Evelyn and Ezekiel had just left the Alkenas’ home, the family’s guards closing the gates behind them. Apparently Allon was hoping to lock down any news from spreading too quickly. Ensuring that no one got in or out of his property would assist in this, but the fact that the children saw much of what happened meant that news would get out no matter what, but that wasn’t Evelyn or Ezekiel’s problem right now.
The problems for them both were very different. Evelyn’s problem was that her friend was going to be very busy for the next few days cleaning house, which was both upsetting because they were friends, but also because she was one of the Alkena family’s suppliers for enchanted clothing. She would purchase cloth and fabrics at a discounted price, and in exchange she wove basic enchantments into several items of clothing that she sold back at a reduced cost, whilst retaining quite a bit of fabric for her own shop.
For Ezekiel, his problem stemmed from two things. First, was the fact that he simply wasn’t going to be making any friends anytime soon due to the stigma against Void mages, as well as the lack of pleasant social interactions likely to occur in his immediate future. Second, was the interesting sight he had when he meditated during Aldor and Everett’s sparring match.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t something he thought he could deal with right now. Whilst he had managed to get through the past hour or so without too many difficulties, his head was pounding during the entirety of the so-called “spar” that he had been forced to suffer through.
Something that he was starting to show on his face as he winced at the sound of the gates slamming shut. His mother noticed and panicked a little as they walked away.
“Ezekiel! What’s wrong!?” Evelyn exclaimed as she noticed her son’s distress. He hadn’t shown any injuries from the spar, so she didn’t think there was anything wrong with him before this.
“...Nuthin...” Ezekiel mumbled as he closed his eyes to rest his head on his mother’s shoulder. He didn’t think it was that big of a deal, but he knew his mother would worry if he explained what he had done. He’d rather his mother just keep moving so they could get home faster.
Unfortunately, in his grogginess, Ezekiel had forgotten who else was not only with them at that moment, but also who had watched the whole of the events from within the playroom.
Reya, seeing the pain that Ezekiel was in, was also worried, and whilst she was proud of the little cub’s tenacity, she also thought that he was being stupid. So, she explained what had happened in the spars. Helping Evelyn get a better idea of what she had missed, as she had only seen the events that had occurred during and after Ezekiel's spar with Alys.
Hearing Reya’s explanation in the back of her head, Evelyn couldn’t help but feel exceptionally conflicted. She couldn’t help but feel pride in her son, as she knew that her baby boy was better than all those worthless brats. Except for Peni and Stephen, she thought those two were okay. Although Stephen needed to focus more on elemental interactions. On the other hand, she couldn’t help but feel incredibly upset at the fact that her son had entered into a meditative state whilst standing in such a dangerous environment.
“Ezekiel, baby...” Evelyn said in a quiet voice so as to not exacerbate his headache.
“Mmmh?” Ezekiel, whose eyes remained closed, softly moaned out a sound of acknowledgement.
“I want you to know that Reya has explained everything.” Evelyn told him.
“... Tattletale... “Ezekiel replied as he opened one eye to glare at the unrepentant feline sitting on his mother’s other shoulder.
“And regardless of how upset I am. I am also quite proud of you.” She continued on as if Ezekiel hadn’t said anything. “But honey, you can’t keep doing these things. You’ve already passed out from using too much mental stamina. How you managed to go for even longer than the last time without passing out is remarkable.”
“I didn med’tate frr longr. I count tuh ten and stop. Like dad said.” Ezekiel continued to mumble, closing his eyes once again. “Jus kep eye shut. Make mad.” He explained.
Evelyn was once again impressed. If what Ezekiel said was true, then that meant that he had managed to dodge and attack with his eyes shut without seeing the mana forming to tell him what was happening. This was a skill that took years to develop, as only those who had honed their senses through countless battles could understand their environment to such a degree.
“Rya en Tio snek atac beter.” Ezekiel said, throwing the small black cat next to him under the bus.
