Book 1 Chapter 4: Magic, Warrior, and Type
"Sir? Could you please show us around?" Solomon asked a tall well-built man who was cleaning the patio to a small building along the path they had left.
"Oh? You two must be some new recruits, ah sure…why not kiddo, I got some free time right now before training." He set his broom down and walked into the small building before coming out with a long black jacket and a fist of gauze.
"What's the gauze for?" Alexander asked.
"Those…marks on your hand, let's call it from training…should be bandaged kiddo. Wrap it like this…" He gave them an example by pretending to wrap his own hand, and spread his fingers as he weaved back and forth around them before bringing his hand around his palm several times.
"Thank you senior…" Alexander took it and gave him a grateful look. It felt great, but god did his hands hurt right now.
"Come on…if you're new, have you been tested?" He asked while tossing the jacket over his shoulders and walking down the path away from the patio he had stood on.
Solomon and Alexander shook their heads.
"Ah…that's okay, we can leave the rest for later…best to get you there as soon as possible, come on try and follow"
The man began to jog down the path adjacent to the patio, and the two sighed before sprinting after him.
Several minutes later they arrived in front of a white building. It had several zig zagging structures come from a large dome. The building itself at the least took up several tens of thousands of square feet. In fact, from atop the cliff when they had come they had indistinctly noticed this building in the distance.
"This…is one of 5 buildings you should come to know…it is the directory, testing center, grading center, and mission hub…it has a lot more to it than that, but for you two that is what matters for now. Step through that door, and wait for the woman at the front desk to call you forward…goodluck!" The man smiled at them and then began to jog back up the path they had come down.
"What a nice guy…" Alexander patted Solomons shoulder, and the two walked forward and up tens of steps made of grey granite before arriving at a large ornamental door.
Someone was just leaving, and so they simply slipped by them before closing it.
The room they walked into was way larger on the inside then what it looked like on the outside. This shouldn't just be related to architecture, as the space inside this building which looked at best a thousand feet wide on the outside was 1,000's of feet on the inside. If all the buildings and structures around the large dome, including this one, was several tens of thousands of square feet, then the inside following this concept would be the size of a small town.
"Woh…" They looked around mesmerized at this thought.
"You two must have some good ties with fate, there just happens to be an opening for you both" A woman with a wide tome in her hands walked forward and gestured for them to follow.
They bowed to her respectfully and jogged up to either side of her.
"Testing?" She asked directly, receiving a nod from the two in reply.
"Good okay…Follow me this way…" She closed the tome in her hands before setting it on a large table nearby. Up over 4 sets of stairs, they arrived in front of a dark purple door.
"Mam…how is it that the space inside just this one building is larger than that outside?" Solomon couldn't help but ask.
"Oh that…its spacial manipulation! A profound aspect of space is compression, microcosm, as well as many other variants…in short, it allows its wielder in some paths related in space to change the space of something within an object or structure. When used on a tent, you could expand the internal space until it was the size of a mansion! Thrilling right? This principle was used on this very building, and all the others connected to it. You will come to find why…for now, it was to provide a direct view of what such techniques look like. Like right now for you! This is also a mage school, and thus magic is apparent in every building…it is mighty, and it is deep."
"Is the testing were doing related to becoming a mage?" Alexander tugged on her long flowing shirt. She didn't mind and smiled to him, "Yes…and no."
She opened the purple door in front of them, and nudged them inside before looking over to an amiable old woman and nodding to her.
The old woman looked them up and down several times, "Okay kiddos…off with everything."
The two boys shrugged and began to take off their clothes down to their underwear.
"You probably don't need the numbers on those…haha…ah…stretch your arms out wide…separate a bit, you aren't holding hands come now…good, stay like that" The old woman took a crystal ball off of a shelf next to her and began to wave her hands around it.
Solomon and Alexander looked around the room, to their left was a glass door leading to a balcony and beyond it their seemed to be a garden with several trees that weren't like the dark needled and black colored bark trees outside.
The room had a lavish carpet, with strange squiggles and shapes that seemed to make up a pattern but they couldn't tell for what purpose. It certainly wasn't for style, as the very room they stood in seemed to be layed out to follow the patterns borders.
"Hey! Look forward or we could have deviations…" She propped her legs up on a table next to her as she sat down. She pulled a cigarrette out from her bra, which in their two inexperienced opinions was useless on her, and lit it up.
The clear glass ball she had held in her hand, and chanted and moved about rose up from her other hand and floated up over the two.
A strange light swirled inside of it, before spread outwards like a glowing field and shining upon them. They didn't feel anything, but strangely symbols began to appear within it as each second ticked by.
Several minutes later the sphere floated back over to the woman, and the script that had formed inside floated through the glass sphere and layed itself out in the air in front of her.
"Mmm…okay…good…nice actually…okay…" She never said for them to put their arms down, and so begrudgingly they kept them up.
