Hadwyn inspected the boy, he was younger than Hadwyn, maybe 17 or 18, but Hadwyn was most interested in his skin color. First gen Aldarians were usually white, sometimes darker, yellowish-white, like people from the northeast, and extremely rarely, any black, or dark skin color. The most likely reason was he wasn’t a first gen. This was the conclusion that Hadwyn reached; this boy had been born from an Anvior, and obviously, an Aldarian parent.
“Dude, are you gonna answer me?” He threw up his hands. “Why are you messing with my stuff?”
“Your stuff was all over the goddamned floor!” He shot back. “Also, who the hell are you? Why’d you scratch off the serial number on the sword-”
“Scratch off?” He asked, looking offended. “I knew you were looking through my stuff! Also, no I didn’t scratch them off, Scratching them off the hilt doesn’t erase them from the memory bank. It’s a helluva lot harder to erase that! You gotta get-” He paused. “Actually, I was thinking the same thing, who are you?”
“Hadwyn.” Hadwyn replied, matter-of-a-factly. He was astonished by the fact that this guy hadn’t bothered to read the paper clamped onto the side of the door.
The guy scratched his head. “I’m Marco.”
“You're the new roommate huh?” Hadwyn asked. He stuck out his hand. No need to get off on the wrong foot.
Marco shook his hand.
The other room is an armory, why didn't you take that one?”
“Some dumbass took it first. He doesn't even use it for weapons!”
How’d you even get here late?
“Blademaster offered it to me. Naturally I accepted. Partially because of GOAG and partially because of the offerings.”
He stroked his chin. “I got recommended to, uhh… Iron Legion. Have you ever heard of those guys?”
“Nope.”
“Uh huh.”
Right at that moment, the bell tolled again. Hadwyn wasted no time, grabbing what little he owned and scrambling for the door. As he began to leave, he turned to look at Marco again.
“You don’t know where you’re supposed to be, do you?”
Marco shrugged sheepishly, which transformed to defensiveness quickly.
“And you do?”
“I sure hope so.”
Hadwyn jogged a good few meters ahead of Marco, he was leading the way, but also, because Marco was carrying a bag of swords with him, a bag of swords, literally.
Some of them tore up the hardwood floor. creating ugly marks. Hadwyn saw them when he went the wrong direction and had to turn back. He feared that Marco's bag would explode so much that he almost missed the damage done to the floor.
Eventually, they made it to the gymnasium.
Teresa and some other students were there. He realized he never got to thank Teresa, and sprinted towards her, but Peter interjected.
“Get in line.”
Hadwyn whirled back round and headed to the red line. Teresa and other students stood on the blue one. He managed to lock eyes with her, she didn’t say anything, but she nudged her head towards Peter like, listen to him!
“Alright, at ease. Get to know your neighbors, lessons start in 20.”
Hadwyn ran forward to Teresa as the line dispersed. He stuck out his hand. When she didn’t shake it immediately, he bowed.
She giggled, “I’m not Zyenurian.”
“I just wanted to say thank you for saving me from Dale.
Teresa coughed. No, thank you. That scruffy-ass cracker was causing us all sorts of trouble.
“Trouble? What kind?”
She stretched her arms out. “I used to do patrols with Peter,” She motioned to him, “But when the Aetlens finally allowed him to start training early… Well, let’s just say I’m glad to have a roof over my head.
“Me too.”
She laughed again, but then a serious tone spread across her face, “No offense, but I think Gahvin is kind of a shithole.”
Hadwyn shrugged. “Okay?”
She squinted. “Weren’t you born- I mean, Summoned in Gahvin?”
“I've visited Gahvin a few times, but I don’t know why you think that, I’ve lived in Graunvilk recently. I was summoned in the Ocean.”
“Like which coast? Rorin has beautiful beaches, you know. ”
“And beautiful bitches!” Marco exclaimed.
They shook their heads at Marco.
The other students ran forward. They shook hands and talked. The other nine students included Lars, Sophia, Ruby, Akoto, Balut.
The next 15 minutes went by in a blur, but Hadwyn got to know them a little bit.
Akoto was pretty nice.
Balut was rude and for some reason, seemed to hate Akoto.
Ruby was unusually religious (for an aldarian).
Sophia was shy and tried to avoid conversation.
Lars was a raging conspiracist.
Hadwyn actually got to know Lars pretty well. He had many different beliefs.
