First Halo of Ciazel,

City of Atera,

Hall of Eons

-Four Days Later-

Strolling into their designated study room an hour before noon, Val stopped a step after the doorframe. The volume inside the room hit her with the force of a train, uncharacteristically loud. Caro’s booming voice competed against the boys’ low-pitched cheers and—get this—Val sighted no signs of an argument? Moments before she believed she entered a sheen or a mind trap of some sort, she studied the screen hovering above the metal desk. Really now…

Someone in Hammer Squad—she placed her bets on Caro—managed to set up a racing game on the IBR interface, and the table now registered their rapid swipes, taps, and swirls on its surface as inputs inside the software.

Otis clenched his straw hat in unabated fright on one side of the desk, and the other guys not only shared similar demeanours, but identical hats. Where he stored three of the same straw hat and why he dished it out to them might forever be a mystery to Val. However, it appeared to be the determining factor on who was on which team since Caro and Lenson, quite conveniently, sported matching dark-blue clothing—the latter in an oversized crew neck and the former in a breezy dress.

Val huffed a silent laugh as she moved to grab a seat, content to simply watch Lenson thoroughly crush Nightingale, to both Jesal’s and Otis’ dismay. He might’ve possessed the reflexes of an agile cat, but Lenson harboured the foresight of a skilled diviner. I’ve got to remember to ask her how it works.

Several fake fireworks went off as Lenson’s character crossed the finish line in record time, to both Jesal’s and Otis’ dismay. They slumped into their clothing and gave Nightingale a few placating pats on the shoulder as his face darkened to a dangerous degree. Caro carried on heedlessly, shaking the Support’s shoulders in glee. Her happiness, contagious as it always was, infected Lenson by way of a growing smirk, only broadening as her partner flipped around to the losing side and stretched out a hand.

“Pay up,” Caro demanded. “Ten infinitesimal remnants, all of you. Or the bill equivalent. I’m not picky.”

Rummaging through the fanny pack strapped across his chest, Jesal shot the girls a good-natured glare. “I thought this was Kyles’ first time playing.”

Lenson gave a small shrug as if to say she was just as lost as the rest of them.

“What do you know, she’s a natural,” Caro laughed, skipping from teammate to teammate to collect her due.

Magus Kane chose that instance to make his entrance, striding for his normal spot at the end of the metal desk. Jesal worked quickly to close the app while everyone else—save for Lenson, who always managed to stay ahead of the curve—scurried to one seat or the other.

The Magus panned his gaze around the room and his lips began twitching at the spectrum of expressions across the table. Val could only imagine his thoughts as he compared the beaming Strikers and Support to the latter half of the team. “Though you are still on your suspension—” six bodies deflated at the news “—I am going to continue your lessons.”

“Fine with us,” Otis answered for everyone. Not even Nightingale protested against his proactive response. I mean, who would say no to free training?

Magus Kane nodded his approval. “Today, you are going to start learning the intricacies of breathing techniques.”

“And are we ever going to use our artifacts?”

“Patience remains a virtue, Hayes,” Kane didn’t hesitate to answer. “As you may have noticed amongst yourself, your breathing techniques are oddly similar. There remain two things to achieve: gather aether, and weave said energy into your AV to strengthen it. Correct?”

Half a dozen nods across the board affirmed his presumption.

“These are handed to Novices as a foundation in your understanding,” he said. “Very soon, you’ll be given manuals that’ll put your elements and, for some, your fighting style at the crux of your breathing techniques. This way, not only do you enhance your ASC, you grow to understand the specificity of your elements while raising your affinity.”

“That is a lot of change,” Caro pointed out.

“It is,” he agreed. “It’ll be taken step by step, just as we will proceed this afternoon.”

“Alrighty,” Jesal said from beside Caro. “We’re ready.”

