12 Nothing Happened! Really!

Someone could fully release and strengthen their aura, like Myra did herself with the group of thugs some weeks ago, but normally it was barely noticeable. Barely noticeable was still enough to get an idea of someone's personality though. Gentle souls would usually have a calm and peaceful aura, crazy killers would give one a creepy feeling of bloodlust while a necromancer might have an aura that would remind one of a graveyard.

The guy in front of her was obviously not used to hiding a lot of his aura. One could nearly feel the cold and powerful aura, giving one a hint of danger. It might have scared others, but to Myra who was used to travel through the stars and crossing the paths of many ancient and powerful beings, far beyond anything this world had ever seen, was mostly intrigued. It made him all the more interesting and mysterious. His muscular build, didn't exactly scream mage either. It was a good guess that he was some kind of magical knight student.

'Who is this guy?' she looked down at herself and was relieved to find that she was still wearing most of her clothes, except for her shoes and cloak. 'Doesn't look like anything happened.' she told herself, even though a small part of her would have probably enjoyed it to be otherwise. Myra wondered if she should get up, but didn't dare to move even a little bit. Having someone to hold her was a rather exciting feeling, but at the same time she was really embarrassed to not remember what happened.

After quite a while she started to disentangle herself and it did not take long for him to wake up as well. Initially he looked really confused and ready to grab for a weapon when he woke up, but then he seemed to remember what happened and relaxed. Both of them looked at each other for a moment awkwardly.

"Hi." Myra said, not sure what else would be a proper introduction to a guy she never met before, who was currently sleeping in the same bed.

"Good Morning" was his reply, sounding rather grumpy. Aaron wanted to scold the girl once she woke up, but now looking at the guilty and confused face, he really did not know what to do. The girl made him anxious and as much as he tried to deny it, there were some feelings that he did not have for any other girl so far.

"Uhh, sorry if this sounds bad, but ... who are you and how did I get here?"

When Aaron heard her question, he had to laugh. "You hugged me when I was sitting near the lake last night and didn't want to let go. I'm Aaron and we're in my room in the academy." he did his best to sound as if it was nothing special to bring someone to his room, or have some stranger hug him. The last thing he wanted was some random girl he didn't even know to get attached to him.

"What about you? I have not seen you before, so I guess you are a new student?"

"Mhm, I'm Myra. Nice to meet you." the girl blushed, it was rather unexpected that she hugged him last night and they didn't even talk. It made the situation even more awkward than it already was.

"You better get out of here before anyone notices us together. That would probably cause some silly rumors that I really don't need." Aaron told her before doing his best to ignore her and get himself ready for another day at the academy.

"Yes, sorry again for your troubles." Myra replied to him, rather sad. Aaron was right to scold her because in the end it was her fault, but she still hoped for a different outcome.

Seeing the girl leave his room with an expression that was quite different from the curious and happy look earlier, Aaron scolded himself for saying such harsh words.

'Darnit what is wrong with me today? Why do I even bother?' he started to make his bed when he stopped in the middle of it. 'Might as well talk to her, I don't want her to look so sad.'

He rushed out the door trying to catch up with Myra and nearly ran into a young boy on his way.

"Haha hey hey, senior, careful, watch where you're going!"

Aaron ignored the laughing boy who must also be a new student and quickly closed the distance between himself and the girl who just left his room a minute ago. "Hey Myra! I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that."

Myra stopped and turned around to Aaron. 'Why is he following me? He didn't mean it like that?'

She was confused and tried to figure out what Aaron wanted, but really could not tell.

"You know, what I said, was a bit mean, I'm sorry." Aaron explained. "Want to meet up for breakfast? Once you had time to change clothes and all that?"

"Sure, why not." Myra answered him shyly, before her eyes looked behind him at the young man who slowly approached them. "Hey Nell, wanna go eat breakfast with us?"

Myra didn't notice how Aaron's face darkened when Nell told her he would join them. Neither did she notice the smirk on Nell's face once she turned around going back to her room or hear the conversation between the two. She was simply happy that Aaron was no longer mad at her.

