3/19/54
ALEXANDER GALDUR
The woman waved to us, signaling Deimos and I to come closer. We strode to her, keeping out of the way of the training of others. I carefully made my way across the metallic floor, avoiding flying icicles, fireballs, soaring boulders, and other different forms of magic. We eventually reached the woman where she happily greeted us, “Hey there! You must be Lucas, yeah? I got the message that we’d have a new light magician with us today, so I got here in a hurry.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, I’m Lucas. I’ll be looking forward to my training.” I introduced myself with a slight bow, trying to be as polite as possible. I would’ve used ma’am somewhere in that sentence, but I unfortunately found out the hard way that while some people are a fan of its use, some aren’t.
Deimos greeted the woman with fear clearly present in his voice, “H-hello, Trainer Masako. It’s, uh, been a while, yeah? Well, now that I’ve gotten Lucas here, I might as well be off now. Bye!” He quickly turned around and started speed walking away. Wasn’t he going to stay and keep an eye on me? What happened to him?
Almost as if answering my internal questions, a wall of stone and earth shot from the ground in front of Deimos. He slammed right into the wall and hit the floor. The woman strode up with an evil glint in her eye, “Hey there Deimos, it’s been a long time, yeah? Last time we met, you would have been able to react to the appearance of that wall and easily stop in time. Could it be that your skills have gotten rusty in the amount of time you’ve been away. We can’t have my record of training some of the strongest magicians around here change, can we, Deimos?”
Deimos turned around, sweat dripping down his almond skin, “N-no, ma’am.”
“That’s more like it.” She grinned. First thing’s first, I mentally jotted down that I should use ma’am when referring to her. Second, I could’ve sworn I saw some sort of aura form around her. The aura glowed a slight red with horns appearing above her head. Her eyes were twisted in sadistic glee along with her mouth. A demon. She was a demon. Were all the members of the DME sadistic, maniac, demons? From the looks of it, yes. Yes they were.
She turned around, her vicious gaze fixing upon me, “New kid, line up against that wall I just created along with Deimos.” Deimos quickly stood up, back against the wall, hands by his sides, sweating profusely. I joined him as quickly as I could, my instincts screaming in fear to obey. With Deimos and I side by side, she strode up in front of us, her smile disappearing into the look of a professional, “Alright, new kid here needs training, and Deimos needs a refresher, so let’s start easy, yeah? Twelve laps jogged as a warm-up; from here to the forested area that I shot Jacob into. Now!”
“Yes, ma’am!” Deimos and I responded in unison, a tear streaming down Deimos’s face, and cold sweat already drenching my shirt. Deimos raced ahead in an extremely fast jog. I kept at a slower pace, trying to preserve my energy when all of a sudden a rock slammed into my back. It was enough to knock the air from my lungs, but it wasn’t enough to push me over.
I dared not turn around when I heard Trainer Masako’s voice sound behind me, “What the hell is that!? I’ve seen obese grandparents walk faster than that; get your shit together and speed up!”
“Y-yes, ma’am!” I yelled out speeding up to only barely slower than Deimos. I could hear her following me, a predator stalking its prey. I started to speed up, trying to get as far away from her as I possibly could. I suddenly felt another rock slam into my back.
“I said jog, not run, dumbass! Can’t you follow the simplest orders?” She yelled, her clear displeasure making another wave of cold sweat run down me.
“Sorry, ma’am!” I yelled back in response.
I could hear her click her tongue at my response, “You’re not here to apologize, you’re here to be trained into shape, and I’ll make sure it happens. Now get back to jogging, and only jogging!”
“Y-yes, ma’am!” I shouted out one more time before matching Deimos’s pace. I spent my entire life on the run, so while not stellar, my physical abilities were definitely not something to scoff at. Of course, they would’ve been better if I hadn’t been malnourished since a very young age, so I definitely wasn't far above my peers. Still though, they were certainly above what was considered average by most people, however, by the end of the jog, I was too exhausted to even speak.
My back was forming a new ocean as I lay on the ground collapsed. The distance from the wall to the forested area was definitely somewhere around three quarters of a mile in distance. We had done twelve laps, so it was twelve times three. We would get thirty-six which when divided by four gets us nine. We jogged nine miles, and according to my new trainer, that was a warm-up. This is why you can’t trust anyone, they’re all sadistic pieces of shit.
As I lay there, gasping for breath, huffing and puffing more than a seventy year old smoker after taking a few steps, Trainer Masako stood over me, disgust and disdain clear in her expression, “You’re tired after only that? Pathetic, we have harder things to do; though, now we’re learning more of a theoretical lesson so catch your breath while you can.”
She walked away back to the wall she had formed, and I slowly got up and scooched closer to Deimos. She walked over to the wall and stood slightly to the side of it. Other people gathered around, who I could only assume to be fellow trainees. Slight whispers went through the crowds before Trainer Masako yelled above the crowd, “Shut the hell up all of y’all! First off, I’ll explain some basics because we have a newbie, and you all are so damn stupid, I doubt you remember things over the slight jog we just had.”
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“First, some smartasses might want to ask why we are training our bodies, so I’ll clarify for y’all. Magic is everywhere, at least, ever since we established contact with that other world, so everything is filled with it. We are, animals are, the earth is, the water is, and the air around us as well. Everything. This can be seen in nature with the sudden occurrence of magically mutated animals. We call those animals monsters, and the thing that separates the two are magic cores. In animals, with the accumulation of magic, it will solidify in an area in their body. With it, they can naturally harness magic, breathing fire, digging incredibly quickly, or creating huge waves.”