Kane took his comment in all seriousness. “I want you to call your elements. Use the frame form if it’s concrete, and express if it’s abstract. If the resource is already here–” a pointed look at Lenson and Nightingale “—then invoke it. Nothing more than a fistful, if you please.”

“If we have multiple elements, sir?” Lenson asked. Val tried her best to mask her frown as several gazes flickered to and fro between the two. Here sat the only person on the team who possessed a singular element, unluckily placed beside the sole mage in the area who awakened as a tri-bound.

“I said call your elements. Plural,” he replied. “Do it simultaneously.”

That’s one less thing for me to worry about, Val mused, going right ahead. She recalled the first frame she learned under Magus Hawke during her trainee days. It came as easy to her as playing a triad chord on the guitar and in a heartbeat, the light-blue ensign beckoned. A smooth, unblemished coldsteel orb rested in her palm, its skin massively less frigid than it had been the first go-around. Curious.

Beside her, Lenson urged the occasional soft breeze into existence to twirl an ice diamond above her open, her third element, divination, as invisible as it always seemed. Otis balanced a pentagon-shaped, jade plate on his lap while a ball of pulsing, yellow light took dilatory laps in a halo over his head. In different versions, the same picture was replicated opposite the IBR-connected desk, with Jesal seemingly the only Novice without a single apparent element to speak of.

For Magus Kane to proceed with his lecture, though, it must’ve been summoned in a sufficient manner. “Despite what they try to sell to you on the internet,” he said, “elements are not just a power to command. It’s something that lives and breathes in a different form. It has qualities. If you look hard enough, you notice that the wielder holds the same ones. Ever notice that air mages are curt and straight to the point, or that fire mages are perhaps too passionate?

“There is a reason behind those connections. No two Elemental Gates are the same. Likewise, every mage is unique. So, Novices, study your element. Which parts of your being did your elemental force resonate with? Why? Ruminate on these questions exhaustively. When you meditate, do not solely focus on building as you keep feeding aether into your spell. Focus on connecting.”

This meditative exercise was a long time coming.

You see, Val liked to believe she understood herself better than most her age. She had an ear for the musical arts, appreciated the simple and grew fond of unweaving the complex. Give her a book, and she’d be A-okay. Brew her a cup of coffee and you’d befriend her for life. Comfortable was a home she took everywhere—quite to her detriment, as she was realizing. I’m working on it. Like it or not, though, that was her.

Where the heck do you fit a metal like coldsteel in that description? A hard, heat-stealing, unbreakable element that carried the toughest parts of both ice and forged iron? To bind to such a polar force of nature… It almost felt like a lie. And maybe it was, in some form, a lie. Before all else, she tethered to the Metal Gate itself and its many ensigns. Could that be where the disconnect lay, or—

Let’s focus on the task at hand, Val told herself, cutting off her train of thought before she fell down a spiral she couldn’t return from. Nevertheless, she was getting tired of these arcane tasks without a step, direction, or a finish line in sight. As most could probably guess, her road to true Apprenticeship had gone nowhere in the past couple days. She neither inscribed an able rune, sighted an avenue of possible growth or even had a clue if she was progressing in the right direction. Go figure.

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Be that as it may, she—literally—beheld a hint this time around. In her palm rested a Glazen orb that she conjured. Her mind eased into the cycle of her timed breaths. In. Hold. Out. This time, though, she tagged on a fourth step to the process, one she never thought would come in handy.

Observe.

The flickering ensign within throbbed with her every exhale, and pulsed during her extended inhales. Circulating aether around her body, pinning her concentration on her element, she found it. The similarity.

Within her pliable personality, within the doting-but-harsh sister and whatever else coexisted underneath her exterior form, she nestled a kernel. Small, tiny, practically invisible—but it was there.

That stone-cold resolve she dug into whenever things became too unbearable for the coffee-loving Val to handle—she could visualize it as this core sitting in her gut. When she tumbled in the depthless darkness of the Tripartite Trial’s second exam and that very first step she took after the revelation of Life’s Hymn, it was there.

