I woke up the next morning in the same clothes as the previous day, as I had decided that they were comfy enough to be my pyjamas. It took substantial effort to drag myself out of bed for the scheduled breakfast at eight a.m.; in my brain, that was equivalent to being awake at four a.m. and certainly not waking hours. The promise of not having to deal with the dog door was the extra push needed to get up on time.

I followed Mathew downstairs through the open dog door to the kitchen, ignoring any difficult thoughts that it was too early to deal with. The breakfast selection was the usual affair of bread, toast, and cereal, which everyone helped themselves to.

One of the kids tried to start a conversation with me. “Oh hey, you’re the new kid, right? I’m Al, so when did you-”

I put my earphones in my ears as I was not awake enough for interactions. Al seemed to understand as he stopped trying to talk with me. I was given understanding by some of the ones with mugs of coffee, which I assume meant that Al was just one of those dreaded morning people.

I just poured myself a glass of milk, downed it in one, and then poured myself another, which caused some of the other people to look at me in slight horror, but they, too, were too tired to call me out on my drink choice. I then poured myself a bowl of cereal.

After I had eaten my cereal and drank my milk, I petted the dog, who seemed to love the attention he was getting, before he went on his walk with whoever was unlucky enough to have to brace the cold outside.

After I was finished with what I counted as socialising, I went back to my room to change from my ‘pyjamas’, timing it with other people for obvious reasons. The dog was on his walk, so I thought it was fine to leave it unlocked. Walking into my room, the sight of Mathew’s side reminded me of my rude awakening, which brought the thoughts I was ignoring to the forefront of my mind. Honestly, him being a Mythic is not that strange, I mean, there are a ton of them, I’m sure. Although I personally hadn’t interacted with many that I could remember, they were the ones who went to the weapons schools that I failed to get into. The idea of Legacies was slightly soured for me due to the fact that I was unable to unlock my own, but occasionally, I daydream as they’re usually so cool. I’ve heard that some can allow a Mythic to talk to animals or make portals to different continents as easily as breathing.

I would even accept it if only my aura had unlocked, even though that was just the basic function of the soul, which was the same for everyone. It felt like everyone had at least their aura unlocked and that I had been missed somehow. Moving over those frustrations in my mind, I changed the topic before I got annoyed with things I couldn’t change.

Which then led my thoughts to what Mathew’s could be, obviously something to do with that glowing symbol thing. Maybe he’s like a human torch and can just create light, though that does sound dumb. I can’t really see any Shades being killed by an atmospheric glow, though there probably have been stranger things. Though whatever it is, I would have liked a warning before being woken up at four a.m. then again, I hadn’t even known him a full day yet, so I can’t really blame him. Still tired, though.

Shaking off the weight of deep thought that shouldn’t have to happen earlier than ten, I went into my wardrobe and took out the first pair of trousers and T-shirt I could find, which was an orange T-shirt with the lettering ‘CHB’, which was in reference to a book series I liked, and some navy jeans. I went downstairs to watch TV, and the news was on. I sighed as the news was definitely not my preference, but I also didn’t want to ask anyone to change the channel to something better, like a cartoon or something.

While it was boring, with most of the same stories or variations of the same stories repeated over and over, it was still better than nothing. It was honestly impressive how they made things that should be interesting, dull, and emotionless. For example, how a Shade almost destroyed another village outside the walls, but a Mythic team saved the day or a new aura power use discovery. These should hold my attention, but their delivery destroys it.

I turned my attention to the rest of the room, which had white walls, white carpet, drawn blue curtains, and a couple of warn sofas facing the TV. The room was bigger than a lot of the other living rooms I’d been in and seemed to be where most people hung out. There were video game controllers around, randomly put away or next to the console. I scanned the room for Mathew, spotting him on the sofa.

Matthew looked as he did when I first saw him: blondish hair, grape purple eyes (with pupils and whites), non-glowy hands, and regular whitey-pink skin. I went to sit down but the sofas had no space, so I remained awkwardly leaning against the wall, acting as though I never intended to sit in the first place.

Most of them were younger than me, though a few were older; the only one who looked my age was Matthew. That’s why they paired us together most likely. When I looked around the room, most people had bags under their eyes and were giving me dirty looks. That may have been my fault; I tried to look as apologetic as I could. If they had not known about Matthew, they probably did now, though I didn’t realise I was that loud. I decided that I probably should not say anything.

“So, Matt, how long have you been a Mythic?” I asked out loud before I had finished my own thoughts. Dang.

“Since I was ten,” Matthew answered offhandedly like it was perfectly ordinary, his eyes not moving from the TV. “Can we talk about it later? Team T.G.W.P from Drakonsbain just killed an Alpha Drakon that was lurking near kingdom borders, and they actually caught some of it on camera.”