To start with the most crazy ones, He believed that the world was flat and that the Elves were right and Adonis lied, he believed that the Hand of Gods were evil and killed Adonis. But the last one was most interesting; He was a firm Halonar believer,
Hadwyn didn’t know much about the Halonar. The Halonar was a somewhat religious figure that existed before even Adonis and the Aldarians.
Lars chuckled upon Hadwyn’s confusion. “Man, they didn’t teach you that at school?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, my mom used to read stories about the Halonar to me. And I'm pretty sure there’s a book in the library somewhere about it. You should go read it.”
Peter yelled. “Alright, line up! Silence!”
He adjusted his uniform, which was now chain mail and a chain mail scarf.
“Today you are going to learn the foundation of what you as an Aldarian! Each of you have rudimentary abilities, whether you have awakened them on your own is irrelevant. Because here at this session you will maximize your flow output.”
Hadywn saw the confusion spread across their faces.
Peter grunted. “Flow is something not all Aldarians know about. The Guilds will not teach you what we teach you. Guilds claimed that flow is random. That is not entirely true. Maximum potential is random, but possession of flow is not. You as an Aldarian will always have flow.”
“Raise your hand if you have rudimentary abilities that you identify as such.”
A few hands shot up. Lars, Balut, and Teresa.
Peter jerked his thumb, go to the wall, I will have a separate lesson for you.
They went to the wall he pointed at. Peter turned back to the other group.
“Raise your hand if you never practiced flow.”
Hadwyn raised his hand, as did Marco, Akoto, Sophia, and Ruby.
“You have permission to speak, Marco, Akoto, Hadwyn, and Ruby.”
Hadwyn spoke first, “What is flow, exactly?”
Peter raised an eyebrow. “I think it's best If I show you a diagram.”
Peter produced a piece of chalk and began to scribble on the wall with the trough built into the baseboards. He began drawing different symbols, he produced many dyed chalks, and soon the board looked like this:
“I can draw better than that.” Marco muttered. Hadwyn was surprised that Peter didn’t hear him.
Peter turned around. “There are many different parts of an Aldarian,” he explained, laying the chalk on the sill.
Hadwyn secretly wondered if Peter would start beating Marco with the stick, but he tapped it against the black board instead.
He picked up a stick also on the sill and smacked it against his hand like he was going to hit one of them with it. Probably Marco. Hadwyn thought.
“Before you begin doing anything remotely involving using magic, emitters, and such, you need to have a basic understanding of the rudimentary abilities of an aldarian.” He continued. He adjusted his grip on the stick and used it to point at the red lines. Before we talk about any of the other colors, we’re gonna talk about red.
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“Man, I hate red, why can’t we talk about blue?” Marco snickered.
Hadwyn wanted to elbow Marcus, but Peter turned around at that moment and addressed them.
“Those red lines you see there? Those are flow veins.”
Akoto raised his hand. Peter nodded.
“What exactly is flow, sir?”
Peter pointed back at the red lines. “It's… complicated. We don’t understand how it works… but we do know what it does and how to activate and use it.”
Hadwyn raised his hand.
“Yes Hadwyn?”
“So the red one is flow?”
“Correct.”
Hadwyn was going to ask what flow was. But he realized that Peter would probably explain it in a couple of minutes, so he stopped talking.
Peter looked around the room with mild annoyance to see if anyone else had questions, then he continued.
“Flow allows you to materialize energy called flow. The energy comes from the center of your body, which we will go over later, but almost your entire body is covered in flow veins. The flow veins are different from your blood vessels, they carry pure energy instead of blood.
He looked at the nervous crowd. “But, I know what you’ve been told at your schools; that pure mana is dangerous And you are correct, but this is note pure mana, its pure energy, the foundation for mana. Like I said, we don’t know exactly how it works.”
We? Why does he keep saying we…?
“But we do know that somewhere in your body, your brain tells your veins to create mana, and of course, essence is the name of this energy, and it is what you get from slaying a living creature. Every living thing has essence, but not everything can transform that essence into mana, Aldarians are one of the few races that can do such things.”
He smiled. “Have you heard of the language of the limbs?”
Everybody shook their heads.
“Alright, lets get on with the lesson then.”
“He put his arms. First, you need to activate your flow, and in order to do that, we need to jumpstart it.”