Now, slightly less surprised, but still frustrated, Evelyn couldn’t help but glare slightly at her bonded Spirit. Who looked back at her in a smug and satisfied manner. Proud that her hunter teachings were paying off on her partner’s young cub.
“Yes.” Evelyn said with a sigh. “Reya and Theo’s sneak attacks would be better than some hot-headed little brat. Especially one as angry as that one was.”
“Angry Chihuahua.” Ezekiel muttered clearly and angrily. His frustration at Aldor and his behavior gave him enough focus to talk clearly. He immediately drifted off once again.
“HA!” Evelyn barked out a laugh as she made the mental connection in her mind. Comparing Aldor, a little boy with a big temper and bigger mouth to a tiny dog that couldn’t do anything, but bark loudly was a wonderful image in her opinion. One that she thought was not at all inaccurate.
The mother and son pair walked and were carried home in silence for a short while. Slowly, Ezekiel’s headache lessened, and he was able to focus more easily as they arrived home.
“Mum...” Ezekiel whispered quietly as they entered their home. Evelyn’s ears perked up as she focused on what her son had to say. “I don’t think I like other kids that much. Peni and Stephen were okay, and Shari didn’t do anything, but the other three were mean. Mister Allon was nice though.”
Evelyn’s heart broke as she heard her son’s words. Her greatest desire was to see her son make some friends. Close companions that would help him get through the troubles of life that were certain to come for him. But even she had to agree that his first experience was not a good one.
“Well, maybe that will change later on. You said you liked Allon, right? There are certain to be people your own age that are like that. Not caring about what magic you have, just what kind of person you are.” Evelyn said in a hopeful voice. She really didn’t want this one bad experience to taint her son’s view of other people for the rest of his life.
“Maybe...” Ezekiel didn’t say much else as he walked off to his room. “I’m gonna take a nap.”
He walked up the stairs and laid down on his bed. Not looking back to see his mother’s downtrodden face as she tried to hold back tears. There was so much she wanted to say to him right now, but she just couldn’t get the words out after hearing how despondent he seemed to be. Worse yet, she couldn’t even tell him the news that she had been hoping to talk to him about earlier.
Reya tried her best to comfort her, but there isn't much that she can do right now. Spirits just didn’t understand the complicated social connections humans had with one another. Usually Spirits only really cared about their bonded human and, to an extent, the ones said human cared about.
Her hand fell to her stomach as she walked into the home’s attached workshop. She couldn’t do much right now, but she could at least take steps to keep her son safe. Some enchanted casual wear that could protect him when he went out would certainly be of help. She’d even make them look like normal clothes rather than the high-quality clothing nobles wore so that it wouldn’t stand out.
While Evelyn started plotting and designing magical clothing for her son, Ezekiel couldn’t help but replay the events that occurred earlier in the day in his head. Watching Everett and Aldor spar was eye opening. Especially after what he saw with his eyes closed.
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He didn’t lie when he said that he didn’t spend more than ten seconds meditating. Ten seconds at a time that is. Not technically a lie, though certainly a misdirection. Not once did he meditate for longer than ten seconds. He just meditated for ten seconds six separate times.
He knew he shouldn’t have, but really, with what he saw he considered it to be completely worth it. As he saw something in the fight between Everett and Aldor that he wouldn't have noticed otherwise.
Previously, when he had meditated before, he saw motes of light in every single color. The ones that didn’t have much were the elements that weren’t prominent in his room, lightning, life, death, water, etc. However, whilst he saw maybe a couple of motes of mana for the elements that weren’t prominent in his room, the one element that he didn’t see at all was Void. At no point during his previous meditation did he notice any white motes of light to indicate the void was there.
Yet they appeared when Aldor and Everett sparred. They appeared quite a bit, to the point that they were, at one point, the most prominent motes of light in the room.
At first, Ezekiel had been confused, thinking that he was wrong, and that he wasn’t meditating properly since he was standing up, and in a room where the ambient mana was weird because Aldor and Everet were throwing around their own mana like monkeys flinging feces.
