Dream of the Guardians I-1: Rising

Chapter 7 - Attachment

After crying for a few minutes, Hanna wakes up with a smile that would make any young man her age fall in love with and gives her mentor the sincerest thanks in the world. Chris just smiles and backs down a bit because of the discomfort of having someone thanking him, for having successfully helped someone and receiving a reward, that's right, his reward is that strange feeling of having taught someone well.

Going back to the city in the middle of the sunrise they enjoy the walk and the landscape, something that almost nobody does, although it is a dream land. The silence is awkward so Chris invites Hanna on a walk around town as a reward for her hard work and she happily accepts. Although by the time they are in the middle of the day it is Hanna who directs the walk since Chris is a foreigner and never had the opportunity to know much about the city.

Food, clothing stores, utensils, libraries, all the places Hanna had already gone and also those she could never go to for fear of getting out of control she visited with a huge smile on her face. People, although they were already more than familiar with the rumors about Hanna's past, were always watching her with her new personality. Was she really such a cheerful person? It's the question they had practically written all over their faces.

During their journey throughout the city, they ended up wandering to the quarry, Guilian was already famous among the people who work in there and even admired him for his power of destruction. All the workers have a lot of respect for the firebrand that have been getting stronger by working longer and harder than everyone on the site.

Hanna is a little uncomfortable with Guilian's behavior but trusts Chris's opinion that he is a good boy. An explosion arises and a huge rock fall from the cliff, the Earth adepts use their powers to stop it, but it is too big, and they cannot stop it completely.

If it is not landed properly, the 8-meter-diameter stone will roll down the hill until it reaches the city. Suddenly, Chris and Guilian jump into action, with their powers the two take care of one half of the stone, making it explode into smaller stones and freeing the workers.

Hanna sees Chris in action for the first time and is impressed as she cheers the pair of foreign adepts for saving the day and begin to inspect what caused it. No one can explain where the explosion came from, but some workers acknowledge that gunpowder was used, a resource they do not have in Vodheim, which raises even more suspicions.

With a dead end, Chris and Hanna say goodbye to Guilian and proceed to visit Tsubaki, who was training on top of one of the mountains surrounding the city, at a training camp for Air adepts. The staff and students speak highly of Tsubaki, being a prodigy in air control, as she completed the beginner and intermediate level courses in just one week. She is currently finishing the advanced course to proceed to forge her own style. That leaves Hanna impressed, though she has always heard how difficult the course is.

Chris observes the facilities, which are three towers connected by thick ropes, while on the platforms that hang in the intermediate zone there are a series of rectangular panels which must be rotated in a certain way according to the level of difficulty of the exercise.

The most advanced level is to rotate all the rectangular panels while the three circular panels in each of them rotate in the opposite direction. Tsubaki is still somewhat stuck in controlling air gusts in a millimetric way, but she has become accustomed to dancing with the flow of the wind.

"Some masters change the drafts, and you have to keep yourself unharmed as you progress through the rotating maze." explains Tsubaki as the three of them watch the students practicing the exercise, "Although being a foreigner, I noticed that the teachers made it more difficult, and I was getting a lot of blows for weeks."