"Hey senior, don't look at me as if I stole your lunch. She's not even interested in me. By the way, did she just come out of your room this early in the morning?" Nell used his best mischievous smile to look at this senior of his "Oh and as you might already have figured out, I'm Nell."

"Aaron" came the reply along with a threatening stare. "Also keep the part about her coming out of my room to yourself. Nothing happened. If I hear any rumors about that I'm going to make sure you never say anything again."

He then turned around and walked back into his room, getting ready for breakfast, leaving Nell standing outside all on his own.

"Aww scary scary, princess got herself a scary boyfriend!" Nell laughed and tried to get rid of the creepy feeling caused by Aaron's aura, before continuing on his way to look for his brother.

--

Breakfast was over quickly and except for the few stares that followed both Myra and Aaron, it was mostly a quiet time with the young people enjoying their food. They talked about random topics, about their favorite food, competitions and sports and the latest gossip. It seemed like a very normal breakfast, except for Aaron, who was not used to share this time with anyone else.

"So what are your classes for this week?" Myra asked and looked at her new friends.

"Well, we do have some of the same classes like history and mathematics and things like that. Oh and there's also a section about strategy and command that we share at the end of the week." Nell inspected his schedule as did his brother Liam.

As if to finish what Nell started Liam continued with the comparison of their schedules. "Yeah, but you two have knight classes, while I have what they seem to call self-study time in the afternoon and then Myra and myself have mage classes this morning that you can probably skip or something. Oh never mind you seem to have some magical theory stuff too, but it's shorter than our classes for mage training. See there and there, we have our class twice a week, while you only have one of them."

Aaron took a look at their schedules and nodded. "Mine are all advanced knight classes, so I likely won't see you a lot during those at the beginning. Once you are past the initial courses though, we might have more classes shared, or they might assign you to a more advanced class if you are skilled."

"Are you sure you want to keep both knight and mage classes Myra? That will be tough on your free time and even harder to get skilled in any of them if you have to split your time between the two paths."

Myra just nodded and smiled at Aaron. "I should be fine. I can always drop one later on if it gets too difficult, but I want to get a feeling for both before making a decision."

In the end, when each of them got ready to return to their own classes, Aaron realized that their time chatting together seemed too short. He would have enjoyed talking with all of them some more even though most of his time was spent listening instead of talking.

"Let's meet up again after classes are over?" Aaron asked them and the group quickly agreed.

It became more and more obvious to Aaron's classmates that he was behaving rather oddly. Not only did he suddenly have breakfast with others instead of wolfing down his food all on his own in record time, but he even wanted to meet up again after classes on his own.

Many rumors started to circulate about Aaron and the new girl. The only one who was neither aware of the rumors as well as Myra's background seemed to be Aaron himself.

--

"As all of you already know the basics of magic, I won't bother to go into detail about it." the instructor stood in the little courtyard and started the magic class for the new students with a short introduction, telling them his name Zoran Yin as well as his standing as a master mage, before diving right into the topic of magic theory.

"In the beginning, when magical ability just awakens, you all learn to control and accumulate the magical energies. While all of you have different magical affinities, it is quite different from actually being able to make the most out of this ability."

"Even someone with a red magical aptitude still has to go through the steps of learning about the power, otherwise it is just an aptitude. A talent that does not get trained is a wasted talent. A great talent will advance faster and grow to their peak later, while someone with less talent will reach their limits earlier, but both need the knowledge and training to succeed."

He raised his hand and a little glowing orb of magical power could be seen. "You all started during your childhood by gathering magical power. Using a little bit of this power to turn it into heat and light are some of the most basic applications of magical energy. Accumulating magical power and sending that power back out would correspond with a white grade magical affinity."

The magical globe in his hand turned into a little orb of light, as if to give an example of what he just explained.

"All of you are beyond that stage, as already mentioned, I won't cover things you already know in detail. The next stage, is usually related to yellow grade talent. Changing magical energy into a specific type, to achieve different effects. Pure magical power is a mixture of different types of power, usually referred to as the seven types of magic. These include the four elemental types, them obviously being fire, water, earth and wind as well as the three non-elemental types, enchantment, divination and dimensional magic."