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

He then seemed to have a thought and looked over at me, with a slight curious look on his face, seemingly mumbling something. His hands started to glow and hum faintly. A rune-looking thing appeared above Mathew’s shoulder, disappearing as soon as I saw it. They then started looking at me strangely, mostly with confusion.

“What?” I asked defensively.

“How can you have eight different songs stuck in your head at the same time?” he asked, clearly confused. “They’re not even full songs. They’re mostly just the chorus or one section on loop.”

“Wait,” I thought, “is mind reading an aspect of his Legacy?”

“Yep,” Matthew answered without speaking.

His response made me jump as I wasn’t expecting the response.

“Would you mind not doing that?” I thought at him, assuming he could still hear me.

“OK, sorry.” He looked slightly guilty as he turned his attention back to the TV.

I left the room so I could come to terms with having a roommate who could tell what I was thinking twenty-four hours a day. I hope it’s not a passive ability.

***

Because there was nothing to do at this point in time, I decided to practise using my bronze RK gauntlets, Red Thunder, in the firing range next door. So that everyone has at least some protection against the Shade if any Mythics were not around, everyone is issued with at least a dagger at the age of fourteen, but they usually break within the first month of receiving them. I was one of the few people who had their own weapon in my class because I inherited it from my mum.

My ambition was to get into a training school such as Bellum or Paix, but I had not even awakened my aura, no matter how hard I trained. I failed the entrance exam twice. I probably should have reevaluated what I wanted to be, as it was almost impossible to train at one of the three kingdom schools to become a Mythic. Almost. The kingdom schools almost exclusively gain their students from the lower training schools.

I could ask Matt how he gained his aura, as I was probably doing something wrong, and he seemed to know how.

I thought about this as I was shooting at eight Draknid Shade targets, which were a dragon/spider hybrid with wolf fangs. Every shot hit. I quickly became distracted, as the targets didn’t require much effort; they were only stationary. Before long, I had demolished the target row and was already prepping up the next to repeat the process. After a while, even blowing things up became boring since I did it often enough.

The rest of the week went like this: I woke up, ate, and then practised. Everybody else was doing boring stuff like reading or watching the news. It just kept going on about the same old stories again and again, including the rumour that the terrorist group The Dark Flame had hired some unknown mercenaries.

It was made slightly more bearable by the fact that Matt trained with me some of the time as well. We talked, usually using telepathy because my gauntlets were too loud to talk verbally over. He didn’t have his own weapon, as his power allowed him to use some kind of glowing symbols, which he called runes instead.

“So, what are these rune things which are so powerful?” I asked after seeing him use a kinetic blast one, multiple times.

“Well, you know, coding with computers and stuff like that, well, it's a bit like that but for the universe. Anyone can use them if they can shape their aura. It's just that mine specialises in it, so it's easier for me to use them. I only know about five runes 'spells’ reliably, so it's not as powerful as you might think.” He’d obviously had to explain them quite a few times, judging by how rehearsed the explanation was.

“But still, with a power like that, why aren't you at one of the training schools? You'd be a shoo-in.” Mathew stopped firing at the target to give me a look, which even made me pause.

“You haven’t seen a Shade in real life, have you?” Mathew replied out loud after a long pause.

“Well, no,” I said apprehensively, feeling the shift in tone as we both shifted to speaking out loud. “But even if they're as scary as they say, I’m sure you'd get used to it, especially if you're constantly defeating them. It's like being a main character in a video game.”

“Except you and your friends can die permanently.” He said bluntly. I went back to shooting to mildly distract from his point.

“Well, yeah, but it'd be for a worthwhile cause as you'd be protecting people who couldn’t protect themselves, so they don’t die permanently, you know.” I shifted back to thoughts as it felt like they had less weight to me, “Plus, you get paid a lot, and you don’t even have to fight Shades. You could just do the acting part or work with the police; my mum did a lot of that before… you know.”

He gave a look before he went back to firing and replied mentally, “That's exactly my point; I do want to help protect people. I'm just not sure the personal cost is worth it.”

“I mean, we should probably change the subject as we’re kind of close to the wall, so why don’t you use the training stuff.”

“Well, I have daggers, but who needs long-range weapons when I have this.” He gestured to the impacts he’d left on the targets.

“Yeah, I guess you do have a point. Still think my gauntlets are cooler.”

The days after my first day followed a similar pattern as the first as I fell into a routine. I became at least alright friends with Mathew as we talked while we trained. It was weird how quickly his telepathy spell just became normal. He showed me a couple of other ‘spells’ on some of the days, mostly his ‘magic missile’ type spell, which just released a blast, and his shield spell, but he claimed most of the other ones he’d worked out had more niche applications.

Other than learning how Mathew’s Legacy worked, the routine was mostly the same as the other orphanages. That changed, though, when I was made to walk the dog.