The day of the Great Search competition is cold which means perfect for Fon. She never liked the warmth of the sun even back when she was living as an aberrant. Being a witch, it's natural to hate the glaring sun, and besides, she's more used to the biting cold.

Fon looks at the expectant faces of the audience and searches for that of Rissa. She is sitting in the front row while holding a banner with her name on it. Fon smiles. Rissa really is strange. Since there is a huge possibility that the gesture was copied from the aberrants, the teachers will surely interrogate her later about the gesture.

"Each one of you will travel to the farthest part to the East using your brooms and bring back the legendary scepter believed by most to be owned by the first and strongest wizard who ever lived on this planet," Jayden says and looks over at each of the Great Search candidates.

This would be easy. Taking a hold of scepters owned by other witches, especially a wizard, would be a difficult task if your magick is insufficient. It is the only thing that wizards are superior to the witches. Whatever item wizards left will have a greater magick residue than the owner has. This means that this is a test of magick level and will require almost no effort from her.

"Ready!"

Fon is no doubt the fastest witch who can fly among the competitors. She placed first in every flying competition Freya Academy has ever involved itself in.

"Set!"

And now, her dream is in sight. With this kind of test, her victory is assured.

"GO!!" Jayden shouts and Fon speeds up and leaves the other competitors behind. Her speed amazes everyone. But for Fon, it is not something to be stunned for. She had already broken the record of the fastest flyer.

A few moments longer, Fon is the first to reach the goal. It's on top of a small valley which is only a few kilometers away from the starting point. She can make out the barrier erected by Philomena which is a few meters away from where she's standing. It was set up to guarantee that the competition will still be within Freya's barrier.

When Fon reaches the place, she feels the tug of the scepter. It's beckoning for her. She takes a hold of it and it sends a few shivers up her arm, but nothing more. With nothing to do, she scours the area and realizes that there are five scepters in total, one for each competitor. They might have copied the original for this test.

Fon smiles as an idea pops into her head. She picks up the other scepter and transports each one to another place outside Freya's barrier. Besides, the rules do not state that participants can only take one scepter.

When she's about to reach for the third one, Ayin arrived. She automatically hides and erases her existence in the area. With a magick as low as Ayin, he will never notice that she's the first to arrive. She plans of knocking him out and continuing with transporting the other scepter. He will never suspect a thing because wizards are dumb creatures who are given a trickle of magick.

Ayin reaches for the scepter while Fon is posing to attack him. Suddenly, Ayin screams in pain. She forgets about her plan and investigates what happened. Ayin is crouching in a corner while trying to hold a scepter with visible lightning around the edges. It is a rejection. The scepter does not want to accept Ayin as its master. Besides, the scepters serve as power gauges. The lower your magick affinity is, the more pain it will give you.

Fon looks at Ayin with false pity and says, "You should give up being one of the Greats. With a magick like yours, even this scepter does not want to acknowledge you."

"Who are you to decide for me, witch?" Ayin retorts amidst his pain.

"The strongest witch there is, and that gives me the right to decide for a wizard like you. Most of the magick in this world repulses you. Maybe that's the reason why you got your name," she pauses and pretends to apologize. "Sorry, I really have a bad sense of humor."

Fon takes the scepter from him and like the other three scepters, it only gives her a few shivers that reaches only up to her arm.

"Can you see the difference in our magick?"

"Give it back," Ayin says weakly. The rejection from the scepter is still giving him a hard time.

"You are no rival..." Fon shakes her head and offers the scepter she holds to Ayin. "... but having a Great Wizard like you would be a disgrace."

Fon watches the desperation in Ayin's eyes as he extends his hands towards the scepter. She pulls her hand back, and the scepter vanishes into thin air. "Now you fail."

She leaves Ayin speechless and reaches for the last scepter. The other competitors will still be a few miles away. Flying might be one of Ayin's specialties and yet, he could not compare to her speed. What is the need for a competition when her rivals are these weak?

