POV Change - Max

Very early in the morning...

"Max! Get up already! You promised we would go explore for a new place to hang out today." Waking up from that I quickly realize after looking out the window that the sun hasn't even come up to the point of it peeking past the tree line.

"Jason, why are you waking me up this early? Go back to bed, we can do it in the afternoon." Rolling over so I won't have to look at him anymore.

"You promised though!" Jason starts to talk in a outside voice, not at the level of screaming, but with how quiet it is around us, it almost seems like screaming. This time of day even if we didn't have to whisper, it makes it seem like we should whisper.

Taking a deep breath as I start to get up out of bed. "I'm up, you happy?" Staring meanly at him.

"Yes, thank you. Let's get going already, Emerald is already waiting by the back tree." Well I am glad that I wasn't the one that had to wake her up. She isn't the kind of person to be in a good mood just after getting woken up.

Quickly reaching towards the drawer with my clothes in it, I grab one of my long sleeve shirts that is about to give out from so much wear and tear. With how cold it is in the morning compared to the afternoon, I also put on a short sleeve shirt over top of the long sleeve.

I will just throw my long sleeve shirt out once it gets too hot to wear it. And I can't forget about pants as well. Too bad I don't have a crappy pair of pants, so I will be forced to wear pants all day. Not going to throw away a good pair of pants.

Walking down the stairs towards the front of the orphanage. I walk outside, trying to be quiet when I open the door to make sure that I don't wake anyone up from their sleep. Something that I wish I could be doing right now.

Once I get outside, I start to run around the orphanage towards the back. I am really sad that there is no door way leading towards the back of the orphanage, so I am forced to take the long way.

Before I reach the back of the orphanage, I should mention that yes, I do live in a orphanage. I have no idea who my parents are, and I don't really care. The reason is if they didn't drop me off here, I would have never meet my two best friends, Jason and Emerald.

The people that run this orphanage said that I was dropped off when I was only a few months old, they can't even remember who exactly dropped me off or what she looked like. Besides the fact that it was only a human women with long brown hair.

Too bad that 'has long brown hair' covers a wide range of women. Like well over half of the human females in this country.

Well it has been seventeen years since then so I can't complain. I have gotten used to living here. The only question that I still have though is why was there only a girl? Why wasn't there also a guy?

I have just stuck with the story that my father was a war hero somewhere, and my mother, due to not having enough money to care for me, got rid of me in hopes of a better life. If that story was true, it makes me feel happy to be a son of theirs.

Even if my mother had to get rid of me. Also glad that if my story is true, they didn't get rid of me by 'other' means.

Finally reaching the other side of the orphanage, I see two familiar people waiting by the lone tree sitting closest to the orphanage. For some reason it is the only tree in the clearing that was left alone.

The first person that I lay my eyes on is Jason.

His overall appearance is still the same as usual. Unkempt hair that is mainly red, but the red parts don't stand out too much because of the mix of brown that is randomly mixed in with the red.

The two colours seem to blend together in most spots making it even harder to tell the difference between the two. In the end though, it just makes his hair look very shiny under the sun light.

He is pretty much the average height of everyone else. At five feet and ten inches. Most people finish growing taller once they reach the age of sixteen. This includes both genders of humans.

Besides his hair there really isn't too much to talk about when it comes to Jason. The rest of his body is just average. He is quite toned because of how much training all three of us been doing in the past year, but other than that he is still quite skinny.

Compared to him, my body build can be called very brutish. Which in other words means a big body with clearly defined muscles in the areas that I train a lot in. So mainly my arms, and kind of my legs.

I don't like to talk about my body too much because of certain matters, but that is a subject I don't feel like thinking about right now. So I won't think about it any farther.

Looking over his face a little bit more I notice something that I was too tired before to notice when I was getting up. That is a black eye around his left eye.

Once I noticed it, I just couldn't look away. Making me stare a bit. "Yes Max. I got a black eye, get over it." Okay, maybe I was staring a little bit too much.

"How did it happen?" I say in a very surprised tone with a hint of mocking in it.

All he did was turn to look meanly at our group's newest member that has only been with us for about two years. Her name is Emerald and she is about half a year older then both of us.

She used to be a part of another orphanage, but the village got wiped out because of a goblin raid attacking her old village in the middle of the night. So she moved here a little over three years ago. She only became our friend after about a year of her living here.

From what we were told she went out that night to go collect something, she hasn't told anyone what that something is. Then when she got back the goblins were in the middle of raiding the village.

