The main office was huge, as large as the Royal Citadel or the Grand Sanctum back in Suma’s city, Zach-Ahshem. It was shaped differently, but it has similar features, like the holes that Neame would fly through, large spires, and guards surrounding it. Its differences, however, were what told the real story of this place’s purpose. It was surrounded by walls, patrolled by Neame and their familiars, on top of the spires were carvings and runes. I didn’t know what they did, but probably something bad. Just like when we tried to enter the citadel, we were stopped and questioned, but this time they also demanded to see our tablets. I showed them, and we were let through.
“Suma, do all of your world’s cities have citadels like this?” I wondered as we walked in.
“Only the largest ones. Most make do with Lesser Sanctums or Royal Embassies. Small towns and villages however are lucky to even have Temples.” From the names, I figured those were just smaller versions of what I had already seen, so I didn’t ask any more about it. Instead, I wondered about something more relevant.
“Do you know what we are supposed to do exactly? I can’t read the tablet thing, so…”
“All it said was that we were to present ourselves for inspection and assignment. Beyond that, I do not know.”
“I hope it’s not anything weird... or too formal. I don’t even own a suit.” I joked.
“A suit?” Suma asked.
“It’s like a… uh... actually, never mind. Don’t worry about it; it’s not important.” We finally arrived at what was effectively the main desk, and asked for directions. The Neame showed us some markings on our tablet, and told us that the room we were to go to would have those same markings, then the Neame pointed us in the right direction.
“I’ll fly ahead and try to find it Jake.” Suma said and spread her wings.
“Um, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” I said stopping her and remembering what happened last time she left me alone in a place like this.
“Why not?” She asked.
“Let’s just say I don’t want a repeat of last time.”
“Last time?”
“I’ll tell you about it later, let’s just stay together for now okay.”
“Well, alright.” She said settling back onto my shoulder. It took a while, but eventually we did find the room with matching numbers. Like all the rooms here, it was made of stone and wood, with sculpted vines acting as a door. The markings were engraved into the stone part in the hallway. We entered and saw an empty room. “I suppose we are the first ones to arrive.” Suma said and made herself a perch, then softly landed on it.
“I guess so.” I looked around, the floor was stone, and so were two of the four walls; the two on the east and west halves of the room. The north and south halves of the walls were made of wood, and so was the ceiling. The room itself was basically just a large square with vines strewn along the floor randomly. I took a cue from Suma and molded some of them into a seat and sat down.
A while passed before another Neame finally showed up and made himself a perch. “Hello,” Suma said.
“Greetings, is this the correct room for meeting the Drake Brigade?” He asked.
“Yes, at least I believe it is.” Suma said.
“Are we supposed to have our familiars summoned? I wasn’t made aware of any such rule.”
“No, this is Jake, he is a friend.”
“Hey, nice to meet you.” I said. He seemed surprised, his feathers raised for a moment and his body pulled back.
“I did not-” He started.
“You didn’t know I could speak, yeah I get that a lot.” I laughed, it was actually starting to get kinda funny.
Over the next hour, two more Neame showed up. Of the three others, two of them had names when they arrived, the other was designated nine on his official summons; apparently that meant there were already eight other nameless Neame on our team. The two others were called Odens and Rou. Odens was the tallest Neame in the room, standing about four inches higher than Suma, and his feathers were a very light blue with hints of darker reds and browns and the tips of his wings. He had no gold or jewels, but that might have been because of some kind of military rule. Rou was almost the same height as Suma, but she seemed leaner. Her beak was less rounded, and her wings came to a sharper point at the ends. There were touches of white around her head feathers, and she sparkled less brightly than the others; with the sole exception of Nine. Nine was darker in color than the others by a lot. His color was more of a royal blue, and he lacked the sparkle that every other Neame I had seen so far possessed. Nine was also the shortest in the room by about an inch and had rounder wingtips.
