“A word of advice: prepare for anything,” Edward spoke, making me jump. I had been mentally preparing myself for Dr Jacq’s lesson before Edward snapped me out of my overthinking. I stood outside the door that was listed on my timetable for slightly too long and just needed to push it open already.
“Jacq tends to use this time to test your limits and how you react to situations no one who you would consider sane would think of. Just be glad that your Legacy has already been unlocked; he likes testing his theories in that area of expertise.”
I pushed open the door.
An arrow came flying toward me, giving me a fraction of a second to move out of the way. The arrow thumped into the door, cutting my shirt on the sleeve. “Jeez, that could have hit me!”
“You need to work on your reaction speed,” Jacq replied calmly as a fump of a bow revealed another arrow to my left, which I managed to catch. I threw it away immediately, my intuition (or maybe my aura) not trusting Jacq to not put an explosive or acid in the arrow. I was proven right as I heard a pop of explosives in the direction I threw it. I quickly moved out of the way of the door to give myself room to manoeuvre myself more easily.
The room I was in seemed to be rather plain, with different raised platforms for a variety of battle scenery. In view of the door, a woman in armour sat admiring her hands.
“Good, you’re one of the few who didn’t fall for that trick the first time. Let’s see your hand-to-hand combat,” The woman in armour quipped before closing the distance between us.
She was fast and showed clear skill at moving in armour. The woman was around my height, her unflinching gaze level with mine, unnerving me as she approached. She drew closer, a reflection of her armour glinting in my vision. My eyes were drawn to a red ruby amulet that was embedded in her chest. It was familiar to me, my brain was slightly distracted trying to work out why. She tried to land a punch, but I blocked it with my gauntlet. She struck me as I left my side open when I blocked. I moved out of the way of another punch to my face and attempted to use this movement to land a sweeping kick, which was apparently too complicated for me to pull off at my skill level.
“A stomach hit aided by a gauntlet shot would have been a wiser move,” she advised as she struck down, knocking me to the ground. “Your balance needs work.”
I moved out of the way of a kick, causing blue sparks to trail behind me. I tried to use my speed to add extra force behind a body blow, but she caught my arm and used the momentum to throw me on my back, forcing all the air out of my lungs.
“Safe to say you need to improve your hand-to-hand combat, but not bad for someone from outside the training schools.” She put her foot on my chest, which prevented me from getting up.
She looked down at me, revealing her olive brown eyes. “We can fix that.”
“Wait, Dr Jacq?” I asked.
“The one and many. I would say ‘only,’ but that’s not true for me. " Another Dr. Jacq appeared, this one male like I was used to, and continued, “I’m a duplicator. Why else would Washington pick me for personal training? I don’t have a choice in my gender, though, but the peculiarities of my power aren’t important. I have to say you fared relatively well for a first lesson, but we need to move on to civilian protection.”
***
Civilian protection consisted of saving different Jacqs’ from different dangers, such as fires and collapsed buildings, as well as protecting them from shrapnel and other projectiles which were flung everywhere from other students’ fights. I was paired with Cassie, whose fighting style caused a lot of debris, mostly when she missed with her weapon and hit one of the columns or walls in the training room, which honestly was massive to fit all the different traps and scenarios in it; there was a reason why Telum was far from the main kingdom. Edward helped me to know where the parts flew and whether a ‘civilian’ was in the way but even, so I still missed a lot of them.
Safe to say, after Jacq’s lesson, everyone was exhausted and hungry. People were crawling to the cafeteria just to get some food (some literally, some were even carried by their teammates). Everyone’s clothes were slightly ripped, and no one escaped without at least one cut or bruise. I felt the strain of overexerting my aura for the first time. I felt tired in my soul.
“You will get used to the strain as your body adapts to be more aura efficient, but the next few weeks are going to be hell for you as you use more aura than is needed. The time dilation you experience with my power will both not help and help with the adaptation.”
“Thanks for the ever so helpful info.” I thought as sarcastically as I was able.
Our teams ate in exhausted silence as we shovelled whatever food we picked up, being too tired to care what it was as long as it was sustenance, even after judging me for that exact thing earlier, though I was too tired to comment on that. After we had eaten, we dragged ourselves to our rooms, yelling silent obscenities towards whoever invented the concept of stairs, and then we collapsed into our beds. Somehow, I remembered to take off my leg with a press of a button before I fell into dreamless sleep knowing I would regret it otherwise.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
A silent thank you rang out to whoever decided that Jacq’s training was only bi-weekly in the first year.
***
The sun unfeelingly assaulted us with its existence bringing us back to consciousness, making us aware of the previous day’s workout. I hurt in muscles that I had been unaware existed before that very moment; I wished to be gifted back my blissful ignorance. I didn’t even know you could get sore forearms before today.
The only thing that managed to shift my carcass was a rumbling.
“Food!” I weakly ordered my team; Matt threw a pillow at me. I got up without registering the warning in my head before I almost fell flat on my face, my only response being, “Oh.”