After that, she fled until she found a big group of traveling adventurers. They were actually on their way back from clearing out the goblins in the village Emerald used to live in.

Since those adventurers were heading back to the capital, they dropped her off at the closest village that ended up being here, New Haven.

A small village that is one of the closest to the ever expanding border of the human territory. As of right now the closest non-human village is about a month's travel away by carriage when you head east.

Well because of that, she became quite silent, and doesn't talk much to anyone. And when she does talk it is short and to the point.

She told us that before she wasn't the most talkative girl before the goblin attack, but now we are only able to hear her voice a few sentences every couple days.

I guess seeing goblins kill people you know can be quite traumatizing to a twelve year old girl.

She is quite average when it comes to how tall she is, she is roughly five feet, seven inches. Currently her hair is in a pony tail that reaches down to her shoulders, but usually on days when she isn't going to be training or walking long distances, she has it down. The hair is a solid light brown.

Her build is defiantly on the physical side. Well toned arms and legs. One thing though is she is very small in two areas. The first is her butt, but that is just a side effect of the training.

Me and Jason don't really care about it, so its fine.

The other place where she is small at is her chest. Flat as a board in the simplest of words. Never, and I mean NEVER mention that to her though.

Let's just say it is one of the things that she really hates about herself. A black eye is the least that you can get if you make fun of her for it. And that is on her happy days, you don't even want to know what the least is on a bad day.

Me and Jason are quite sad about this. But we knew that if she did have that part of her body be on the bigger side, it would get awkward with us getting older.

If you know what I mean.

The barely talking to other people isn't even something that she hates, whenever we mention why she doesn't talk. All she ever says is you shouldn't get too close to people.

I don't want to get that traumatized, I like still having child hood thoughts.

At this point though you can tell that she is pretty close to us though. Since we have been hanging out for years now. My guess is no matter what someone does, they will always get close to another person.

Most people that don't talk to others is because they are shy, but not her. That is also why she doesn't have any other friends besides me and Jason.

Both of us are able to notice what she wants to say without her even talking. Whenever we say something her face changes slightly and we can both see what the general idea behind her thoughts are.

Jason is better at reading her face then me, but I can at least hold a conversation with her as long as it isn't too complicated of a conversation.

Let's just say that is a huge difference compared to others who have no idea what the tiny changes in her face mean. The reason to why I am thinking of this?

Well I am just going to say that Emerald isn't talking right now, but her face has a clear meaning behind it. "You deserved it."

Looks like it is time to get this staring contest over and done with. All of us know that the black eye was from how he woke her up, and we all know that he DID deserve it.

Maybe not that big of a black eye, but it will heal fine in a day or two. "Guys, we are out here right now so we can find another hangout spot. No fighting until we can at least find one."

After a few more seconds of them staring at each other still Jason finally gives up and blinks. On Emerald's face appears a small smirk of victory. "Are you done now?" I say to both of them.

"Yeah we are done. Let's go!" Jason says a little too loudly considering we aren't that far from the orphanage to be able to yell without waking people up.

Once ten minutes goes by of silence of walking in the forest outside the orphanage, Jason starts to complain. "Man it sucks that we got to find a new place to hang out."

"I know what you mean. Just makes me want to punch those guys face's in at what they did to our last hang out spot. Destroying our fort like that was not cool." I reply back to him, also complaining about what happened.

Our old fort was in the forest about twenty minutes away from the orphanage. It was, to us, the best place to hang out and just be alone from the rest of the world. Only the three of us, and no one else.

All it was, was a bigger then the average tree in this forest that had some thick trucks that were able to hold our weight while we laid down on them.

In two parts of the tree we even made two different small platforms which we were able to sleep on if we wanted too. At one point we even brought some blankets up there to make it so we sleep up there in case we stayed at the fort too long.

We would have made a third platform, but there wasn't a good place to make one. So we just left it as it was. Jason and I are able to sleep in the same bed without it being as weird as if one of us sleep in the same bed as Emerald. That would be weird.

Which is why we are glad there was at least two platforms.

Jason and I had been there for four years, and we never really did much with improving the tree to fit our needs. That changed when Emerald started hanging out with us two years ago.

One day Emerald got tired and wanted to sleep, but was too tired to go back to the orphanage. So she used some earth magic, and made a small platform that would allow her to sleep.

Let's just say that Jason wasn't happy with that, since he wanted to go back to the orphanage to sleep. This is also the moment that we found out she isn't the best person to try and wake up.