We made introduction, they got shocked that I could talk, and then finally… our handler arrived, Lieutenant Datahu. She was completely different from the others, for starters, she was white, not blue. And unlike the nuns I had met in the temple, she didn’t even have a tinge of blue in her feathers. Instead, she was white with light gray tipped feathers on her wings, and dark gray tips on her head. She was about two inches taller than Suma, but something about her exaggerated that. She had two golden squares on her chest, which I think meant she was a Lieutenant… maybe; I’m still not a hundred percent sure on how their military symbols reflect their ranks. With her, she carried several gold objects suspended with mana wrapping.
“Hello everyone,” she announced as she landed. “I am Second-Lieutenant Datahu. You may refer to me as ma’am or Lieutenant. I trust that you have all had time to get acquainted, so I will skip introductions for now.” Lieutenant Datahu looked over at me. “You must be Sentinel. I will speak to you in a moment, but first… this.” She manipulated the golden pins so that they floated in front of each of the Neame. “Privates, these are your rank emblems. While you are on base or operating within our kingdom’s territory, you will wear them. They are your life, they are your family, do not lose your family! If you are caught without them, you will be punished. You may wear them wherever you want, but they must be placed in the correct orientation, and they must be visible from the front.” She carefully attached each of the pins to the Neame. “Now that my introduction speech is over, follow me.”
She spread her wings and started flying towards the exit, before stopping and hovering for a moment. She turned to me, “Sentinel, we will be flying quite a distance. Your master can simply summon you once we’ve arrived, please wait here.”
“Sure,” I said and sat back down. They all flew away and closed the vine door behind them. I ended up waiting for about ten minutes for them to summon me. While I did, I pulled out a sheet of paper Suma had helped me write. On it were the rules of magic that Suma explained to me. While she travelled for three days to the city, I had asked her for more information about magic, and she took the time to explain. I made sure to write down as much as I could, well actually I typed it out and printed it off later but whatever. Whenever I had a few moments, I made sure to study it.
There were a few different types of magic: rituals, rites, and spells are all drawn from the same source, mana, but are accomplished through different means. Rituals are complicated magical events that require a minimum of two mages to perform. They are used to apply some measure of extreme control over an object, person, or environment, often with supernatural or unusual effects that normal spells can’t achieve. They are semi-permanent but can be undone with great knowledge and effort. This type of magic requires the most amount of energy to perform and usually takes a significant amount of time. They also apparently require expensive magical components to perform. I guess it’s essentially some combination of rites and spells being performed individually, but I didn’t really understand that one too well.
Rites are more of a cross between a ritual and a spell. They only need a single caster to perform, but often take a good bit of mana and sometimes magical components. A rite allows a caster to take more control of something than a spell would, but in return it takes longer to cast. Suma said the bonding I did with my weapons was a good example of rites. She also said it included summoning, domination, and curses.
Spells were the one she didn’t need to explain much to me. They’re quick and easy to perform magical events that require minimum energy and are usually only performed by a single mage. They’re used for everything from day-to-day chores to battlefield attacks. I guess spells make up most of all the magic most people do. Honestly, I just assumed they were all spells, and like different subtypes, but apparently not.
Just as I was about to read the section on magical artifacts again, Suma summoned me. I appeared in a large cavern like place, but made entirely of vines and molded stone. In the room was about twenty-nine Neame of various sizes and colors. Most were shades of blue, then there was the Second-Lieutenant who was white, and there was Odens and Rou.
“Good, now that everyone is here, we can begin.” Second-Lieutenant Datahu said. She flew up and perched on a molded stone column near the front of the room. Beside her were eight other Neame, each with what I figured were high ranking symbol pins of their own. Among the Neame, was the major from our bootcamp.
“Greetings everyone, I am the major in charge of the Drake Brigade. I am the highest commanding officer in charge of your team, and my job is to oversee the entirety of this operation. You will be organized into four squadrons, each commanded by a Captain and a Lieutenant. You will receive your orders from them, and your missions from me. As a part of the King’s Armed Forces, you will be sent to many dangerous locations, and as a part of the Drakes, you will be expected to accomplish the impossible. Each of your squadrons will be mostly comprised of battle mages, your familiars, and one healing mage.”
