3/20/54

ALEXANDER GALDUR

I struggled in bed, still mostly asleep while knock after knock on the door assaulted my ears. A voice called from the other side, “Lucas? Wake up! Training starts in fifteen minutes.”

Despite my reason telling me I should wake up and avoid further scolding from Trainer Masako, my body yearned for longer sleep in this delightful bed. After a final blissful minute, I reluctantly got out of bed and furthered my day. Still in my clothes from yesterday, I reached my hand for the door, opening it to see Deimos mid-knock. He lowered his hand at my sudden appearance and complained, “Finally, I’ve been knocking on the door for three minutes; I was about to let myself in.”

“What time is it?” I managed out, groggily.

“It’s 11:15 Am,” Deimos replied, “Come on, there is breakfast, or I guess brunch, in the kitchen, but we should eat it while we make it to training. Trainer Masako does not like it when people are late.”

“Alright.” I drowsily yawned. Deimos made a slight nod in response and left for the kitchen. I slid out of the bed and out of my room, walking down the bright hallway to the rest of the dorm. When I arrived in the mainroom, I took notice of the attributes I ignored in my tiredness the day before.

The floor is made of laminated wood, reflecting the light coming from the sun through the window. The kitchen area has some cabinets and counters in the shape of an L connecting to the wall. The counter top is a whitish, grayish stone with speckles of black and darker grays. There is a small kitchen island a little separated from the rest of the counters. The fridge is in the topmost area of the L, and a single counter keeps the stove and oven from the fridge.

Spices, appliances, and other items are kept neatly on the counter, clearly under some sort of organization from Deimos. To the right of the kitchen, closer to the hallway and myself, there was a dining table with enough room for six other people. On the dining table, there was a single place mat with two slices of toast on a plate and a jar of blackberry jelly with a butter knife in it. I slugged over to the toast, grabbed the knife, and started spreading the jelly on it. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Deimos eyeing me suspiciously.

Looks like I’m still not trustworthy. Understandable though, the prejudice against dark magicians is strong; I doubt I could do much to get rid of it. I finished the toast quickly, seeing on the digital clock of the stove that two minutes had passed. I turned to Deimos and noted, “We should probably be off now.”

“Yeah, let’s go.” Deimos agreed. We prepared our shoes, getting them from the small cubby that we placed them in when we first got here. I pulled my shoes on along with Deimos, and we left the apartment. We hopped into the empty elevator and pressed the button on it which read “L”. The elevator began moving down with a jerk.

The elevator slid down the shaft, until similar to how it started, with a jerk, it stopped. We stepped out of the elevator and began our walk from the dorm lobby to the training room. Nothing interesting happened on the path to the training room. We went down the path to the DME building and down the maze-like halls to the locker room. One quick change later, and we were in the training room.

Trainer Masako looked up at our appearance, a face of disdain and rage spreading across it. She walked over to us faster than we were getting to her, and with the sudden stomp of her foot, the ground underneath me slid. It shifted causing me to fall into an earthen chair. Cuffs made of stone and dirt locked my limbs in place while she stormed over to me, “Well, if it isn’t Lucas Greymore? The kid who thinks that he can ignore me, his trainer.”

“I-I’m sor-”

“Shut the hell up!” She interrupted, a dangerous glint in her eyes, “I don’t care for your excuses. Do you know how idiotic you are? Well, let me explain: you could have nearly killed us all! Thank god you passed out when you did, because if not, then that spell might’ve just blown up and incinerated everyone around. You are not meant to manipulate light. You probably already knew this, but you still decided to try your hand at it anyway. Stick to your strong suits, and don’t risk it for everyone else!”

“In addition,” She said, continuing her rage-fueled rant, “The danger you put yourself in is much higher than what you could’ve done to us. The magic came from yourself, idiot. When I saw you after you passed out, your hands looked like a roast turkey! Burns and red and blackened skin covered your palms, boiled blood just oozing out. Fire, light, and other magicians of similar types have heat and energy running through their blood because of magic, so when they fuck up their spells, they could just disintegrate every inch of their bodies!”

The rant continued on, repeating over itself a few times, but it still hit just as hard each time. The tongue lashing I got made my other scoldings seem like peanuts. Part of it though, was also because I knew she was right. I already went over a few of the points she mentioned in my head back in the hospital, and I knew I was endangering myself and others. I was in the wrong.

“You fucking dumbass!” She ended, “Damn, as a punishment, all exercises will be doubled. Now get to it!”

“Y-yes, ma’am!” I yelled in fear, not daring to try talking back. I quickly began the jog from here to the forested area, and I already felt tired after the first two laps. The pounding of my legs continued, banging against the metal floor. By the time I was on my tenth lap, most others were already done. Once I hit fifteen laps, I felt myself slowing down, until a pain suddenly came from my back, and I hit the ground.

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“The hell did I tell you yesterday, huh?” Trainer Masako growled, “A constant jog, damnit! Now, get back to it!”

