Hierohn arrived at the award chamber, inside were three men sitting and all of them were at the moment busy with the other three goblin killers, giving him a chance to look around. He saw quite a lot of exquisite and wondrous things but they all looked pretty to him, leading him to a conclusion that he really didn't yet know what to get or even how to use magic.
With this revelation he turned around and walked right out bumping into Roland on his way out.
'So where did they stick you, I bet you came here to get a better lodging. I sure did.' Roland said smilingly.
'3rd dormitory fifth floor room 5711, I didn't know what to get', replied Hierohn partly to better memorize it.
'I'll come find you later, this room will soon be flooded by people with token, take care.' But Roland was listening and with that he left Hierohn to go and stand in a queue.
Hierohn wondered aimlessly around trying to find dormitory three until he saw an elemental master and asked him for directions, all he got was a middle finger pointing towards the inner courtyard or perhaps down at him. It was impossible to read his hard face and Hierohn had no desire to repeat the question.
Not knowing what to think of it he followed the given 'direction' and set out. It seemed everyone was moving in that direction. And soon he saw people moving towards one of the four square like massive buildings with a three lines on it. This building was to the right of the main entrance to inner courtyard. It seemed like all or at least most of the new students would be lodged there.
After entering he was greeted by a hallway wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side. Both walls were filled with doors, every six feet there was a three feet wide door. At both ends of the hallway there was a turn to the west and some stairs leading up. They had entered from the northern most door, and most of them took a quick turn towards the stairs.
Hierohn having gone up four floors finally walked onto the fifth floor, it mimicked the first one except of course for the exits. There were numbers on the wall, but like many others he had no idea how to read. Few senior students had came out of their rooms to see their new schoolmates and then started instructing the kids on how to find their rooms.
After a few minutes most have understood the system of hundred rooms per hallway counting starts from north and the counting for eleven hallways starts from east. The middle hallway is for toilets. The first number stands for dormitory number and the second for floor number . It will follow suite on every dormitory on every floor. Except for the top seventh floor that is divided to hundred rooms for each dormitory and these rooms can be bought for a year with enough tokens.
After the explanations he quickly finds his room 35711 which wasn't exactly what the headmaster had told him.
He faces his door and does as he was instructed by seniors. Places his right hand on the door, then he gets sucked in through it, he finds himself in a eight by eight by eight feet room.
In front of him is a bed seven feet long and three feet wide. The last feet taken up by a table on which a lamp rests. To the left of the door is wall with three pegs for clothes, to the right a table feet wide and four something long. Above his bed and table few cupboards take up space.
He sits on the bed and sees a stool under the table. He looks around the room one more time and sees a fist-sized red rock next to the lamp, with a letter under it. He leaves it there for the time being and lays down for a brief rest, hoping that there are no classes on the first day, sleep soon overtakes him.
***
Roland walks out of his room, his room is much bigger than Hierohn's having spent all his tokens on this. Just outside his room there's a warden, one of the four peace-keepers and monitors for seventh ward.
Every warden is one of the six people who are allowed into others rooms by the doors protective spells, others being head warden and the headmaster. The twenty sub-wardens weren't allowed into rooms and were selected amongst the students.
'Roland friend of Hierohn?' asked the warden in cold distant voice.
'Yeah, is he in trouble?', although he had just met Hierohn he already considered them friends, and Hierohn being a fire mage who couldn't even use mana yet, he also felt protective towards him.
The warden didn't reply, he grabbed Roland by his shoulder and lead him to his room, there he started chanting a spell and looked Roland in the eyes as he finished the chant. Roland's eyes flipped leaving only whites behind, he fell on his butt and started drooling.
***
Hierohn woke when he heard knocking and Roland's voice outside the door asking for him. He quickly got up and went to the door having fallen asleep with his clothes on.
'I don't know how to let you in.' Hierohn yells through the door.
'Just tell the room I can come in, you have to do it before every time, didn't you listen when the elemental masters were explaining stuff'
'Room, Roland can come in now. You should get in now!', Hierohn talks to the room then yells at Roland. After letting him in and pulling out the stool for him he sits on his bed. 'So what did you get from the award room?'
'I got a room, I'm glad bro told me about the lodgings here. If I had to spend a year in here I would go crazy, they are all out of rooms now too. I was one of the five first-years who got a room, all others where long ago sold to seniors. Only five were put away for us. Oh by the way, have you already bound your Roomstone?', last sentence coming out in slightly colder and more distant voice.
'Roomstone?'
