Time had a tendency to pass quickly once you settled into a fixed routine. Even if said routine was monotonous and torturous, lasting for hours at a time and left you completely exhausted.

During these relentless weeks of training, nary a word of the situation outside reached John’s ears. However, that, combined with the fact that the so-called nobility came in greater numbers with each passing day, couldn’t possibly bode well.

There was a nervous air in the Golden Gate, spread from the adults to the children. No one, from the youngest orphans just recently pried from the clutches of the streets, to the ambitious young men and women about to enlist in the military, was spared from its influence. The normally empty training fields were filled to the brim with growing men and women, sweating and training in the humid air in preparation for what would be the first real experience in real combat for the youngest, and one test amongst many for the rest.

To be honest, the fact that they would all have to join the military for a mandatory service time of ten years after graduation shouldn’t have surprised John as much as it did. Everything, from the very fact that they trained in the art of war every single day, to the smaller things like not even mentioning that warriors could become something other than - well, warriors. With their immense capabilities, it seemed like more than a waste to use them as mere soldiers.

Though unable to verify his doubts due to a lack of trustworthy people above the age of eighteen willing to answer them, he was sure that all these rocks and walls and golden bricks had to come from somewhere. And unless their purified forms were randomly lying around in the right sizes, there really wasn’t the industry to support such an empire seemingly built upon stone and gold.

Not like that mattered all that much. He would have to survive those first ten years of service first. A deeply sobering thought that only caused the bags under his eyes to expand as training slowly began to take over his entire life.

From dusk to dawn and somewhat beyond, he dedicated his life to becoming stronger, better, faster. Though training was invaluable to soldiers in any age, battlefields dominated by cold weaponry had a far, far greater reliance on it.

Any random civilian could kill a masterful martial artist who had trained for decades if trained properly for a day and given a gun and some distance. Try killing the same person with a sword or spear in your hand, and your chances of dying have just multiplied manifold.

Days and weeks passed, and finally, things happened as they had to. Sooner than John would have liked it, the rain gradually stopped. It was a gradual process, unnoticeable to all but the most aware, one people only became aware of once the torrential downfall turned into a drizzle, and then stopped entirely. The grey clouds overhead stayed around, as if unwilling to give up their dominion over the sky. But they, too, would eventually part and reveal the azure sea beyond them once more.

Time moved on regardless of the state of the clouds. The end of the rain meant the beginning of autumn, the season of harvest and the end of their preparatory phase.

The smell of washed up earth pervaded the air like a heavy blanket, suffocating all beneath it when John and the rest finally assembled in their training field on the next day. They had all become more haggard in the weeks that had passed, the students from a lack of sleep and the teacher from whatever mysterious tasks he was accomplishing when he wasn’t observing them like a hawk, popping out at the most unexpected places when they least expected it.

At the very least, their training had gone nicely, though John couldn’t fathom why they didn’t practice fighting in groups. It hopefully simply meant that they were assigned to support roles, basking in the safety of their older peers.

Of course no one told them whether that was an actual possibility, perhaps due to the realistic fear of them losing the motivation to pull off the very much murderous training.

As John looked around, he glimpsed at a few groups that had already started marching through the thick foliage, more hearing their uniform footsteps than seeing them. Other groups were like his, gathered in their training fields and undoubtedly discussing things of paramount importance before marching onwards.

He was pulled back to reality by the firm voice of his teacher. “…have trained hard in the last weeks, and I hope you will be able to prove the fruits of your labour against worthy adversaries and not die under the claws of a far more powerful beast than any of you could handle,” he said. His face remained impassive, with not a hint of a smile. “Don’t think that won’t happen. It has happened before, and I’d rather not lose students to gross overestimation.”

The words seemed to have their intended effect, as the enthusiasm of a certain few blockheads – John couldn’t help but sneak a peek at Logan, who was hanging his head and shifting the sand with his feet - waned. This finally brought a smile to the old man’s face.

Their teacher looked at them for a moment, grin fading a bit as he said the next words. “Since this entails quite a bit more danger than our previous excursion, it has been decided that each teacher must take an additional helper with them, in order to ensure that no mishaps happen.” He waited for the oohs and aahs to pass before clapping twice, his smile turning wry. A woman, taller than most men yet still a bit shorter than their ridiculously tall teacher, stepped out from behind him. Her hazel hair wound in a tight ponytail, the all-too-familiar woman smiled at them kindly.

Not really noticing that, John only wondered how the hell she managed to hide behind him and remain unnoticed.

“Hey kids! Some of you might know me already, but let me introduce myself just in case.” She laid a hand upon her chest. “My name’s Franziska, and I will be watching and teaching you alongside your esteemed teacher for the next few weeks. Don’t cause any trouble, and we will get along just fine.”

There was silence for a brief moment as the children collectively looked at their teacher, and an approving nod quickly caused enthusiastic greetings to erupt. Especially the girls seemed to be drawn to the older woman, eventually splitting off from the boys who stayed with their old teacher.

“Kids…” the marble vocalised John’s thoughts, scoffing despite remaining with the other boys.

