The first thing she did after that test was look for Cadem to try to understand how to give the next step. She found out he was out on a job.
He came back almost three weeks later. After that she inquired more on the actual assassin job. The minimum cost depended on the target, conditions and which assassin took the job; Eigil being the most expensive staring in two thousand gold coins. The organization guaranteed the quality of the job, target successfully eliminated, no collateral damage and no way to trace down the client.
Eigil said they managed three to ten jobs a year and the assassins earned close to Fifteen thousand gold coins a year. They were not the most productive among the organization but the fear factor that came with it helped them to maintain their position in the underworld. From this the possibility of doing a “interview” of a year that included food, housing and training.
“I manage to heat up a bar of copper from room temperature to four hundred Celsius in just under an hour. My body seem to be protected, I started to feel hot at about three fifty but felt no pain” She told him as soon as Cadem had arrived.
He was as excited as she was and tried to help her as much as he could.
“Did you feel the void chica?” Was his first question. “A sensation of emptiness, of something like despair that spread from your chest?”
“Nothing like that, no. on the contrary I felt hope and happiness” Astrid responded with a confused look on her face.
“Que bueno. When you start to feel that, and you will, you need to dial it down. Tomalo con calma. That means you are reaching your limit” He said with a motherly concern that make her feel protected.
“What happens if I don’t? if I continue full on? Will I be consumed by the flames of my power?” She asked
“Que drama” He laughed “Nothing that big. Most people just go full locos. I mean like raging beast crazy. We take those guys to use in the pits. That or they just die. Poof muertos in the ground” It was a little too cheerful for a warning but Astrid got the idea.
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She felt this was one of the things if not the thing she hated the most; the cheerful attitude towards all manner of grotesque or dark events still made her feel a bit sick.
From that day on Cadem and her used the time to train her ability. For the first couple of weeks, she felt nothing wrong and her progress advanced steadily; she managed to increase the temperature from four hundred to close to eight hundred Celsius. Her output however had not greatly increased; It took her close to forty minutes to take the sword from room temperature to the four hundred mark and close to two hours to reach the maximum of eight hundred; leaving her mentally exhausted.
On her third week of training, she felt it; she finally understood Cadem’s description of the void. As she placed all her anger in to the copper, she started to feel a tug from her heart; it spread slowly and felt like an emptiness she could never fill up. She dropped the bar she was heating; the cushions Cadem had placed to train catching fire with contact. Rising a hand; a can full of an anti-flammable dust came flying to his hand and he dumped it to kill the flames.
“How can people let that feeling spread and consume them? I just felt it for like three seconds and I wanted to run from it for the rest of my life” Her hands were at her heart, gripping the uniform tightly, she sounded winded and preoccupied.
“People get used to it” He responded with a shrug.
“HOW? How in hell do someone get used to something like this?” She almost screamed. The dreadful feeling had yet to stop.
“Humans get accustomed to anything. Good or bad. I come from what most would call a Paraiso. Beaches of white sand and water crystal clear; most outsiders fell in love with it as soon as they saw it. To us the locales it was nothing as we saw it every day, we even polluted the waters and damaged the beaches. Same goes for this. If you keep doing this every day se vuelve mas facil and you will let the feeling advance more and more” She had never heard Cadem talk so seriously, his homeland was not a happy subject for conversation. “Others just loose themselves in desperation or in a last attempt to live” He concluded.
He was right, each time she felt it she dreaded the feeling a little less, she started to measure and predict when it was going to happen so the shock would not affect the outcome of a possible battle. And so, she continued her training; giving her all for the first time of her life. To win, to ensure she would have a life and maybe someday her freedom and not to become a source of fun for this people or a personal heater.