Jay entered the Gemstone Council’s building with no care for his life, walking straight into the meeting room. He entered the massive room, finding the seats completely full with talking Gemstones, Diamond at the bottom, facing them. As Jay entered, the room went quiet, and as one, they all turned to him. “The one being groomed for Onyx?”

“What brings him here?”

“We should kick him out.”

Jay stepped into the room. “Hello. Is Onyx here?,” he asked the closest Gemstone to him, a man wearing an unidentifiable white crystal.

The councilor nodded. “Hello, Onyx-candidate. Diamond has actually challenged Onyx to a battle, which is the only reason we’re all here.” He snorted. “If there wasn’t a good show to watch most of us’d be gone.”

Jay nodded. “I’ll wait, then.”

“Suit yourself.”

A deep darkness appeared in the center of the room, turning into a swirling portal which Onyx stepped through. “I received notice that you challenged me.”

Diamond nodded. “You’re getting older, and I will not stand by this insult. We last battled a century ago. I have gotten stronger. Make way for the new generation and stand down, Onyx.”

Onyx shrugged. “All I care about is that you challenged me. Let’s go right here?”

Diamond nodded, rushing at Onyx before anyone had announced a fight to start. An orange barrier appeared around them as the Gemstones looked on. Most of them cheered for Onyx, but a rare few were rooting for Diamond.

Diamond rushed Onyx, who stood still, unmoving. Diamond punched Onyx, who swayed to the side and brought a knee up, driving it through Diamond’s face. Jay winced, expecting the fight to be over-

Diamond fractured, suddenly appearing somewhere else, uninjured. A titanic fist appeared behind him, driving forward with his next punch. Onyx caught the massive fist, twisting and ripping it out of the air-revealing ripped flesh at the end, as if it’d come out of a giant’s socket-before smashing it into Diamond’s head.

Jay looked more closely, and he saw the entire world fracture for a moment before something else was suddenly happening. Diamond was in front of Onyx, a spear rushing for Onyx’s chest. Onyx grabbed it, pulling Diamond into his own fist.

The world fractured once more, and Diamond appeared back on his side of the arena, panting. Onyx stood tall, looking slightly bored. “Did you really think I revealed any of my abilities to you in our last duel?”

Diamond roared, charging again. The world fractured, and a meteor appeared above the arena. Onyx sighed. “I’d hoped you’d moved past these petty tricks.”

The meteor crashed into the arena, and it was suddenly gone. A pit was now in its place, with Onyx tapping his foot at the bottom. “Fix the arena, will you?”

Diamond floated above him, his eyes wild with rage. He flew down, strike after strike hammering Onyx, who flowed between them without a problem. Diamond yelled, a glistening white sheen covering his body. Onyx nodded. “Finally. That’s what I’ve wanted to see. Here you are, Diamond, Leader of the Gemstone Council.”

A strike finally pushed Onyx a step back, the sheer power cracking the barrier. Onyx’s eyes flicked towards it, and tendrils of darkness crept up the barrier, reinforcing it. Diamond glowed brighter and brighter, until he was simply a white light teleporting around the arena.

Then the world fractured again.

Diamond was back, now holding a glistening spear. White light condensed into it and he raised the spear as if it was a javelin. “DIE, ONYX!”

Diamond tossed the spear at Onyx, and it disappeared into a beam of white light, crossing the distance in a blink of an eye. He stood apart from Onyx, still in a spear-throwing position while Onyx stood, robes unruffled, the spear held back by a single finger. Diamond fell to his knees. “Now, this duel is over. Can you repair the arena, please? I have mentoring to do.”

With that, Onyx walked out of the arena, stepping over to the wide-eyed Jay. “You’ll get as strong as Diamond in not too long. He’s not terribly powerful. Now, gather up all your friends and we can have a session.”

The four of them stood in front of Onyx, who seemed to be in a brooding mood. “I said I’d come by every once in a while, not for you to seek me out, because you probably won’t find me. I can’t be here all the time. Cool?”

Jay nodded. “Alright.”

Onyx nodded. “So, have all of you gone to your first class of a School?”

They all nodded. “Which ones?”

Crystal spoke first. “The School of Thought.”

Catherine went next. “Song.”

Drake spoke up. “I went for Aura.”

“Change.”