The fact that the white lights were disappearing almost as soon as they appeared, lingering for maybe a second at best, also meant that they didn’t seem that real.
But they kept appearing. They had kept appearing, over and over again. During the whole of the spar that he witnessed whilst meditating the white motes kept appearing.
It took him longer than he’d have liked to figure out what was happening, so focused as he was on making sure he wasn’t imagining things. But during his fourth ten seconds of meditation, he finally figured it out. The motes of Void mana were appearing whenever Aldor and Everett’s mana clashed with each other. That’s when he figured it out. In nature, opposites tend to attract, this rarely happened with mana, as it was naturally attracted to mana of the own type as itself, but just as opposites tend to attract, opposing forces also cancel each other out when they equal one another.
At the same time, Void mana wasn’t a specific type of mana. It was the neutral form of mana that only existed when the other elemental types weren’t present. But because of that absence, it was easy for Void mana to change back into a different element as soon as it formed.
The Void mana was no element but was also every element at the same time.
This new discovery was something that shook Ezekiel to the core. Was this it? Was this his path towards the future? His path towards becoming an actual mage?
He didn’t know, but what he did know was that this was something he had to experiment with. As soon as possible. So, after playing through the scenes of the spar in his head for a few times, he did in fact take a nap, only waking up a couple of hours later. The sun still hadn’t set, and his father was still out patrolling. He could also faintly hear his mother working downstairs. Guilt briefly flared up inside him as he realized he’d probably upset her earlier with what he had said, but for the moment he had to push those thoughts aside.
Sitting up in his bed, Ezekiel looked around his room for anything he could for sources of opposing mana, before realizing that he could just use Tempest and Cavern. Air and stone were plentiful afterall.
He immediately entered into a state of meditation, being careful to pay as much attention as he could to how long he was meditating, whilst not allowing his focus to deviate from the Motes of mana around him. It was a difficult balancing act, but one he thought he had achieved.
However, focusing on the mana around him was extremely difficult. He found that, as the techniques he had were all about focusing on and cultivating one type of mana, so as to help prevent accidentally absorbing the wrong mana types, he could only attract one type of mana at a time. Meaning that when he tried to attract Tempest mana, the Cavern mana would return to its natural state, and that when he tried to attract Cavern mana, the Tempest mana would float away.
He ended his first ten seconds without making any progress whatsoever. This was obviously not ideal, but he knew that there wasn’t much he could do without taking a risk. So that’s what he did.
Deciding to do something incredibly stupid, Ezekiel decided that he would remain in his trance, and instead of visualizing one element, he would visualize two. This was dangerous as, for one, people were not meant to absorb multiple mana types. And for two, due to his own skill at meditation and visualization, he ran the risk of absorbing too much mana at once, causing it to run rampant through his body and destroying him from the inside out.
But Ezekiel didn’t care. He’d had the second worst day of his life in this world so far, and he refused to let himself become a wastrel that couldn’t repay his new life, his new family, with anything other than debt and disappointment.
Deciding to meditate for longer than the ten seconds he was supposed to, Ezekiel decided he would double the time, thinking that would be long enough to get what he wanted without too much harm.
Thus, entering into his trance once again, Ezekiel immediately started visualizing something strange, and unknown to this world. He pictured a yin-yang symbol within his core, right in the lower area of his gut. The image of wind swirling in a tornado stood on one side, and a steady boulder that didn't move at all on the other, slowly circling one another as he continued to meditate.
His head immediately began to hurt as the visualization took up his mental stamina, but he internally rejoiced as he noticed both brown and gray Motes of light drifting towards him. But he saw that there was far more gray than brown, and began to panic. He needed to have the same amount of Cavern and Tempest energy, or he could seriously injure himself due to the incompatible mana entering his body freely.
He started to change his visualization. The tornado within his core no longer looked as fierce as before, blowing much more softly as if buffeted the boulder next to it. But now the Cavern mana was moving faster than the Tempest mana.
