TBATE-The Lost Hero

twin horns

POV : Arthur

Silence fell as my mother dropped her fork onto her plate.

"What? Reynolds! Arthur and Asher aren't even four yet! No! Besides, you said if our children were augmenters, you could teach them!" My mother spoke with clear desperation.

"I never expected our children to be mana manipulation prodigies either. Who's ever heard of an awakening at the age of three?" my father responded more calmly.

"But that means they'll have to leave home! They're only four, Reynolds! We can't make our children leave home at such an early age!"

"You don't understand. When I observed their bodies while meditating, I couldn't help but feel that all this was natural for them. Honey, I'm holding back our sons by trying to teach them something they can do in their sleep."

This was how my parents' argument began.

They went back and forth, essentially repeating their initial points; my mother kept saying I was too young, my father insisted they couldn't prevent us from reaching our full potential, blah blah blah.

Meanwhile, I was playing a war game with my food, attacking the peas for the empire of mother, while the nation of father's carrots fiercely defended their land.

My brother was eating his food without caring about us, as if he were the only one at the dinner table. Finally, my parents settled down and my father turned to me and my brother.

"Art, Ash, this concerns you, so you have a say in it too. How do you feel about going to a big city and getting a tutor?"

Great...

He applauded the effort to try to make this fair, but I don't think he realized he was trying to ask two four-years-old children to make a decision that would ultimately change their lives...

In an attempt to wrap up this little argument, I suggested, "Can I at least try to meet some tutors and have them see if we need the teaching or not?"

Silence

Did I step on a landmine? Wasn't I supposed to be clear in my sentence at my current age? Are they mad because I didn't choose a side?

Since I couldn't maintain a poker face, I looked down and waited for their response.

Fortunately, none of my fears were on their minds. My mother finally spoke, muttering quietly, "We'll at least formally test the mana core and channels. We can figure out what to do from there."

When my father nodded in agreement, we started preparing the next day. When I said what I did last night, I assumed we'd go to a nearby town or city, at most a day's travel, to be tested by a qualified mage. But boy was I wrong.

We were preparing for a three-week journey. A trip by horse-drawn carriage through the Great Mountains to something called the teleportation gate that would take us to a city called Xyrus.

A book I read came to mind. I remembered reading about a floating piece of land built by an ancient organization of mages for the sole purpose of housing a prestigious mage academy. A city was later built around the academy. Both the city and the academy were named after the leader of the organization - Xyrus.

How could a piece of land hundreds of kilometers long be kept floating? Magnetism? Then the land beneath the city would be affected. Does the city have its own gravitational field?

Anyway!

This journey was long. At times like this, I wished for modern transportation. To reach the city, we would have to enter through one of the teleportation gates in the Great Mountains; otherwise, traveling through cities easily to reach the gate below the actual floating city, near the border of the Kingdom of Sapin and Darv, would take much longer.