POV Aron Brightcloud

The attunement chamber’s doors closed behind me, Bones and Olivia. Once more the chance had arrived to widen the bridge into the ether and enlarge my core.

‘Bones, don’t suck the arcane crystals dry this time. They will become suspicious if another formation breaks!’

‘Ookay...’

My little brother’s head sank down in sorrow. I didn’t know a skull could be this expressive. It metaphorically oozed sadness. Shaking my head, I focused inward.

Soon the energy flowed through me, widening the bridge. Bones kept himself in check. It was apparent by how little my connection improved. I had expected that. What I hadn’t expected though, was my core not growing at all after the bridge widened.

I suppressed the growing panic. This was not supposed to happen. I had counted on the attunement chamber to improve my core through the next years. I mean, I knew it would take an abysmal long time to do so, but at least I had the option of improving my core at all.

Stagnating core growth was known, but very rare. How unlucky could I be to become one of the few souls that had to contend with it?!

From now on the attunement chamber would only improve my mana recovery rate. No core growth for me. Fuck!

‘Boss, everything okay?’ Bones had picked up on my disturbed state.

‘Yes, Bones. Everything is okay. I encountered a minor setback but nothing that we can’t cope with.’ I projected self-confidence outward. My little brother didn’t need to be burdened by my problems.

His mind sent supportive feelings in response. Warmth flowed through me briefly. I had to stay positive. Maybe it would grow if I tried some more? I concentrated on the task.

An hour later, I walked out of the chamber with a sombre expression. The situation hadn’t changed. My core had stopped growing. This meant I would remain a mediocre mage. At least as long as I hadn’t found another solution. I forced myself to stay positive. There had to be another way. Still, today marked one of my worst days so far.

_______

POV Torsk Forus

Ha! The favors of the heavens had changed! The sun had broken through the endless veil of clouds! The formation worked. During the previous days, the armory had remained secure!

His recruits even made progress and won more often against Aron’s skeleton. Torsk remembered it had appeared listless during their fights. Still, he felt sure that his recruits’ wins not only stemmed from the familiar’s sad state.

Torsk walked with a spring in his step down the corridor. The armory had become save once more. He could proceed with his plan of storing the Institute’s higher grade weapons and armor in the armory. This would free up one of the other storehouses and with it the space he needed to build the endurance chamber he had longed for since long.

This would allow his recruits to train their recovery powers, giving them an additional edge they so needed to survive. Torsk had always felt sad that his recruits were comparably worse than the ones that graduated from warrior schools. The mages invested all their money into magic related equipment; they left nothing for his men.

_______

POV Aron Brightcloud

A fire-arrow crashed into my arcane shield, followed by another one. Jane and Fawsk had transformed their spells over the last weeks and unloaded a veritable disaster into my defensive measures. They held Bones at bay as well.

‘Go invisible, buddy. Transform back on top of them.’

As they had known Bones before his transformation, it made little sense to hide this ability.

Half a second later Bones folded in on himself and vanished from view. I observed Jane as she frenetically searched for my skeleton. She knew as good as me that if he reached her, she would lose. Not finding him, Jane changed her approach. A huge fireball came to life in her hands and shot in my direction.

It collided with my defense. The power manifold stronger than the previous ones, it tore through my spell, disintegrating the shield I had conjured.

Finished with my once mighty defense, it surmounted half the distance between us in an instant. I watched as it closed in. I knew my power. A foot away, it stopped cold, exploding against my second shield. This one an entire different caliber. Unhurt, I ended the spell and walked through the smoke towards my teammate.

Outside, Bones greeted me with his sword at Jane’s neck.

“You won. You broke through my shield before Bones had reached you.”

Jane’s frown changed into a victory smile as she heard my words. During the last week all my new teammates had found out that although I possessed a weak core that didn’t mean that they easily defeated me. I won most of the duels. It had become an unofficial goal to best me.

I felt the pressure rise. Their spells got stronger and their defense more elaborate. Each time I had to invest more to win. That didn’t mean that they had become a danger to my existence. They only won against the official me if I deemed them worthy, or if they had shown significant improvement in one of their weaknesses. I could have evaded the fireball, but Jane had shown sufficient growth to gift her the win.

We were sparring. My serious side lay buried. Combined with my hidden aces, they were up for a rude awakening would they try to harm me. Not that there should exist an interest to. I had made sure to give them no reason. Manor for example, loved to provoke me in an attempt to show his superiority. Different to how I had reacted to Mason, I let it slide for now. I had enough troubles to deal with as it was.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Excellent performance Jane! Quick thinking at the end there. I still have to find a way to locate Bones when he changes into his ghost form.” Luana’s voice alerted her to our team-leader’s presence. Jane turned thankful in the woman’s direction.

I had known all along that she had moved closer. Before, she had stood at the other sparring area and observed Manor and Erik. The later showed a distinct lack of knowledge on how to keep Shor at bay. Unsurprisingly, Manor won the round.

“Enough for the day. Tomorrow we will dive again. Rest and prepare yourself. We should reach the boss of the second floor at last.”

My group sighed in relief at that outlook. They loathed the endless dark and dirty tunnels filled with ravenous goblins.

After my initial emotional outburst I had taken the time and weeded out the imbalanced emotions in my inner-self. This time I had gotten rid of them completely. There would be no more relapses.

______

The dark rocky surface of the underground tunnel greeted us.

“You know the drill. Forward at a steady pace.”

Already used to our surroundings, we quickly moved into formation and proceeded down the shoddy built tunnel. Scanning over all the cracks and fissures made me wonder how they had survived this long down here. Step by step we traveled further into the dark.

