"If whatever was chasing me comes here, it could very well be your destruction and I would never forgive myself if something bad happened to you, Ezequiel," said Igor, showing concern. "After all, you saved me from certain death, but you know very well that the risk is too great, if I stay here."

"There may be a risk, yes, son, but I am not as unprotected as it seems. I am not level one, but I am level two and also superior, although I use the staff. What do you remember about your powers?"

"To tell the truth, almost nothing," replied Igor. "They manifest themselves when I need them, since the only thing I did consciously was the light inside and lifting the boulder in the clearing."

"In other words, son, you are in much more danger than I am, because you will not know what gifts to resort to when you need them. That's why you will stay here until you learn something. This can also help with your memory and your nightmares."

"Do I still have nightmares?" asked Igor, wrinkling his forehead, incredulous. "I don't remember anything!"

"They are almost daily, son, but they are less aggressive," replied the wizard. "So it is decided: you stay here long enough to learn, or relearn, your powers."

"Agreed," said Igor, thoughtful, "but I will stay only as long as I feel that there are no risks for you."

"That, my young man, is for me to decide." The wise man gave a mocking smile. "After all, I know my craft."

― ☼ ―

Dude: The original term used in this sentence is 'tchê' and it is a regional vocative from the south of Brazil without a direct translation. Dude was chosen to translate, but it would not be exactly appropriate. A. N.