She took another breath.

It was there and, month by month, it invaded her reality in such a subtle way, she hardly noticed. Her rekindled desire to grab onto the branch to the next height, the simply joy she reaped in improving herself in the smallest degrees, and the peace she discovered in cultivation stemmed from that kernel. What ever happened for settling for what she received?

The intense duality dwelling at her core felt so obvious, now that she perceived it. Comfort and growth, fear and advancement… cowardliness and courage—these attributes fought to see daylight within. Not any longer.

She needed to do away with the Valory that came out of those years after Deduction Day. To not forget the dread and change and hurt, but reforge it into metal she could carry to both her internal and external fights alike. As of right now, it dragged along at the heels of her feet, elongating her every pause and casting a shadow on every positive.

Finally, the connection to a well of strength buried away inside—a piece of her that pulled so much weight unknowingly—clicked into place. Eyes closed and mind so deep into thought, Val couldn’t see the confident smile tracing her lips, nor the faint vapour sneaking out from in between.

“Stop,” Kane called out from… somewhere. Val’s eyelids separated a second later, and the world she returned to traded out for a clearer version, almost like someone suddenly changed the graphics to the highest option. Severing the link between the coldsteel ensign—and therefore her current spell—she noted the distance between the ever-daunting Metal Gate in her mind’s eye appeared just the tiniest bit reduced.

“Shit, Oats!” Caro flung her arm outward, jerkingly pointing towards him. “Your eyes are glowing, dude!”

His mouth opened and closed as he brought a slow hand upwards. He looked at the girl opposite of him in shock, and then inhaled a sharp breath. “Yours are too!”

“I believe a congratulation is in order,” Val barely heard Kane say, too occupied admiring the dullest ice-blue glare boomeranging right back into her frozen gaze off the metal desk. The Mage’s Mark.

“You all moved up in affinity,” the Magus continued. “I’m impressed. I didn’t think you would get it on your first try.”

Though Val failed to remember the specifics behind elemental affinity, she could fully grasp the gravity behind attaining a major milestone in a mage’s journey. Across Spiravale’s continents, the coloured light officiated one as a practitioner of the arcane arts, a seeker of the unknown. There was no denying her status as a Novice anymore. Val didn’t even register the broad grin that split her face.

“I’d advise you to head to the conference room in an hour for the mandatory guild meeting,” he announced, taking a belated sit in the chair nearest to him. “I’ll meet you there.”

Guild meeting? Val shared confused glances with the other five Novices in the room. First I’ve heard of it.

“It’s an emergency one concerning only lower-ranked adventurers,” Magus Kane said, reading the atmosphere like a book. “You will be there on time. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir!”

~

“Forget being here on time,” Caro grumbled under her breath and flopped into a chair alongside the aisle, fanning out her dress’ material as it crumpled underneath. “We got here half an hour early, for heaven’s sake!”

Nightingale heaved a resigned sigh, screwing his head over the shoulder to glance at Val. “Does she always make a big deal out of everything?”

Caro's scoff was loud enough to turn the necks of those trickling into the auditorium. “You think you’re one to talk?”

Jesal tugged at one of the piercings dangling from his ear. “Caro, you're kind of blocking the way.”

Her grumbled complaints returned double-time at the remark. With a huff, she turned to scoot down the row, allowing the others to shuffle into the narrow walkway and find a cushioned seat in the angled auditorium. Despite the space feeling unnecessarily large—the heightened stage to the far front appeared so minuscule in their spots in the middle, Val questioned whether she needed glasses—it filled up in a matter of minutes.

Val deflected the stares garnered by their peers, specifically their fellow sponsored-student squads entering with an uninterested air. Reynor University—easy to spot by their spotless clothes—gave them respectful nods in passing, and U of A, another top university based in Atera, walked by with no small amount of friction.

