Chapter 5

I escaped dinner without anyone noticing anything out of the norm.

Well that isn't strictly true, all throughout the dinner I had sat and watched the people I had always called family and I became more and more depressed. My entire world had changed in the past three hours and they didn't even notice. Were we really that different?

With a sigh I pushed the door leading down into my bedroom open. I locked the door be-hind me then made sure the other two doors in my cellar bedroom were locked too.

I grabbed the book from its hiding place and immediately flicked to the section marked simply First Steps.

As I had previously found, the most important thing for a new mage to do was set up a Sanctuary, complete with Inner-Sanctum and Ritual Chamber that was warded as much as possible as soon as possible.

As I read a few sections in more detail the reasons why the Sanctum is so important be-came readily obvious. The book quite clearly outlined what happened when Mages got in-to prolonged battles or wars. Quite simply, Carnage.

It became glaringly obvious that pretty much everybody who has magic cares little for rules or law, instead each mage kept to their own code, whatever that may be. Often this meant that a mage would do anything they could to protect what they saw as their posses-sions or territory, as such it is recommended for any budding mage to protect their Sanc-tum with as many wards as possible directed at concealment and stealth.