"We'll walk this road together, through the storm. Whatever weather, cold or warm" ~ Eminem
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THE wind swept across the sandy plain, brushing the sand against the feet of the two armed men that faced each other in silence. One of them was blindfolded with a black scarf, holding two wooden batons while the other held a long wooden staff. The latter started the fight as he spun the staff twice in his hand, carefully examining his opponent's positioning with keen birdlike brown eyes.

After a while, he decided his path of attack. He lunged at the man at once, conscious of every step he took. He leapt off in the air and brought down his staff with all his might, aiming at the head of his adversary.

It all happened in the blink of an eye, but he knew he had lost again. The blindfolded man somehow managed to predict his move, dodging his staff just at the moment it was supposed to strike him. The man then countered with a kick that sent him sprawling just as he landed.

"Fifty three wins, zero losses. Reece, you didn't make it past a move this time," the blindfolded man bragged, removing his mask to reveal a brown skinned man with a straight scar underneath his left eye. His hair was peach black and short, shaved and blended on both sides. His beard formed a straight line that extended a bit under his chin. He grinned has he held his hand towards Reece to help him up.

"You were peeping," Reece replied, accepting the hand as the former pulled him up.

"Was not, you are just that bad!"

"How do you do it?" Reece asked, this time he was serious.

"Do what? Kick your ass? Well..." he started

"Erous come on! Seriously. I just lost a fifty third time to a man in blindfold." Reece ruffled his dirty blonde hair. "Like seriously, I preferred when you could see me."

Erous smiled, he gesticulated for them to walk. "Now tell me, what do you know about Ghars?"

Reece wanted to ask how that even mattered but he knew more than to question Erous' weird teaching skills. "Vicious and tiny bat-like creatures that hunt in packs."

"That's it? Like Diane could do better and she doesn't even exist."

"I mean what's there to know about Ghars. Like you know what a Ghar is and you know I know what it is!"

Erous patted his shoulder. "You don't want to bore yourself with the details, but that's all about it. You can't ignore the details and expect to get better."

"Huh?"

"Yes, the Ghars are blind and deaf. Yet you can't escape them once they have a lock on your scent. They use their only sense so good that even the wild Bergian Walthorn fears them."

Reece walked in silence as he tried to digest and understand what his master just said. After few minutes he gave up. Erous never talked straight, everything Reece had learnt from him was from bitter and cruel experiences. Erous believes experiences and memories help imprint lessons, "important lessons," into us. He was once tasked to find a necklace that doesn't exist in a Gorgon spring. Like Gorgons were one of the most feared constrictors in the realm. He discovered the lesson was just to always double check facts before jumping head on into trouble.

After a while they reached their house. A small cottage made of timber and stone. Erous sat down on the small wooden pavement in front of their house, removing an apple from his pouch and throwing it at Reece. It was more of a strike than a throw, but after years of reflex training it was easy for him to catch. He sat down slowly beside his master or guardian whichever he felt like calling Erous White.

"So tell me about your dream," he proposed.

Right, Reece had never really been a peaceful sleeper. His sleep were rarely without nightmares or actual hallucinations. People say dreams are reminiscent thoughts that lingers to ones unconscious memory while they sleep. Whoever postulated that was half right. Sure half his dreams were about watching his town burn down in flames and watching his father beheaded before him, like the usual Tuesday dream for anyone who's had to watch their whole town burn down or had to watch their father beheaded in front of them. But then again some of those dreams just breach in and he wasn't sure they were stuff that's happened.

"I was in the middle of a war of sort. Like Egrimorth was in flame," he paused to recall.

"The usual." Erous chipped in.

He raised his brown eyebrows before he continued, while his master spread out his hand innocently. "I was standing with the girl, actually we were backing each other and demigods. Loads of demigods surrounded us." Reece stopped again, the memory of it was a bit disturbing for him. "She fought valiantly. But in the end she was overwhelmed by the odds. I woke up before she got stabbed anyways."