“Only a single healing mage?” Suma said over our private connection. “That seems dangerous.”
“The reason for this is due to the nature of our operation. The Drakes rely mainly on stealth and RARR tactics. That is: Rapid Assault and Rapid Retreat.” The major said.
(Hit-and-run style guerrilla warfare.) I thought.
“RARR tactics require small squadrons moving quickly and covertly to accomplish their missions. You will be sent behind enemy lines, most of your missions will be without backup, and you could be gone for months at a time on missions if needed. We are now going to break you up into your squadrons. The Captains will call your names and numbers, if you hear your name or number, go to the Captain that called it. They will be in charge of your squadron. I wish you all safety, luck, and most importantly… success.” The major ended his speech, and the first of the four Captains began calling out names. Suma and I were in the third squad, which was led by Captain Gigoales, and Second-Lieutenant Datahu.
Second-Lieutenant Datahu flew up to me after the major’s speech. “Sentinel, it’s time to talk.” She said.
“Yes ma’am, how can I help you?” I asked.
“You have Chaos Magic, by Royal decree, we will be giving you specialized training to allow you to utilize your skills to their fullest. This will be on top of your training along with the other new members.”
“More training? I thought that boot- I mean, the camp had already trained us?” I asked confused.
“If you were going to be a normal soldier then yes, the camp would have been sufficient, but this team will be going behind enemy lines, you need to be ready for that. Besides, even by the standards of a normal soldier, you fall short.”
“What? But I thought-”
“Your ability to use Chaos Magic granted you and your master a place on this team, but I will not allow a single untrained mage to put the rest of the Drakes in danger.”
“I-I understand,” I said solemnly. “What kind of training will it be?”
“As I understand, you completely lack an understanding of the fundamentals, correct?” She asked.
“I… um… yes, that’s fair.”
“Then we will start there. After you have completed your team training and live fire exercises, you will report for private tutoring with a specially chosen Magic Theory instructor we have selected.”
“Yes ma’am.” After our talk, Captain Gigoales brought our team together and led us to our quarters, well, the Neame’s quarters.
“Sentinel, you are technically a familiar, so we did not know of any special accommodations you may need. Until we can find a more permanent solution, you will simply return home after training rather than staying here.” Captain Gigoales explained.
“Yes sir, I understand.”
“Excellent. Now, everyone will have one day to get settled; specialized stealth, team combat, and aerial evasion training start tomorrow.” With that, the Captain and Lieutenant left us to get settled in. I didn’t know what they meant by that at first because… nobody was carrying anything… they’re all birds after all, but one by one everyone started summoning large chest and boxes of supplies. The floor filled with one magic circle, after the other until everyone, even Suma, had summoned at least two boxes of materials. We didn’t need to make introduction because everyone who was on our team was the Neame we met earlier in the waiting room: Odens, Rou, Suma, Nine, the Lieutenant, and finally the Captain. Once everything was summoned, I watched as they started to use mana wrapping to position everything where they needed or wanted around their beds/nests/whatever you call them.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“Jake, would you mind helping me?” Suma asked while she carefully moved some kind of brown fabric from a box to her nest.
“Sure, no problem.” I said and took it from her as she stopped the mana wrapping.
“Thank you, Jake; fabric is much more difficult for me than solid objects.”
“I find rolling it up tightly first helps keep it stable,” Rao said and picked up a neatly rolled tube of cloth with mana wrapping before laying it on her own nest.
“I’ll have to try that next time,” Suma said. “Jake, would you just lay that on my roost for me?”
(Roost, I should have guessed.) I thought and laid the fabric down, carefully spreading it out in a way I thought it would be comfortable. “So, does anyone need any help getting settled in?” I offered.
