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Dreamsbane
(Ch. 14) Earth

(Ch. 14) Earth

I woke up in a cloud of dust with Telluric glaring down at me, obviously questioning my sanity for attempting to split an entire lake in half with my will alone.

"Did I ever tell you how stupid you are boy?"

I chuckled a bit, that caused a new round of pain to wash over my body.

"Once or twice."

Telluric sighed, then he slumped down onto the ground next to me kicking up another cloud of dust. I looked at the overgrown man curiously, he had been so cold to me when we first met only talking to me about training or asking me how Lindon and Lillian were doing. Now he treats me like I'm another great grandchild to deal with, he talks to me more openly and playfully and even went as far as to grant me the Greenfeather name to keep prying eyes off of me.

I don't know what changed to make him act this way but it felt nice to have something of a parental figure to guide me through my life; Even with my parents and the villagers memories I still felt detached knowing that I never truly got to spend any time with them.

"Hey Telluric"

He twisted his head in my direction and raised an eyebrow.

"Can I call you Gramps?"

For the first time since I met him I think a genuine smile flashed across his face.

"Of course you can, you're a Greenfeather now."

I kept silent, but I smiled at the man to show my appreciation. Of course my reason for coming all this way was for training, so that should be my main focus.

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"I think I'm ready to train now"

"Are you sure? You used a lot of your nightmare to get here and you fell from really high, Rebel."

"I'm fine gramps, my nightmare has replenished a decent amount and you should know that if I can take a punch from you then I can survive a silly fall."

He shrugged his shoulders and got up off the ground.

"Come on then, I'll show you how the training platform works."

I followed him from the small crater that my fall from the sky had created to the training platform I had seen from the cliff. The gears and cogs were all stationary until Telluric sent a bit of his lightning towards the small disc on the side of the platform, his lightning coursed through the strange machinery powering it for whatever its intended purpose was.

"Come here and look at this Rebel."

I walked over to Telluric who was hovering over some strange apparatus, It was shaped like a table only much smaller and there was an extra leg in the middle of the table. The five legs of this miniature table were all labelled with a letter: A, F, L, E, and W.

"What do the letters mean?"

At that exact moment Telluric twisted the leg labelled E and two earth golems appeared on the platform, he jerked his had towards the platform signalling me to jump up onto the platform. I did as he said, when I was on the platform I saw that the two golems looked like me I also noticed that some of the tiles on the platform were slightly elevated like a pressure sensitive plate.

"Step on the plate in front of you."

Once again I did as Telluric requested and I stepped on the pressure pad, instantly the golems entered an offensive stance and I had only a second to prepare myself for their inevitable attack. I couldn't just surround myself with poison like I did in my first fight with Telluric because these things have no pain receptors.Instinctively I wanted to try back away to put space between us and buy myself some time but I had no idea how strong these things are.

"Do not look to me for guidance, I want you to figure it out on your own this time."

"You always make me figure it out myself."

I looked towards the golems, they were speeding towards me clearly not wanting to take me on one at a time. I had to think of a strategy quickly. Regular poison would be far too weak to melt the rock, but to make poison strong enough to melt rock would take time and concentration.

I thought about how I had tried to form a solid object from my poison, whilst it may not be possible to do so yet I still had the ability to do something similar. Coating my arm in a thick liquid layer of poison, essentially forming a semi solid gauntlet around my fist. This would hopefully allow me to increase my punching power by boosting it with a high potency poison without taking as long as making the poison alone strong enough to melt rock.

One of the golems made it to me before I was fully prepared, unleashing a barrage of attacks aimed at my ribs. I sustained some serious damage however I was able to brace myself in time to stop the next barrage. I lurched from the pain welling up inside but I pressed forwards nonetheless.

My poison coated fist blurred through the air and passed easily through the rock, my hand grazed a solid orb inside of the golem but I only cracked it. Based on how the golem reacted to this I had an idea that this orb was the core keeping the golem alive.