far away, and the dense forest. The wind rose and was now shaking the tops of the trees.
“Look at you!” he heard a mocking voice behind his back.
Where did it come from? There had been no one there a moment ago! And no one could get there without being seen! Vlad turned abruptly.
“Are you really from Molyobka?”
A boy of approximately fourteen years old was leaning against a thick tree, with his arms crossed on his chest, grinning.
“Who are you?” Vlad asked, startled.
“When you summoned me, I thought it must be some kind of joke. We haven’t seen anyone from this godforsaken place for more than eight hundred years,” the boy kept grinning. He stepped out of the shadow of the tree, and Vlad could get a good look at him.
The boy was lean and devilishly handsome. That’s right, devilishly, for that was exactly the word for his arrogant face. He was wearing blue jeans and dark-green long-sleeve plaid shirt. His face was oval, with regular features. He had dark green eyes and a chin proudly turned up. His thick dark hair was slightly disheveled, his pale pink lips were twisted into a shadow of a wry smile. The appraising glance of his vulturous eyes was fixed piercingly on Vlad.
When he came closer, Vlad noticed that the boy was almost a half-head taller than he.
“You look somewhat different than I imagined,” the boy narrowed his eyes, still having the grin that began to irritate Vlad. “I thought you were older and taller.”
Despite the provocative behavior of the stranger, Vlad kept calm. He gave a guileless smile and held out his hand.
“Vladislav,” he introduced himself respectfully. “You can call me Vlad.”
But the boy ignored Vlad’s hand. Instead, he stepped back and slowly looked Vlad up and down once again. Vlad was not a bit embarrassed by that.
“You are from the Academy. They’ve sent you for me, haven’t they?” Vlad realized. A sly smile was creeping over his face.
The stranger parted his lips in a smile, showing his straight white teeth. He clapped his hands three times, making pauses.
“Bravo, young man, well done! Only forty seconds!”
“Forty seconds of what?” Vlad was confused.
“It took you only forty seconds to understand where I came from. Others start asking stupid questions like ‘who are you?’, ‘where do you come from?’, ‘you were sent for me, weren’t you?’. But most of the time, they say: ‘Get out of here!’ At this point some problems tend to arise, but not at my end!”
His eyes flashed as if he was up to no good. He was hovering about Vlad just like a predator, preparing to attack.
“I understood it as soon as you appeared,” Vlad said with a sneer. “But asking point-blank would be inappropriate. I thought you were going to introduce yourself first.”
He thought he had cut off the stranger’s arrogance. However, the stranger didn’t change his behavior. He stopped circling around and was now looking straight into Vlad’s eyes.
“Introduce myself? Who needs such formalities? What if you fail the trial?” the boy asked in a low voice.
“What trial? I don’t know anything about it!” Vlad’s throat became dry with fear, but his face remained calm.
“You were invited to the Academy not for your good looks,” the boy sneered. “You have to prove that you deserve studying there. For that, you need to be able to survive.”
“To survive?”
“Before I take you to the portal, I need to make sure that you are the kind of person we need,” the boy’s pupils dilated, turning into two black abysses with shining stars at the bottom.
Silence hung in the air.
“What do I have to do?” Vlad asked, without waiting for an explanation.
The stranger’s eyes glistened with excitement. He spread his arms wide to the sides as if he wanted to hug Vlad.
“Nothing difficult! All you have to do is to beat me in a fight.”
Vlad thought Peter was joking, and reflexively took a step back.
“You want me to fight with you?” he couldn’t believe his ears.
“These are the rules,” the stranger shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t invent them! I just have to test you.”
“And what if I don’t want to?”
“Ha-ha-ha! Who cares?”
“Don’t I even get a say in your world?”
“You are not in our world yet,” the stranger said. “And, after all, haven’t you heard the saying ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do’? We have our own rules. You must follow them. Otherwise, I will leave and you will miss your only chance.”
The stranger looked as if he did not care at all: He talked about a fight in an unengaging voice, as if Vlad was a plant or a bird. He even turned away, staring at a bush.
“So, I’ll be going now?” he asked without a backward glance.
“No! Wait! I will fight!”
“Oh, thank you!” the stranger took a bow, pretentiously. “To make it less frustrating for you, consider this fight your entrance test.”
“Are you serious?!”
“I’m dead serious. You heard me – I didn’t invent the rules! If you pass, you belong to us. And if you don’t…” the palm of his right hand burst into flame.
The orange glow of fire lit the stranger’s face and eyes.
The next instant, a ball of fire was swooshing toward Vlad. He barely dodged it, but his shirt caught fire. Vlad tore it off, the buttons fell down to the ground. Bare-chested, the boy ran into the forest. Hardly had he reached the trees when a wall of fire rose in front of him. He was taken off the ground and thrown right at the stranger’s feet. The fire was still blazing in the stranger’s hand. Hitting the ground, Vlad got the wind knocked out of him. The stranger leaned over him and smiled wryly.
“It looks like there’s been a mistake at Malefisterium,” he shook his head sorrowfully. “Apparently, you are an ordinary human being. But,” the tone of his voice changed, “I like you. I’d like to teach you something myself, but alas!”
He threw his hand up in the air: Time seemed to slow down. A fiery tail flashed through the air. Vlad snapped his eyes shut and thrust his hand out, protecting himself. He knew he couldn’t stop the ball of fire, but was reflexively trying to keep the fire away from his face.
The fight
A flash of blue light.
The flame in the stranger’s hand burst and threw him off.
Vlad opened his eyes.
His opponent was lying nearby, smoke coming from his hand and the right side of his face. Vlad came up to him, staggering, and knelt down. The skin on the stranger’s hand and face got burnt and was smoking. Some of his hair, the right eyebrow and the sleeve of the shirt were gone.
Vlad realized that the boy was not going to live through such injuries.
The tears came to his eyes.
“So many events on one day, and now a murder,” he lamented. “That’s a fine kettle of fish… It’s a good thing that Father Konstantin is not around. He would never forgive me… What have I done? But I didn’t know! How am I going to get to their world now?”
Vlad bit his lip and passed