“An hour! We’ve been running for more than an hour! Sprinting might I add! I thought it would only take 20 minutes.”
“I’m injured, give me a break. It usually does take me 20 minutes. Hey look, there‘s Horizon!”
A village as Kristina called it, but its size hardly warranted such a title. The houses seemed to be made almost entirely of wood or stone, lacking the reinforcement of concrete or other materials. These houses were sure to fall during a heavy storm.
Darius felt that she was missing the point, “My grandfather used to tell me stories about New Dawn, about how the people had special abilities. I assumed that’s how we’d get to the village.”
“I keep forgetting that he’s not from around here,” Kristina thought, “Wattiez, or I believe you call it magic in Journey, just how much do you know about it?”
All Darius could muster up was a shrug, “To be perfectly honest with you, I just assumed you say some magic word and magic happens. I’ve never even heard the word wattiez before now. Are you sure that you’re not making it up?”
“He’s a total novice. I never thought that I’d be the one who had to teach wattiez principals to someone else, a thought that vastly worried Kristina, “Then, to be perfectly honestly with you, if you wanted to learn about wattiez, I’m probably the least qualified person to teach you. Even so, I’ll tell you what I know. Do you know what a hexagon is?”
Darius glared at Kristina, “Please don’t patronize me, I may not be informed on the specifics of magic or wattiez or whatever you call it, but I’m not an idiot... most of the time.”
“Listen, I didn’t mean to be rude, but you’re the first person I’ve ever met, well first person I’ve ever met here, who didn’t know what wattiez is. Okay, imagine a hexagon, and inside the hexagon are six pieces surrounding another hexagon.”
Darius looked addled and raised a finger to ask a question, “Let me finish. The first piece represents Augmentation Wattiez. This gives the user the ability to change their form, properties of their bodies, and sometimes the things they touch. The griffin we were fighting before was an augmentation type beast, being able to take the properties of other animals, usually a bird and a large mammal.”
Against her wishes, Darius was unable to stop himself from interjecting, “I saw a bird lite itself on fire earlier. Apart from being on fire, it of looked a lot like a large hawk. Is this another type of… wattiez?”
“A flame phoenix?! He saw one?!” Kristina was incredibly jealous. “Yes, Elemental Wattiez which gives the user the ability to control many aspects of nature and the elements, but you may have seen something special. A flame phoenix, incredibly rare. Legend says seeing one will lead a lost person to their destiny.”
Instead of the look of glee she expected to get from Darius, Kristina was met with a face of utter contempt, “Did you hear me? Finding your destiny.”
“Yeah, I heard you just fine. I’m just not all that into the whole destiny or fate thing. Not a fan. Regardless, I do have a question. Each form of wattiez is differentiated by what do but is there another way to tell them apart. I’m just guessing here, but what about color?”
“That seems a bit specific for a random guess,” Kristina’s eyebrow raised. “As someone who claims know nothing about wattiez, you seem to know a bit more than you tell me.”
Suspicion quickly arose within Kristina, something Darius did not fail to notice, “Just… when I was on my ship, we ran into some trouble along the way, luckily, we had a magical staff that I… procured through tremendous effort. In a latch ditch effort to save ourselves, we used the staff. When my friend used it, nothing happened, when my drinking buddy used it a red… light surrounded his body, however nothing else happened after that, and when I used it, I could see a yellow light surrounding mine. That’s when the wave about to kill us disappeared. Though I passed out before I could see it.”
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“There’s a lot to unpack there,” Kristina thought. “You’re right, we call that light surrounding your body an aura, and the color is your affinity. Red would represent an augmentation affinity and yellow would be elemental. I need to ask, are you sure you’re auras were different colors when you held the staff?”
“I’m almost absolutely sure, and even if I wasn’t, many of the other crewmates say they saw the same thing.”
“It’s just one surprise after the other with you, huh?” Kristina said with a heavy sigh. “Do you still have that staff somewhere? I notice that you don’t have it with you.”
“It’s safe, that’s all I’ll say.”
“I don’t know if you just have a penchant for “procuring” rare items, but what you have is a staff made nearly a millennium ago. You don’t have to worry about me stealing the staff, it would be worthless in my hands, anyways; I’ve just never seen one in real life.”
Satisfied with her response, Darius decided to share a little truth. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t show you the staff for another year. It’s safe, just off island.”
“Of course it is, regardless, the third type of wattiez is life, which gives the user the ability to manipulate or otherwise control different aspects of what we call life or vitality; it’s represented by the color orange. The healer we’re going to see, along with most doctors on the continent tend to be well versed in this aspect of wattiez.”
“They can control life? Then is it possible to…” Darius started to speak excitedly, but trailed off, as if afraid to finish his own thought.
“I’m guessing resurrection or extending the life of a loved one? We’ve all lost people important to us, so you’re not the first to ask, but it’s usually impossible, no, it’s just impossible. The strain of such an action would be likely to kill you. Personally, I think it’s better that way.”
Darius chose to respond by nodding his head rather than allow his voice to give away how he truly felt. “What are the rest of the wattiez? There’s three more, right?”
“Four, actually. The fourth type is wave which gives the user the ability to manipulate various wavelengths and their intensity; represented by the color green. Next, is Relativity Wattiez, it’s typically a lot more mundane than you’re thinking right now. It does give the user the ability to create distortions in space and time, though any distortion is too small to really matter; purple. Then, there is Mental Wattiez or the ability to manipulate the thoughts or influence the minds of others; blue.”
“You talk about controlling the elements and affecting others minds like it’s something normal. You could at least take the time to realize how crazy everything you just told me sounds. Then again, we did just fight off a 10-foot-tall half eagle half lion creature, so just about anything sounds possible to me right now.”
“Says the person coming from a place where metal objects are used to project sounds and even capture moments,” Kristina thought back to her own time in Journey and all the amazing machines they had. “Don’t worry, the last bit of wattiez is as strange to me as it will be for you. It’s called Anomalous Wattiez. Like its name suggest, those with this wattiez have abilities that can’t really be grouped together; their biggest and usually only similarity being the wattiez’s representative color; black. This wattiez is the rarest among them, probably less than one percent of people are born with it.”
“Born with? So, you don’t get to choose?”
Kristina shook her head, “No, typically a person is born with an affinity for one of the seven types of wattiez, though it isn’t extremely uncommon for someone to have an affinity for two but rarer more.”
“Alright, then I’ll bite. What wattiez can you use? elemental, right?” Almost immediately Darius could sense that he made some type of mistake.
Kristina gaze became extremely downcast, and her voice was audibly shaky, “About that, I was using something called an envy staff, which allows someone to use a type of wattiez they don’t have an affinity. My type of wattiez is even rarer than anomalous, probably less than one percent of one percent. It’s called being untethered, unable to use wattiez.”
Darius felt like he should say something, “…” He just didn’t know what.
“Hey, you’ve lived your life until now without wattiez, so why can’t I? Darius knew a liar when he heard one, and Kristina was already a terrible liar.