Life at the fort went quite smoothly. Around the tree there was a small clearing that was big enough to do whatever we wanted. So at some point we even decided to hold sparing matches against each other.

Emerald currently holds the champion title for most wins against the both of us.

All she ever does is block until we are too tired from attacking.

When she goes on the offence, I am considered the strongest in long term fights. If the fight is only a short one, Jason will be considered the champion. To keep things interesting, we do set special rules during the sparring matches like time limits so Jason can win without him winning with a lucky hit in.

Any ways, where was I?

Oh yeah! I was thinking about how mad I was at those douche bags that ruined our tree fort.

It is a group of nine guys who are all fourteen years old, and they think that with their superior numbers compared to any other group of people in the orphanage, they can just do whatever they want. Well, let's just say that they rely on their numbers a little too much.

Since me and Jason are both sixteen, just about seventeen in two months, and Emerald having already turned seventeen a few months ago. We have all had more time to train, our bodies, mana, and elemental control.

Making it so that once all of us started to fight (for a reason that I can't even remember now), and were able to separate the douches into smaller groups, we were able to win against them when they first came to our fort. Which was just under a month ago.

And two weeks ago, they decided to get revenge on us. The form that their revenge took, was in the form of destroying the tree that we hung out at and on.

Yes, they took the time to burn up the entire tree. And just to get rid of their anger, the people that didn't have fire magic cut, or broke the already fallen parts of the tree.

So we are back to where we are now. Looking for another place to make a fort, or base. We will call it differently depending on what the place ends up being.

Right now I look down at my own reflection in the small pond that we just reached, that is about a twenty minute walk away from the orphanage. If we walk ten minutes west we will be able to see the remains of our old tree.

Splashing my average looking face with water, I also cup the water in my hands and raise it over my head. Letting the water fall, it runs through my short dark brown hair that almost can be called a black hair colour.

With me being a water mage, I have a connection to water. Making it so the feeling of having the cold water run down my neck, and parts of my back before it stopped falling down from having the shirt absorb the water, it is just a nice feeling.

If I had to say what it felt like, it would be like the feeling of having a mother caress my back with her soft hands. Not that I know what that feels like, but I hope that the feeling of a mother's hands feels like this.

Turning around, I look at both Jason and Emerald who are both just staring at me weirdly. "What?" I question them.

"Done with your moment? Or do you want to do your weird connecting with water thing some more?" Jason says with a tone that says he is making fun of me for what I have been doing for the past few minutes.

I look to Emerald to see what she has to say. At this point though she isn't even caring once Jason started talking. She is too focused on flipping a small flat stone between her fingers that she got from somewhere.

"Yeah I'm done, let's get going again. Also it is not weird, I have heard that most people do something to connect with their element. What you just say just happens to be mine." I reply back to him, trying to make it sound like I am not the weird one here.

"Why did I become friends with such a weirdo like you anyways?" Jason snorts out as we start to walk again in the same direction. Away from the orphanage.

"Cause no one else would want to hang out with you. So I decided to be nice to you, and let you play with me all those years ago." I say back sounding super smug about it because me thinking of how nice I am to other people.

All Jason does when he hears that is stops and looks at me weird. Then he starts to talk some more. "Now, hold on their Max. I was the one who was nice and let you play with me. YOU were the one that was left alone by the others because of you know what."

I just start to laugh at him. "Haha. Who said that I was the only one that was alone? You were also alone and only decided to play with me because you didn't have anyone else to play with that day."

Before he has the chance to say anything else, I say something else. "I was the one who let you play with me after you asked. I only played with you because of how lonely you looked."

After a few seconds of silence, Jason just starts to walk again. Once he passed Emerald and I he said in a very quiet voice, in a tone that made it seem like he never wanted to say it in the first place. "Shut up."

I just do another chuckle. While Emerald made a actual full smile, too bad that the two of us didn't see it or we would have been shocked since the most we ever get is a small smirk out of her.

Too bad it disappeared once she looked back at the stone in her hands, while looking up every once in a while so she doesn't run into anything.

Now that we are walking again, and no one else is talking. My mind starts to wander and it just starts to think about random things, and in this case I am stuck on the topic of the elements and magic.

So in this world, there is four elements. I say this world because of old legends saying that the god of our creation is a being that used to live in another world. No one has been able to prove this though, so it has remained a legend.

Where was I? Oh, yes, the four elements. These four elements, make up everything. They are fire, water, earth and air.

