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Elementals Chapter 2

"Noah's tutorship takes him to an arena to see the Elementals in action."

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Chapter Two

The trip to Rozak by foot took a couple weeks. From time to time on the way there Bran would quietly mutter to himself complaining about not having a horse or something, Noah couldn’t always make out what he was saying.

Noah continued practicing to gather energy from around him and convert it into lightning. Bran told him it wasn’t necessary but he didn’t complain when it slowed them down a little bit either.

They arrived at Rozak in mid-day. The city was a moderate one just a few miles south of a river. The town had canals extending to the river to draw in water that they used as a source of constant energy. The townspeople filled the streets with activity and noise but it wasn’t overly crowded.

Bran led Noah around town aimlessly for hours until he finally stumbled upon the Inn. He got them one room with two beds for just a single night. When they settled into their room a little and after some relaxation Bran spoke, “I never could fully get into the comfort of Inns.”

“They’re nice but I think I know what you mean, nothing beats sleeping under the stars in the spring or summer does it?”

“Ahh, not just the stars at night, the feel of the ground beneath you,” Bran said. “The excitement of knowing you can be attacked by a wild Elemental at any moment; even on the roads they have been known to pass by time to time.

“Sometimes I would spend more time camping outside or in the mountains than an Inn. I would build myself a nice little rock hut for the night if the weather was bad, and only went to stay at Inns if I found myself a fancy lady or if the weather was too bad to stay outside like in the winter. I don’t suppose you ever fancied yourself a girl back in Rasoras have you?”

Noah shrugged and said, “I definitely noticed some of the girls around, but I didn’t much like talking to them or many of the other kids for that matter. None of them wanted to talk about the Elementals or the Pillars sport.”

“Well you’re young and a handsome enough lad you will soon enough be finding girls from all around the world that share the same interests in you. But girls are another mystery all their own, and it’s up to you to discover it for yourself.” Bran stood up and stretched then said, “Now then let’s go to the arena to you will see firsthand what the pillar of elements sport is like.”

The Arena in Rozak was a large circular ring with fifteen foot walls erected to protect the audience, who sat in the rows of stands lined up around the arena where they could watch the battles for free whenever there was one scheduled. With spring here battles would be more frequent in every city and capitol so it was no surprise to Noah or Bran that the arena was more crowded than the streets.

They found themselves some seats in the least crowded area and watched as the two competitors entered the arena and stood next to their pillars. Noah could see the Pillars were tall white structures that were at least three times the size of Bran. There looked to be some sort of marking engraved into the pillars but Noah couldn’t tell from the distance.

“Tell me Noah how do you think I knew to come here at this exact time to make it for the match happening today?” Brann asked.

Noah looked to Bran studying his face for a clue to the answer, but when he found none he said, “I do not know sir.”

“Because while I searched for the Inn I was also keeping my eye out for a poster and I found one with the schedule of the today’s arena battles. Keep that in mind cities and capitols will always have some posters around each day with the scheduled matches so when you’re looking to compete make sure that the days schedule is not filled.

“You can still sign up if the arena or coliseum is booked but you will be put into the earliest time the next day. Remember the sooner you sign up the more options you have to schedule your match at a time best suited to your style. The arena and coliseum opens at the crack of dawn in every city or capitol but only in the summer do some of them stay open past dark. Now than while we’re still waiting on that stupid judge to hurry his ass up, look out at the arena and tell me what they are standing on.”

Noah looked out around the arena and saw there was dirt everywhere, smooth brown dirt. He told Bran this and Bran nodded.

“Aye just dirt but some have grass, trees, rows of flame running along the ground in patterns, you name it. The most important thing before signing up for a specific arena or coliseum is to scout out what type of environment you will be fighting in, its completely free to do so and you don’t want to go into area where you will be at a severe disadvantage.”

Bran finished talking and now kept his eyes straight ahead instructing Noah to watch everything closely. The two competitors were both male, and around the same age, one had short black hair the other medium length blonde hair. They stared off at one another calmly as a man in clean white robes ran out into the middle of the arena between them.

The man in white robes shouted, “Contenders, arms to your sides and hands open!” Then he glanced between the two men to see that both their arms were out and their hands were open holding nothing in them. Then he nodded and shouted, “Begin” disappearing in a gust of wind a moment later.

At first nothing happened then after several seconds both the pillars began to light up more brightly in two different colors. The blonde man’s pillar illuminated a deep blue light while the dark haired man’s pillar was a silver light. Noah was almost too busy looking at the pillars to see that both the men pulled out some sort of cards and were now holding them in their hands.

