Chapter 41

'Separation, dividing the people. The perfect way to create conflict. This division has grown as humanity grew. Gender, race, beliefs, livelihoods, cultures, the list goes on. All it takes is one person who dislikes the differences. Or three in this case.'

And that they did as Alex went to class the three began to spread chaos.

Alex took his usual seat in the history class. He opened the book of runes planning to learn them all, but his seat jerked forward suddenly. He turned around to see the guy behind him looking at him with a look of disgust.

"Why don't you go back to where you came from?" He said suddenly.

"He was born here Steven. Don't ask stupid questions." Mr. Tatum said as he entered the class.

Alex turned around and continued reading.

He had made a lot of progress on runes. He had found many runes that were able to combine. What they did changed randomly as they were grouped up.

He blocked out everything that was going on around him. The more he watched and listened the more it was harder to hold himself together. People that used to ask him for help with work were looking at him as if he were below them. Alex wasn't the only one going through this, he almost broke a guy's wrist who forcefully shoved a student into a locker.

Luckily Mr. Tatum caught it and gave him detention. Most of the teachers were fighting it. Many students were trying to, but they weren't taken seriously and were even threatened by the other students.

Alex walked with his head down, several hundred invisible runes rotating around him.

He felt something traveling through this spacial detection towards him. He blocked it and looked at it, It was a piece of paper. He unfolded it while looking up. It was the three men, they were wearing evil smiles.

It was a detention slip. Alex lifted the paper directly in their view and shredded it into confetti with his 'wind affinity.'

Two of them looked at him with anger, the last one was different. Alex's action had awakened something within him. He quickly pretended to be angry as well.

They were about to go over and teach the boy a lesson, but stopped themselves as they were told to not link themselves with his disappearance. They left with heavy steps.

Alex entered his next class.

"Did you hear that a bunch of Tragnantians are getting into fights?" A girl said getting quiet as Alex entered the room.

"Yeah, maybe what those three men said was true." The girl who she was speaking to answered. She had her back turned to the door.

Alex said nothing and pulled out his book.

"Those bunch of racists yeah right, I watched them hand out detention slips to everyone they saw as evil." Raven spoke up from the corner of the room.

"She is right. These men are acting on beliefs, not reason. So when they speak to you, try to think about what they are saying before taking it to heart." Ms. Taylor said while giving the students a packet to work on.

Alex sighed internally. He was walking around with a huge target on his back. He knew that they were after him. Somehow the head temple had learned about him.

But he had no proof, all he had was his intuition.

——————

When he had finally made it to the building for mages, he felt the tension lessen.

"Are you sure? I would be incredibly happy if you would be willing to test my new concoction. Please don't leave I need fresh guin… ahem lovely test subjects." Alex watched as the three men left the building.

Lockhorn was at the door wearing a shiny badge from the potions guild. He had a potion in his hand and was calling out to the three.

They gave Alex dirty looks as they walked past him.

"Humph, these guys have no authority in here. Even the principal has no hold on us, stupid sheep." He said before pulling Alex in and shutting the door.

All of the instructors were gathered. They all had the same look on their face.

"It seems that the Temple is making its move." Millay spoke up.

"Indeed their stupidity will be the downfall of our kingdom. Mages are already spread thin and they expect us to expel a quarter of our inhabitants." Duncan said in agreement.

"I'm saddened that they didn't try my potion. It's strong enough to knock a woolly elephant off its feet." Lockhorn said as he put the potion back up.

The instructors looked at him as if he was a madman.

"What? my sleeping medication wasn't strong enough, I had to take matters into my own hands." He said before adding. "They would have been fine." He said assuring the other instructors.

"As long as they don't cross my bottom line." He muttered under his breath.

"Michael will be getting the students who were sent to detention. Never in my life had I seen such blatant evil." Duncan said. "Daniel I might have to take you up on that offer."

Daniel nodded.

"Alex, Taylor is in the training room would you like to go join him?" Deb asked seeing him just standing around.

Alex nodded as he grabbed the card and headed off.

"Are you sure that they are after him?" Duncan asked.

"Yes word of him has gone all the way to the upper echelons of the temple." Michael spoke up. "They are using this opportunity to spread their influence and remove a threat."

"If they feel that they can do something, they will continue to send more people. Have you contacted your superiors Locky?" Stacey asked Lockhorn.

"I did. They are taking this matter seriously. We have to make sure that we keep an eye on everyone until we can send them back with their tails between their legs."