"So you mean the same girl who gave you that golden button was in your dreams again."

"Yes! At least I think, I told you I can't even see her face. It just makes sense that she is the one," he pointed out. "I can't even remember what she looked like."

"Well I am not really good with dreams, but go take your bath. I will have a word with Lorna and Alaina,"

Reece flinched at the mention of Alaina. That woman was one of the most terrifying thaumaturges Reece has ever met. Her eyes were grey almost transparent, like you could look into her soul through it. Her ivory skin was way whiter than Reece's and they appeared scaly sometimes, all of these were complimented by a really long pitch black hair. She doesn't say much, or smile much. Reece always wondered how Lorna was her best friend. They were complete opposites. Most of the times, the first thing you see when Lorna appears is her teeth, grinning from afar. If there was a world competition for loquacious people Lorna would ace it. She could say fifteen thousand words in a minute. Even their appearances were different. Unlike Alaina's pale scary skin, hers were golden and clear. Her eyes were Amber and her long hair were supposed to be black, but she had dyed them into horizontal golden stripes. Like their friendship still bothered him till date.

"What are you staring at? Go and take your bath, school's gonna start in an hour," Erous ordered.

Reece obeyed, it was already past noon, they had been training for four hours and he felt sweaty. After his bath, Reece dressed up and headed for school. Since Erous had managed to buy a house that was so far from the castle. He had to walk two miles to the carriage stops before taking a carriage to the castle for another ten minutes. Today was even worse. Old man Regan's carriage was the next so it took Reece another fifteen minutes. Reece ran as fast as he could, his school robes almost tripping him on several occasions.

He didn't even have time to check out the lovely gold plated amours of the guards. He always admired those, most especially the kingdom's symbol that was designed rather skillfully on their cape. The symbol was that of a dragon with a man on his back soaring high in the sky. Reece had always argued that the animal in the symbol wasn't a dragon but a wyvern. Close associates of dragons, but not dragons. Unlike dragons, wyverns don't belch fire, they more like spit poison.

He sprinted through the inner gates and past the royal spring. The spring that always housed half the princesses in the royal palace. They were always there every afternoon, doing the same thing. Either they were giggling about something or pretending to fan themselves while sitting beside it. Sometimes they even pretended to feed the little goldfishes in the blue spring. Reece thought their lives were very boring.

The palace was right after the row of houses that the royal staff lives, and right in front of it was the statue of King Alaroc the first. Slayer of demons, God of dragons and blah blah blah. The man was so decorated in stories and poems that Reece stopped believing anything he did was real.

He forked left past the palace and there it was, his main destination, the Institute of Thaumaturgy. It was designed to teach young thaumaturges like Reece to use their blessings. When Reece found out he was a thaumaturge, he was fourteen, a whole year after he'd lost his family. Erous had being the one taking care of him and being a thaumaturge himself, he began to notice few signals in him. Reece had the ability to control other people's emotions, make them feel what he wanted, amplify whatever they were feeling. And it wasn't limited to just people, he could do it to animals too.

Reece still remembers from the history books they had force them to read during his first years. Not that Reece hated reading, but he hated reading history at least most of it. Reece loved the parts about wars, rise and fall of kingdoms. But when it comes to trade and other stuff like mining, Reece always felt like they were unnecessary, though this particular history was one of the fun ones. A war had broken out between Eleinberg and Egrimorth. Eleinberg was the kingdom of the demigods, children of the gods with godlike powers. Egrimorth on the other hand had nothing but weapons, so Eleinberg had the upper hand. Frustrated, King Alaroc, "the hero of many stories," cried out to the gods and prayed for their blessing. The gods unable to choose sides decided to bless ten of Egrimorth's soldiers with abilities beyond ordinary. And that was how the first Thaumaturges were born. Egrimorth managed to push Eleinberg back and the war ended in a mutual agreement since both sides lost too much people already. At least that was what Reece thought.

