NIGHT WIZARD

3| FOURTEEN (part 3)

The first class was on a circular, diorite platform atop a grassy, ancient looking hill. Surrounding the sphere, were massive stone pillars covered in moss and vines. Our class was small, having say about twenty students but it was lively nonetheless - waiting for the teacher, it only got more excited as time passed. Fortunately, I was with Ethan so, at least I had someone who could help me - especially that moment specifically when, - I assumed because of that morning's events - I was feeling incredibly tired. But not so fortunately, that self-centered rat Phoebe was here and I was not about to hear how hopeless I was.

Walking, into class, was a tall, spectacle-donned, woman dressed in vivid scarlet robes which, her dark hair complemented well. She looked highly authoritative the way she stared down some of the students into silence but, when she smiled, she seemed the most delicate thing on earth. A true chameleon. "Splendid morning class! I am professor Mara, and I will be guiding you through this year's magic 1 classes. Now, without wasting any more time, let's get right into today's lesson! Now, everyone pick a partner!" She engaged and Ethan turned to me smiling softly, "Do you... I mean, are you okay? If we partner up? I mean, if you don't want to..." he started bur got quieter and quieter, making me laugh. "Yes. Yes I will," I said and he beamed.

"Professor Mara? May I choose to not partner up with someone?" Phoebe, as boastfully as possible, asked miss Mara who just looked at her in shock. "Uhm, okay! It'll be tougher on you though," she suggested but Phoebe kept her confidence "No worries miss Mara, I'll manage," she gloated and I just rolled my eyes. "She's such a show off!" I complained to Ethan who nodded in agreement, "Forget her, let's just work through today's lesson," he said. And we moved to an emptier area.

"Now, I want one member of the pair to create a gale sphere and the other one watches their technique. It's simple to cast a gale ball. Just focus on what you presume to be your magical center and feel it. Once you do, thinking light, easy thoughts will get the wind going, channelling your anger will get it furious. What you want to do is think warm thoughts. Wouldn't want the class to go insane," she instructed and immediately as she finished, Phoebe already had a small spherical swirl of wind going on her right hand. "Impressive Miss. Eom! Everyone, you'd better want to hurry id you want to catch up with Phoebe!" She said and I was eternally pissed off. But I can't say I wasn't inpressed by Phoebe's swiftness.

"Your turn," Ethan told me as he stroked his small sphere of wind. I closed my eyes, trying to feel that vibration. But it wasn't there. It was gone, just like that! I immediately began panicking - I didn't feel anything at all! No magic, nothing! "You okay Jake? Lesson too quick for you?" Phoebe mocked and I just scowled at her. "Ignore her, Jake are you okay?" Ethan asked. "I can't feel it Ethan! I can't feel anything inside of me! My magic's gone!" I panicked and Ethan looked at me in shock. "I don't think magic can just... disappear? Maybe you're not doing it right?"

"You don't understand Ethan! There's nothing for me to feel!" I exclaimed and Phoebe, who'd walked over to us just began laughing. "Maybe there was nothing there to feel in the first place. Face it Jake, you're a dud," she said and it went right off. Slow and unsure at first like a creature coming out if hibernation. The humming began. "Just drop out of the class Jake. You're worthless, I mean seriously, look -" she gestured at all the other students "everyone's casted something, you, have nothing," she said loudly and a bunch of nearby students looked our way. The wind started blowing slightly harder. My heart pounded, afraid and nervous but it was tamed - or rather, enhanced - by anger. Raw, dangerous anger. Then I could feel it. My energy, easy and light at first then hard and forceful after. "Can anyone else feel that?" Ethan asked clutching his head. "I sure can, it's utter failure," she mocked again looking at me.

It snapped... I couldn't control it.

"Think I can't do it huh?" I yelled. "Well, here!" I threw my arm forward and twirled my fingers before stretching them out. On my palm, a small spherical ball of wind emerged. "That's puny! It's nothing compared to mine -" she stopped when the one I conjured grew larger, ten times at least and leaped off my hand,
"Fantastic Wexler! Now, just fold a fist to decimate it," professor Mara instructed and I did as she said. The sphere closed up.