“I could use some lifting this sack,” Odens said. I picked it up for him and noticed it was kinda heavy, and pretty big too. At least as tall as Odens was, and a third a meter wide.
“Wow, what’s in this?” I asked.
“My favorite seeds. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get them here, so I brought along enough to last a few months. These grow the best Iggy fruits.” He explained.
I helped everyone unpack, and we all talked a bit too. They learned Suma was their healing mage, and I was a Chaos Magic user, which freaked them out a bit at first. Then they all started talking about themselves. Rao and Odens were cousins, they volunteered together a year ago and were both battle mages. Odens specialized in Fire and Lightning types of Energy Magic, while Rao specialized in Water and Plant type Nature Magic. Nine was a support mage who used Soul Magic, specifically Memory and Illusion.
“What are your specialties, Jake?” Nine asked. “You do Chaos-Magic, right? Must have a pretty incredible one.”
“Uh, well I don’t really have one, I don’t think. I kinda just use whatever I need to, you know.” I said.
“Well, you must be better at one of the forms more than the others.” Odens theorized.
“I guess I’m pretty good with Fire Magic.” I offered. “But my affinity is for Inversion.”
“So, does that mean your fire is cold then?” Rao asked.
“What do you mean?”
“The flames your magic produces, are they cold? Because of the Inversion, I mean.”
“I don’t think so. I’ve definitely melted stuff before,” I said.
“Having been close to his flames on several occasions I can assure you they are quite warm. Almost unbearably so,” Suma interjected.
“I did turn some flames cold once though.” I added. “I put some mana into a fire rune and it froze what I was trying to heat up.”
“So, your flames are cold then!” Odens said.
“Well no, what happened was my Inversion mana affected the rune, and that’s why the flames were cold.” I explained.
“Did you not tell me you also turned the Magistrate’s flames cold, Jake?” Suma asked.
“Oh yeah, so I guess that’s two times then.”
“Are you sure you don’t have cold flames? It sure sounds like you might.” Rao said jokingly.
I laughed, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure. My Inversion doesn’t affect my own spells, just others.”
“Have you ever tried?” Nine asked.
“Well… actually no. No, I haven’t. It never really occurred to me.” I said surprised at my own oversight.
“You should try it during training,” Nine suggested.
“Huh, maybe I will.” I said. After talking, I asked Suma to send me back home for a bit.
“Are you sure, Jake?” She asked.
“Yeah, I told my mum I would call her after we arrived and got set up.” I explained.
“Okay, I will see you tomorrow morning.” With that, she sent me back home, and I called my mum.
The phone rang for a moment and I heard her voice, “Hello?”
“Hey Mum.” I said.
“Oh Jake, how was the base, did you finish getting settled in?” She asked sweetly.
“Yea, we arrived a few hours ago and had a kind of assembly with everyone. They split us up and assigned us to teams before having everyone unpack.”
“Oh, that’s good, how’s Suma settling in then?”
“She’s good. We did find out that she is going to be the only healer on our team though, so she is a bit nervous about that.”
“What? Why is she the only one? That seems unsafe.”
“Well, we are a small team, only about six total, so I guess they figured we wouldn’t need more than one?” I theorized. “Anyway, we spent an hour setting up her things in the team’s room, then she sent me back for the night. We have training tomorrow, so I’m probably going to go to sleep early tonight.”
“What will you do until then?”
“I don’t know, probably just make some dinner and watch a movie.”
“Oh Jake, that reminds me, you got a letter yesterday, it was sent here by mistake.”
“Who’s is from?”
“It’s from the HMRC.” She said.
“Revenue and Customs? Why did they send me a letter?” I asked.
“Well, I don’t know, I didn’t open it.”
“Huh, actually, there was an issue at my bank a while back. Maybe it’s about that? I’ll come pick it up later, okay.”
“How much later, because I have my Dominos group tonight at five.” I looked at the clock on my phone, 3:48.
“I can be over in about twenty minutes; do you need anything while I’m out?” I asked.
