Dak And Stell/The Travelers Trilogies

1.2 Questions

We started through the grass to head back to the edge of the village where our house was. Stell didn't have parents, but mother let him stay with us. He always has helped with everything and if it were left to my brothers and me, I would be left with all the chores. They would just stand and argue the entire time instead of doing anything.

My younger twin brothers were out behind our house setting up a shed for mother. Now when I say that they are building a shed, one would think this is a simple task. A few quick spells and the thing will practically assemble itself, right? Not with my brothers, the two of them couldn't decide on anything. The solitary thing they have ever been capable to share is their birthdays, only because one couldn't take it from the other when his back was turned.


There was a point long ago my mother convinced me that it was just better to let them get it out of their systems. I think mother was trying to say if they were left to argue with themselves, they were less likely to get into any real trouble. Not that that stopped them, the boys would get sent home from school for arguing with the teacher because they couldn't keep quiet in class.


As we got closer to the village, we could already hear the yelling and I broke into a run. By the time I got around the corner the scene was a mess and Stell almost stepped on me as i stopped to behold the disaster. The mans legs were too long for his good. I could see one wall with a large opening in it flying around our yard with a slight blue glow to it. I had to duck just in time to see a door coming flying over my head.

"I told you I would put the door in Hamak. We decided this at the start!" Screamed Gren.

"No you idiot, you decided that in that oversized head of yours!" Hamak shouted back.

"You both look the same and you both have giant heads, you idiots. Now put that damn door and wall down before mother comes out and skins the hides off you two," I said. Too bad there did not seem to be a lot in those giant heads.

"Dak, I told him that I was going to put the door on! Now he is acting the child he is." He said with an overly strained look of seriousness that I could tell was about to crack and the furious Hamak could tell aswell.

"That's it, Gren, I'm done with you hanging that 2-minute difference in age over top of me. Like some elder advising me of the moment I went wrong!" He snarled at his brother with fire in his eyes. I had seen this look and before things could go any farther I gathered in the magic from the area around us.

Pulling it in and concentrating it into the task I needed to complete, like any other time or any other job I have done. I pulled the magic from my brother grasps and heard them both start in wonder and the magic was pulled right from their fingertips. Then, with the same force, my younger brothers had sent the doors and walls flying around the yard, I put the door and walls back down.

"How did you..." Was all Gren got out before him and Hamak were forced flat to the ground. Once I had finally got the pieces of building on the ground, I continued to use the same force to hold the two boys onto their stomachs. The will is not only a tool but a weapon of a dangerous variety.

We have lived in peace for the last 250 years with nothing more then minor duels in the streets and even crime is sparse in the kingdom. Luckily our king, Remorus Balzen the thirds grandfather push the tribes of the northern continent away and sealed them into a glacier. The U'talic were a nomadic people that live in the northern reaches of our continent.

When I was a boy, my mother used to scare me with stories of the U'talic. She would threaten of them coming freezing me solidly in my bed if I didn't go to sleep. It's too bad that they weren't just a scary story meant to frighten children.

The U'talic enjoyed the cold more than anyone else. Though they could not leave the northern icy reaches for they had been born in the cold. Their bodies evolved to be able to withstand the frigid temperature with barely any clothing on. There is a problem with this because they have only ever been in a cold climate. When they entered our warm and humid land, they start to die. Since they are immune to the cold, their bodies only know how to stay warm.

When they come south, they would literly boil from the inside out. No amount of water could keep them hydrated, or any amount of shade could keep them cold. Their elders cried out to their spirits and accused us of doing this thing to them on purpose. They riled the people up and they collected all their adept magic shapers and set about to cause that which the history books call the Great Storm.

Over 30 years, war raged between both sides as the U'talic tried to force a great storm to encompass the southern half of the continent. The Valkirans pushed tirelessly to hold the storm back from our mighty capital, but with the storms came the hordes of U'talic who came with steel and will. Our king at the time, Remorus Balzen, sent legion after legion into the battle to hold them off, but the war was not going well.

The storm was encroaching on the edges of the city. In a last ditched effort, the king called in the five of the strongest shapers in the kingdom. These were called The High Five-Mages. They drew their wills together to form huge walls of fire that drove the U'talic back to the northern. With the U'talic on the run, the king and the mages walled them off. It was 1/2 mile thick and over 500 feet tall wall of pure ice stretching across the continent know today as the great divide.

Since then we have had peace with the lower continent and outstretching island continents. The wall is guarded small legion outposts on the top spread across the wall. The wall has been silent for 250 years now and shows no sign of changing.

As my brothers still squirmed on the ground, Stell had already begun to put the shed together. It was amazing just to watch the big man move his hands slowly through the air gently as if leading a symphony. The sections of wall slowly slid into each other. The boards flexed and began to braid themselves together at the corners and seams as if they were blades of grass. As the walls finished the bracing for the roof tiles began weaving like roots. They moved in an intricate pattern across the roof in a spherical shape. This was followed by rows of tiles with holes in them spreading across the dome. As the tile floated into place, the vines from the dome looped itself into the tile to hold them in place.

