“And so, I fall. Let my final words be thus; end this war, and seek peace amongst yourselves, for no nation should suffer as ours has”

Last words of Weaver-Queen Marianna, seconds before her desintegration by means of elemental backlash, and minutes before the end of the Blue War.

Time flew by, and the next thing he knew, he was on the way towards Mendrich Academy. It was a simple choice, really; they were the undisputed number one institute of scholarship when it came to will weaving. At least, thats what the brochure said. He still had no idea how they had managed to creat a piece of paper that dissapeared the moment you finish reading it. Highly potent Weaving, no doubt.

Sitting in his seat on the train, Savas looked outside and looked at the green plains occasionally encompassing a field of grain. He was a long way from home. The landscape was beautiful, with the golden crops planted all along the train tracks shining in the sun like his own hair. Maybe not quite that much; his was a dirty blonde at best. Morin, however, had inherited their mothers hair color in its entirety.

The area near Gatestone was not nearly as pleasant to look at, with rocky outcroppings and snowy summers. Learning that Gatestones economy was largely based on tourism still confounded him; how could someone actually enjoy the grey skies of the south? He supposed he was somewhat biased; the landscape could be quite beautiful to someone who had not spent his entire life there. Thinking of home and his mother sent a pang of sadness through him.

It hadn’t always been only Morin and him. In fact, even after their mother had left them, he was more or less adopted by the town as a whole. Of course, it didn’t make up for a missing parent. Savas curiously wondered what she was doing nowadays. Hopefully she was happy. That did not apply to Father, though. With any luck, the rat bastard was currently rotting in a ditch somewhere.

Realising that he was quite quickly getting depressed, Savas thought about the Academy. Really, calling the ten most prestigious schools Academies with a capital A was ridiculously pretentious. Come to think of it, most of the important names in the republic were exceedingly pretentious. The Capital, The Chancellor, The Headmasters, The Overweaver…man, the Republic really had a boner for capitalising names, didn’t it? With the possible exception of The Overweaver (which sounded objectively cool) the names were definitely compensating for something.

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Prestige, politics and all that. Savas had no intention to get involved in politics. Not due to a lack of interest in the betterment of the Keiran Republic, or an overall contentment in his station, but rather that the politics of the area were a confusing mess.

A rather famous example was the city of Hradek. The Pernician Empire, the Keiran Republic, and the Eastern League all had a claim on the city. In order to not have a repeat of the Blue War months after the last, they had split the city into 3 districts managed by representatives from each nation. Last he had heard, the city was in open rebellion after citizens stopped being allowed to pass from district to district.

With a sigh, Savas realised that he was getting nowhere with his negative thoughts. Thinking about politics was definitely a step down from thinking about his broken family. Basically everything was a step up from politics, but that was beside the point.

He was being needlessly dramatic. This was the beginning of a new life! He would finally be able to achieve his dream of a lifetime; tossing people with his mind. Or hands, if he learned to use the Life Element. As much as he had disliked studying for his exams, reading and learning about things, especially Weaving, was very appealing to him.

He supposed he was born for it, in a way. He had only heard of people Awakening as soon as he did in legends or state propaganda. Some of the older people in the town had even hailed his talent as a gift from the gods! Disregarding the actual possibility of gods existing, there's an interesting thought experiment; could sufficiently powerful weavers influence the age of Awakening? Hell, everyone knows theres some relation between intelligence and potency in Weaving. Could a particularily powerful Mind or Life Weaver influence the mind of a child to turn them into a prodigy? Could he have been the result of such an experiment?

A thought for another time. If he was an experiment gone rogue he could worry about that when he wasnt on a train. For now, he took a thick tome with a leather cover out of his bag. His brother had suggested simply buying a normal book, without mystical markings and nonsensical glyphs, but he couldn’t deny his more dramatic desires. Plus, the title was far better than "Basics of Will-Weaving" or something boring like that. Shame even the obviously cultured author fell to the depravation that is capitalisation. Huh. That rhymed. Savas considered becoming a poet, before deciding that the world was not yet worthy tobe graced with his silver tongue, and went to sleep.