Vyheria - Chapter 5

Walking into the clearing, Navarre could feel all eyes on him as his cape billowed behind him. Every apprentice knew that he had come in first, and if they had forgotten, the banner on his back would quickly remind them. He wished he could pull the cape over his head and hide beneath its blue tones. Most of the other accepted students were ignoring Exliana beside him. Navarre noted that whoever their teacher was going to be, they had not yet arrived.

“Well, well, if it isn’t Navarre Septiem, the strongest magician in the class.” One of the students stepped out from the crowd, a light purple bandana on his head suggesting he was a Caelimancer. His body was large, and his movements clunky, like he had been put together rather than naturally grew that way. “The name’s Reyvo. I watched the whole final fight from the edge of the clearing after sparkly boy over there-” he pointed to the Fulgurmancer who Navarre and Luatia had fought “-nabbed my ribbon. Funny enough, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you can’t really use your magic. Actually, I don’t know any better.”

Navarre felt a gentle breeze begin to build up, and looking down, he saw a gust of wind swirling around the Caelimancer’s feet. By now, the rest of the apprentices were watching silently as the intensity of the wind doubled, tripled. Navarre walked right past the boy, not hesitating as the wind built up in strength. Ignoring him will completely shut him down.

Reyvo grunted indignantly, but decided instead to turn his attention to Exliana, who had been standing behind Navarre during his face-off. “Look here, it’s the girl Navarre had to carry into a place at the program.”

“I could probably still whoop your weak ass,” Navarre heard Exliana shout to Reyvo challengingly. He sighed as he heard Reyvo’s knuckles crack.

“Exliana, Reyvo, it’s the first day,” Navarre said, turning back around to the two. “Don’t start fighting this early on.”

“Shut it, kid” was all Reyvo muttered before he swung a wild fist towards Exliana. She ducked low to the ground, and his attack missed by a great distance. Exliana launched herself into his torso, using his lack of balance from the punch to knock him towards the ground. He used jets of air from his legs to stabilize himself, however, and in seconds his fist was once again flying towards Exliana. She had been completely caught off guard, and Navarre saw a need to step in.

He jabbed Reyvo’s left side with two icy fingers, feeling the pressure point. Up his torso and into the shoulder, the joint locked up, and the fist stopped inches from Exliana’s frozen face. “End this quarrel now, before the mentor arrives and you start on the wrong foot.”

Reyvo’s arm fell limp to his side as Navarre removed his fingers. Navarre turned away from the two children, feeling Exliana’s eyes are they bore into his back. He always hated when she did that. He hated when she got mad at him for helping her.

Walking into the crowd, he felt a great deal of attention on him. Anxiously, he tried to ignore the staring, but it was difficult, considering the eyes of thirteen people were watching him. Finally, he saw a face he recognized approaching him with a warm expression. “Luatia!”

“Heya, Navarre. Not bad handling that.” She nodded at Reyvo lying on the ground, holding his arm tightly. A blue-haired girl knelt beside him, a bubble of glowing water hovering over the bruise from Navarre’s fingers. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

“Locking up joints using pressure points? Yeah, a Glacimancer who used to train me taught me it. She always swore that it was a weak skill, and that I would barely use it, but I’ve been using it for years.” Navarre and Luatia watched as the Aquamancer beside Reyvo focused intently on the bruise. In seconds, the mark was gone. She stood up and turned to Exliana, but Exliana had already walked away.

“Good day, young magicians!” came an upbeat voice from across the clearing. The students all shifted attention to the flashy mage crossing the way, his white jacket flowing extravagantly behind him, his smooth yellow hair shining in the sunglight. “It is I, the great Fulgurmancer Emniu. I would list my accomplishments to you, but there’s no point in me sharing what you already know.”

The group of magicians stared at him in confusion. Emniu? He was smiling, basking in the attention he was receiving, even if he was misreading the lack of recognition as the opposite. “We must move right along. No time for autographs, I’m afraid. I would like to start by extending a congratulations to each and every one of you. Whether you placed first or you placed sixteenth, you earned yourself a spot among the most prestigious up and coming magicians.

“Now look around you. The fifteen children standing on each side of you will be your rivals. You will ultimately fight them for a spot as one of the seven archmages, when the time comes. But for now, for the next two years, you will train alongside them. You will develop with them, they will help you develop, and you will help them develop. There is no time for introductions, unfortunately, as we have a tight schedule for the day. And of course, that schedule starts with you lot arriving at the training complex.” Emniu waved the students along as he made his way out of the clearing, through the royal gardens and towards the castle gates. Despite the apprentices’ vocal confusion, he answered no questions, and continued on silently.

*****

They had been walking for several hours. In that time, they had left the walls of the kingdom and traversed most of the forest just outside it. And after the extremely tiring (albeit interesting) walk, a walk that the apprentices had not been allowed to follow during their early years, they arrived on the edge of the forest. In the distance, Navarre could see the tall trees of the fairy lands eastward, the tops of mountains in the wyvern kingdom in the north, and the elevated mesa to the west. He looked over his shoulder and saw, through the haze of long distances, the top spire of his home fortress.

“This has to be pretty close to the center of Vyheria, huh?” asked the quirky Fulgurmancer from the entrance competition from the back of the crowd.

Emniu snapped his fingers, winking at the boy. “Precisely, young one. A lot of people, especially those who don’t leave the kingdom often, fail to realize how small Vyheria really is, and thus how close we are to our enemies. Fortunately for us, the badlands here at the center make passing between kingdoms very difficult, even for the wyverns and their flight. Lesson one: wyverns cannot fly forever.” Emniu seemed proud of that fact, and no one wanted to tell him that everyone already knew that.

“Lucky for us, these badlands also happen to provide a great training ground for you young children, as you experiment with the full force of your magic. If you’ll follow me once more, you will learn of our kingdom’s greatest secret.” He took three steps forward and disappeared. Surprised, the apprentices rushed forward, and Navarre watched as one by one they disappeared. Luatia looked at him from his side and shrugged, before she too hopped forward and disappeared. Navarre hesitated a moment, but his curiosity quickly overcame his caution. Stepping into the space where Luatia and the rest of the class had been moments prior, he looked around and saw a rather large fortress.

It wasn’t really a fortress, per say, but the buildings lining a central garden made it feel like one. Past the garden and under several buildings was a massive training field, with every terrain and practice dummy imaginable. The students beside him were equally as shocked by the complex that had appeared out of nowhere, but that shock was dwarfed by something far more, and yet even less predictable.

In the center of the garden, walking towards them with a warm smile on her face, was Queen Sylvetta Syleen the strongest individual in the kingdom, and the continent.