'Yeah, it's that big red rock, just pour some blood over it and you will be good. Oh and you shouldn't tell others about the stone, they will try to steal it so they can have a bigger room. Hurry up lets go get some dinner and after that we have reading lessons.'
Hierohn had wanted to ask what the stone would do, but just as he was bleeding over the rock Roland had started talking about classes thus wiping this question from his mind. The Roomstone flickered once under the blood drops and turning into a liquid flowed into Hierohn through his small finger wound. Hierohn was surprised by the warm feeling the liquid carried all over his body.
Just then Roland pulled his hand and steered him out of his room and into the eating place in the basement. All along talking about how he already knew how to read and didn't need the lessons, and told Hierohn about the next day's timetable and some more rules he had heard from the headmasters.
***
They quickly got their food and found a table with a few more first-years including Lianne. No one really paid attention to Hierohn and were soon bombarding Roland with questions about the school and magic. A great proportion of public had magical capabilities but the magic teaching was generally left to schools so they turned to Roland and his brother's knowledge for guidance.
'What does the skull and black collar mean?', asked a redheaded boy with ugly teeth. This immediately brought Hierohn's thoughts to the princess, although the boy had asked of self-interest as he too was wearing a skull on his chest.
'It should mean death but the magic is more like rust, it can eat through everything. You will be taught how to use poisons and the likes. A killing magic, it should be the best at it, doesn't have many other uses though.' The ginger's face was smiling with his teeth leaving an eerie picture. He was looking forward to becoming a warrior.
After dinner they left their building and moved towards one of the seven great buildings even further in the courtyard than the dormitories. Usually they would learn reading and writing before dinner but this was a special day and most of the time was taken up by the entrance ceremony. School really wanted to get children reading as quickly as possible.
These buildings with dormitories formed a 4-3-4 pattern inside a circle of outer wall, the outer wall had 4 exits one on each side. The northern most leading outside, the southern inwards toward a great magic tower, the two on the east and west side lead respectively to sixth and eight ward.
The children headed towards the rightmost one of the three buildings it looked like a crescent moon mirroring the leftmost building. At the center stood a great hemispherical building know as The Fighting Ground, used for combat practice and dueling.
When the mass of children reached the front of the Old Hall, named so for the phase of the moon, they stopped before entering. One of the teachers had come out and took them to the back of the hall onto a lantern lit giant sandbox. It was there they learned the letters, by writing them in the sand. After the basics they all went back to their rooms.
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Upon return Hierohn quickly scanned over the letter. After finding few now similar characters on the letter he smiled and but it on his table to study more on the next morning. He got undressed and went to sleep. Few minutes after he had fallen asleep the letter went up in bright flames and burned completely without leaving any ashes or smoke.
***
Next morning Hierohn woke and soon afterwards shot up. He had just remembered he was in a school and had no idea what the time was. He quickly got dressed and ran out of his room shooting a single glance towards his table. He felt that something was wrong but he shrugged it off and ran out to see the position of the sun.
As he ran through the empty hallway and staircases he soon reached the exit. He sent one quick look at the sun then turned and stormed down a few more stairs. He had almost missed breakfast.
After breakfast he went into the eastern most of the four teaching halls that were located on the other side of The Fighting Ground, and almost directly behind the New Hall. This building was called the Hall of Elements and here they were thought each magic individually and on most basic level. Other halls were from east to west Teachers Hall, Hall of Combining and Hall of Understanding.
Hall of Combining was meant for students who wished to mix different kinds of magic to reach the mage level and was mainly meant for fusing your mana into other elements to use them at sufficient level. Hall of Understanding was for deeper study, for progressing and testing your magic.
Hall of Elements was where all first-years went. After they have been cleared for self practice by their elemental masters they would be allowed into Hall of Understanding. If they have cleared self practice for two elements they would be taught a bit about fusing different manas. This training would always be overseen.
He went to the fire practicing room. It's name and way of writing it had been hammered into his head at last nights literacy class. He sat down in one corner of a small room with twenty or so other disciples. In the middle of the room there was a big fireplace. A few minutes later the elemental master for fire arrived and without pausing started talking about magic. Hierohn recognised him as the one who had given him the finger.
'Todays lesson is very simple, you will stay here until you can feel your mana, if by supper you haven't found it you will go eat then go to your literacy class. After that you will go sleep, you will eat breakfast at dawn the next day and then immediately return here. This cycle will continue for a week or until you have felt your mana, whichever happens first. If you fail to do so you will be throw out of the Academy, should you succeed sooner you will be given a spell to practice in the training hall in the basement under the watchful eyes of few teachers and your seniors.' He paused for a second scanning the surrounding children with his eyes, seeing them slightly afraid he nodded to himself with a smile and continued.