In a way it felt like a relief when the awaited message eventually reached my mind.

‘Incoming!’

My shields went up. Factor and Bones braced themselves. They would keep the incoming goblins at bay while my teammates unloaded their spells into the little monsters.

Now used to their tactics, we easily weathered the goblins attacks and culled them with practiced ease.

_____

“Forward. kill! Use their own defensive structure behind them to trap the creatures! Keep the shield up, we don’t know what awaits us behind it!”

Factor and Bones fought with their entire bodies, doing everything in their power to hold the green mass back that tried to overwhelm us. In the last few minutes, the hip sized breasts had become more and more frantic. Now they proverbially threw themselves at us.

At last we saw the end. One last throng of bodies waited to be slain between us and a bad build wooden gate.

“Aron, be ready to immediately raise the shield again! I will send a big one!” Jane forewarned me. She didn’t have to. The little sun that grew behind my back was plenty warning for me. I would need to raise my shield damn fast if I didn’t want us to get included in Jane’s hand made disaster.

“Shield is going down!” I shouted. An instant later the spell passed over me. Even-though most of the heat remained hidden, I still felt the temperature raise in response. The lunatic had compressed the raw and indomitable power of fire to such a degree that the color had turned close to white!

Cursing inward I raised the shield and diverted additional power into it. I had no problem with a potent spell, but I knew Jane’s mastery. There was no way she could handle this much power! The spell could unravel at any moment.

“Jane, what th-?!” Luana’s voice drowned in the all-encompassing roar as the fireball exploded. It engulfed the entire tunnel in its expanding flames, breaking part of the walls with its tremendous energy.

At the last moment I completed the sealing of the tunnel. My anchored shield stood strong and kept the disaster on the other side. The shield functioned as a base to force the energy further into the tunnel, doing even more damage than it would have done normally.

As the dust and smoke began to settle, we came face to face with the result of Jane’s self-made monster of a spell. Light shone into the before dark tunnel, illuminating Jane’s grizzly work. The gate must have been destroyed as well. Half charred corpses lay everywhere. It stank terribly of burned meat. I shook my head. Fire was devastating.

On the bright side, Jane had used magic fire. Otherwise we would have had suffocated after her risky spell. My superiors on earth would have beaten me to death if I had tried to detonate a charge this potent while I remained in the surroundings underground.

Manor’s retching disrupted my musings. Obviously, the young noble’s stomach didn’t approve of Jane’s carnage. The young woman in question didn’t look too well either. Still, I recognized the heritage of her family as she forced herself to appear unaffected.

“Stay in formation. Move forward.” Our teamleader’s frigid voice forced my teammates back into action.

I think the only reason Luana hadn’t given Jane a verbal lashing on the spot was that the spell hadn’t actually exploded in our face and it took care of the rest in one full swoop. Nevertheless, Anna’s hot headed twin would get a little one on one later after the dive, of that I was sure.

As we moved closer to the former gate, we got a better look at how powerful the fire mage’s spell had been. It had ripped the entire thing from its hinges and even destroyed a part of the surrounding frame, enlarging the passage significantly. We should have had a splendid view into the adjacent cave, but most of the dust and smoke had remained in the air, obstructing our view.

“I don’t like this. We don’t see enough. We will stand completely in the open when the dust settles or when we reach the other side of the cloud. Let my familiar take a look first.”

“Aron, I knew you were a turtle, but now you became a scaredy cat too? They are goblins! What could they have down here apart from some rocks? Grow a backbone!” Manor’s offensive reply caught me by surprise. He must have felt ashamed after he had lost control over his stomach. Still, leave it to a noble to select a dungeon dive for his dick measuring contest. Real smooth…

I was in the process of giving him a piece of my mind when Luana’s voice stopped our budding argument.

“Stop it. Manor, keep it quiet. Aron’s objection was justified. Despite that our enemies are goblins. We will only loose time if we go too slow.”

She starred at me and Manor challengingly, daring us to open our mouths. As we didn’t she proceeded.

“We will walk through it! Aron, rise your shield. The rest stay ready for surprises.”

I shook my head in disapproval. Such decisions would cost us at some point, but Luana was the leader, I wouldn’t fight her orders for now. Especially as they were the ones that would be hit first if my shield broke.

In a way, they would learn more this way. A child did not remember their parents telling it to not touch the hot stove. It remembered the searing pain after it had done so.

We cautiously stepped closer. Subdued cackles drifted to my ears. The goblins tried to be quiet. I shook my head. The dumb monsters couldn’t even do that proficiently. Their excited chatter reinforced my notion of impending doom. I connected myself with Bones to get the Intel as early as possible.

Because of that, I was the only one who had realized early enough in what sort of trap we were walking.

“Down, now!” I had just enough time to shout a warning, grab Luana’s shoulder and enlarge the shield downward. I dragged her to the ground with me.

An instant later, a monster of a ballista-arrow drilled its way through my shield. Factor got speared through in an instant, the earth elemental woefully under-equipped to handle the tread. His body broke apart, only leaving a mount of brown earth as a reminder of its passing.

At least Jane and Erik had been quick enough to folow my advice, Manor had not.

Who knew why he was slower than the other two. Had it been because of his jealousy towards me? In the end, he was too slow. That was all that counted.

One second he stood in front of the falling Jane, and the next second we were showered with blood as the ballista-arrow pierced through his shoulder, ripping the entire left arm of his body.

The rest of the group gaped in shock at their teammate. The power of the impact had thrown his body to the side. He lay lifelessly against the nearby rocks. The for survival necessary blood leaked out in spades, forming a large puddle around him.