But the second after, it re-emerged as a massive ball of furious wind energy that quickly transformed into a tornado! "Wexler! I thought I told you to close it!"
"Jake, what's happening?" Ethan asked while Phoebe looked the typhoon in awe but she chose to hide it and attack me instead, "how and why would you expect him to do that?! He couldn't do it the first time!" And this just made me much more furious. "Shut up Phoebe! What's your deal with me anyway?!" I blared and the storm in a fraction of a second, ignited. It became a massive swirl of raging flames. Everyone gasped at first but when it started shooting out massive sparks of fire, they began screaming, attempting to run from the fire, except, the force of the winds sweeping material into the column was far too strong. Phoebe screamed "You're going to kill everyone!" While Ethan grabbed my shoulder, "Jake, relax. Relax man," he said. "I can't!"

"Enough!" Professor Mara said as she put out the flames with a flick of her hand. She rushed over to the students who'd huddled on one spot. "Wexler! Be careful next time! Allowing your magic to go out of control like that is dangerous! “she stated while Phoebe gave me a look that was meant to boast her superiority.

•••

"An anomaly," the old professor said. We were sat in a domed room lit by billions of stars and galaxies that cluttered the walls of the room, swirling and drifting. It was hard to focus when such beauty grazed all around me. That room was the first time I felt comfortable and  secure - something about it was peculiarly familiar however. "So you're saying that everything that's happening to me is because it's not normal?" I asked and she looked at me with a blank expression painted on her face. With her arched eyebrows, she almost looked forever cursed to appear angry. "Yes. Nothing about you is normal... in the magical sense,"

"Can you please elaborate?" I asked as I looked to a galaxy that'd drifted so close I felt like I could touch it. "I'll do you one better, I'll start from the beginning," she said, catching my attention.

"There are fourteen attunements divided into four levels based on rarity. Rarity does not dictate power though and this list is not fixed - as believed by most scholars of the science of attunement, there are more attunements to be discovered. Many more we don't even know about,"

"How come?"

"Simply because some are so rare, they may not appear until several generations. The way attunement magic works is that, everyone is born with the ability to do all kinds of magic -"

"Like, genes right?"

"Precisely. Just like genes, there are dominant attunements and recessive attunements. Dominant ones dictate what magic one has the ability to do best. Recessive ones allow someone the ability to do other schools of magics but not nearly as well as they would their dominant ones. But there's more. Recessive ones are levelled in that, some are much stronger than others while some are impossibly pathetic,"

"Can someone have more than one dominant attunement?"

"Yes they can. You can have a dominant attunement for all the available kinds of magic. Recssive attunements are the same. You can have one or all. But remember, just because it is recessive, doesn't mean that it's weak. Recessive magic can be trained and grasped. Dominant magic comes naturally,"

"What are the attunements?"

"I was coming to that. The first four are called the children of ancient earth magics. Long ago, there were only two magics, SKY and GROUND. But over time, man learned to diversify the two - once they mastered them of cource. They divided the two into four. Sky became AIR magic - fuelled by Arial motion and magicery, along with heat - fuelled by fury and warmth but this best translated into FIRE. One the other hand, ground became EARTH - which encompasses not only geological activity but also plants - along with WATER - which is self explanatory,"

"Did they stop there?"

"By all means no. Curiosity grew, so they began combining the elements. Only a few were capable of this most complex magic but over time, it became common and soon enough, there were children capable of magic even the elders could not fathom. This Jake, was the birth of the Combinate - meaning combined - magics. The first was a combination of Earth and Water. The thick of rock and the fluid of water combined to create QUAKEN. This allows the user control over earthquakes and seismic activity along with fluid mechanics of water trapped inside sand, mud and geyser formation - something earth and water were unable to do on their own. The next combination was Water and Air. This brought about TIDE. This allowed mastery of storms and convection itself. But the people were hungry for fury, so they brought fire into the equation. The first was Fire and Earth which brought KRYSTALE which was previously titled CRYSTANA. This is the mastery of rare earth metals along with the ability to create them at will. Then finally Fire and Air to give LIGHTNING. Which is plainly the mastery of the fury of a flow of electrons. Have you noticed something about these combinations?"

