Emily

  I stood on a rooftop patio adorned with planters containing gorgeous, glowing flowers. They bloomed in droves and gave off a faint, pale multicolor gleam; a pastel rainbow in the night. I absentmindedly reached out to touch the petal of a shiny golden daffodil when I heard the door to the rooftop open behind me. I turned to see who it was.

  Jake stopped momentarily and said, “Oh, uh... hey.”

  “Hey,” I replied somewhat curtly. I wasn’t sure how exactly I was supposed to act around them yet because of my mom’s warnings. I walked over to the railing of the roof and looked out over the nighttime glow of the magical underground city, Eris. Jake came and stood at the railing a few feet away. The silence stretched for a time, both of us simply staring into the distance.

  Suddenly, Jake broke the silence. “You seem to be handling everything pretty well.”

  I let out a sharp laugh. “You think?”

  “Well, I guess I probably wouldn’t be able to tell, huh?”

  I sighed and rested my chin atop my arms folded on the railing. “No, you wouldn’t. I’m pretty good at hiding stuff like that.” Whispers of city noises painted the air, filling the blank silence.

  After a moment, he spoke again. “So what are you doing up here this late? Guardian training starts at 6:00 am sharp tomorrow.”

  “Are you gonna be there too?”

  “Well, yeah. We’re sort of in the same squad, I guess, and all squads train together.”

  “Then what brings you up here so late at night?”

  Jake chuckled lightly. “Touchè,” he paused for a moment, “I come up here whenever I can’t sleep.”

  I looked over at him. “So what’s keeping you up tonight Mr. Guardian?”

  “I dunno. Stressful day I guess?”

  “Ha, that’s an understatement,” I commented, turning back to the city.

  He turned to me, leaning against the railing. “Now what about you?”

  “Hmm,” I started, thinking, “Maybe it’s the fact that my whole world was turned upside down in the span of a day? That I’m now living in some magic city under a mountain? Perhaps that’s it,” I said, putting a finger to my lips.

  “Perhaps it is,” Jake said with a small and somewhat tight smile, looking back out at the city again.

  We stood there in silence for a little while longer. Silence but for the sound of people and cars moving around in the streets below. At length, I decided that I should at least try to get some rest for tomorrow and I left Jake standing at the railing to make my way to my room in the barracks. He bid me goodnight, which I returned with a small wave as I opened the door to the stairwell. I flopped down on the bed in the plain room I’d been assigned and closed my eyes. Against all odds, I somehow managed to fall asleep.

  …

  I don’t know what I expected Guardian training to look like but whatever it was, I was wrong. A fiery ball of magic was hurtling towards my head. Shit. I tried to dodge sideways and in doing so, somehow tripped over nothing and fell flat on my face. I grumbled irritatedly into the floor then picked myself off it. That’s when I heard some restrained laughter coming from nearby.

  I looked up to see Jake standing by the wall of the training hall, clearly chuckling to himself. I gave him a stern look that said, What? Is something funny to you? He caught my eye and immediately looked embarrassed, looking away and scratching the back of his head.

  “Stand up Cyra,” commanded my trainer. Lieutenant Elidi was his name. Well, his title. No one had told me his whole name and he hadn’t offered it either. He was a tall, stern-looking man with a little salt and pepper in his black hair which was close cropped, military style.

  I huffed with exertion as I pushed myself to my feet. “I’m not sure this is working.”

  “Nonsense. You simply must create a shield of magic around your hand and knock the fire away,” explained Elidi like it should be the most natural thing in the world.

  “Yeah but I’ve never used magic before so I wouldn’t even know where to begin to knock away a freaking fireball.”

  He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose between his eyebrows. “I am teaching you exactly as I was taught. It will be difficult at first—”

  “Sorry Emily,” interjected Kirya, “This guy has always been a natural so he’s not the best at explaining the basics,” she said, flashing a smile at Elidi and walking over to us. She was holding this blue glass-cube-looking thing about the size of a rubix cube which she held out to me. As soon as I took it, I felt a distinct buzz on my skin where it touched the glass. I was almost surprised enough to drop it but thought better of it, given the cube appeared fairly breakable.