At last, Reece got to his class just as soon as the bell rung. He chose his sit beside his best friend, Patelon Peruvia. An elemental thaumaturge blessed by Aquaria, the goddess of water.

"You were almost late." Patelon declared on seeing him.

"Almost is the keyword, ain't it?" Reece replied, smiling at the scrawny fair boy beside him.

"Yeah, soon you're gonna stop being almost late." he grinned.

"Huh, don't bore me. Erous already did a good job of that. Any interesting stuff?"

Patelon bulged his eyes as if he could suddenly remember a really important matter he had to discuss. His large curly hair seemed to tense up too. "Yeah! I have got something to tell you," he glanced backwards as if to make sure no one was watching them. He then gestured for Reece to bring his ear closer.

"What do you wanna say that's so important." Reece rolled his eyes, but still complied.

"The teacher just walked into the class." he whispered gently in Reece's ear. "Top secret info."

"Oh you are dead!" Reece smiled sarcastically. "I am going to chop you into little pieces and feed you to the sharks."

Patelon on the other hand was having a good time, he giggled uncontrollably. Their teacher a fair, petite woman with a default smile gently tapped the large table in front of the classroom to get the attention of the students.

"Good day miss Ena!!" the class echoed automatically.

"Open the text books in front of you to page sixty three," she tapped the table with her wand and a large text book shimmered into reality in front of each of the students.

Miss Ena was one of the few thaumaturges that uses a wand, since the output of her powers could probably destroy her. She was a thaumaturge blessed by Aureli, the god of light. But unlike other thaumaturges, her powers were too much to contain, so it was sealed inside her and only a wand can call it up. These kind of thaumaturges were known as submerged thaumaturge.

Reece flipped the page open, he had a feeling the class would be boring. Their topic for the day was Avareia: A kingdom of wealth.

Avareia was one of the four major kingdoms in the realm, also known as the Kingdom in the sky because it literally floats in the sky. Avareia was one of the wealthiest kingdom in the realm and one of the meanest. It was the kingdom of the Faes. Little is known about the kingdom though, since they caught ties with most of the other kingdoms. Only sometimes do they trade with Elves in Arckadania but mostly they are a secluded and secretive people.

Today the class was centered about the Fae's wealth, and Reece wasn't interested. He instead decided to stare at the teacher while thinking on other things. It was really helpful that Erous had thought him how to put his mind out of his body or the class would have been torture. Patelon on the other hand loved stuffs like this. He took so many notes that he would later read to Reece just in a feat to memorise them.

Classes went for five hours more and school hours ended. Reece bade Patelon goodbye and headed home tired. He flung his robes on the wooden chair and fell asleep.

The sky darkened, and the city was on fire. Reece stood at the top of the mountain, watching people burn to crisp. It was as vivid as a painting, as clear as the Avareian crystals. A woman stood beside him faceless like most of the other people in his dream.

"Do you remember me son?" the woman asked.

"Mother?" Reece heard himself say.

"I told you I will always be here for you, didn't I?"

Reece wanted to hug her but for some reason, he couldn't move.

"The time has finally come Reece, the time for you to get up!"

"What do you mean?"

"Reece! Get up!"

Reece opened his left eye to see the obscure image of a grinning Erous about to pour a bowl of water on his face. Instinctively, he sprung off from the bed, landing butt first as the bowl of water splashed on his empty bed.

"Khasm!" Erous cursed. "Get dressed. The bar won't run itself," he ordered.

Reece stood up, drowsy as heck. "Demon's Rising can wait thirty minutes more,"

"Lorna is already at the bar!" Erous chipped in, as he headed out of his room grinning to himself.

Reece's eyes bulged. "Shit!" he rushed straight for his closet flinging out series of clothes before he finally settled for one. He dressed up within a minute and met Erous outside the house. Together they headed to the bar.