City of Fate

Training (Flux)

Emelia stood, puffs of dust rose as she brushed off her clothes. Her fists clenched in anger, she turned to face Ruth. "You need to concentrate." Ruth said. "Now let's try this again."

Emelia took a deep breath and tried to clear her mind. They had been at this for an hour and Emelia just couldn't seem to get more than a fizzle from her hands. 

"Try this, imagine a empty room, dark and silent. A single lit candle sits in the middle of the  room. Imagine all your thoughts, your fears, your worries. Feed those, one by one into the flames, leaving nothing but emptiness, this is The Blank." Ruth said all this in a quiet and monotonous way. "Then imagine whatever you want to happen, make it the only thing in your mind." Ruth readied herself in a defencive stance.

Emelia thought back to her martial arts training. She had learned a similar technique from her sensei. Without taking her eyes off Ruth, she focused her mind inward and imagined the empty room and the candle. She fed the fears, anxiety, confusion and anger into the flame until only the Blank remained. She imagined a bolt of light shooting from her hand, like a laser beam. Immediately she snapped back to the here and now and saw her Mother dive to the side and narrowly missed being hit with the beam shooting out from Emelia's upraised palm. She was in a modified Wushu Dragon stance position. She saw Ruth was saying something but she couldn't hear her. Suddenly someone tapped her on her shoulder and snapped her out the Blank and she faltered and almost fell.

"Whoa there Em. That was too much, you need to start slower than that." Galadon said, holding her arm lightly so she wouldn't fall over. Emelia felt dizzy and weak. "You haven't strengthened you Stream enough for that much power.

Emelia looked up, her eyes finally starting to focus and she saw, beyond Ruth, a plywood obstacle inside the Flux training room was smoldering and split halfway through.

"This is why we should only train, in the beginning, with at least one if not more experienced flux users around." Ruth said in a very nearly lecturing tone. "You could have done some serious damage to yourself or others."

"On a lighter note, it seems you now have a basic knowledge of how to reach the void, just don't reach so deep, start basic, a crackling light ball or a small flame ball." Baldar said, he stood in a corner and Emelia only now noticed him there. "I say good job kid. Most don't get it on the first try."

"I think that is enough of this for now, lets go check out some of the other training areas." Galadon said with a smirk. "I think you might like the next area the best of all."

Emelia's strength was slowly returning and she said with a mischievous smile " If it's anything like this, I think I will like it just fine."

Emelia felt excited about the way things were going. She had dreamed about all of this fantasy stuff for her whole life and was now starting to realize that she had been training for this for a long time already. She steeled her resolve and decided this was all just fine by her, it was more then fine, it was great, a great adventure that she never actually thought could have happened to her. She couldn't wait to get to the next part of her training.