After a couple minutes the blonde man tossed a card out in front of him and after a second it burst into a brilliant blue light and from out of the light came a large blue and white savage shark floating above the ground surrounded by an oval orb of water moving with the shark in perfect rhythm. The blonde man’s pillar lost all its light after that.

The distance between the two men was great but the shark raced across the arena closing that distance fast. In a swift move the dark haired man shout out a lance of Ice that hit the water around the shark and instead of breaking through like Noah thought, it stopped and spread around the water drastically slowing the shark down. Now the shark was at a crippling slow pace but still moving forward.

The blonde man muttered something to himself and pulled out his cards again cycling through them rapidly. While he was distracted the dark haired man held out his card, and from a brilliant silver light came a white majestic bird the size of a person with a silver glowing outline to it. It raced ahead towards the blonde man’s pillar, ignoring the savage shark that was still moving at a slow pace.

“A Gale angel,” Brann said aloud.

The blonde man saw the gale angel racing towards him and panicked a little fumbling through his deck of cards until finding the one he was looking for and he tossed it in front of him and out of a deep blue light came an enormous blue gelatinous creature with an ugly face that blocked the pillar.

Without looking away Noah asked, “What kind of creature is that?”

“A water flan; great for defense but almost useless on offense,” Bran said.

The gale angel didn’t slow down at all, it sped right for the water flan until at the last possible second before collision broke off into a hard right and soared around the water flan going behind it and shooting a ray of silver light at the pillar as it started to crack.

The blonde man shouted something incomprehensible and turned his full attention to the gale angel. He gathered several orbs of water around him which soon froze into numerous lances, but before he could shoot any of them at the angel a four winged eagle, half the size of a person, tackled him to the ground. The eagle caught everyone including Bran by surprise. It hovered around the blonde man distracting him until the pillar was broken, then it backed off immediately and with the gale angle returned to the dark haired man as the referee stepped in and declared him the winner.

The crowd shouted in cheers and the Magicians returned their Elementals to their cards. Then they walked out of the arena and Bran stood up and told Noah to join him as well. He let Noah calm his excitement from the match as they walked back to the Inn before he spoke. “So what did you learn from that match?” Bran asked.

“That the Elementals are an incredible species.” Noah said.

Bran sighed and asked, “Alright yes, but why did the dark haired man win, and the blonde haired one lose?”

Noah thought about it for a couple minutes before saying, “Because the dark haired guy was smarter, more skilled and had better Elementals.”

“Well you got two out of three right but we have no idea what Elementals either of them had. That’s another lesson to keep in mind don’t let the competition know what Elementals you have in your deck, use only the ones you need and don’t be afraid to acquire new ones now and again.”

Noah took this all in than asked, “I wanted to ask you sir what was with the cards exactly?”

“Boy they really didn’t teach you anything in that orphanage did they? Well those cards are where the Elementals are stored. When you fight an Elemental and weaken it enough you can seal it into a blank card and then later summon it so long as you have the card it is sealed inside.”

“How will I know what cards hold which Elemental though?”

“The cards will change on one side showing an illustration of the sealed Elemental. Now then let’s move on, why did the pillars start to glow different colors for the two competitors?”

Noah thought the answer over but came to only one conclusion, “I do not know sir.”

“I’d be overly impressed if you did. Anyways the pillars work as two designs for the sport, the first is a sort of goal to keep magicians from slaughtering one another, instead of killing the magician you simply break their pillar and you win. There other function is to assist the magician in converting the energy they gather around into one of their choosing.

“Because unlike you not every magician can convert the energy they gathered into one of their choosing without the assistance of the pillar.”

“If that’s the case sir why have me learn to transform different kinds of energy I gather, why not just use the pillar?”

“Many reasons, the main being that you won’t always have a pillar around to assist you in transforming energy. So if you’re out hunting wild elementals, say near a river, and you can only gather water or nature energy it will be up to you to convert it into lightning.

“The other reason is because when magicians gather energy into the pillar it starts to glow with the color of the transformed energy, like when the blonde magician gathered water energy to summon the shark his pillar glowed blue alerting his opponent he was going to summon a water Elemental. And though the other magician’s pillar gave away his element he knew how to counter water Elementals so he waited patiently before making his move.”

“I believe I understand all that sir, but how did the dark haired magician know his ice lance spell would freeze the dire shark and not just hinder it?”

Bran folded his arms and took in took a moment to think. “Instinct perhaps,” he said. “Maybe he had been trained to do that sort of thing, hell he could have just as easily seen another magician do it before and then practice it himself until mastering.

