3/20/54

ALEXANDER GALDUR

I dissolved the spell, particles of light disassembling into nothingness. The energy in me felt drained: sapped away and dispersed through the air. I took another deep breath, pulling the air into the vacuum my lungs created. Exhaling slowly, the slight wobble to my vision subsided into the barest feeling of disorientation.

I closed my eyes, watching the darkness encompass my view and looked back within myself. The darkness inside bubbled and reached out, trying to escape and be free. The light was smaller now: less than two thirds of its original size. Consequently, it meant the darkness's leash was lengthened. It could struggle and win more battles. Raging at its kins weakened state, an anger and feeling of urgency spiraled in my center.

My right eye flickered open, and I saw it. It wasn’t very noticeable, but the rippling of my shadow still existed. I fell back into the nothingness in which my magic existed and willed for the darkness to calm down. Slowly, in response to my mind, the darkness stopped its rage, instead opting to stay watchful in case it was needed.

I let out a breath of air I didn’t even realize I was holding in, and my shoulders sagged in relief. I figured that more experimentation or use of my light magic would be putting myself at risk of being found out, so I held out on it for now. Instead, to my surprise, I opted to do more exercise. While occasionally checking on my magic levels, I began redoing the exercises from training. Not as hard though and not doubled. I’m no masochist; I just don’t want to waste time.

Finally, after what must’ve been twenty minutes, my light magic seemed to have recovered. In addition, I could feel the magic running through me because I hadn't had a long-enough respite from exercising. My focus returned to my magic, and I once again restarted training.

I urged my mind to grip the magic and pull it out, and I decided to create a small ball of light. Knowing how I’ll have to live the life of a bounty hunter in the future, I knew I needed to create something to help me in dangerous situations. I started pumping more and more magic into the ball, but I kept it from growing in size. Instead, the internal pressure built up higher and higher while the surface area stayed the same.

To others, the light would’ve been staying mostly the same, only brightening and changing barely. Only then, once pumping half of my magic into it, I let it go, and the internal pressure caused the outer layer to rupture. A bright flash erupted out, and I heard the yelps of surprise and pain from those around me. I knew beforehand to cover my eyes, and by the lack of sound coming from Deimos, he predicted what I’d do.

I cautiously let one eye flicker open after the initial cries fell away, and the other soon followed. The scene opened before me, a few people in the distance who were watching me or looking in my general direction were rubbing their eyes. Deimos stood, eyes closed, stalk still. His eyes were shut tight, and I briefed, “You can open your eyes now.”

“Alright.” Deimos noted as the lids fluttered open to reveal his large, brown eyes. His pupils adjusted to the light level, and he turned to face me, “Looks like you got yourself a good spell.”

“Yeah,” I remarked, remembering the feeling of it, and trying to memorize it for later, “I’m not completely defenseless now.”

We both let out a small laugh at my self-deprecating joke. I looked around and saw that other trainees had recovered from my flashbang. A few were still rubbing at their eyes, but the majority simply glared at me without doing anything. One person in particular seemed to be fuming.

She had perfect porcelain skin with a lack of any blemishes. Her blonde hair had streaks of blue and yellow running through it. She was quite short, standing at about 4’8”. She was slightly baby-faced that was belied by her enraged expression. She simply stared daggers at me while I tried to move on with my training.

After a while, she stopped her death glare, but I could’ve sworn she scowled at me every now and again.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

I returned my focus back to my magic, looking at the world just under my skin. The darkness flailed around, trying to escape its significantly smaller light-formed binds. With my light magic at only half its true power, the darkness was able to reach out even farther than before.

I opened my right eye again and saw my shadow snaking across the floor. While my dark magic drained further and further, my shadow reached farther and farther. Looking up from the ground, I found its target. It was the girl from before!

She was now looking away and holding her arms in the air. Small pieces of metal hovered in the air, wobbling slightly. She must’ve been a metal magician, similar to the ARO member I fought back in the alley. That, or she had some form of telekinesis. Cool, cool, but what wasn’t cool was the fact that my magic was racing towards her. Who knows what it’d do if it got to her!

Why was it doing this!?

… Wasn’t it acting defensive back when I was viewing it? It was, wasn’t it? Like, I’ve noticed before, the dark magic seems to be more volatile and prone to aggression than light, but it was doing it because of outside variables. It was also trying to attack those who seemed to be a threat in any way towards me… which meant the girl who looked like she wanted to push me down a flight of stairs.

Realizing what it was trying to do, I closed my eyes and started thinking calming thoughts while trying to get it under control. The darkness continued to try and break free, but it did flinch in hesitation with the process. In addition, because of my weak magical abilities, it meant that it was making itself weaker and weaker the further it continued quite quickly. Let’s go pitiful, pathetic, and poor capabilities! Who’s under qualified for this job? Me! Remembering the problem at hand however, my mind digressed from insulting itself to calming down my rampant magic. In some part of my brain though, her glower still affected me, and my dark magic was happy to oblige to my inner instincts of fight or flight.

Despite mine and my light magic’s best efforts, the shadows persisted with their advance, and my magic maintained its drain as the shadow lengthened. Firing from the ground in a small, hard to notice tendril, it slowed and slowed. Lethargically it came to a stop, but just when it did, contact was made with her shoulder.

It wasn’t hard contact by all means, but it was enough to push her slightly. With her meditative state broken, she whipped around in surprise. I urged with all I could to retract my shadow, and by the laws of the universe, and the extra magic used, my shadow retracted almost instantaneously. Like a rubber band, it launched backwards, and I let out a sigh of relief.

I looked up and saw her looking around in confusion, clearly unaware of my almost-unwilling-assault. My shadow rippled in displeasure, not quite happy it couldn’t succeed in its attack before I stopped it. This was of no matter to me though being my shadow tried to reveal who I was, assault a DME trainee, and just make my life worse all around.

With the adrenaline no longer pumping through me, the sluggishness and exhaustion of my magic kicked in. Despite this being arguably more difficult than my light magic, I seemed to be only as tired as when I made the rubik’s cube of light. Great, I get more easily exhausted when using light Magic than when I use dark magic. I was proficient in dark magic and not light magic; isn’t that just fantastic?

As I laughed at myself for my lack of fortune, a sudden realization came to me: Trainer Masako on her earthen tower. I flicked my head upwards to see Trainer Masako scanning the area to my right with more intent. She had her eyes locked on a twenty-something trainee and their tornado of leaves. It was an odd sight. One other trainee was creating dummies made of straw and was throwing them into the tornado. The dummy was lobbed inside and a storm of ripped up the dummy, and the straw shot out from the twister.

That was… interesting. Were leaves normally sharp enough to cut through things with such ease? I didn’t know, but I was most definitely curious. I knew that magic is unique to a person, so this could’ve been plant magic that focused on leaves… and leaf sharpness. Odd, really. It didn’t matter though as I looked up to see the unsettled girl I had disturbed go back to making those pieces of metal float.

Looks like I was in the clear with everyone else too focused on their own magic to care about my antics. I realized in my struggle, only maybe five minutes had passed, and my flashbang took up another five minutes. My previous Rubik’s cube and exercising made up about twenty. That means I still had an hour and a half to get through, and then, I would finally see the combat training mentioned before.

Internally, I viewed the magic as both types were steadily increasing. The dark magic still seemed a little upset, but it was calm and weak enough that my light magic could keep it in check. The light magic had recovered a bit, looking like it was now only a little less than my dark magic. Knowing I had to wait a while for the both of them to recover, I went back to exercising, so I would at least not be wasting time.

… Was I referring to my magic as if they’d been living beings this entire time? I think I was.