I groaned out as I rose to my feet, “Yes, ma’am.” With the wind knocked out of me, I gasped and wheezed with the still aching pain from the rock sending waves of hurt through my body. I limped slightly for a while until I managed to fixed my posture and ignored my now-bruised back.

The rest of my laps went without trouble; I realized that if I slipped up, the rest of training would be sent further into hell. While jogging, I could hear the whispers and talking of other trainees, clearly noticing that I was still jogging. I would normally be suspicious, angry, or embarrassed, but I was so delirious that at the point I was at, I could only focus on not throwing up.

I finally finished the laps after what felt like hours had passed, and I wobbled over to Trainer Masako. She glared at me and sneered at me, “What the hell took you so long? Go get a drink of water and do the exercises from yesterday. Doubled, of course.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I groaned and left for a nearby water fountain. Throughout the training building, water fountains were dotted across the floor. I came back and started doing the exercises: push-ups, curl-ups, jumping jacks, stretches, squats, you name it. The entire time, I was sweating like a pig and was allowed to get water more than once.

At the two hour mark, all the trainees were gathered to start the magic training. Before we could actually do anything though, Trainer Masako called out one more time, “This time too, don’t be pulling shit. Know your limits, unlike our resident dumbass here. Give a little wave to everyone, ‘kay Lucas?”

I felt blood fill my face as I looked down and waved to show off my presence. I heard multiple snickers and whispers ripple through the crowd. I felt embarrassment and a hell of a lot of anger at Trainer Masako. I had already been dealt my punishment, this was just unnecessary.

I walked over to an area away from others while the malicious laughs and mumbles continued. I heard footsteps come from behind me, sounding with more banging on the metallic floor. I turned around to see Deimos following behind me; I glowered and asked, “Shouldn’t you be off with someone else, not the idiot who almost killed everyone?”

“I already knew how idiotic you were when you helped me against that ARO member. In addition, because of Fred, I’m not the most well-liked person around here. Might as well throw in my lot with you. Plus, I still gotta keep an eye on you.” Deimos answered.

I looked at him suspiciously, my anger and embarrassment subsiding a little, and remarked, “Do whatever you want.”

He let out a small chuckle and kept on following. Once I was quite a distance away from them, though still close enough to hear them talking, did I stop. I then prepared to cast magic until I realized I didn’t know what to do. At the moment, my magic was quite limited; I could only use my light magic and was limited to light creation and the barest form of manipulation.

Then, I realized I had the perfect person to ask. I whipped my head around to face Deimos and inquired nervously, “Um, how do you come up with new spells?”

“What?” Deimo asked as he faced me.

I parroted my question, “How do you come up with new spells?”

Deimos looked down and stayed quiet for a while before raising his gaze back to face mine, “Magic is unique from person to person. For example, you seem to be quite adept at creating light, but you’re not so great at manipulating it. Your laser from before wasn’t all too powerful, just barely hot enough to melt the floor slightly; others better at bending light would be able to pull that off with a lot less effort. The only reason you were able to make the laser melt the floor was because you made it bright enough to. My own strong suits are creating illusions while others may be able to make an entire room appear to be empty.”

I thought about what he said for a moment before asking another query, “Didn’t you use illusion magic to make yourself invisible in the alley?”

“Yes. I said my strong suit is creation, but I can still do other things just like how you can slightly bend light.” Deimos answered.

“Okay, so do you have any suggestions for my magic?” I continued my questioning.

Deimos shook his head, “Sorry, but it’s your magic; you’re the only one who can make spells for yourself. All I can say is focus on who you are, and something will come to you.”

I nodded my head, unsure of whether or not that would work. I decided to go with an odd approach to it and closed my eyes. I thought about who I was, I thought about what I liked. Something then echoed inside of me. One was a raging darkness, trying to lash out and keep others away. The other was the essence of light. It wrapped around the darkness, keeping it under control, and it appeared to try to accept everyone around it. While it did keep the darkness in check, the darkness’s distrust of others far outpowered the light’s kindness.

The light and the dark. One was violent, untrusting, but just wanting to keep safe. The other was bright, trusting, and wanted to be accepted by its community. They were in a… what was the word? It’s a synonym for balance. Balance something? I don’t know; it’ll come to me later.

My focus came back to the light, watching it glow and shine. I mentally took grip of it while a memory of my father came back to me. It was the same memory of the one where he created a rubik’s cube of light, and I felt the magic in me respond. I twitched my eye open, and I saw the faint outline of a two inch cube with slightly colored sides. They barely glowed and shone in the air, and I felt as my energy quickly left me.

Before I stopped casting the magic, I turned a side and watched it slide and become mismatched with the rest of the cube. Instead of actually moving the light, I was creating new lights in a way to resemble movement, kind of like an animation. Wasteful, but satisfying. A smirk crawled across my face, and I let the magic go. I opened my now-tired eyes to see Deimos making a grin to match my own, “There we go, now you got it.”

“It’s a start.” I let out a small laugh and sigh. My mind went back to the emptiness in which only my magic existed, and I restarted my efforts to form magic.