“Keep in mind you can learn a lot of new tricks from watching others battle, but don’t see something new once and assume you know how to do it. Make sure to practice your spells and techniques before going into battle, otherwise if they don’t work right when you need them to you will be in big trouble.”

Noah nodded and said, “I understand sir.”

“Good, now the last lesson for today is guilds. Joining a guild can have many benefits and you can meet wonderful new people, however to join them you must first sign a contract binding you to that guild for a set amount of time. Some contracts might be binding for life or might force you to pay a large entry or exit fee before you can join or leave them. So make sure you read over any contract carefully before signing.

“But don’t get discouraged by this either it’s not many guilds that do this sort of thing but there are some sneaky ones out there still today. Fortunately Ragnarock has disbanded a high number of these fowl guilds but there are still some around. Keep in mind though all guilds do have a tax fee that you must pay, if you join a more high society guild like ‘onyx crusade’ their fees will be substantially higher.”

When Bran finished speaking Noah asked, “Were you ever in a guild sir?”

Bran rubbed his beard a little, a sign that he was thinking back years ago, than he said, “aye, I was. When I was much younger in my late twenties, but it was a five year contract and after my time was up there I wasn’t qualified to come get back in again. Anyways let’s go get some food if, you want you can explore the city some more but be sure to be back by nightfall.”

When Bran and Noah returned to Bran’s house, just a mile south east of Rasoras, they both spent the entire day relaxing. The next day they were back to their normal routine. Noah spent all of spring and most of summer learning to master the ability to draw in any kind of energy from around him and convert it into another. He still had some practice to go but Bran told him the only way to get better was to practice it in situations where he was under duress such as combat.

Bran also had Noah study an Elemental archive book which he purchased at Rozak. Noah studied the book every night before bed learning as much as he could about the Elementals.

In the fall Bran taught Noah some hand to hand techniques in case his opponent, or anyone, comes up to him and he doesn’t have enough time to cast a spell. This training was short and only lasted a couple months. Bran had to make a trip back to Rasoras and had Noah stay behind so he could clean up the study room.

It was mostly dust in the study room so cleaning wasn’t hard at all. He had to stand on top of a chair to reach the top shelf and started wiping the dust off with the rag when he accidently knocked over a small box that he hadn’t seen was up there. Noah got down and picked up the box but saw that a small object, around the size of his wrist, fell out of the box.

The object was a shiny grey metal with a handle that he could wrap his hand around easily and had a thin curved and pokey ended metal coming out from inside the handle. Noah rubbed his hand across the curved part of the metal object admiring it when a stinging sensation suddenly flared up on his palm and he dropped the metal object in surprise and pain.

Blood flowed right out of the small cut in his palm and trickled down to the floor. “I’d have warned you it was still sharp if I gotten the chance,” Bran’s voice came in from behind Noah startling the young man. “Go wash that hand off and meet me back here I’ll get you some bandage and wrap up your hand.”

Noah did as Bran told him and tried to stop the blood from dropping everywhere as he went. He washed up his hand and met Bran back in the study as the older man wrapped a nice clean cloth around his hand tightly stopping the wound from bleeding out more. “I’m sorry sir I shouldn’t have touched it.”

“Aye don’t worry about, you were curious, hell same thing happened to me when I first laid eyes on it.” Bran looked at Noah’s left hand and smirked, “Same exact hand too.”

Noah smiled and asked, “What is that thing anyways?”

Bran took a long moment to think about it then answered, “It’s a relic from an age not believed to have ever existed.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well very few scholars believe that the Elemental creatures were not always around, or that magic was a force of itself either. I believe I taught you this theory before about how few believe the Elementals came from somewhere unknown and brought with them the element forces of magic.”

Noah nodded and said, “Yes sir you did.”

“Well this theory was only backed up by the fact that magicians can only control elemental properties such as fire and what not. Why could we only control the same forces as these very same beings and not something else? Why could we not transform object or ourselves as we see fit like in those stories written in the books?

“People accepted these questions as another mystery of life but my father was one of the rare exceptions. He thirsted for answers to these questions and spent his life in study of the answers. At one point in time he brought home that object, it is called a dagger, and it is a relic of war. He believed that relic was proof of a time before magic where humans had to use weapons like that to fight instead of magic or Elementals.

“Other scholars found such artifacts as these but without any history books or any other solid proof that theory was never able to been fully realized, it still lingers around though because people cannot disprove it either. I don’t have the brains to continue chasing that theory but I kept the dagger even after my father passed away and I take great care of it just like he told me. Who knows maybe one day the Elementals will all disappear, and relics like that will become more valuable than any amount of crystals.”

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Written by Starfallfantasy
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