The Blood War

A small calamity

It's a bright and sunny day, with a countable amount of clouds in the sky. The slow and gentle winds make a melody for the grass and leaves to dance to.

........................................................................

The bushes shake next to Arzon, his eyes immediately shooting torwards the source of the sound. The face of a cat, about to sneak up on its prey, plastered on Arzon's face.

"..."

The boy breathes, concentrating on his magic control.

Rye LUNGES torwards Arzon from behind the bush, his sword already swinging downwards. Feint streaks of his slashes trail behind him.

"Formless Dragon!.." Arzon says, in a loud but stable voice, which makes his magic energy particles do its work.

The particles then surges out of Arzon's body, attracting its similar element, which is water. Arzon then pin points the particles torwards Rye, the massive amounts of water flowing along with them. The huge body of river rush torwards Rye, the water making small waves which looks like dragon scales from above.

SPRAASSHHH... The water collides with the lunging boy, who is now being swept away by the water's flux. Soon, the water falls down and gets absorbed by the ground. Arzon breathes again, this time lightly panting.

"Hellll yeaaah!" Arzon yells out proudly. Rye emerges from behind a tree with a big smile on his face, his teeth flaunting itself. "Sick! You did it again, Arzon!" He jogs to Arzon. "That was the best one yet!"

"Yeah. I didn't have much trouble than before... It's progress." Arzon sits down and leans against a tree, Rye doing the same.

"You're such a quick learner... Are you sure this is your first time practicing your secondary magic?"

"Yeah. I only used it successfully once, which was yesterday..."

A few seconds of silence comes in as they both rest for a bit.

"... Where'd Collins go by the way?" Arzon asks.

"Hm. I'll go find him."

Rye gets up and looks around before he starts walking.

After a few minutes of walking around, he sees Collins under one of the trees. He's in the more thicker part of the forest, probably to avoid getting soaked by Arzon's magic.

Rye walks to him. They both look at eachother, a bit awkwardly. Rye smiles and sits next to Collins. "Hey. I invited you here so you could practice with us, you know."

"I know." Collins says.

Another silence, but it's less awkward this time as the air is filled with the sounds of leaves getting blown in the wind.

"Why'd you come here?" Collins asks with a monotone voice.

"Urk... Well, Arzon asked me where you went, and I decided to go search for you. I mean, I invited you guys over to this forest, so I'm basically the host here. ... It's my favourite spot to train in. My father showed it to me. It's actually supposed to be a garden, which is my mom's idea, but we found out that the soil here is pretty tough for some reason..."

"... It's because of magic energy pollution." Collins says as he looks around.

"Really? How'd you know?"

"I might be wrong but... ... See the trees? Their leaves are all hardened." He picks up one of the leaves that had fallen onto the ground. He tries to bend it, but it snaps like a cookie. "We're lucky the pollution isn't very severe. Or else, it'll definitely affect us too." Collins crushes the hard leaf in his palm.