——————

Alex entered the training room to see the worried faces of his friends.

"Alex, it's good to see that you are fine. Don't listen to anything those three say." Tom said as he saw him walking in.

James was currently punching a dummy fiercely. Flames were curled around his fists and the dummy was scorched black. "You tell me if they try to do anything to you. I don't care how tough they are."

"What god would give them the right to do what they are doing? People that I once considered friends, are out there picking fights with the less fortunate." Taylor said his hands curled up into fists.

Alex created sound barriers and blocked the views of the cameras. "I promise that one day, I'll be strong enough to reveal the truth to everyone. Whoever this weaver of lies is, I'll remove him from reality." Alex said while thinking about whoever was behind all this.

The three nodded, they knew that Alex knew the truth as he was told it at a young age. they were sure that the truth was damning and would turn the temple on its side.

His lightning affinity had made it to the Adept class and he had stopped using the car to boost it. The fuel was limited and he still hadn't learned how to operate the phone.

His light affinity had also reached the Adept class, but today he could feel the light mana was being absorbed more slowly. He was in such a bad mood that his body was rejecting the light mana.

'No amount of comfort will make the wrong right.'

'No amount of happiness will change the past.'

'No amount of kindness will stop the parasite from spreading its diseases to its host.'

Alex looked forward and for the first time in his life, he could see a path he could take in the future.

"We will be with you until the end." Taylor said as he put his hand on Alex's shoulder.

Alex didn't train his magic, rather he began copying all of the runes with his spacial energy and spreading them throughout the air.

He didn't bother reading what they did, he just scanned them before setting them next to another and attempting to combine them. Hundreds of runes rotated mashed and teleported.

'I can feel that I'm close to understanding something bigger, I need to finish this. This room is too small.'

"I'll be back." He said as he left the room and went out behind the building.

He pushed his spacial element to the limit as his nearly two hundred and ninety feet range was littered with runes. He sat down in the center of a clear area. Shuffling through the runes.

'Doing it randomly is too slow.'

He began organizing the different runes in orders of small similarities.

He tried combining them but not one worked. When the last few runes from the book were finally copied into the air he sighed as he made no progress.

Alex then looked to the runes that he had successfully combined. They had nothing in common. The runes were sometimes similar and sometimes exact opposites.

He stopped as he focused on the first one he had successfully combined. He stared at the runes trying to imagine what could fill in the blank spaces.

"That's it, finally!" Alex whispered as he realized what connected the runes. It was nothing. Fire and frost, water and air runes. Nothing was holding them together, and yet he could tell that once they joined together they would be one.

'Everything has been divided and set apart, that includes runes.'

He set forth a plan to combine the runes. He attempted combining similar first then tried the runes from every section. After several minutes he had finally found a few that would work.

Alex suddenly shifted the groups as he found better groupings. He pulled a notebook out from his bag as he wrote some notes into it. Before he dispelled the magic and went back into the school.

A few minutes earlier.

"We will meet up again later." Duncan said to the instructors who had just finished a discussion.

David went back to his club room and removed his glasses as he rubbed his weary eyes. 'They sent some strong people for just a political movement. There's no doubt that they are here for Alex.'

He put his glasses back on and squinted as he could swear that he saw what looked like snowflakes dancing in the air just outside his window.

David hurriedly went to his window. His eyes widened as he saw hundreds of runes filling the sky. They were all surrounding one young man. He saw Alex sitting on the ground, the rune book open and flipping through pages on its own. Most other people would look out and think that he was meditating and the wind was flipping the pages, but David could see the tendrils of energy flipping the pages and hovering over the runes.

He could see runes rapidly appearing in the sky and saw some disappearing before reappearing a distance away.

That is when he noticed it. He had witnessed it when he first met Alex. Initially, he thought that Alex was using a strange wind affinity ability, but now he understood. The sky was hazy surrounding Alex, when they had first met he had assumed that something was interfering with his sight.

'He can see the mana without his eyes! Alex is sitting with his eyes closed and the runes are appearing everywhere within the hazy area around him.'

"Fuck it. All these rules and regulations can go into the toilet for all I care. This boy has way too much talent to not be nurtured." David said while grabbing his personal notebook of runes. He began writing a journal to give to Alex.

If only he knew that Alex wasn't just summoning runes but uncovering a mystery behind them. Well, let's just say that he wouldn't have been able to remain as calm as he was now.