  I held it away from my body. “What the hell is this thing?”

  “That,” Kirya answered, “is a catalyst. It helps you learn the feeling of drawing out your magic. Right now you should feel something like energy flowing through your hands.”

  She was right. It was a subtle feeling of a stream of energy, a stream of awareness, that was flowing into the cube from my hands. The longer I held the object, the more I started to feel that delicate stream throughout my whole body.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “So, do you feel it now?” Kirya inquired.

  “Yes, I do,” I said quietly, transfixed by the sensation. I closed my eyes and I could picture the flow of magic throughout my body in my mind. Following the stream from where it began in my stomach, to where it branched out to my arms, all the way to my fingertips on the catalyst; I could see it all, all the little streams like veins of magic.

  Instinctively, I tried opening the mental floodgates of the source of my mana a fraction. I felt the pace of the flow of magic pick up and the cube began to glow white hot. “Emily, wait—” Kirya started.

  The cube exploded and I fell backwards, hands hitting the floor behind me to brace myself. Shards of crystalline blue glass were scattered all over the floor. I stared at them, a bit stunned. Then I suddenly felt cuts on my hands and gave a hiss of pain. “Shit, that hurts,” I said looking at the countless thin incisions on my palms.

  “See, that’s what I was going to tell you about next. You can’t put a lot of mana into Syphrite stone or it’ll explode like that one did,” explained Kirya as she kneeled next to me. She traced her finger along one of the cuts on my hand and with an odd numbing sensation, the skin repaired and there was nothing left of the injury, as if it never existed. “Though I guess we know that you can call forth your magic at will now, to some extent at least.”

  I stood and looked over my hands. “That’s incredible.”

  “Healing magic. It’s very advanced so we won’t be teaching it to you just yet.”

  “Captain Aella,” interrupted Elidi, “Recall that your sole purpose here is to control her magic if it goes out of control. It is not your job to train her. It is mine.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I know,” Kirya said, brushing him off with a wave as she walked back to the chair where she was sitting before.

  Elidi turned his attention back to me. “Alright, again.”

  “W-wait, hang on a sec,” I pleaded, “At least let me try to do the shield thingy you were talking about before you start launching fireballs at me again.”

  The Lieutenant looked mildly annoyed but still nodded. I looked at my hands again and then closed my eyes. Find it again, I told myself. Slowly, I started to feel the gentle pulse of mana in my veins once more as it circulated throughout my body. I focused as hard as I could on directing the flow to my hand, picturing it in my head. Sweat beaded on my brow. “This is more difficult than earlier.”

  “The catalyst was assisting the flow of your magic before,” explained Elidi, “A bit like oiling the hinge of a door that doesn’t move. It stands to reason it would be more difficult without it.”

  I continued to focus on the flow of my magic from the pit of my stomach to my palm. I tried to picture the magic taking shape as a shield around my hand and then the skin on my hand started to tingle. When I opened my eyes, there was a soft blue glow around my hand in the form of a shimmering translucent veil. “Whoa, wait. I think I’m doing it,” I said, entirely in awe of the energy I was wielding.

  “Yes, you are,” agreed the lieutenant as he took a stance, “Now you’re ready for this.”

  “Wait, ready for what now?” I said, my attention snapping to him.

  He threw his palm forward in one quick motion, similar to a punch, and from it erupted another fiery red ball of magic.

  Shit. I threw my hand up in front of my face and braced for impact. The fireball hit my hand and my feet slid back a couple inches. My arm threatened to buckle under the force of the initial impact. I flinched, looking away, gritting my teeth and expecting my hand to burn when I felt the heat from the fire. Several seconds passed… and it didn’t hurt. Actually, the heat from the fire could almost be described as comfortable. I opened my eyes again and saw that I was holding the fire. My jaw dropped a little bit. I lowered my arm to look at the fire in my palm. “No way,” I said with a smile, “Look—” I stopped when I saw Elidi’s face.

