I couldn’t believe it. One part of me was relieved that I had beaten the test and defeated the robot. Another part of me felt kind of scared because I was holding a ball of deadly lightning. Then I remembered Sara. All I would have to do was breathe and imagine the radiation being absorbed into my very hands...nothing happened.

The lightning was still there. I then heard the sound of footsteps approaching. Then the door exploded open and standing there was an Asian man who was almost as big an an elephant. He looked about 8/2 feet tall or so. He had white robes that had an image that appeared to be a dragon on them. He also had a giant pair of sunglasses and each circle was as big as a basketball. Seriously.

“Ah greetings my young lightning mage, My name is Mr Zhou and I will be your sub instructor) the man then beckoned for me to follow him. I did. We walked out the room and into the room where I once was when everyone was getting accepted. After that we entered an elevator. On said elevator was a boy, with a frail body. he was blonde and had blue eyes. And had a weed in his mouth. The whole situation was feeling pretty weird so I asked him a question.

“Why are you here?” I asked, partly because I genuinely wanted to know, and partly because I just wanted him to prattle off as background noise while I rode the elevator. What happened next was the strangest dialogue I have ever heard coming

“Let me start off by saying that I am not telling you this because I genuinely want to. Hollyhocks threatened to send me to Hollywood, if I didn't tell you my story. She said something about it 'breaking the plot' if she were to tell you something directly about the future, but between you and me, that makes no sense! Anyway, here goes nothing. I used to be an only child with my parents for about 3 years until my mother got pregnant and gave birth to a child, a boy with hair like bark, and green eyes, named Cardinal, as those were the species of birds that swarmed the house as he was born. Unfortunately my mother did not survive the pregnancy. She died of an exploding heart. Afterwards, two things happened. Our crops began to rot and our cattle were sick and infertile. My dad went to drinking as a form of coping. As the years passed, our father began getting more and more angry and abusive to my brother. I foolishly wouldn’t help him out of fear. When we reached our early teens, I began to notice my brother would begin running out of our cottage every night into the woods, and come back with odd trinkets that would help our cattle and crops One day, I decided to follow him. I noticed that he seemed to be walking...differently, than me. It was as if the very grass on the ground increased his agility. He moved like a locomotive through the grass as long as he was barefoot. It took all of my strength to keep up. Right when I felt we were at the end of his travel, Cardinal turned to me, and claimed that the trees talked to him, and have been ever since he was born. From what I saw just by following him, it seemed to be true. He told me the trees could help us get away from dad forever, before showing me a shack, that had all of those aformentioned trinkets right on the porch. Before I could even make that connection, the door snapped off its hinges as a weird woman sped up to us and told us she could adopt us. We just had to do...something. I cant quite recall what it is now.

“Naturally we were happy, but our father found us and injured the the lady with his flintlock before stealing her trinkets and running back to the farm. Before we did leave, The lady claimed that Cardinal had hidden talent and the two went alone into her shack to talk a bit. Eventually Cardinal left and we got on with our plan. I gave my dad all the whiskey I could find. However, before we left, Cardinal ended up chaining me to the bed and set our house ablaze. My father burned as I broke my foot to escape the chains...." At this point, the boy's eyes seemed to glaze over, as he continued, as if he did not want to focus on what he was saying, "I ran Into the woods to find Cardinal again and we got into a fight that ended in me killing him. I....I slammed a rock into his eye, so hard It punctured the brain and....and then I...." The boy trailed off as he begun to shake even more violently before passing out, his face locked in a silent scream. My eyes were so big after hearing that story, they could be confused for dinner plates.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Yeah sorry for putting the entire thing here but it needed to be said. When the kid was done with his lengthy little dialogue, he took out the little grain he had in his mouth “so Zhou how are you doing?” He asked fiddling with the grain in between his fingertips.

That boy is beyond reality” Mr. Zhou whispered into my ears, bending over so much I could hear his bones give off a faint creak. ”He’s actually not supposed to be here. He was plucked from his time as you can no doubt tell. I'm not sure what Hollyhocks want him, but i can only guess he did it. She told me to come here at this very second, with smelling salts. Zhou leaned over to the boy, and put the salts to his nose, and almost immediately, he cringed to wakefullness. Immediately, Zhou grabbed the boy as ropes of lightning arced out of his fingertips. The boy's scream as a result was and excuse me for the pun shocking, as his body became pure lightning, Which Zhou then forced into a ball, no bigger than the one I recently made.

The elevator had come to a very abrupt stop. The doors slid open. As I stared at the man in confusion and dread, Zhou reached into his pocket and pulled out a flip phone. He turned it on and raised it to his ear. “Erika? It’s Zhou again. John’s back...yeah I really don’t know how he keeps leaving his cell. Anyway I'm gonna send him to the medbay, I just want you to lay out some contingencies before hand. Can you do that....Really? Woah.....his mom?! How embarassing......okay thanks" Afterwards, Zhou released the ball and it immediately ripped through the ceiling of the elevator, before vanishing from view

When Zhou was done with the phone call he walked with me down a smooth brown corridor. At the end of the corridor was a single red door. Zhou opened the door and beckoned for me to enter. I did so, and was greeted by a room about as large as the last one I was in where I fought the robot. And just like the room I was in, this one too was filled with kids.

Zhou grabbed my hand and he motioned for me to lie down on the wall. I did and he did the same. I noticed something. He looked strange, like he was sentient tv static or something. Suddenly I saw something. In the middle of the room was Mr Zhou and he held a microphone to his mouth. He began to speak.

“Greetings agents, my name is Hung Zhou. And I am your lightning instructor.” Zhou announced , in a voice that could only be described as freaky, “ The first thing I will teach you is of the fluidity of lightning, Not how to unlock in order for you to be here you must have used the lightning at least twice. Once for the island, and another one for defeating the robot. You people should be very proud of yourselves.....however, there is more to lightning than just some stuff that shoots outta trees.

To give you some information I’ll give you a small article on the history of lightning mages. “ Zhou grabbed a pencil and began scribbling on random peices of paper. Within three seconds, he had written all the papers. Zhou then began hurdling. The articles at us at like a soldier hurdles bullets at the enemy.

I took a sigh as I began to read the article.