Onyx raised a hand. “Very well. I must tell you I am of the School of Change, not Thought as I stated before. I just taught Jay, in fact. Now, for our first brief lesson. All of you have at least one affinity. Manifest it. Not just normally, bu through your school”

A flame burned in Jay’s palm as he released Fire Mana to it. A sudden darkness grew in Drake’s cupped hands. Jay clearly felt the strands of Dominion commanding the world to summon the ball of darkness. Catherine summoned a floating ball of water, Singing softly, and Crystal summoned an arc of electricity between two fingers. Her Will was almost palpable. Onyx nodded. “I suspect you’ll be learning this in your classes, but what is the purpose of your elements? Eternity, you first.”

“To burn.”

Onyx nodded. “Good. Depths.”

“To flow.”

“Good. Memory.”

“To move.”

Drake didn’t wait for Onyx to call him. “To hide or devour.”

Onyx nodded. Before he continued, Jay spoke again. “I’m Jay.”

“I’m Drake.”

“I’m Crystal.”

“I’m Catherine.”

Onyx slowly nodded. “I didn’t expect a name reveal just yet, but this makes it easier. So, what if you keep your element’s purpose, but change its nature, just slightly? For example, fire.” He pointed at Jay. “What if you made it burn heat and release cold? It still burns. It’s still fire.”

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Jay nodded, trying to change the method in which his fire worked. For a moment, it turned an icy blue, sucking in heat, before he let it disappear. Onyx nodded. “Good.”

Drake’s darkness migrated to the ground, which slowly disappeared, revealing a hole. Onyx nodded to him. Catherine’s water tinged green, revitalizing the ground wherever it touched it. She got a nod as well. Crystal’s fire became frostfire, much like Jay’s, and her lightning changed to a deep red, sparking angrily between her hands. Onyx clapped his hands.

“Good! You’re all far better at this than any normal person, which I quite expected because, well, you held up that well against me. Most people would spend around a week getting their elements to cooperate, if they even figured out what they wanted to create. You just up and did it!” Onyx continued, tapping his foot once. “Normally, Gifted practice one or maybe two additional types of their element, and hold themselves to that, for they simply do not have time to do more. You can create new ones on the fly, if you ever need them. That’s a good quality to have.”

Onyx turned around, looking at the sky. “That’s all the time I have, sorry. I don’t doubt you’ll all learn this in your third year, but this is an excellent introduction to such. Especially since it’s a bad idea to stay for a full three years. Goodbye.”

Onyx faded away, as if he’d never existed, and the group looked at each other. “Experimentation?,” Crystal asked, looking giddy.

Catherine grew an evil smile. “Experimentation.”

Just so you know, it’s never good when two girls agree with each other while wearing these expressions.

Jay gulped. Noted.

Another round of electricity coursed through Jay, and he barely suppressed a wince. Crystal wrote another note down. “It seems this type of water carries electricity in the direction it flows rather than wherever it wants to go.”

Another shock hit him, and this time, the wince came out. “Right now, he should be screaming in pain,” Catherine noted. “But that’s an experiment for another time.”

Jay was standing in the center of the training room, being doused by water, shocked by lightning, and burnt by different types of fire repeatedly. Even Drake joined in with his darkness every once in a while. Whenever he tried to escape, the girls would corner him with evil glints in their eyes and simply start practicing again. Luckily, it didn’t hurt that much.

Drake had escaped the torture by pointing to Jay and telling Catherine and Crystal that Jay would be able to better handle the pain, what with having his heart ripped out. As he’d done so, Jay had gazed deep into his eyes and proclaimed vengeance.

A blaze of acid-green fire started. It ate through his skin and muscle, just starting on his bones when a healer from the audience restored it all. It didn’t hurt very much. You’re used to pain, since you’ve been through so much of it. That’s why it doesn’t hurt. Anyone else, as the girls said, would be rolling around, trying to stop the pain.

Jay nodded. “When’s it my turn?”

Catherine started laughing. “You don’t get a turn. We experiment on you and then Crystal helps you with more types of fire afterwards.”

Jay nodded. Well, I just have to wait here I guess.

The girls blinked at the lack of resistance, shrugged as one, and started again.

Ruby stared at the girls dumping water on Jay before setting him on fire, all while he looked completely unbothered. As they continued to do so, he lit up, seeing Ruby and waving to him. Ruby waved back, mystified. “Is he using some kind of pain nullification?,” he asked the student that had reported the occurrence to him.

