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I sighed, laughed softly, and randomly plucked blades of grass from the ground next to the campus oak tree. “She wouldn’t allow it.”

Manda didn’t seem to like my answer.

“You know I wanted to leave.”

A cool breeze blew across my neck, and I looked around before I could respond to her.

“As much as she wanted me to stay.”

I looked around again, but there was nothing there. It was just the wind, as always.

“You're her favorite child, Alaister.”

I turned to Amanda and looked at her in disbelief.

“You're her golden angel,” I laughed, now clearly baffled. “The gifted Air Quatura.”

Amanda raised her eyebrows.

“You are and will remain her key to the leadership position of the Councils.”

My smile disappeared, and I felt the cold on my neck again. It was foreign to me. It wasn't mine.

“It's certain that she will become Head of the Councils, you already know that,” I began slowly.

A shadow flitted across her face. Her carefree appearance changed to one of despondency.

“No, I...”

“She told me yesterday,” I continued quickly, because no one else knew yet. Not even Alice.

We both said nothing for a long time. It was a shock to her, while it had thrown me into a long spiral of thoughts.

Now that Mother was at the top, everything would change. Not only the town, the Circle, but also my importance to her...

“She did it,” Amanda eventually sighed, staring into the void. And I couldn’t help but look around one last time.

She doesn’t know what I know, doesn’t see what happens behind closed doors, how Mother climbed the last steps to her throne, and that she would sit down, even more broken, even more bitter.

Neither Amanda nor I nor anyone else will be able to stop her.

She is a monster. And I am her son. Her descendant. A thought that makes me shrink back from myself.

I will never be able to tell Alice the truth. She would end up just like her mother. And I couldn't let that happen.

Tuesday, October 28, 1997

Entry 13

Umbra is indescribably fascinating. It's like throwing a stone into water and seeing small ripples form, but instead of fading away over time, they keep getting bigger and bigger.

I never thought I would ever feel so much energy coursing through my veins, so much concentrated power.

It took a while, but now I understand many of the words in the books. Umbra is an interesting language, which I have more or less taught myself over the past few weeks. And there is so much I want to delve into. An entire shelf full of forbidden books. All of them Umbra literature from Europe that was brought to America, some of them works from the time when Blairville was founded.

And slowly I'm beginning to wonder if maybe Umbra is destined to survive.

Once you understand the runes and symbols, the hand movements, the complicated thought processes, the words whose pronunciation is a complete mystery to me, then you can manage, for a certain amount of time and on a very weak basis, to link the other elements to yourself.