He produced a roll of copper wire from his bag. “You know, the oldest teachers who guarded this secret until we learned of it, used to use lightning to do what we’re about to do, but luckily, we have a less painful way of doing it. “
Then he pulled out another item that aroused a gasp from the line of students.
Ball lighting.
Ball lightning was a legendary item, it could be used to craft legendary weapons by smelting it. There were only a few hundred in existence.
“The plan was to tie some of you to the flagpole to get you charged up.” thunder struck outside right at that moment, causing the pupils to flinch. “But I managed to persuade them to give us one of these.”
Hadwyn wasn’t paying attention to the ball like everyone else, he was more fixated on Peter’s words. Who was “they”?
“Now, if you want to activate your flow, " he said, twisting the ball, “You need to have you limbs touching all the wires.”
Peter attached four of the wires and the ends were exposed.
“Now, who wants to go first?”
Akoto went first.
Peter attached two wires to his feet, and held the other wires away from Akoto.
“Hit these wires at the same time, Akoto.” Peter ordered.
Akoto raised his hands.
“Wait! Make sure you hit them with your palms.” Peter warned.
Akoto looked confused, but followed his orders, he threw both of his hands down, slapping the ends of the wires with the back of his hands. His body seized for a second, but he stepped back and inspected his limbs.
“Good, now before I jumpstart the rest of you, I want you to use Akoto as an example.” He turned to Akoto.
“Akoto, try to block my punch.”
Before Akoto could respond, Peter swung at Akoto, who managed to block it, but clutched his arms in pain.
Peter turned to the rest of them. “Akoto blocked my attack with 100% of his body.” He turned back to Akoto, who rubbed his arms. “Now, cross your arms Akoto.” He pointed to the board. “Imagine those red lines inside you, coursing through every part of your body, transporting energy. Imagine those lines when you cross your arms Akoto, when you feel concentrated, block my punch the same way you did.”
Akoto crossed his arms. He clenched his eyes shut, like trying to imagine the red lines. “I’m ready,” he announced after a few moments.
Peter threw another punch, one Hadwyn swore was much stronger and aggressive.
Akoto blocked the punch like last time, but something different happened.
When the punch came in contact with Akoto, a small spark was created and Akoto didn’t get knocked back. Peter relaxed his position, and Akoto was looking even more confused.
“Akoto, do you feel any pain?”
“No.”
Peter turned to the line of students. “What did you think of that? You have permission to speak.”
Marco faked a yawn. That was boring as hell, man. I've hit harder than that.
Peter smiled, “Well Marco, I was trying not to seriously injure Akoto. It seems that none of you were impressed by my attack, so I have decided to show you what flow can actually do.”
He put both of his hands out. “Do you want me to give a demonstration, or do you want to fight me?”
There was murmuring. No one in the room wanted to fight Peter. Some of the students considered that maybe Teresa or Balut could fight Peter, but they wouldn’t win. Besides, when Hadwyn heard that Teresa, the same woman who dislocated Dale’s jaw with just one punch, wouldn't last a minute with the seemingly tired and non-violent Peter, he decided that if for some reason, the group thought they could fight Peter, he wouldn’t participate. Marco and Lars thought for some reason they would be able to fight Peter. The vote ended 3:2
“We want a demonstration.” Akoto announced.
Peter nodded. “Very well.”
Suddenly, a man walked into the room. He wore a messenger uniform.
He made a beeline for Peter.
The messenger stopped and handed him a letter. “From Eisenhauer.” He stated, then he left the room.
When the messenger was gone, Peter shoved the letter into his pocket and resumed teaching.
“Now, I want you to take those bricks over there,” Peter pointed to a darker part of the room, Hadwyn squinted. “And build a structure of some kind. It can be a pile or whatever you want, but don’t put in too much effort, because I will be destroying it for a demonstration.”
Hadwyn and the others began to take the bricks and pile them. “Right over there.” Peter reminded them.
Marco hated lifting the brick, and tried to refuse, but when Hadwyn casually mentioned the scratched off serial numbers as a joke, Marco began piling on bricks like his life depended on it.
In the end it wasn’t impressive. Akoto had studied architectural design in college, but even he gave up and went with the pile idea. Hadwyn made changes to this bricklaying plan. Because a pile of bricks would remind him too much of the situation back in his dorm. What they got was a neatly stacked pile of bricks that would probably be annihilated within the next few minutes.
