The Student and The Scholar

Energy converters sounded like the things that Odris hooked up in his lab sometimes, but Maahes thought it also kind of sounded like what he did. He didn't really get how he used his powers. He had tried telling Odris that the others said it was magic, but Odris was convinced it was something scientific. He was sure Odris would be really interested in what Elias was saying.

...Not that he was going back to Odris! But if he did meet Odris again, he would have told him that he was an energy converter according to Elias.

He extinguished the flames by closing his guise's hand, then plopped back down by making the wind go away, too.

Maahes gave a big nod.

"I'm an energy converter!" he agreed.

"Cooool," Elias said through a smile as he thought about what this could mean. He began to lightly pace.

"You should meet my friends, Alistair and Alan! They'll be back next week. They'll probably have so many questions, especially Alan. Something something about chemical energy. Or is it kinetic? Or thermal? Or something else? I forget. But who cares!"

He turned back to Aen with a big grin. "Show me your coolest move!"

Maahes screwed his face up in concentration.

His coolest move was changing his guise, but he couldn't do that right now. He didn't think energy converters could make themselves look different. Giving a frustrated humming noise, he crossed his arm and furrowed his brow even more.

"I can do a Detonation!" he said.

He grinned, looked around, and then faltered.

"...I'm not supposed to do it in tiny places, though," he admitted. He wanted to, but it really wasn't safe. And he didn't want to hurt his brand new friend! "Even though it looks open here, we're underground. So that makes this place tiny!"

"Detonation?" Elias repeated. All other words Aen said after that went in one ear and out the other. Well, actually, they didn't go in any ear at all. Elias had a habit of hearing an interesting phrase and then ignoring everything else.

"Is that, like..."

He didn't quite know how to describe it, so he imitated it instead, mimicking some dramatic explosion noises and waving his arms around, doing this repeatedly for a few seconds for extra dramatic effect.

Maahes gave an eager nod.

"Uh-huh!" he agreed. To prove his point, he copied Elias by imitating the noise. There was a little more to it, too - it made anything it hit disappear. Odris said it was because the flames were so strong; Maahes just blamed the magic.

The two of them imitated noises of explosions and bowing up, and it was only interrupted when Elias burst into giggles.

"That's so cool!" Elias said through a laugh with a lingering thought that a boy his age couldn't possibly do that much damage. "But it's not that big, right? Right? I can take you to a big field, maybe."

Maahes screwed his face in concentration. Brow furrowed and lips drawn into a tiny, thin line, Maahes tried to figure out if he could actually do that. Odris would have said no if he was here. But Odris wasn't here right now, which meant Maahes could do it!

He gave Elias a big grin.

"Let's go to the field!" he agreed.

"Alright, this way!" Elias said, running towards the trees and gesturing for Aen to follow him. He looked back every once in a while with a grin, chatting away like nothing was wrong with the world and Aen totally belonged here.

"So you've got some pretty cool powers," he said after a big rant about the cool grass of the field they were going to. "But do you know what class you're in? Ooh, maybe mine?! Will you be in our group? That would be so cool! Three energy converters, a healer, an illusionist, and a lame time thingamajig! We would dominate the class. Oh, but also, do you have parents? Oh, obviously not, since you're here. That's cool. We can hang out. Where are you staying? The dorms too? Ooh, maybe we're neighbors!"

Maahes was usually pretty chatty, too, but for once in his life he had no idea what he was supposed to say. Every question that Elias asked made him worried that Elias was going to figure out he wasn't supposed to be here. But Elias kept talking, which meant that Maahes never had to give a single answer. The only thing he could give an answer to was one of the questions that Elias had forgotten by the end of his rant.

"I don't have any parents," Maahes replied as they ran through the trees. A run like this should have made someone his age and size out of breath, but he didn't feel the least bit tired - it was a perk of not being Alteran like Elias and Odris. But Maahes didn't even think of how his lack of heavy breathing would be suspicious. "But I don't want any! I don't need them."

He screwed his face up again.

"If I had them, they'd tell me what to do!" he said. "And Odris always tells me what to do already-"

Maahes skid to a stop, suddenly remembering he wasn't supposed to mention Odris anymore.

"That's right!" Elias said back enthusiastically, jumping over a big rock like a hurdle. "We don't need parents! They suck!"

He glanced back to give Aen an approving grin, but then came to a halt when he noticed he was no longer following. "Hey, what's wrong?" he asked, jogging back.

He didn't really give him any time to respond.

"Who's Odris? Brother? Friend? My sister Ellie sometimes tells me what to do, but I don't listen to her sometimes, so you can do that too! My friend Evaline tells me what to do sometimes too. But it's okay, I never listen to her anyways. It's kind of funny seeing her get mad."

Maahes hesitated.

That was a good question. Even though he wasn't ever going to see Odris ever again, he didn't really know what Odris was to him. He guessed Odris was kind of like a dad. He was old. But he didn't feel like a dad in the same way the dads Maahes saw outside of his window did. He felt more like the adults that sat with the Alteran kids outside the meeting rooms sometimes.

And he was like the big brother in the book that Odris had read to him a little while ago - the one that he had gotten Aen from.

"He's my brother," Maahes announced, giving a smug grin when he finally figured it out.

"Brother. Alright," Elias mused out loud, continually saying whatever thoughts coming to his mind. Aen didn't seem like a talkative type, so he could fill that part for him.

"I have a brother too. Two, actually. And a lot more sisters. But only Ellie lives with me. One of my brothers used to live with me too, but then he became an adult. The rest of them are far away." He scrunched his nose. "I wish that they'd let me travel to see them," he said softly.

He swatted that thoughts away and turned back to Aen. "What about you? Are you living with Odris?"

Maahes frowned.

"Why can't you travel?" he asked. Everyone could travel! All you needed was one of the gates - then you could go from one world to another. The younger Alterans always needed a guardian with them, but Maahes was pretty sure even one of the guards could do it. "Does no one want to go with you?"

Before Elias could answer his question, he thought about the question he had been asked. He froze up again when he realized he didn't know how to answer it.

A moment later, he said, "I'm not living with Odris anymore - and I'm not going to live with him ever again!"

Elias squinted at Aen, asking rapid fire questions. "Did you run away? Does Odris live in Sector 2, too? And also, what do you mean? It's not like we can just walk outside."

Pursing his lips and furrowing his brow, Maahes thought long and hard about what he should reply with. He couldn't ever go back to Odris, but he was also really confused by everything Elias was saying.

Maahes looked at Elias.

And he came to an important decision.

Glancing around to make sure they were really alone, Maahes leaned in and whispered, "Can you keep a secret?"