Quickly, before the mana could enter his body, he pictured the boulder moving, ever so slightly, as it was pushed by the wind. This swapped the speed of mana once again, but it was much closer this time.
Finally, as the mana began to get absorbed into his body, he directed the two opposing mana’s towards one another before they could settle. There was an almost perfectly equal amount of Cavern and Tempest mana in his body. Three and five motes, respectively.
This was not ideal, as he knew that the wind mana would immediately blow through his body the moment he stopped meditation, but he couldn’t do much about this right now. He had to finish what he had started.
As the motes of mana inched closer and closer together, they finally made contact within his body. All three Cavern motes make contact with Tempest motes, and a bright flash erupts from within his body. Ezekiel is almost startled out of his meditation, but barely manages to stay in a trance as he sees three motes of glowing pure white lights floating gently within his body.
Overjoyed at his success, Ezekiel almost forgets to be concerned about Tempest mana still within his body. Worse yet, he can see that more mana is still coming towards him. Attracted to the image he is visualizing so clearly. It’s slower and will take a few seconds to be absorbed by him, but he can feel himself growing tired. He needs to drop his meditation right now.
One last crazy idea passes through his mind as he is about to exit his meditation. As the image he visualizes starts to face away, he imagines two of the three Void motes pushing the remaining Tempest motes outside of his body.
To his surprise, the Void mana moves as he wishes it too, and the Tempest mana, not attuned to him like the Void mana are, doesn't resist as the Void mana pushes the Tempest mana outside his body.
Excited that he won’t be hurt by his discovery, and overjoyed at his success, Ezekiel’s happiness is immediately doused as the the two motes of Void mana exit his body whilst pushing the Tempest mana, and upon leaving his body are immediately converted into Tempest mana, and the Tempest mana around him enters an excited state of being, causing a small windstorm to blow up around him and throwing him off the bed in a burst of air.
THUMP
“... Owwiieee...” Ezekiel wheezes out in pain from his crumpled position on the floor. Now he had a headache and a sore back.
“Ezekiel!?” Evelyn nearly screamed as she rushed through the door to Ezekiel's room. After hearing the thump, she and Reya tore through the house and up the stairs as fast as they could to make sure he was alright.
“I’m okay.” Ezekiel said as he rubbed his eyes and did his best to not show that he had another headache from meditating. “I just rolled off my bed.”
Rushing over to take a look at him, Evelyn saw that he looked quite sleepy, and the only thing that she could tell was wrong that he was favoring one of his shoulders. Clearly, he had landed on one when he fell off the bed.
“Please, honey, don’t scare me like that.” Evelyn said as she calmed down. She bent down and gave Ezekiel a hug as she realized that he was basically fine.
Ezekiel didn’t say anything. He knew that, as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t tell her about what he had discovered. The effort it took to meditate and accumulate Void mana was far too dangerous right now. Even if his parents decided to help him, he didn’t know if they’d be willing to allow him to continue with his attempts due to how hazardous it was.
After a couple of seconds, Evelyn stood up. Bringing a smile to her face that Ezekiel couldn’t tell if it was fake or not, She grabbed his hand and started pulling him out of the room.
“Well now. Since the little sleepy head is awake now. Maybe you can help me with clearing out one of the larger store closets and helping me move what’s inside downstairs. We’ve still got some time before I need to start dinner for when your father gets home.” Evelyn said as they exited the room and moved towards the storeroom next to it.
“Ok. But why do we need to clear the storeroom?” Ezekiel asked in confusion. Were they going to be getting more supplies? If they were, wouldn’t it make sense to store it downstairs rather than do what they were doing now?
“Simply put, we need to make room for your new sibling.” Evelyn said in a matter-of-fact tone as she started handing items to Ezekiel.
“Oh... what!?” Ezekiel cried out as he nearly dropped the small box his mother handed him.
Evelyn just giggled as she looked at her son’s gob smacked face. It wasn’t much, but it was good to see him no longer looking as down as he did before.