Golden Child [Rewriting]

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

The soldier was covered in blood, her long, golden hair matted with the golden substance. But she was used to it, branded with the royal sigil on her chest plate, she swung her sword across a perpetual Aurean traitor, and pushed all thoughts of crime out of her mind. She had been covered in blood multiple times, and she guessed, she'd continue to be covered in it until she took her last breath. For most, blood was their life force, something that kept them alive, but for the Aureans she was killing, it was their undoing. The strong Magi blood coursing through her veins, however, this was her claim to fame. With the René name, she had entered the Academy, and made a name for herself. She joined the Royal Aurean Force before anyone could tell her otherwise, and she's been shedding golden blood ever since. She wiped her sword with a red wine-coloured cloth, and surveyed her work. She and the rest of the force had wiped out an entire village, one of the smaller ones, but apparently these Aureans were especially dangerous. Her ear twitched, and she turned to the direction of the soft whimpering that seemed to almost get swallowed by the sinister breeze tearing through the massacred village.

"Captain René," one of her subordinates said as she approached him, "this one is quite interesting." She turned to a cowering woman on the floor. Her skin was bronzed by hours in the sun, and she held a small, similar looking child in her hands. Evin René had killed children before, part of the job description was making sure that she killed even the smallest ones. Something about this small, caramel coloured baby was different, perhaps it was its strange clothing, or the fact that the mother was babbling in a strange language, sobbing uncontrollably.

Evin turned to her crew, "anyone speak... Aurean?"

One of the soldiers huffed, and stepped closer. He listened to the sobbing woman for a while, "she says to spare her son." At this, Evin brandished her glowing sword, and her bright blue eyes lit up. The woman's crying only got worse.

"Captain, wait," the soldier's voice shook, "she says... not to kill her son, because he's half Magi."

"Half Magi?" Evin raised an eyebrow at the woman, "preposterous. Aureans don't mingle with Magi."

"She says that she met him while she was living in the Capital, Captain, and that he knew she was Aurean, and conceived the child with her anyway. He died in a raid, however." The soldier explained. Evin watched the small child wriggle in discomfort in his strange garbs, and sighed.

"Take the child, and leave me." She said, and with a wave of her hand, the soldiers were gone.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you, soldier!" The woman spoke in broken English, barely able to string her words together without sounding clumsy.

"Don't thank me yet." Evin grimaced, and dragged the sword across the woman's neck, watching her head fall daintily into the red sand. She would spare the child, out of curiousity, but the woman had no value to her. She started to walk back to where the soldier had placed the child.

"Aren't you lucky, little one?" She asked rhetorically, as the child looked up at her with bright green eyes. "Did she say anything about a name?"

"Ehno," the translator answered, "she said his name was Ehno."

"Well, Ehno. I can't say it's going to be easy, but at least you get to live." Evin said with a heavy heart.

The child grew faster than Evin expected it to, and she found herself drifting away from her work, and spending more and more time with the half Magi child she'd spared. Ehno, now René, had quickly become a part of Evin René's household, and when she arrived with the small child six years ago, her husband dared not to question it. If she were being honest, she thought he liked Ehno just as much as she did. He was quick to show his affinity, the power of life springing from his fingertips as soon as he turned six. Evin had no idea what to do with the poor child, so she started to train him herself. Luckily, she had the same power, but from her brief Aurean history lesson she knew that Aurean magic was fundamentally different from Magi spells. She tried to teach the poor child as much as she could, but it was all for naught, because by seven, his eyes had deteriorated, and he could barely see anything without wearing glasses as thick as a sword. She felt sorry for him, knowing that once he got to the Academy, he would be targeted because blindness would be a very exploitable weakness. She knew, from that day, that Ehno René was not a fighter. He saw things no other children could see, strange glowing creatures danced across his vision, and although Evin brushed it off as simply imagination, she should have paid more attention to it. Ehno wasn't like a normal Aurean, and his deceased mother had known it. Ehno was the special type of Aurean, with both Magi and Aurean blood coursing through his veins, so when it was revealed that he had something known as the "spirit sight", Evin should not have been surprised. She was, however, disappointed, that he couldn't have gotten a combat ready ability, because being able to perceive some sort of ocean of dead people wasn't exactly combat ready, if you were asking her.

Ehno René was never meant to be a great fighter, and he knew it very well. He's known it ever since his magic surfaced during the summer of his sixth birthday. He was an earth variant, like his mother and like his father, but he was nowhere close to where they were. His father was a revered weapon smith, who could bend any mineral to his will, while his mother was one of the best Royal Aurean Force captain the monarchy had ever seen. Ehno, however, was not as blessed as they were. It was blatantly obvious as he struggled through his training, but it became even more apparent when he entered the Academy. Like every other Magi child his age, he attended the Royal Academy for Magic and Combat Arts when he finally turned eleven. As soon as he stepped into his preparatory magic control class, he could see the metaphorical line drawn to separate him from his peers. Friends that had trained with him as a child, suddenly became indifferent to his struggled as they breezed through their classes. Ehno was still stuck on the Identification Test. All of his classmates had been split into special classes while he struggled to pass the Test. The Test was supposed to specify whether he'd be classified as a combatant or healer, or a specialist. Combatants show proficiency for both magic and combat arts, while healers tend to be better at magic. Specialists, however, don't fit into either category, and usually this part of the Academy is reserved for the future heads of families who wanted to hone their skills, in order to secure their ascendance. Tucked in between the special classes for rich Magi students was the unclassified class, filled with strange looking students who hadn't discovered their affinities yet. This was where he ended up, confessing to a strange looking professor that he could see strangely colourful creatures dancing across the skies that no one else could see. Spirit Sight was uncommon among Magi, but not rare enough for suspicions to arise, however, Ehno found himself in one of the oldest classes in the Academy, the Spirit Arts class, with a teacher who was completely blind. She had been exiled from a minor Magi Clan when she discovered the extent of her powers and decided to pursue a career in academia instead of fighting for the King. Ehno was the only student in her class and would be until he could officially enter the Academy when he turned fourteen. She told him, that even though he'd never officially fit into a category at the Academy, that it didn't make him inferior. Simply, it made him rare, and people would always be afraid of rare.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

short-ish chapter, but new character!!! ehno was only supposed to come in later in book 2, but since HES HELLA IMPORTANT to the entirety of the series, here he is!! i love him sm hes adorbs

w love, 

dan <33