Training Days

I awoke the next morning with a mess of Sara’s hair caught in my mouth, it was a strange sensation and took me a moment to come to my senses before I realised what it was. I took the strands in my hand and pulled them away from my lips where they had stuck to my saliva. I groaned, still feeling fatigued as the rising sun burned into my eyes from the window. My clothes felt a little strange on me, having slept in them all night I wanted to change out of them into something that hadn’t been rubbing against me for hours.

I sat up in the bed and rubbed my eyes, trying to wash away my tiredness. I sensed a yawn coming and opened my mouth wide as I stretched my arms out. I felt a motion to my side and looked down to see that Sara had turned over in the bed to face me, she was smiling and I couldn’t help but smile back as I looked at her face.

“Morning” I yawned, feeling myself start to slip from the slim mattress. “How did you sleep?” I asked, not wanting to bring up what we had spoken about.

“Yeah, I slept well” she said as she sat up in her bed, making more room for me. “Thanks for staying with me Aucus, it means a lot” she said after a pause, looking down at her blanket.

“Of course. I mean if someone tried to kill me again, two is better than one right” I said with a smile, making it clear I was joking.

She grinned back at me, and gave me a soft punch in my arm, “please, we both know you wouldn’t be able to resist protecting me” she said as she sidled out of bed. She looked into the pane of glass on her window and adjusted her outfit.

I left the bed as well, having a look around her room briefly, though it was no different to my own. “We should probably get breakfast; I didn’t eat anything last night and I don’t want to get beaten by Orion on an empty stomach” I said.

She nodded her head, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure he enjoys trying to kill us” she said humorously as we left her bedroom.

We stepped into the living chamber where Korin was sat, gnawing on a haunch of pork. He raised an eyebrow to me as he saw me leaving Sara’s room in the morning, I couldn’t help but blush at the thought he must have been having, I shook my head to him, trying to dissuade him from the notion. His mouth moved into a sort of smile as he returned to his food, chuckling to himself.

I quickly returned to my room and changed into another set of clothes, identical to what I had been wearing the day before. Dressed once more, I returned back into the living chamber and sat with Korin and Sara, hungrily feasting on the dishes laid out before us.

That day continued much the same as the previous days. We trained with Orion, he beat us thoroughly once more though it seemed my training ability had worked once again last night without me activating it again. Then we trained with Astrid, using our abilities, and strengthening our pathways so that we could use our mana more efficiently. After lunch, we had a lesson with Anoir on undead monsters such as skeletons, resurrected, revenants, ghouls, and Liches. Like the previous day we went to the gardens after our class finished and trained some more, though this time we devoted some time to training with weapons as well.

More days passed in the same fashion, spending all of the day either training or learning from Anoir. It was exhausting and excruciating, we were lucky if we managed to pass an hour without being either physically or mentally exhausted.

At night I had reopened the book that Anoir had given me on the various abilities that adventurers could have. I was hesitant to try them out, knowing that if I could use them then it would be confirming what she had told me, that I could be able to use all of the abilities. However, some of them were too tempting for me to be able to resist.

I found some more battle magic abilities, including other elemental spells such as earthen shield, fire sprout, frost hold, water lash, and mist. There was a myriad of other abilities that I discovered as well with some similar to my training ability. They could strengthen my mana wells so that I could use magic for longer without rest, grant me the ability to heal from my wounds faster, and increase the pace that my abilities improved when I trained them. Most of the abilities were quite common among adventurers with only a very few rare ones even being in the book, they were also quite weak when I first used them, but I knew I would be able to improve in time.

When I was able to use eight abilities, I realised that there was no going back. What Anoir had told me was true, I was able to use them all. It was a lot to take in, I didn’t tell anybody else about my other abilities and I didn’t train them in my time with Astrid. A part of me didn’t want anybody to see me as stranger than I already was, though another part knew that if no one else knew what abilities I had, they couldn’t plan for them. It was a callous thought, but my experience so far made me think that it may be necessary.

Most of the week passed in this manner, training with the teachers through the day, in the gardens in the evening, and by myself at night. We were bothered very little by Zarin and his cronies for a few days, and my life appeared to be safe for the time being with no further attempts on it. Life was mostly good in the citadel, there were even moments when I could almost forget everything I had been told had happened in my home village. A part of me knew that it couldn’t last forever though, and that knowledge came to fruition on the fifth day of my training.