Ombric - Big if true

Ombric was generally a wizard of extraordinary calm. Nothing seemed to surprise him. How could it? He was the last survivor of the lost city of Atlantis! He was a man who had seen and done everything. He could communicate telepathically to his owls. Walk through walls. Turn lead to gold. He’d helped invent time, gravity, and bouncing balls! But today, as he talked to this cluster of insects, he seemed, for the first time that the children had seen, perplexed and worried. His left eyebrow furrowed into a frown. Then suddenly, he turned to the children and said something he had never said before: “No lessons today. You should return to your homes—now.”

The children were amazed. Even disappointed. Lessons were never canceled and rarely over early! Sometimes they went on for so long that Ombric would have to stop time for a bit so they could go on even longer. This always caused great excitement because everything Ombric taught them was, without fail, fun. Not only did he show them how to make water flow backward and to properly dam a stream, he also taught them how to climb most everything, build catapults, and, best of all, the secrets of the imagination. “To understand pretending,” Ombric was fond of saying, “is to conquer all barriers of time and space.”

In fact, all of their studies were focused on how to make anything they thought of—no matter how impossible or fantastical—come true. And so, dejected and uneasy about the change to their daily routine, the children trudged back to their homes. Some lived in trees, some underground, some half and half. For Santoff Claussen was unlike any other village in the world. Every home had a secret passageway or trapdoor or magic room. Telescopes, and retractable roofs made of evergreen sprigs were the norm. That was how Ombric had dreamed it should be. He wanted a village that seemed impossible.

Nicholas Saint North and the Battle of the Nightmare King Chapter 2