When they returned, Peter looked unimpressed. “If I was an art teacher, I would have flunked all of you. But since I don’t care about your art skills I’m fine with it.” Though Hadwyn could tell he wasn’t fine with it.
“Alright, is everyone watching?”
They all nodded.
Peter crossed his arms. Then Hadywn saw something weird, a flicker of energy around Peter.
Peter moved his hands really fast, then he sprinted towards the brick stack. Everyone, including the other team, watched with awe. He jumped, reaching almost the ceiling far above, and drove his fists down.
The bricks were smashed to smithereens in a blast of power.
Peter sprinted back. “Who wants to go next?”
Everyone wanted to go next.
And everyone did. But when it was Hadwyn’s turn, his flow didn’t activate. So Peter tried again and again, until Hadwyn’s feet and fingers went numb. Everyone stared and murmured.
Why him…?
Something is wrong with him.
Why didn’t It work?
So Hadwyn stood there, absorbing the lesson. The next day, Peter tried again.
Then the next.
And the next.
And the next.
Then another week passed.
Hadwyn opened up his new journal, and with a lead stick, he began to write to memorize moves. He looked at the guidebook for reference.
Marco was sleeping in the bunk above, so Hadwyn tried to tune out the noise.
Hadwyn practiced the flow in his room.
It still didn’t work.
Why? Every other student had been able to use flow, but he hadn’t.
He flipped furiously through the pages of the textbook, trying to see if there was anything he might have missed.
He shut it when he found nothing. It was the middle of the night, and he had made no progress. Even Marco, who insisted he didn’t need it. Tomorrow, he would be practicing with Peter again.
As he slid the book away, another caught his eye. In his bag, there was a book titled: The Halonar.
He remembered when Lars told him about the Halonar, and how he insisted Hadwyn should read it.
Had Lars snuck the book in his bag?
It didn’t matter. Hadwyn wasn’t interested. No one knew if the Halonar even existed, there was no physical evidence.
So Hadwyn went to sleep that night, unsuccessful yet again.
The next day, he went to Peter early. He asked Peter why he didn’t have flow.
“Why don’t I have it? Why Peter?”
Peter shook his head solemnly. “You do have it. But the ball lightning wasn’t enough to activate it, I suppose.”
Hadwyn grumbled. “There has to be a way. There just has to be.”
“Maybe the shock did work, and your flow hasn’t quite started up yet.”
But Hadwyn knew. He knew that for the first time, Peter didn’t actually know whether Hadwyn’s flow was activated. His only ticket to becoming greater than he ever was, was gone.
When the other students came along, they were taken outside. It was pouring.
It had been almost two weeks since Hadwyn joined, and he swore Peter was getting more and more aggressive with them.
“You will be running this entire obstacle course! The last person to finish has to go to the top of that flagpole and stay there for a full minute! If you can’t do it, I will make you do it!”
So they stood out in the field, drenched in rain. Waiting for the whistle to blow.
The obstacles ahead flashed in the lightning.
The whistle blew.
Hadwyn ran as fast as he could.
Lightning flashed.
Hadwyn jumped over the first beam. He nearly tripped over the second and climbed over the third.
Hadwyn was first… to fall.
He tripped on the fourth beam. Teresa was in the distance, she was in first place, jumping over beams and climbing fences. The rest of the students went far ahead.
Hadwyn kept running, he eventually got to a wall so tall, he caught up with the others.
This is it!
Hadwyn began to climb the fence, lightning flashed again.
YOU CAN’T DO IT.
Yes I can!
He slipped, but a hand caught him from falling.
Teresa.
She had come back to help him.
She pulled him up, and then the test was over.
Hadwyn was the last one to finish.
Peter came over to him.
“Hadwyn, get up that flag pole!”
So Hadwyn climbed the pole, he felt angry, cheated of a life he could have had.
So when he got to the top, one thought ran through his mind.
I won’t let this happen…
The rain was getting more aggressive now. It hit him hard against the face.
“Alright, Hadwyn you can come down now!”
But Hadwyn didn’t come down. Instead he waited.
Peter realized what he was trying to do, and so did everyone else.
“Hadwyn! Get down, you don’t know what you're doing!”
But Hadwyn didn’t care.
“HADWYNNNNN!!!”
Suddenly, Hadwyn felt a jolt. He had been struck. And he fell from the flagpole.