1 1 - The Shortest Straw

In Hall C of the prestigious Mistral Academy, a young man scurried around furiously mopping the extremely long hall all the while pouting and whining softly under his breath. 'Clean the halls, scrub the toilets, clean up student's trash, who the hell thought it would end up like this?'. A month later and he could still remember the pain he had felt during the Aether Initiation, the day all of the children of 14 years of age in ClearWind City had been gathered to test their talents and to see if they had what it took to become a Practioner. While each person had the wondrous ability to call upon the elements and cultivate Aether, only a minority had the talent necessary to be recruited by a faction and be fostered into a practitioner. A practitioner was like a god amongst men having power far surpassing that of a normal person, once awakened they would gain powerful skills, control of the elements, and the ability to cultivate the Aether. To become a practitioner it was best to get into a faction as it would allow one to have fame, wealth, and resources, making cultivating far easier and ensuring that you quickly grew, while it wasn't impossible to cultivate by oneself it required many times the effort and yielded half the results. So the Aether Initiation stood as an extremely important event and was carefully monitored by the City's faction, each desperately searching for talents in the hopes of assimilating them into their own guilds. The common people also rushed over too in the hope that their own children might be recruited, raising their status and wealth into that of nobility. So that on that day all the people of ClearWind City had assembled and excitedly watched as their children were heralded on to a stage by a shaggily bearded old man and were examined one by one for desirable traits. One of the first to be called was a child with slightly handsome features, sporting black hair and a thin stature he would be considered average, except for his glossy green eyes.

"Rlan Solis, if you could please come up on stage!"

Rlan, jittery with excitement and trepidation, walked up onto the stage and next to the bearded old man who flourished a transparent crystal about the size of a soccer ball from out of nowhere.

Rlan was shocked by the crystal's sudden appearance, but the old man ignored his stupefaction.

"Hurry up and just put your hand on this ball we still have a few hundred kids to test!"

Rlan gently placed his hand on the crystal and it immediately began to glow with an ethereal light; in the bottom of the ball a small amount of red light appeared and started to rise rapidly until it stopped, filling the bottom two inches of the ball. The old man looked astonished for a moment, but his face gradually changed to a half-concealed look of disdain, some of the more knowledgeable commoners showed looks of pity. Rlan suddenly felt like a caged animal on exhibit and from the looks he got from the crowd he thought he probably wasn't all that impressive of an animal either. Not knowing how he had failed he started to almost instinctually feel sad and embarrassed. The old man announced Rlan's results.

"Fire Element with no subsidiary elements, Elemental Affinity is around 12%"

The crowd collectively sighed and looked on in pity.

"Poor kid"

"Well that sucks"

"He got the short straw alright"

"That has to be the lowest affinity I ever saw"

"How unlucky, well not everyone can be a genius"

"RNGesus must really hate that kid"

Rlan finally understood just how badly his affinity was, if elemental affinity was like a measure of one's intelligence then he would be autistic when compared to others. Rlan knew some basic info about the elements and while Fire was a great element that boasted high battle power and included skills with vastly destructive capabilities his affinity for Fire was just to low. Affinities in ClearWind City were graded into different levels according to how high or low the affinity was, Supreme Grade is 49-40%, High Grade is 39-30%, Middle Grade is 29-20%, Low Grade is 19-10%, and Inferior Grade 9%-1%. Each of these Grades is then further divided into stages: higher stage (9-6%), middle stage (6-3%), and lower stage (3-0%). Only in a few extremely special cases did anyone ever awaken with Inferior Grade Affinity, while the average person boasted a lower stage Middle Grade or a higher stage Low Grade Affinity and some exceptionally lucky people would have even awakened more than one element! Meanwhile, Rlan was stuck with 1 element of Lower stage Low Grade with no chance of becoming a practitioner, while it was possible to raise his affinity it would require a massive amount of expensive materials to raise his affinity by just 1 or 2 % and who would bother to help him when there were millions of other people with affinities multiple times higher than his own. Even Mayor Leon, the richest person in ClearWind Town would go bankrupt if he tried to raise someone's affinity and even then there was a limit to how much you could raise your affinity! So Rlan had absolutely no chance to become a practitioner much less get picked up by a Faction. After a few of the longest moments of Rlan's life, Rlan put on a brave face and tried not to cry as he moved towards the stage's exit. The old man, acting as if he had just remembered something, appeared in front of Rlan and put one of his hand on Rlan's shoulder. The old man then seemed to glow with a mysterious blue light before taking his hand of Rlan and leisurely walking back on stage. Rlan having no time to react, suddenly felt a burning feeling in his stomach, which then spread throughout his body. After a second of pain, Rlan felt an unexplainable new sensation, as if he could now sense a kind of liquid throughout the sky and earth. It was like suddenly realizing that you were in water your whole life, but you had never realized the water was there. He could now feel the Aether, his body felt great and his mind was calm. He even momentarily forgot about his failure to become a practitioner, but as he was enjoying this great new sensation he felt a sudden horrendous pain in his bowels and he coughed up blood, falling weakly to the floor as he twitched in agony. The old man who was just swaggering back on stage looked back in astonishment. He had been astonished more times today, then he had throughout all of last year.

Author - So what do you think? I would love to hear some comments. I will keep working on this story, for now, I already planned out the next few chapters, but I will need a week or so to write a few of them before I post anymore. That way I can work ahead and post more reliably. I realize the chapters are on the smaller side, but I think I will keep them like this for now. I am pretty busy with School.