'If you want to learn other magics like most fire mages do, you don't have to worry. The first week is same for everyone. After you have found your fire mana you should try looking for other manas. They will be harder to find and you should ask the other teachers for guidance as seeking techniques for different elements are different. I will teach you the one for fire. After that I strongly recommend you give up on fire and go try for different manas. If you however wish to continue with fire you should go learn arcane magic as it can be supplemented into almost anything. It is a rare mana to have a talent in, but if you do, this mana spelled into fire magic will be your sole chance at reaching wizard level.'
'Few more notes before I teach you the technique, fire magic isn't rare like you might think by your low numbers, for example almost all demons are of fire element. Elements are fairly evenly distributed amongst humans but as fire magic is so weak all who are here should have gotten in with either first or second test. We haven't seen middle level fire magic for decades, if any of you was judged as such let me know. For you there might be a different training regime.' Seeing no raised hands he gave a grim nod. None this year either.
'Fine, if none of you has any talent I'll teach you a cheat you can use. Like all mages we can directly pull power from the element itself. Everyone get a handful of firewoods from the room just across this one, and lay them atop each other in crossing pattern. This way they will burn the hottest and fastest. After that you will sit in as tight circle as you can shoulder to shoulder. I don't want any of you sitting behind others, that way you can't reach the flame and will be hard-pressed to find your mana.'
After doing as instructed they all looked expectingly at the elemental master.
'Okay I'll soon light the fire, all you have to do is enter a meditative state. I will show you a breathing technique to do so. After that you must try to reach for the center of the flame with your minds and try to find similar presence behind you. I'm afraid our seeking method is the weakest but no one is really interested in developing techniques for pure fire.'
Soon after being taught the breathing technique the children's breathing fell into a single rhythm. Hierohn was immersed in it and found the feeling eerily familiar to his state for using Vision. Only through pure will was he able to block the Vision out, it took him five hours to do so.
After that he focused on the outside of his body, in there he found thousands upon thousands of different particles floating around. All in all he could see five different sorts out of which the set of transparent particles reminded him of the Vision. He disregarded them immediately and spent another two minutes getting the Vision out of his head again.
Then he willed his mind towards the flame and found it holding radiating hot particles. He hadn't felt any of these before, but he thought he now knew what to look for. After looking for hours he found one particle amongst others in the air and soon another. He quickly got the knack of it, but there were far less of these particles than there had been others about one to a thousand or so and soon he found it very hard to find anymore.
'Okay that's all for today all of you come back tomorrow, so only three of you got it.' as they were standing up they saw three empty seats in the circle.
'Master, wait please' Hierohn spoke to leaving elemental masters back.
'Yes kid, what is it?'
'Why were there so few hot particles, sir?'
'Kid, I take it you felt other elements as well. You really should stop with fire then and go practice these, there are few naturals even amongst other elements. It's sad you have a fire soul. It is like you have guessed, fire mages aren't weak it's mana that's missing from this world.' And without answering his question the elemental master left.
***
A hooded figure was standing in an empty cave whispering into an musky crystal orb.
'He has used blood to bind it, with luck he will find his mana soon. Then the grandmaster can waken and lead him to the seal.'
'And what if he doesn't, can you regain the stone when he is kicked out?'
'That's half of the reason why we chose him, he is an orphan. Killing him if he is kicked out will be easy.'
'What's the other half, he is a fire mage and he passed the first test with flying colors. He is creative and if he doesn't desire power yet then with fire he soon will.'
'Does anyone else know about the stone?'
'He couldn't read I had to use his friend to tell him to bind it, don't worry when he saw the stone I took control of his mind until the kids blood drank it.'
'Hmm, talk to me again when he finds the mana, with luck we should expect success in three years. You will receive your reward when we regain our power.'
'Thank you, Emperor.' and with that he seals the crystal and slides it into a crevice.
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AN: Ok that's the third one, I will try to get a chapter out everyday. Your feedback is greatly appreciated. It's still a script so I can changed it with quite some ease. As long as I don't get more comments than is humanly possible to read(yeah right) I will read them and consider it. Even if it is along the lines of "make X and Y a couple, they are so kawaii". I'm not really good with writing from kid's perspective, I have only my memory to go by so if they do something impossible let me know. Peace out.