So much so, a low whistle sounded out from behind. Val deemed that worthy to ignore too, until the shuffling at their backs became too much to bear. She snuck a look behind, and her face lit up in surprise.

“Wow.” Her lips curled up as she took in the auburn water mage sinking into his seat, three more well-known faces trailing behind. “Talk about a pleasant coincidence.”

“Our little Strikers have grown up,” Aeron quipped and his perpetual grin broadened, a blue glare coming over his hazel irises. “Oh—your elemental affinity has improved!”

Caro inclined her chin. “Think I can beat Sil?”

Jesal snorted. “That’s a sad joke if I’ve heard one.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she waved him off.

“You guys should try Vague View now,” Aeron suggested, tapping at his temple. “Remember when I taught it to you in the Ashless Forest? Your elemental affinity is high enough for you to see—”

“Elemental traces!” Val sat up, eyes sparkling. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Still asking questions,” Sil remarked, the last to sit out of the four. “Just activate the art. It’ll be there regardless.”

Val kickstarted the visual Aetherial Arts in haste, a weird giddiness bubbling up in her chest, and panned her gaze around like a kid in an amusement park. Reds, pinks, beautiful shades of yellows and vivid greens swept the auditorium like an array of intersecting rivers of solid colours. Light blue drenched the ground and dripped off the walls, and Val recognized the hue, denoting the icy colour to the AC runes inscribed and at full power in the middle of summer.

“The Heavenly Hues…” Val muttered as she saw the world, for the second time today, in a new lens.

For the lines of young mages in the sectional theatre seating, elemental traces oozed out of their clothing. It made a simple job of documenting their bound Elemental Gates and ensigns. Six—wait, seven now—months in, anyone would know that crimson denoted fire, azure denoted water, grey denoted air, and so forth.

For the dozen of weathered maguses, magisters and high-class adventurers coming to a stop atop the elevated stage up front, though, she’d barely picked up on a thing. Their elemental traces hung tight to their bodies and, in fact, she only glimpsed a colour on the youngest amid their ranks.

A lady in her early twenties—not much older than Val—stood brazenly beside her seniors. Though her wild mane of elaborate brown curls would’ve usually caught Val’s attention, the particular shade of fuchsia-pink lingering on her frame left Val stumped. I’ve seen that before… She wondered internally. Where have I seen it?

“The guildmaster looks a little down today,” Caro commented down the row.

“Probably went to a funeral,” Otis replied, shedding the straw hat that Val somewhat considered a fifth limb of his. Nine confused gazes pincered him from all sides where he sat in the middle of the conjoined group of friends and associates. “What, you guys don’t know?”

“Don’t know what?” Caro demanded.

“Magister Thorne takes it upon himself to attend the funerals of those in the CAU,” Magus Kane answered for them, and the blue specks fleeing his body informed Val he used Aether Shift to teleport into the spot beside Caro without a single notice.

Naturally, his sudden appearance gave the girl a heart attack—evident by her jumping up to her feet, only to collapse downwards and mutter a couple curses under her breath—yet, he continued onwards unfazed, his steely blue eyes tracing each of his students. “It’s his way of appreciating the work we and others do.”

The group fell silent at that, shooting cursory glances upstage as the young mage stepped forward to whisper into guildmaster Thorne’s ear.

“Oh, it's one of the banes.” Otis piped up, leaning forward to get a better look. “Bane of Humanity, to be specific.”

“That is one of the most—” Val began to say.

“Sickass,” Caro added.

“Negative names I've heard,” she finished. Following the Bulwark’s suit, she moved to the edge of her seat and squinted at the faint wisps escaping the sweats the bane chose to wear. Putting the adventurous in adventurer, she dared to use Vague View a little more. That pink is too familiar…

“Today,” a baritone voice reverberated across the room in a tangible wave, snapping Val toward the guildmaster’s rigid frame unconsciously. “Today, adventurers, is the day we rely on you during what most call a grave time.”