  He had gone pale and appeared utterly stunned. “All you needed to do was knock it away,” he said weakly, “But you… you took the full force of it and caught it?”

  Then I heard Kirya laugh from her corner. “Ah, that’s our Emily,” she said with a wild grin, “Genius.”

  I flushed a bit. “Aw, it was nothing,” I said, scratching the back of my head (with the hand without the fire, it would have been bad the other way).

  “It was not nothing,” Kirya said, walking over again, “Newbies are not normally able to face a lieutenant’s magic head on and win. But you’re no normal newbie,” she put her hand on my shoulder and smiled encouragingly. “From the looks of it, on top of shielding your hand from the fire, you seem to have instinctively reinforced your arm with magic. Otherwise, you would not have been able to take on that attack the way you did.”

  I looked down at my arm and then at the fire in my hand. I really did all that? I thought, surprised and amazed. Then after a bit, I just felt giddy. “Damn, magic is cool.”

  “I know, right?” responded Kirya with a grin like we were talking about a cool TV show instead of magic. “Now let me show you how you can neutralize a spell like the fire in your hand. First, you—”

  “Captain,” warned the Lieutenant.

  Kirya exhaled frustratedly. “Alright, I’ll let you explain it but if she’s not getting it, I’m coming over here again.”

  A glint of annoyance shone distinctly in Elidi’s gaze. “Fine,” he responded with a clipped tone. With that Kirya returned again to the chair in the corner.

  The Lieutenant described magic neutralization to me and to my understanding, it required you to use your own magic to, in a way, break apart the magic in the spell and disperse it. My first attempt at neutralizing the spell, the ball of fire just started to get bigger and Elidi frantically told me to stop. My second attempt, chunks of flame started shooting off in all directions. I made more attempts than I could count but eventually, I found something that worked. I pictured my magic forming into threads which I had weave their way through the spell and with that, the fire dispersed harmlessly into thin air.

  “Excellent work, Cyra,” said Elidi, when I got the hang of neutralization, “You can go take a break for a bit.”

  “Okay,” I responded, wiping sweat from my chin with the back of my hand.

  I walked over to a bench by the wall where I had put my water bottle. I sat down, took three big gulps of water and tried to catch my breath. Damn, it’s not even like I moved that much. Magic sure is exhausting. Leaning back against the wall, I took another sip of water and let my gaze wander the room. Some parts, I observed, were much like any normal gym but there were some things like weapon racks and such that were definitely not your normal workout equipment. Eventually, my eyes wandered to where Jake was sparring with the other member of our squad, Alex. I found my gaze lingering on the muscles in Jake’s arm, watching them ripple as he moved, and I quickly averted my gaze. I touched my ears and felt that they were warm. Come on Emily, I scolded myself, Keep your head in the game.

  Then, suddenly, I heard someone ask, “Are you Emily Cyra? The Dawnscourge’s daughter?”

  I turned and saw a group of people, a girl that looked about my age standing at the front. She had midnight black, wavy hair and unnervingly dark brown eyes. The way she said my name and my mom’s moniker put me on edge. “Uh, yeah.”

  The group started snickering as the girl continued talking. “Ha,” she laughed with a heavily condescending smile, “So you’re the one. The higher ups really must be losing it to let a fucking Half-magic into the Eirguard.” The group laughed.

  “Half-magic?”

  “Oh, you don’t know?” the girl asked with mock sympathy, “Rumor has it your mother ran away with some filthy Regular without a drop of mana in his veins. Just goes to show what kind of taste she had. I suppose it makes sense though,” the girl looked me in the eye, standing over me as I sat on my bench, “filth would be attracted to other filth.”

  I looked down at my feet and chuckled lightly. What is it about me that makes people want to pick a fight with me?

  “I feel so sorry for you, having to be the daughter of such—”

  My fist connected with her jaw.

  ? 4.1 ?

  2477 words