She is about to transport the last scepter when it's snatched away from her hands. She looks around and sees Sven having a little difficulty holding it. Sven is still a child and her magick is still developing. Yet, she exceeded Fon's expectations. She thought that Sven is still half an hour away from this place.

She smiles. So this prodigy child is the closest she have as a rival.

"Why are you taking away all the scepters? You already have yours!" Sven castigates while helping Ayin who is sprawled on the floor.

"To dispose of rivals," she answers.

"Ayin is not a rival, why did you hurt him?!"

"He clearly is not a rival," she snickers. "But that is the work of the scepter, not mine. The scepter is a magick gauge."

"Still, you should have helped him!"

I raise a brow. A haughty kid with such a strong sense of justice. Maybe all the Kleinfelds are like this. They have noble blood so justice might come as naturally as survival is to the common witches.

Then Fon realizes that she must return to the Academy while Sven is busy taking care of Ayin. From the rate it's going, she might encounter other competitors on her way back. She groans. She doesn't want any of her time wasted.

"Where are you going? Help me with this," the little girl orders.

Fon shifts her attention back to her and accidentally let out a few of her aura. "Little Kleinfeld child. If you still value your life, you should stop bothering me."

Sven is petrified in place when she heard the tone of voice she uses. It's a BeastMaster voice. Taming beasts should not be learned during a witch's academy years. And right now, Sven might be thinking of how she learned it. Someone as young as her should not have any clue of the existence of that voice. Right, she remembers. Sven might be familiar with it because an older Kleinfeld is one.

Without saying anything, she leaves Sven trembling in fear while holding the scepter. Fon accidentally used the voice that Philomena warned her not to use. Fon's BeastMaster voice is the main reason why Philomena invited her to be a proper witch. If Philomena learned of this from the Kleinfeld child, she will be punished... severely. She has to ensure that after this challenge is over, she will talk to Sven and give small threats if regular conversation won't persuade her.

Abruptly, Fon's reverie is broken by a shrill voice coming from a little house below her. She sees a little aberrant child being protected by another aberrant child from the creatures within the forest. Out of curiosity, she lowers herself and sees gooey creatures coming straight into the house. She hides herself and finds out that there are other aberrant children who are still inside the house.

Those creatures are called Cordajel. They are amoeba-like creatures that will grow bigger when it had eaten something that they desired. This time they have a craving for an aberrant child.

She observes how scared the older aberrant child is, but nevertheless, he stands his ground while protecting the other aberrants.

"Aberrants are really remarkable. Saving other aberrants for the risk of their own lives," Fon comments as she watches the spectacle below her.

Confused, Fon wracks her brain as she wonders why there are aberrant kids inside the barrier created by Philomena. The Council should have prevented this from even occurring.

She also does not understand what comes into her, but she suddenly had the itching to help the aberrants. Interfering with aberrant affairs is forbidden in the witches' world, but if she leaves them alone, they will surely die.

So it's on a whim when she comes down and appears in front of the house. At first, the Cordajels pay her no heed. But when the Cordajels start to die off one by one, their attention shifts to her. But these creatures are so weak that within a few minutes, there are no more traces that they ever existed.

She places a charm around the house while the children observe her–something that is easy to ignore. They will soon forget her, anyway. But before that, she advises the aberrants to transfer into the town proper to avoid these kinds of creatures. She even puts up an enchantment on the children to believe everything they have witnessed was only a bad dream.

Then, she returns to the examination area and still wins the first part of the competition, even with that little distraction. As she waits, she heard the judges talk about how she came down to help some aberrant children. And she hopes that helping them is not grounds for her disqualification.

Still, the other participants are taking a while to return. Half an hour after, Sven finally comes in second with the wounded Ayin. The rest are tied up in the last place garnering zero points for not completing the task.

However, it's only after the announcement that she felt relieved that she will not be disqualified for that unwise decision of helping other people.

A/N: 

And here is a picture of Fon as a little kid.