"They aren't opposite elements being combined?"

"Exactly! Opposing energies cancel each other out so a product was unattainable. They tried further experimentation but to no avail. Three elements, all four but none of it worked. That was until, one woman, Sefana Cruish, decided to combine all the eight magics, and birthed, SUN magic,"

"Whoa,"

"Indeed. She experimented further - only this time at night and she founded moon energy. This was the first step to elemental mastery. But the mastery of the two was extremely difficult hence few children were born having it. Only forty to date are known to have either sun or moon energy. But the founding of the two magics only sparked more interest. Flash forward to today, and we have COSMO energy joining sun and moon as the mastery of astral magics. As well as CONFRACTION which is the rare mastery of the energy of the sun and the moon as one unit. Only Twenty in history are known to have it,"

"You said there were fourteen attunements. You only told me twelve. What are the other two?"

"The forbidden magics. One is a dark form of magic that tends to bend one to his temptations and translates as the mastery of life itself. BLOOD magic. Only eight blood attuned are confirmed and they were all egotistical maniacal criminals executed due to their greed. There is - in essence - no evil magic, but they let their powers drive them into evil. One of these men stood out in particular. He remains  missing to date despite being speculated dead. He went by the nomenclature Dava Del Ghava. An evil and heartless man, he killed many a thousand in search of power and strength; he had an army that executed women and children alike, burned cities to ash and levelled any defence like it was made of paper but he vanished one night. A body discovered in the woods was declared his but, many believe he never died,"

"Wasn't there a way to just execute him quickly?"

"There was. Another form of magic. This one, is a mysterious magic and it was always believed non-existent. That was until one man performed that very magic. So powerful was he that he that he flattened an entire country to just rubble and  rock. His potential was high and the magic has been associated - just as the blood magic - with dark temptation and subconscious evil. To avoid that deadly mix of bad magic and high potential, the attuned community declared it banned energy and unfortunately, along with confraction, it was the only kind of magic to put an end to Dava. But he'd already eradicated all the Confraction-attuned into near extinction in search of a kind of power considered wicked nowadays. "

"Did the war end?"

"Yes. It did,"

"Have there been any other blood attuned since?"

"Not any that I know of, but, I strongly believe that Dava is coming back, I can see him in the horizon. There are red clouds of blood and anguish approaching. I can see the Ill nightmare creatures and angry soldiers ready to fire at any one moment," she trailed off, string out into the setting sun through a window cast upon a wall that had returned to normal from the spacey deco. What she said scared me and had me on edge for a while. The thought of a man of that nature coming again.

"The magic is called NIGHT. It allows one the mastery of the combined energy of the moon and the sun, in absence of light. It is gifted only to those born during a solar eclipse with a high enough potential and the dominant energy for said magic...." she began and I looked at her expectantly.

"Jake, some people have about a teacup's worth of potential, we call this poor potential. Others, most have about a water glass' worth though this varies anywhere from a wine glass to a beer glass. We call this mid potential. Others, a special few, have as much as that barrel over there at the counter. We call this high potential," she explained and I couldn't help my gut from having mixed reactions. Did I have high or poor?

"Where do I fit in?" I asked her and she smiled brightly and continued, "Others, even fewer, usually around one every one hundred people, have as much as a well's worth of energy. But you Jake, look outside the window," she said and I looked at the window. "What do you see? "She asked. "A lake?" I answered, the butterflies in my stomach raging. "Precisely. That is the closest we can get to how much potential you have in you! Jake, it took an entire teaching day but I have finally found your attunement. Well, attunemets," she said standing up excitedly.

"You, Jake, are attuned to first, water," she said and I smiled slightly.

"That's not all though, Jake, as one of the most powerful - I can't even say attuned given how much potential you have. Instead we use the term BOUNDED in cases like yours - so, as one of the most powerful beings to walk this school, you are bound to...," she moved over and made to turn to me.

"NIGHT!"

Welp. There it is. A very long chapter.
14 attunements. Wich is your favorite and which do you think you'd get? (Tell me in the comments)