15 minutes passed by, and the two had slowly nudged towards each other so that they could at least hold up the others arm for them. Their shoulders were aching horribly, and yet the old woman continued to mumble to herself.
She glanced up at them, and then looked back to the symbols in front of her, a minute passed before she flinched and sorrily said "My bad…you can put your arms down young ones…thank you for being so respectful and waiting."
"No problem mam…thank you for helping us…" Alexander mumbled out.
"Oof…" Was all that Solomon cared to say.
"Names…ages…" She said without glancing over to them again.
Solomon stepped forward, "I am Solomon…this is Alexander…we know not our last names or origin, we are 8 years old."
"Pretty mature for an 8 year old…" She used her finger to write several things amongst the floating symbols, which rearranged themselves accordingly.
"Okay…Solomon you have a good physique…your potential as a warrior isn't very high, but only in the concept of strength not speed…I recommend if you choose the warrior path, you go into the scout field of it. Your mind is an organ as well, we can test for its potential but not the inherent value of what it contains…either way, you have a mind with a great potential towards magic, I highly recommend the mage field for you.
As for Alexander…you have a perfect physique towards becoming a warrior, I recommend close quarter training, as you would excel in strength unlike your brother…brother right, you two do look alike…you have a good mind for magic as well, so that is a toss-up."
Alexander and Solomon looked at each other for a long while, not knowing what to say, "Mam…can you do both?" Alexander asked after a bit of thought.
"Why yes…the difficulty rises by 200% though, and the chances of excelling in both past a certain level are quite low…but you can…you wouldn't have any free time though, but you wouldn't be the only ones to have chosen this type of path…" She waved her hands and the symbols disappeared into the crystal ball, which seconds later disappeared as well seemingly into thin air.
"How do we know what type of magic to pursue? Or what weapons to use?" Solomon asked, he had the hunch that they would test more than just physique.
"Oh honey…that will be up to you later on, the world has a vast amount of techniques to learn…its quite endless in fact, this is just a preliminary understanding of you two. Later on, you will be asked about what you want to do…only after learning the basics. Then, you will truly from that point forward begin to learn…"
They nodded in understanding; she waved them to the door and then went over to the balcony to finish her smoke.
"Good kids…" She mumbled after a while, still thinking over the data that the orbs had showed her.
A man silently appeared next to her on the balcony in a flash of silver, it was Ezken.
"So? Was it as I guessed?" He asked, while reaching into her bra to pull out a smoke.
She didn't seem to mind in the least at his touchy hands, but nodded to his question. He lit up the smoke, and leaned over the balcony while breathing in the fresh air along with his cigarette.
"It…is amazing…the potential within their bodies for magic, qi…it's…unbelievable." She slowly slid back from the balcony and leaned hard against the glass door with a thud. Her mind was reeling.
"I know…it's even greater than mine when I was tested. They can truly choose any type of energy and pursue its to the extreme in magic, or have godly bodies to break mountains…this is only what you can divine too…hopefully they don't die before that point, they beat the living hell out of a teen the first day they got here. Took me till my third to do that! Quite ruthless hahaha…haa…" He sighed out into the air with a puff.
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The same woman from before was standing outside the door, she smiled as they came out "Go well?" She asked while patting them on the shoulder and walking them down the hallway.
"Uh yeah…I think?" Sol muttered.
"It's okay…it's just the preliminary testing, it is just to help you know what you can become strongest in! The paths of life are endless, and knowledge is vast…take your time choosing what you would like to get into."
She walked them down over 8 corridors before stopping in front of a plain grey door.
"Okay…be respectful when you enter, if Ezken is the leader of these lands as a lord…then this man, is the leader of the school as an elder…" She patted them on the heads and then left.
"Enter…" A warm voice rang out from beyond the door.
Alexander grabbed the door handle and pulled it open, before Solomon followed him through the door and closed it behind them.
The room was over a 1,000 feet wide and yet its height was the true mystery. No matter how hard they tried, they just couldn't see into the space above. It wasn't that their eyes couldn't see far away, but above a hundred feet it was as if everything became blurry and misty.
"Come…sit with me young ones!" That same voice spoke up, causing them to cast their gaze towards a hearth set against a wall.
The rest of the space of the room was covered in shelves and walkways; they could guess that apart from beyond the concealing mist there had to be well over a million books here. The hearth was the only thing not made up of spines and pages in the room. The only things throughout the center of the room were 3 chairs set around the hearth, and a small table with a tea set.
A, not as old as they thought, man sat in one of those 3 chairs. The chair itself looked to have seats made up of sleek satin and leather. When they walked over and finally sat down in them, they sank down comfortably into them. Whoever made the chairs was a master in his craft, and just by resting in them they felt as if their bodies were gaining back energy after a long day.
"Hello little two…my name is Etabar Snow, I am the head master of this school and information center…and will help to guide you in your long journeys, at least in the present moment…