When a person or monster is born, they are born with a mana core. Plants don't have a mana core when they are made, so they don't count. Either way, every mana core has one element that it is made out of.

If a person has a fire mana core, they are able to control fire around them. Once a person trains to control fire past a certain point, they can be called a fire mage.

This also happens for the other elements too. So if someone was born with a air mana core, they can control the air around them, making them a air mage. And so and so forth with water and earth mages.

Now onto magic and the two types of it. The two different types of magic are internal and external magic. So internal magic is when someone sends mana from their mana core to a area in their body.

When someone gets to certain levels in terms of how good they are at controlling internal magic, they can increase the effects that happen to the body when it is reinforced with mana. Which includes things like increased strength, increased amount of force needed to break the skin, or break bones, etc.

They can also focus their mana to the specific parts of the body that need the reinforcement of mana. Unlike what happens with inexperienced internal mages, who can only send their mana to their arms or legs instead of sending it to their hands or feet.

Enough thinking about internal magic, external magic seems so much better to me at least.

When someone is a external mage, they are the ones that control the elements around them. The difference between a experienced external mage and a inexperienced external mage is the amount of control they have with their respected elements.

It sounds easy to just control the element around you, and even easier when someone shows you their control as a kid. But the reality is it is quite hard to control the elements.

Which is why practicing magic is a life time task, that doesn't have a end goal where you can say that you mastered it.

When a external mage controls their elements in a way that attacks, or defends others or themselves, it is called a spell. So if a air mage controls the air to dense together into the shape of a spike then throws it, that would be called the air spike spell.

There is a unknown number of spells, and there is always new ones being tested on.

Now onto another thing that everyone is born with. Talent.

A person that hasn't heard of talent when it comes to internal and external talent, might say that everyone has a talent when it comes to something. What I am talking about though is a measurable talent that affects how fast someone will be able to get better at using their magic.

So the way that someone gets measured on how good their talent is for both external and internal magic, is to get kids to try and get kids to use external magic for the very first time. The shorter that it takes the more talent that they have in external magic.

Then if it takes too long, a person has more talent when it comes to internal magic.

I have never been told how long it takes for someone to be considered talented for external or internal magic. Plus I can't remember how long it took me to get control my element for the first time.

With me saying that, you can say that I have no more information on this subject. And you are right. So I won't be explaining it anymore.

Now, with me saying that everyone has a talent, I should get onto what the talents and type of mages we have in our small group of three.

First off we have Emerald.

She is a Earth mage. Her talent is sixty percent external earth magic, and forty percent internal earth magic.

This talent percentage is actually quite common, which is about sixty percent of the human population. Well that is what magic schools have down for their students, the overall percentage could be different.

What Emerald does is mainly use external earth magic, but she also uses internal earth magic to support herself when someone gets too close for comfort. Other than that she is a external earth mage.

Jason is a fire mage, but he isn't a regular fire mage. He is what people call a balanced mage, or in this case a balanced fire mage.

Now what this means is his talent is spilt fifty-fifty. So no matter what kind of fire mage that he chooses to be, it will take roughly the same amount of time for his external and internal fire magic to make improvements.

Roughly only five percent of all humans have a talent like this. Making it a fairly rare trait to have.

So a normal balanced mage would be like what Emerald does and focuses on one kind of magic, with the other kind being a support in case the situation calls for it. Jason though has chosen the least traveled path in terms of balanced mages.

The path that he has chosen is a true balanced mage. Where instead of having a main magic preference, he uses both types equally. This in turn has caused him to not have as much control over fire then Emerald does her earth, but he is still better at internal magic then her.

And in the end we got me. A water mage, which in my own opinion is the worst element to have.

My talent is also quite bad. Now I did mention just a few moments ago, that I like external (water) magic better. So the only way for my talent to be considered bad, is to have my talent be better in internal (water) magic.

Which is totally correct. I have a talent of ninety percent internal water magic, and ten percent external water magic.

No human has ever been known to have this level of talent. And only one of the three races that can be called people are able to have this level of talent. Even for that race, this is a weak talent in terms of internal magic.

The kind of talent that is considered great for that race is ninety nine percent internal magic, and only one percent external magic.

So what is this race called, and why do I have a talent like this race?

It is because I am not human, well not a full human anyways. I am only half human, most likely from my mother who dropped me off at the orphanage.

The other half is from the race known as a race of savages, to some, and those same humans they shouldn't even be able to themselves anything but monsters. Let alone call themselves people.

Their race is called Titans!