The student shook his head, clearly horrified by the amount of blood he’d seen. “A healer dude in the crowd offered, but he refused. He’s just been fine this entire time.”

Ruby nodded. “Well, I have to do my duty as a teacher. YOU OKAY OVER THERE?,” he shouted at Jay.

When he received the double thumbs up, he nodded and left. “Blasted students. Keep calling me over for useless things,” Ruby muttered as he walked away. The crowd once again grew larger, watching this event.

Jay nodded to Drake. “Hey.”

Drake nodded back, covering his hand in darkness which immediately ate through it. “This hides your hand from existence, so your hand slowly stops existing as the darkness eats through it. I could just go into the devouring aspect, but this is more fun.”

Jay nodded. “Cool. This would probably incapacitate someone with pain.”

Drake nodded, retracting his darkness and walking away. “You guys should sleep now.”

Crystal turned around. The crowd was gone, and darkness was visible outside the door. “Wait, the healer’s gone?”

“Since when?,” Jay asked.

“Probably for a while,” Catherine noted. “How are you still healing?”

Jay looked at the wound Drake had created and noticed a small stream of energy heading towards it. “Wait a moment.”

He followed the stream, watching it fray into three parts. One end led to a droplet of blood. Another led to a chunk of flesh, and the last led to a piece of bone. The energy came from his Mana, which had been slowly trickling away. “I’ve been using Blood, Flesh, and Bone unconsciously.”

Catherine turned to him. “Show us!”

He molded the bones in his hand into a spike, connecting it with his forearm bones. Then he thrusted his hand out, and a spike of bone pierced through his palm. Jay let a larger stream of energy flow into it, and it increased in size, as long as a spear. You don’t need to do any of that with me around.

Jay nodded, retracting the bones into his body and reshaping them. “It’s a healing tool and a defensive thing, I suppose. Bone’s not very useful on its own. But the three of them together, blood, bone and flesh… I bet I could do some crazy things with them.”

Crystal gained a mad gleam in her eye. “EXPERIMENTS!”

Jay shook his head. “Not right now, it’s too late. And besides, why are you so excited? Wouldn’t I be using my abilities on others?”

Crystal shook her head. “We’d be hurting you and seeing how well you can recover!”

Jay sighed. “Let’s just go to sleep.”

Diamond sat at his desk. “You’re telling me he just stood there and took all of that, with no pain, no retaliation, or anything. And the person healing him had to be taken to the infirmary halfway through, because he’d used too much Will, and Jay just kept healing?”

The spy reporting nodded. “Yes, Lord Diamond.”

“Call Gold. Tell him we have a problem. The war needs to start before the kid gets too strong.”

“I can call him right now and let you discuss, if that pleases you, Lord Diamond?”

Diamond nodded. “Do it.”

The spy pulled out a metal plate. It shivered, a face appearing in it. “Diamond. Nice to see you. How’s it going?”

Diamond got straight to the point. “We have a problem. There’s a kid-no, actually, a group of kids, who are a problem here. If they get strong enough, the Metallic Council is screwed if it attacks. We have to attack now or not at all.”

Gold smiled. “Are you strong enough to take on Onyx, son?”

Diamond shook his head. “No. I’m not even sure that Platinum can take him on.”

“That’s why you, me, and Platinum are going to team up and assassinate him in the middle of nowhere. He just went on another mission. I am the one who posted that mission.”

Diamond nodded. “Father. What if we call Elena and tell her killing Onyx is the favor we’re calling in?”

“This is why you’re my son, Diamond. I’ll go call her right now.”

Gold’s face disappeared, and Diamond nodded to the spy. “Leave.”

The spy disappeared briefly afterwards. A massive smile stretched across Diamond’s face. Onyx against Elena. Onyx, the strongest of this world, and Elena, the strongest of this galaxy. Finally, he’d gotten rid of Onyx.

The world fractured, and Diamond was gone.

Far away, Onyx looked up to the sky. “The mission’s gone. This was a trap. No matter.”

Then his eyes widened as he sensed a power he would recognize anywhere. “Elena?”

The world fractured, and suddenly he was staring her down, with three people standing behind her. “I’m sorry, Onyx, but I have to do this. Debts, you know.”

Onyx sighed. “I know. You don’t have to tell me. But I’m sorry as well, Elena. My life, you know.”

The smile only he could coax out of her appeared. “Very well then. Let’s go.”