“Maybe some bread dear, whole wheat with raisins if you can find it.”
“Okay, see you in a bit.”
“Bye bye.” She said and I hung up. Seven minutes later I was walking around the store.
“Raisin bread… Raisin bread… Raisin bread…” I chanted as I searched. “Rais-” the sounds of flapping cut me off and I turned around to see what it was. “What the-?” I looked around the empty isle for a few more seconds before chalking it up to just a trolly passing by. Finding the bread, I put it into my basket, then Ambos landed on my shoulder.
“Do you remember the first time you gave me bread, Zachariah?” Ambos laughed, his sea-colored feathers ruffling as he thought about it.
“Of course I do,” I laughed, “you acted as if it was the nectar of the heavens.”
“And this bread must be even better, it has those delicious raisins in it as well!” We both laughed as we remembered, until someone came and tapped me on the shoulder.
“Sir… are you okay?” A store employee wondered. Suddenly, I forgot what was so funny, and who I was talking to.”
"Uh… yeah… I-I’m fine. Excuse me.” I said with my head filled with fog. I left the store, and the bread behind, then went out and sat in my car with the door open. “Suma… Suma something’s- somethings not…” I said trying to contact her, but my head was spinning, and throbbing too much for me to focus. “Suma, can you hear me?” I said and fell to the ground, that’s the last thing I remember for a while.
Sometime later, I woke up with a throbbing pain in my head, and a bright light in my eyes. “Uhg.” I groaned.
“Mr. Vandal, you’re awake; excellent. Are you okay?” A voice said.
“My head hurts.” I said. “What… uh… what happened.” I moaned as I slowly opened my eyes. I tried moving around, but that only made the pain in my head worse, so I stopped.
“It seems you fell and hit your head sir. What’s the last thing you remember?” The voice came close enough to see that it was coming from a doctor.
“Where am I? Is this a hospital?” I wondered.
“Yes sir. You collapsed getting into your car. A store employee called 999 for you.” The doctor said.
“My mum, I was going to see her.” I said, my mind in a confused fog.
“Yes, we already contacted her. She is on the way now.” The doctor said. “Mr. Vandal, do you have any idea what may have caused your collapse?”
“It was the flaming man, the figure of flame. He did this.” I said, not realizing what I was saying in the moment.
“Hallucinations, he may have head trauma.” The doctor said. At first, I thought she was talking to me, but after the fog left my brain, I realized she was probably talking to a nurse who was somewhere I couldn’t see. “Schedule a CT and a psych eval.” I don’t remember much of what happened for the next ten minutes, mostly because of the haze, partially because it was just the doctor talking to the nurse about how I was probably on drugs and I needed a “tox screen”. Soon, my mum burst into my room crying, shoved past the doctor, nearly knocking her over, and hugged me.
“JAKE! Thank goodness you’re okay! What happened? Are you hurt? What happened?!” Mum screamed as tears ran down her face. She hugged me so hard I heard something pop, and not in a good way, in a “cry out in pain” kinda way; which is exactly what I did.
“AH! MUM, MY BACK!” I yelped.
Mum turned to the doctor, “What happened to him?”
The doctor, who was rubbing her shoulder after having been knocked into the wall by the charging bull that was my mum, answered. “We aren’t sure yet. He fell unconscious and may have hit his head. He was delirious when he first woke up. He was talking about flaming men.” Mum’s eyes went wide, then she looked at me confused and worried, but soon her eyes narrowed, and I felt my butt cheeks pucker when I realized that she had realized what I didn’t want her to ever figure out… I was keeping things from her.
She turned back to the doctor with a mask of friendliness and pleasantness draped over her true feelings. “Thank you for taking care of him, how long will the tests take?”
“Um… about six hours total.” The doctor answered.
“Thank you, I will wait here with him.” Mum told her. As soon as the doctor and nurse left, Mum’s mask came off. “Jake…”
“Yeah?” I asked nervously.
