Andrew Bailey & The Eternal Maze

Chapter - 16 (v2 - rewritten)

Snow was actually a cheerful girl during her time in the institute, her cute looks attracted the attention of the guys and her cheerful disposition made her popular with the girls. Even her talent was comparable with Ethena's, High praises were sung about her bright future, she was happy.

It was only at the age of eleven that something happened to Snow. It was completely out of the blue but one night when she was in bed, her body was in immense pain, nothing that she'd ever felt before. It took up so much of her energy that she couldn't even get out of the bed. The next thing she knew, it was in the morning and the pain was gone and it felt just like a nightmare.

Though the pain was gone, as a precaution she informed the instructor and went to the infirmary for a check up. Primary scans and tests were inconclusive, the healer there thought it might have been psychological instead. Stress and fatigue were common in institutes and all they could do for Snow was put her under observation if the pain comes back.

That night Snow thought it was stress like the healer said and decided to relax for the evening. No studying, no training just peace and quiet. Reading for pleasure was rather relaxing.

As the minutes passed, something strange started to happen. The strangest thing started happening, the room started curving left and right almost like a house of mirrors. As the distortion got worse, even her body parts weren't off limits. The pain started all over again, along with the confusion, she couldn't sense her left from her right. Struggling to get out of there, with a bang and a crash, things were toppling and with a thud she landed and blacked out for the night.

The next day when she got up, the room was in a mess, things were broken and the placed messed up. She remembered last night clearly and there was something very wrong with her.

Being told to stay for observation later during the night since there weren't symptoms during the day was about to be a huge mistake but no one could know that at the time. As Snow headed back to class, the smiles that were awaiting her was pretty calming.

Tick tock went the clock, an ordinary lesson like any other day. Even the lessons that day seemed so fleeting, the lessons were incredibly dry and it was tough just staying awake. The lecturer noticed that more than half the class were starting to doze off, he tried to tell a joke that would let the class get their enthusiasm back however the students started dropping like flies on to their table, knocked out.

"Come on guys, I admit the joke wasn't that funny but pretending to sleep or actually sleeping in class is bad. Wake up."

The class was completely quiet, not a peep nor a chuckle. The lecturer started to think something strange was occurring when he himself felt it, something was in the air. It wasn't because it had a distinct smell but because he himself felt like he was going to lose consciousness.

It was only after a several hours that they started getting up, with no idea what had happened, everyone was just in a daze when they looked around the classroom. As Snow got up, the pain had started. It wasn't in a specific point but it felt like it was in every single part of her body. Snow started screaming, the pain was completely intolerable. She scratched gripped her own hands till it started bleeding.

The lecturer gained consciousness after hearing the scream, he was quick on his feet and immediately went to ask what was wrong, however he made a rather fatal mistake by touching Snow. The lecturer went down within seconds coming in touch with Snow, the other kids who were conscious were backing away from her. Looking at her with fear and called her a 'Monster'. Snow was so frightened and so in pain that she blacked out.

It was only know much later that Snow's aura had awakened before 'Godhood'. It wasn't a widely known fact, it really rarely happens after all. To elaborate further on what happened, the elaboration of 'Aura' is required.

'Aura' is in every living being, think if it as energy. It is limited, everyone has a different amount and will be restored after using with time. For example 'spells' that Ethena used previously needs aura to function, you could say it's like a battery that provides the energy for the 'spell' to work. Though unlike energy, aura allows the user to do many incredible things.

Different species have generally different amount of aura as well, it's possible for an individual to have more aura than the rest of it's species but it is considered rare in that scenario.

Though in Snow's case, her aura was already infused with a 'characteristic'. A 'characteristic' is different from normal aura. Think of it like coating, example if it's a fire 'characteristic', no matter the spell or action used with aura, it would be coated with it. The good part is that one wouldn't need to use energy and aura to convert some of the aura into a 'characteristic' however in exchange the user wouldn't be able to use any other 'characteristic'.

Having a 'characteristic' is really rare at a young age. It was why the healer in the institute could not see the incident coming. The nights where she had uncontrollable pain was because her aura was changing, into something violent and uncontrollable. She became the first in Olympus history to have a poison 'characteristic'.