The old man looked at them. “What are you waiting for? I won’t show you any favouritism just because you’re too dumb to suck up to your new charge. Shoo, familiarize yourselves with this nice lady.”

After quite a lot of shuffled sand, John, for once feeling like the adult he was somewhere under that childish shell of his, sighed and joined the other group, where the girls were enthusiastically asking the older woman all sorts of questions, some more, others less appropriate. Franziska winked when she saw him, but her attention was quickly diverted by some freckle-nosed girl John often saw around Jessica, asking some question about her husband. What was her name again? Lydia?

The other boys quickly joined him in standing outside the circle of enthusiastic girls, some of them occasionally throwing in a question or snide remark, yet feeling remarkably left out by the group that had formed within seconds. It was as funny as it was sad, for even when they tried to fit in, they were met with quickly ignored glares or shoved out as quickly as they intruded.

Giving up their futile struggle, most of the boys gave up and returned to the old man. Perhaps emboldened by the friendliness and surprising willingness to answer questions about herself that Franziska showed, Logan stared up at him with his best puppy eyes and asked, “Teacher, are you married?”

The old man gave him a pointed stare, one eyebrow rising above the other as the wrinkles overlapped on his forehead. “Listen, unlike the lady over there I’m not your friend. I’m your teacher, and we shall remain in that relationship until you graduate.” His eyes wandered over them, daring another to step forth and try.

Needless to say, none did. His amber eyes were radiating a presence that cowed them like a predator would its natural prey. Greg, as John resolved to never call him anywhere but in his thoughts, blinked, and the heavy pressure se upon them vanished as if it had never existed in the first place. “I could perhaps reconsider once you’ve brought honour and glory upon me and the Golden Gate,” he added, low and quiet enough that they could barely hear them.

“He’s a wise one, I’m telling ya. Nothing good comes out of associating with your pupils. Only makes them more unruly and…”

John closed his eyes and groaned, though for entirely different reasons than his classmates. That damned marble still couldn’t shut its mouth, interrupting with its monologues whenever it found an opening.

Together, they waited in an awkward silence until the enthusiastic Franziska seemed to have hit the limits of her patience, gently yet firmly ordering the girls to take up rank and file once more. They did so with giggles and happy affirmations, probably happy at meeting someone willing to answer their questions, off-topic as they might have been.

Her smile now slightly strained, Franziska resumed her position slightly behind their teacher, giving him a nod. Greg closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. “It’s time then. Brace your feet and prepare to march, we’ll probably arrive tomorrow at dusk if we hurry.”

He marched onwards, a middle-aged woman and a small horde of children following behind.

Their destination was a small outpost, close enough to Frumentum to avoid taking the brunt of the rampaging hordes, yet far enough that a certain level of danger was still present. Faint shadows moved back and forth on the thick stone walls carrying the insignia of Frumentum, the soldiers ever vigilant in these trying times. Entering without any fuss, a soldier soon led them to the stone house that would become their base of operations for the time being. Around it were a dozen more stone buildings, all tightly packed together by the high walls and held apart by cobbled roads.

From the neighbouring houses, John could make out the voices of children. How many groups did the Golden Gate send here? They couldn’t possibly have much more than two or three classes of orphans in their age group, could they? Children, especially groups of them, weren’t exactly unnoticeable. They tended to talk, scream, fight and play pranks on each other, loud enough that they very hard to miss if you lived close by.

Putting these things out of his mind with a sigh, he sat down on his rock-hard bed and proceeded to massage his feet with aching hands. Somehow, he had deluded himself into thinking that walking all day long wouldn’t be an arduous affair, despite all prior experience pointing towards the opposite. Especially with the noisy little voice inside his head nagging away at everything. Why couldn’t it just stop for a moment?

“I think you should…rest for a while,” Ronnie said. He was lying on his own bed on the opposite side of the room, his diary, which was essentially a bundle of paper bound by a rudimentary leather cover, discarded somewhere on the edge, almost falling off but never entirely doing so. “Sometimes you just stare off into space and start cursing under your breath. Or your mood completely swings from happy to annoyed in a second. The old men on the streets got like that, too, when they pushed themselves too hard for too long.”

John stopped and looked up. He smiled weakly. “I guess I should, yeah.”

Swinging his legs onto the criminally thin mattress, he turned to face the wall. Bad habits, that’s what all of these things amounted to. He had managed to tame them, once, training himself to completely ignore the literal voice in the back of his head when other people were around. But a years of homelessness didn’t exactly help with self-control, nor did the events that led him up to that point.

But the situation was different now. He was different now. The past may lay the groundwork for the future, who was to say that foundations couldn’t be changed out?

He smiled, more at the lull in the endless monologue in his head than at his own thoughts. He was stuck in a child’s body anyway. Why not embrace this unique period of learning and change whilst no one would blame him for it. He had, what? Seven, eight years? Perhaps ten?

‘More than enough time to grow powerful enough to make my own damn decisions,’ he thought to himself in the voice of the old friend whose name still remained a mystery.