“Who is are the flaming men?” A cold calm dripped from her voice, the likes of which I hadn’t heard since that one time she caught me smoking in high school. I knew what that eerie calm meant… bad things.
“Um, nobody Mum. I was just having a bad dream and was-”
“Jake…” She looked at me with a glare that almost begged me to try and lie to her. Sometimes my mum is really unnerving.
“Okay, so I met this guy. He did something to my head and I have been seeing things, but this was the first time I have passed out.” I confessed, talking quite quickly.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Suma’s POV
I was in my roost, nearly asleep, when I heard a voice. It was far away, but calling to me. It sounded like Zachariah, my familiar. I flew towards the voice, I was soaring high in the sky, and the voice was growing louder as it called out for me. “Ambos… Ambos!” Finally, I saw Zachariah. He was practicing in a field with his sword; like always. I landed on a rock next to a small sapling to talk to him.
“Hello, Zachariah” I said.
“Hello, Ambos. Did you need something?”
“The Royal Court wants to see us.”
“To scold us again?” He groaned and used a reverse summons to send his weapon away.
“Most likely, but maybe we will get lucky and they will just kill us instead.”
“Better than sitting through another of their long-winded lectures. Do you know what it is about?”
“Do you really need to ask?”
“Let me guess: they once again disagree with how I used my magic in battle.” He shook his head. “We are at war, does it really matter how the enemy dies, so long as they do?”
“I believe they are more concerned with that new spell you used in the last battle, actually. The final one you used that looked like a cloud of fog.”
“I wonder if they will make it another of my, Forbidden Spells?” He stood up. “What do you think Ambos? Was I wrong to use it?”
“I thought the spell was rather interesting, and your application of it was superb.”
“You know what I’m asking, Ambos.”
“And you know that I do not care how the enemy dies. Watching them turn on each other like they did… it is what they deserve.” Zachariah nodded his head and looked towards the sky for a moment.
“Alright then, let’s go get into trouble again, Ambos.” He said.
“Yes, let us-” I started to say, but was interrupted by yelling.
“SUMA!” I jerked awake and saw Nine standing over me. “Finally! You sleep deeply, don’t you? It’s time to wake up for training.”
“Already?” I asked confused and in a bit of a haze. I stood and exited my roost, stretching my wings wide.
“Did you not sleep well then, I take it?” Nine asked.
“I had a strange dream.” I said.
“About?”
“I do not know. I did not recognize anyone in it, and it certainly never happened to me, so it was no memory.” I explained. As we flew to meet everyone else outside to eat, I told Nine about the dream.
“Ambos, wasn’t he that famous hero from the time of the dragons?” Nine asked and we landed outside. The others were talking amongst themselves, so we simply grew our fruits and started eating.
“I believe so. In fact, I am sure of it.” I said taking a bite of my fruit.
“But I don’t know of any Neame from that time with the name Zachariah. He must have been an imagination of your sleeping mind.” Nine said.
“In the dream, he was not a Neame. In fact, he was a member of Jake’s race.”
“You dreamed that Ambos was the same race as your familiar?” Nine asked.
“What? No. Zachariah was the one who was… oh, what did Jake call his species again? Hoomyns? I explained.
“Oh, well, either way… it’s still sounds like a strange dream.” Nine said, taking a bite himself. We talked a bit more, until we finished eating and the Lieutenant showed up.
“Good morning, everyone. I see you are all finished eating, so we will begin today’s training. Follow me.” She said before spreading her wings and flying upwards. We all followed behind. She led us to a large domed building with a wide-open area that was dug quite deeply into the ground. It was clearly a constructed area; there were far too many sharp edges to be natural. “Welcome to… the pits. Here you will be straining and training, this is where you will improve your skills so that you won’t die the first time you go on a mission.”
“Why is it underground?” Odens, the tallest Neame present, and on our team, asked.
“Once you have progressed enough in your training, you will undergo a trial to be confirmed as ready for field duty and will then be allowed to go on missions. The pit was created to protect the spectators watching the trial.”