“Humans have something similar to magic cores. Over time, we create microscopic magic minerals in our blood, and this grants us magic. Now, while we can also innately use magic like animals, it is on a much weaker scale, and pales in comparison to the magical disasters monsters can create. We have a different advantage though: intelligence. We have communities of people who research, use, and test magic all over the world, so we have found a few facts to give us an edge over monsters.”
“First, is that we realized that magic is unique to an individual. From the amount they can use, innate talent, element, whatever. It’s all unique to an individual just like their identity. While if your father has fire magic, you have a higher chance of inheriting fire magic, the amount you can use and the way you use it are yours. You can imitate others' spells, but it will most likely come out much weaker. What you should be doing is focusing on making spells that match who you are, that is how you’ll get the most bang for your buck, but I digress.”
“Now, to the original point of this: why am I having you train your body? Like I said before, humans have little magic minerals in our blood, and that is where our magic comes from. Therefore, by strengthening your body, you are strengthening your magical abilities. Better blood and body, better magic. Simple. This also means you should be focusing heavily on cardio because it works out your heart, the core behind your entire body and all your blood.”
“We’ve given you a basic warm-up, and it’s about twelve right now. Alright, we’ll do physical training till two, magic training will take place till four, and combat training will finish it off till we go to six. First off, let’s get some stretching in. It’s best to stretch before and after exercise, in addition, it improves with flexibility. Ask me if ya need water, I’ll let ya get some if I think ya need it.” She finished.
For the entirety of the lesson, she was making diagrams, pictures, and explanations across the earthen wall. She walked off, and we all followed her to an open and flat area. From there, we did stretching, muscle exercising, flexibility training, and cardio-improving activities. I had to go and get water on multiple occasions, and only a few times I was allowed to. The practice went by in a heated and excruciatingly painful flash, soon dropping us into magic training.
For that, Trainer Masako created a large pillar of stone to watch down on us from. She was probably doing it to make sure we didn’t die while practicing magic. Magic is quite dangerous; while we could do things innately, it was exhausting and better if we had a clear image in our minds. From there, we would need to adjust the magical output and image accordingly. If one didn’t get things just right, they could easily blow their hand off in some corruption of the idea of a flaming fist blasting out of their arm. Of course, we also had a basic and innate sense of how much magic we should use and how to do that exactly, but it was still incredibly dangerous and difficult.
I was honestly quite worried about this part. I probably used light magic just as much as dark magic, and using the two together felt natural to me. Staying true to your natural use of magic is what we were told to do, but I couldn’t afford the chance of making a tentacle of darkness that was just dancing in my shadow.
I focused on just my light magic, and a small ball of light appeared. From the little I remember about my life before the orphanage, my father had been able to bend any light to his will. He didn’t create light, but he could manipulate it to a great extent. I remember watching him create a square of light with a grid pattern going across it. He would then create lights of different colors for each square, and tada: he had a magically created five by five by five rubik's cube. I, however, don’t have great manipulation of light, but I can create it. At most for manipulation, I might be able to create a beam of light and curve or focus it.
Actually, now that I think about it, couldn’t I create a laser? Like, a concentrated beam of light, something along those lines? I decided that during the magic training, I should probably be trying my magic, so I went along with the idea. First, I created a decently bright ball of light, and I had it float in the air, between two of my hands. Then, I let my imagination take the wheel. I came up with the image of first curving all of the light I’ve created into the form of a wide spread flashlight.
My fingers and hands curved, and slowly, the light followed. It became less bright in other directions while it became slightly brighter in the opposite areas. Sweat already began to slide across my face as this was far more magical exertion than I was used to. The magic bended slightly more and more, becoming closer to what one would describe as a flashlight than the lightbulb it was before.
My arms shook in exertion, but I was making clear progress towards it and refused to give up. I heard the shifting of stone behind me, but I chose to focus more and more on the magic in front of me. At this point, the area in front of me was well illuminated, the glare off the metallic floor clearly annoying more than just myself. A familiar feminine voice shouted at me from behind, but I was too close to getting this done. Just a little more, and I could… Why am I doing this?
I wasn’t quite sure why, but I felt like I had to do this. To follow through. To finish what I started. Had I always been like this, focused on one task to an uninterruptible state? I remember times I became so engrossed in something the rest of the world faded away, and I guess this was like those times. In the end though, it didn’t matter; I would do this. The voice got louder, but my focus stayed unbroken.
As the voices continued raising in volume, echoing around in my strained mind, the light focused more and more. At this point, I was panting from how exhausted I was, but I made up my mind that I had to do this. My mind became more and more fuzzy with my only goal being to form the laser I set out to make. The light focused more and more before finally it collapsed into a singular line. The metal beneath it started glowing red hot, the heat of the focused power of a magical light being taxing on the material. A hand came down on my shoulder before the words from Trainer Masako registered in my mind, “Kid, stop, you’re gonna hurt yourself!”
I was too delirious from the exhaustion flooding my mind to care though, only quietly answering, “Heh, I did it.” Suddenly, despite the glowing laser, my world started to turn black. The laser died down and flickered out of existence, only leaving a slightly molten part of the floor left. Even though my vision went dark and my mind was passing out from exhaustion, I could only be happy at my accomplishment. Then, just like that, everything disappeared.