Sometimes John thought him to be more of a concept than a real person, an imaginary wise and fierce warrior persona that fought and bled for his ambitions. Someone he could have been, but ultimately declined to be.

But then came the vivid memories, so fresh as if nary a day had passed instead of decades, and that notion was quickly discarded as quickly as it came.

Their first meeting, the revelation of the marble, the start of the rebellion and so much more. It seemed so cohesive, so nicely fitting together that he could have believed it if not for the specks and fragments of memories that were definitely his, yet so foreign at the same time. They appeared in his dreams, showing him a different life. A more peaceful one, far from the ravages of war and stress of supporting a growing galactic empire.

Which version should he believe?

Which version could he believe?

Perhaps none. Maybe they were all implanted, a tool to mould him into a suitable pawn for the marble’s plans, however unlikely that may seem.

His memories had been tempered with, that was the only thing John was sure of. The marble deflected or didn’t answer whenever he asked, and it was too great an asset and too fierce an enemy to fight against on suspicion alone.

John closed his eyes and sighed. Why was it that it turned out like this whenever he was seeking for peace and calm? His thoughts just wouldn’t leave him alone unless he was preoccupied with other things. Perhaps that’s why he loved and hated Meditation so much. It was a time of pure focus, minutes and hours spent guiding the aether through his channel in absolute concentration. But at the same time it left him highly vulnerable, completely oblivious to the outside world until someone touched him or he ran out of aether.

Stewing and brewing with his thoughts, John only gradually eased into sleep after hours.

The rising sun was already looming behind roofs and walls of stone by the time he woke up, throwing deep shadows across the stony landscape. Too busy with lamenting over the loss of an entire afternoon he could have spent productively, John barely spared it a glance before returning his attention to the room.

Ronnie was still fast asleep in his bed, his limps sprawled across the narrow confines of the bed with one leg dangling off the side and nearly touching the ground. His blanket had been twisted into some sort of hybrid between a rope and a robe, twisting and coiling around his body like a snake suffocating its victim.

It was mostly quiet, safe for the faintest sounds of metallic boots drumming on the ground and Ronnie’s soft snores. No monologue in his head, either, which was a good sign. On most days, it needed a prompt to start speaking. Something to kickstart a mumbled conversation, which finally devolved into a monologue once he stopped paying attention. He intended to drag this moment of peace out for as long as possible.

Too awake to fall asleep and yet lacking any real motivation to stand up, John remained lying on his bed, clutching his blanket and meditating for what his foggy mind was worth.

The arduous concentration quickly brought clarity to his mind, and he quickly lost himself in the endless streams of aether cycling through his body. Out his core and into his channels the aether went, steadily pushing onwards into smaller and smaller branches all over and in his body. Normally, this was where it would end. But not today. It felt like he could go even deeper, beyond the physical limits of his channels and into something words couldn’t quite describe. All it would take was one final push, one last burst of aether…

With an almost audible snap, the aether rebounded. It crashed into the narrow walls in the deepest depths of his body, stretching them to their very limits and a bit further.

His eyes snapped open in shock, but at first, he felt nothing at all, as if the sensation from before had been but a trick of his mind. But slowly, a tingling took over his entire body, which increased to a faint burning. And then came the pain. Fierce, torturous, debilitating pain all over his body at the same time. Like someone had let out a bomb inside and outside of him at the same time, the two forces barely keeping themselves in check so that his body didn’t explode in a shower of mangled flesh and bones, but merely pain that could reduce a grown man into a crying, sobbing mess.

It must have lasted for an eternity, eroding his will to live in a fiery inferno of the worst pain man could imagine. Had it not been for the cool tendrils emerging out of nowhere at some point, John might have chosen to end this second life of his right then and there, just so he wouldn’t have to suffer any more. They eased along his channels, eliminating the pain and bringing a sense of comfort that he clung onto like a drowning man to floating wood.

In a moment, the pain was gone, erased by the tendrils of what he now recognized as foreign aether retreating into the confines of his core.

With a gasp, John’s mind was flung out of the insides of his body. With a hammering heart and a body soaking in sweat, his eyes bulged out as he patted his body down in spasms. Feeling nothing amiss and hearing no one rushing towards him, it couldn’t have lasted for too long. His screams would have awoken the entire outpost, otherwise.

“What the fuck,” he said in between gasps. “What the actual fuck?!”

He gulped, and continued patting his body down. Nothing. Just as he was about to wonder whether he had truly gone insane, a familiar voice came into his mind, for once not aggravating or condescending, but enraged. “What in the actual void where you thinking! You bloody idiot, did you plan on killing us? If it weren’t for my fast reaction, you would in the best case have become crippled! Or worse, killed us both in a massive aether rebound!”

His head still spinning, John took a moment to process these words. “What was I even doing?”

“Hell if I know! You humans and your cultivation system are a complete mystery to me. Try asking your teacher the next time you see him, but do not! Attempt! That! Again!”

Wanting to do so right away but realizing that he would do so at an ungodly time, John fell back onto his stone-hard mattress, pulled the pillow over his head and sighed.

He hadn’t even started fighting against the beasts and almost died already.

What a way to start the day.