“I did warn you.”
Alex helped me up and handed me my prosthetic. Apparently, he was less dead than the rest of us. “Tom is right; we need food if we are to survive the morning and most likely coffee.”
A pillow bounced off his face in response, “If you have enough energy to throw pillows you have enough energy to get food.”
“Or, here’s a thought: we can go back to being dead to the world.”
With help from Oliver, we managed to drag Matt to breakfast. It was clear who was unfortunate enough to live through Dr Jacq’s hell for the first time, as many had the zombified look of exhaustion. The older years were clearly recalling their repressed experience and were talking to some of the new students about it.
The food went down the void, which was their stomachs. There wasn’t much discussion as everyone half-heartedly shovelled food into their mouths, everyone’s except Alex. Alex only really drank some strange liquid, though he did eat a small amount. I didn’t think too much of it; he probably just has a more efficient aura. I had heard stories of some Mythics not needing as much sleep or food as most people, as their bodies just become more energy efficient.
Luckily, the lessons of that day were not overly physically exhausting on our still recovering bodies as the first lesson was history, where we learned about the previous kingdoms and wars which led to their downfall as the present-day kingdoms came into power. Some of which we only know small amounts of information as the Shades destroyed almost all written information about them, and what we do know is how they interacted with the surrounding area and stories from slaves from those captured or sold by other civilizations.
Facts about these fallen kingdoms and battles had to be regarded with a grain of salt, as information could have easily been exaggerated or been straight-up lies. However, any information we could learn to help protect us against the Shade is invaluable, so much so that many people dedicate their lives to finding forgotten fighting styles and weapons to help in any way.
The lesson was taught by Miss Howl, one of these people, who in her classroom had many recreated weapons almost lost to the sands of time. Miss Howl had apricot orange eyes, blond hair and was average height, she had small square glasses and was very energetic, which did not mesh well with a class who were having trouble keeping their eyes open. Despite Miss Howl’s best efforts to make her class fun and interesting, she was fighting an uphill battle, and by the end of the lesson, nearly half of the class was asleep.
“They always give me the lesson the day after Dr Jacq’s training when it would be easier to teach to a brick wall!” She complained to those who weren’t asleep yet as the bell rang to signify the end of the class. “It probably would be more worth your while if you just had the day off to recover before returning to class.”
The next couple of lessons went like a haze as my brain tried to focus, but I focused too much on focussing that I missed what the teachers were actually teaching until the lesson ended. Edward, however, managed to keep notes through me as he was less physically negated some of the mental fatigue brought on from the lack of energy. Still, nothing went into my brain, and before I knew it, we were getting food and sitting with the Legends.
Alex brought over a tray over a tray of black sludge, which, according to him, was meant to be coffee, in an attempt to wake us up in time for the afternoon’s lessons.
“I think this might be a lethal dose of caffeine if I’d ever seen one; does it even have sugar in to mask the taste slightly?” Oliver inquired as he tipped the cup to show how viscous the liquid was, and with a nod from Alex, he downed the sludge, and the rest of us did the same.
“DON’T DRIN…” Edward warned too late. I gagged at the taste of what used to be coffee. I quickly poured myself a glass of milk to mask the taste and felt the rush of caffeine as it flowed into my blood. It was like I could hear colour; the amount of sugar and caffeine in the concoction Alex had made most likely would have killed a non-Mythic, but I felt like I was made of energy. An unstoppable force of nature, the fatigue of the previous day gone. Similar to when I first activated my aura.
I needed to do something with all this energy, and I knew that exercise would be wasted as my body, though not tired due to the coffee, hadn’t recovered just yet. My mind went back to an earlier thought on efficient auras. The library seemed to be the logical solution at that moment as I could read about what I missed in training school without doing anything physical. I picked up a book on aura as I hadn’t heard much about it despite the fact that most things use it as energy nowadays.
I flipped through the pages skim reading until I found something useful, which apparently was something called aura weaving, which was a technique which essentially bound aura tightly to certain parts of the body, such as vital organs and muscles, to make them more efficient and improving health drastically (according to the small print this technique wasn’t made common knowledge as if done wrong it could damage the body or if someone’s aura is insufficient it may uses up all their aura draining them of what is keeping them alive killing them). The more aura bound to the muscles, the stronger you become and likewise to organs. Plus, less energy is used up, and the more tightly woven the aura, the higher the endurance.
What people enhance also depends on their Legacy. As auras change when someone uses their power, it would make sense for different Mythics to enhance different parts of their body. If someone hasn’t unlocked their power yet, then during training, only a basic weave is formed, which is easily undone when the power is unlocked.
“I’m honestly surprised that you’re using your speed high so productively. I didn’t know what you would do, but I didn’t expect this. Plus, it’s quite impressive how fast you are actually going, though you’re definitely going to have an aura crash soon, and it’s only been a few seconds. From the slight strain, I can feel you’ll probably black out from aura depletion any moment now; I’d recommend staying away from caffeine.”
With that note, I passed out.