Within ten minutes stell had completed the job. The boys had spent the better part of the day trying to complete the project. Mom kicked them out of the house this morning when they started arguing over who's top spun more perpendicular then the others.

"If you two don't stop fighting, mother is going to have to send you to Zambar," I said with a blank expression.

Both boys cringed, Zambar was the local butcher. As punishment, some parents hired out their children to Zambar to clean the slaughter pits. This was where they bled and gutted the animals before chopping them up.
Now, you don't get sent there always on the day you get into trouble. No, Zambar doesn't mind cleaning the pit when the temperature is fair or a bit chilly. The special job is only completed in the hottest and most humid of days. At this point, the boys had gone snow white.

"I am not always going to be here to keep you two from getting yourselves in trouble," I stated coldly. "And mother doesn't have the time to deal with you two getting trouble in school and fighting about the most irrational and pointless things." Hamak was about to say something, but I cut him off.

"Oh, I know that you think its not pointless and quite rational, but when you next decide to argue, remember that smell that isn't poring into your nostrils of rotting flesh as a reminder," I said with a flat look.
As I finished my rant, I relaxed the force I was holding them with and then took in a deep breath of air. The shed did look good, Stell was by no means less of a shaper then me. You cant let his deep slow speech fool you into thinking he's some half-wit.

Stell has always been my only real friend, even in the classes in the temple. Everyone else would just play around, but Stell was the only one that took to the studies of basic shapers applications and theory seriously with me. While the other kids played and chatted in class, Stell and I practiced the theory and basic till we knew them from memory. We knew that to truly shape the magic that was so thick in the air, you needed to understand. You need to know exactly how to control the flows and ebbs on the streams of magic.

It is not the type of thing that can just be grabbed and forced to do whatever you want. Magic isn't alive in the way I am, but more of a consciousness that is aware and does not like to be forced. For shapers like us, to "grapple" magic as we call it, meaning exerting more will then is needed or going to fast without having full control can have consequences. In this event, the stream breaks because of the overexertion of your will. This causes the stream to loss the shape the idea or notion of what you want. After that, it releases as a pressure, the blast of force that can knock a person off there feet. The greater the task, the greater the exertion. People have died more times to their stupidity or bravado than any natural disaster.

Needless to say, when we started, many sore and envious students blew themselves and each other up. This happened across the meadows while trying to move a rock the size of an apple. The first thing you do in shaping is to learn to lift things and starting with a small rock is the best way. This way none of the injuries will be too bad, more bruised back-sides and egos, then real danger. Stell and I stood off away from the rest of the group. Then we began to toss the stone back and forth making it move in an figure eight shaped pattern. Stell grinned and soon we had eight stones all following in the pattern and sister Glendra, our teacher smiled and gave us a small applaud. The other students were not impressed, and we could see the envy in their eyes. After that, Stell and I were set apart from the rest and gave different lessons. Now the others looked at us like we were freaks, but as I told Stell.

"Envy is just a lost dream found in someone else."

Regardless of what the others thought, Stell and I made the best of our years as children studying hard with our eyes always to the horizon. The plan was to receive our tomes and make our way to Valkira. From there, become master shapers or branch out into one of the many other divisions of magical studies. Our tomes are the books we use to record our will infused words and we get them at our day of passing.

The day of passing is for students that have learned how to properly manipulate the energy around them and shape without accident. Sister Glendra completed the testing for each of us individually and everyone's test was separate. Sometimes, if the class was small enough, sister would take them all in and test each individually.

The point was to challenge you on the things you were most deficient in. Also, to prove that even using your weakest skills you could still channel the energy without overexertion. Wile most tests were based on the manipulation of magic, some were different and no childs test was the same.

My test was perplexing. As I have said, Stell and I were comparatively good at shaping, but we all accept our faults. My test was a particular question.

"Dak, what is your plan?" She asked with a gentle voice. Now, if you know Sister Glendra like I do, this is no simple " I'm going to go be a master shaper at Valkira."

No, that wasn't what she indicated or the answer she desired. She wanted to perceive what I planned on doing with the power after I found it. To be honest, I didn't possess a clue. I just thought I needed to be good at something, and that was all I needed. Things would merely happen after right?

Something had always itched at the back of my mind hinting at...Something more, but I felt no particular urgency towards anything. Except knowledge. The power in information was boundless. Proof was in the tomes everyone valued above all else. Unique words could start a fire, construct a road, or produce a tree and these are just single words! Combining more words allows users to give the magic complicated instructions. This helps to design and develop things like bridges, tower or even an entire oasis in minutes from your mind with the words. The power stored in the words acts as a focal point to draw the idea from and shape it from the surrounding using the image in your mind.

Indeed, with this power at our fingertips, we have barely even scratched the surface of what we might be capable to do. How do you think of an idea that's never been imagined? We consider the world we live in is Loranth and it's just a minor planet in our small galaxy. There has to be more people in other places besides Loranth. There has to be an unknown place with new ideas.

"I want to discover new ideas. I don't feel I can be happy with the things we know, when there is so much we don't. " I ultimately said after a lengthy pause.

"I'm gratified you feel that way child," sister said as she patted my arm.

And that was it. My life as a mage was about to begin.