“Can we ask what the trial is?” Rou asked nervously. “If you need a pit to protect the Neame who are just watching it… it must be dangerous.”
“It will be live combat. A creature will be summoned for you and your familiar, or Neame partner if you prefer, to fight. You could also choose to fight alone, and doing so would result in a rank increase if afterwards you were successful.”
“Does this trial apply to even the healing mages?” I asked.
“Yes, it does.” She said simply.
“May I ask why?” I asked.
“Anything can happen in combat. There is no way to guarantee your survival, and relying completely on your team to keep you alive in the field will only slow them down and may get you all killed. Every one of you must pass this trial before your team is cleared for duty.” Lieutenant Datahu explained.
“Just like the entrance test.” I said.
The lieutenant started quickly looking around the room, then stared at me. “Private Suma, where is Sentinel?” She asked sharply.
“I haven’t summoned him yet ma’am.” I said, nervous.
“Do so immediately. From now on I want him to arrive at the same time as the rest of the team. If he is late again, there will be consequences.”
“Yes ma’am, I understand.” I said and started to summon Jake. “I summon you, Sentinel!” He slowly began to appear… however he was in midair again.
“Ah!” He yelped and landed on the floor heavily with a thump. “What the heck?!” He sat up and started looking around. Jake was dressed strangely; his garments were thinner and more free-flowing than normal. Instead of having holes for each of his appendages, it had a single hole that seemed to have gone all the way up his back.
“I’m sorry for summoning you without warning, Jake.” I apologized.
“Prepare yourself, Sentinel, we are about to begin today’s training.” Lieutenant Datahu ordered.
“Oh, right. I completely forgot.” Jake said standing up. “Lieutenant, I’m sorry but I don’t think it will be safe for me to train today. I was being treated in a hospital for hallucinations and intermittent loss of consciousness.”
The Lieutenant seemed confused. “Are you saying you were in some kind of Healer’s Abode, or infirmary?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“What!?” I asked, shocked. “Jake, what happened?”
“I don’t know. I passed out after you sent me home, and started seeing things that weren’t there.” He said.
“Well, now that you’ve been summoned, the healing aspect should take effect soon, so you should be fine.” The Lieutenant said.
“Ma’am, he has been summoned nearly every day for almost a year now. If whatever is happening can continue even through that, then the healing aspect might not do anything.” I told her.
“Then cast some of your magic yourself, Private Suma, we need to get started.” She snapped.
“Ma’am, the first thing they teach us in school is that healing magic cannot solve everything, and may only make some problems worse. If the healing aspect hasn’t already healed him, then my magic will not either.” I explained.
“Ah… I see. A disease that cannot be healed with magic. You have my deepest sympathies, Sentinel. Have your healers told you how much longer you will have to make arrang-”
“I’m not dying!” Jake blurted out. “I just need to get back so the doctors can fix me. My world never had magic, so we developed other ways to heal people.” He said. “Actually, I feel fine.”
“Then why can you not train?” Lieutenant Datahu asked annoyed.
“Hmmm…” Jake closed his eyes for a second, “okay, so I’m really strong.”
“Yes.” She said.
“Would you want someone with my strength, and who occasionally sees things that aren’t there, and who already has a history of using overpowered or uncontrolled spells, doing magic anywhere near you?” Jake asked. There was a moment of quiet.
“I don’t.” Rou stated; Nine and Odens nodded their heads in agreement and shifted uncomfortably on their perches.
The Lieutenant sighed deeply, “Fine, you are excused from training until you have been released to do so with your healer’s approval.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Jake said.
“But you will still be required to take the after-training courses with the instructor that we talked about. You won’t need to do magic, so you should be safe.” She said.
“Yes ma’am, I’m happy to.” Jake said then turned to me. “Suma, could you send me back before a doctor, or worse, my mum, comes back?” I sent him back, and as soon as he was gone, the Lieutenant let out another deep sigh.