Chapter 25: A New Home

Trip had a strong light within him. He still had a childish innocence which was still contained within that light. This caused the murder of Gassy Grandpa to really affect his mental state. He had killed animals before, and he has talked about murder before. He knew that his parents were dead, and that Alex’s entire family was killed, but watching the life slowly drain out of someone was truly something that a nine year old was unable to deal with. Everything had happened so quickly. Initially they were having a nice conversation, and then suddenly they got caught in a life and death fight. It was terrifying. Trip was not a pacifist, and he did not want to become a pacifist, but he didn’t enjoy fighting other people. To think that someone’s life had been taken by him was incredibly surreal. Someone has ceased to exist, they had become nothing. Trip couldn’t imagine what it was like to stop existing. The entire idea of death now terrified Trip. He liked to be alive; he enjoyed the trees, the flowers, the sun, the waterfalls. He generally liked everything about the earth. Everything looked so beautiful and colourful to him and to imagine that in death you would be unable to see these colours scared him. He did not know what happened after death, but he hoped that the soul would continue to exist and that he would be able to continue existing even after death.

On a more positive note, Trip had managed to understand more things about the soul. This caused his strength in light magic to increase dramatically. When Trip killed Gassy Grandpa he felt that he did not destroy his soul, but instead that the soul had shrunk until it eventually disappeared, almost as if it was being taken out of the body slowly. This meant that light magic did not break or kill a soul, but instead released it into the world making it become a loose soul. Trip had heard of loose souls before. They were similar to ghosts, but they never actually died. Instead it was that they had gotten kicked out of their body. Trip did not know much about them, but he remembered reading that if they didn’t find a new body within a day then they would truly die. Having understood this Trip realised that light magic never actually broke anything, such as he had previously assumed, but it instead had the power to bend and control things. He saw that light was a flexible magic. When he looked at the light bond between trees he felt that instead of breaking it or dissipating it he could bend it, and change the way the bonds worked. It was as if he could control souls and bonds between souls. This left him wondering what the later versions of light magic might entail. Could there be more to light magic than controlling souls?

During the time of Trip’s recovery from the murder of Gassy Grandpa Alex had developed as well. After he took care of Trip for a couple of days he developed a lot as a person. It was always Trip taking care of him, but now there was a switch. For the entire time that Trip had been vulnerable Alex had to take care of him. This made him feel like a bit of an older brother for a while, that was quite special for Alex, and he felt an extra sense of responsibility. This responsibility he felt made him develop his fire magic as well. He already knew that his emotional state greatly influenced both the strength and control of his magic. At this point he realised that he could assume a sense of responsibility over his fire magic, as if he was assuming an older brother role over the fire magic, and that the fire magic was a chaotic younger brother. This mind-set allowed him to be patient with his magic, while also gaining gentle superiority over the fire magic, as if he was taming it.

Through Grelin’s constant support Trip recovered in around a week. After this recovery they decided to find a place to settle. There should be no problems with settling in the wild in West Hrior. With the wall they doubted that there would be any patrols happening within the country so anywhere would be safe anywhere outside of any towns and cities. This meant that they would finally be able to train without any external interference.

They travelled a few days to get away from the walls, just to be safe, until they made it to a large valley. Because of the terrain they estimated that they were in the north east part of the country, which was the least populated part of West Hrior. The valley appeared to be quite strange. Even though it was winter the valley still had a near tropical climate with sunlight, green trees, and sparkling lakes. However the area surrounding the valley was barren and mountainous, with snow covering the peaks of the mountains. It was truly a peculiar yet beautiful place. Trip could feel that the soul of the valley was stronger than the soul of any forest he had ever been in. This intrigued him as he wondered what could cause this strength, and he was excited as he could learn more about light magic this way.

Setting up a camp took a while. They wanted to stay for at least half a year, or until they had mastered all the things that they had to wanted to master. The thing that Alex wanted to master was of course elementary fire magic, and Trip wanted to master the basics of light magic and intermediate level water magic. This meant that they needed a nice cosy camp to live in for the next half year. Having considered this, they were ready to start building some sort of base.

With the tropical climate they did not want to be separated from the outside air, so they ruled out settling in any place like a cave. Instead they decided to build a tree house. There were some really large trees, stretching up to 70 metres in the sky. They climbed to the top of the tallest tree in the area and they looked at the view and felt the fresh air. Just from being on top of the tree caused them to feel like they were completely entranced in nature. They decided that they would be ambitious and build their home on the top of the tree.

Their design was very simple. They created a ladder that stretched down the tree to make it easy to climb, and on top of the tree they cut a lot of branches and leaves, and then placed wood on the top of the tree in order to make it flat on the top, they also added some railings on the side. It took a week to build, but in the end they were very pleased with their progress. They would sleep in the open air on bedding that they made out of leaves. This was their new home.

Three months passed and both Trip and Alex had developed a lot. However, even though Trip had gained a lot of strength with water magic, unfortunately there was a problem with light magic. He realised that while training light magic was important, you didn’t learn anything by sitting still and only training, you had to go outside and gain experiences, you had to study the souls of all that is living.

Therefore Trip decided to investigate the strange and powerful light within the valley. He walked around to find where the source of the light magic was the strongest. The valley was quite large, and Trip’s skill in finding the source of the light magic was not at a high enough level to be able to identify it quickly. Thus he had some ideas of where the source was. He knew it wasn’t within the largest tree, because he lived on it, so if that was the source he would have already known. There were only three other places that could be considered landmarks in the area. There was a massive waterfall in the north part of the valley, there was a large cave filled with stalactites and stalagmites, and then there was a strange hill which was covered in blue grass. It was quite incredible with how many types of strange and beautiful places there were within the valley.

Trip told Alex that he would be gone for a while, this worried Alex, but he knew that Trip’s strength was at a very high level and that he might be a burden to Trip if he came along. So Trip started to investigate. He started with the waterfall. This was the one he believed was least likely, but there was always a chance that there might be something.

When he arrived the first thing he did was look behind the waterfall, and surprisingly there was actually a little cave. He looked through the cave, but he could not find anything other than a strange looking red plant. It was definitely not the source of the light magic, but he realised that there was something different about the plant, so he plucked it out of the ground with some soil to keep it alive and took it with him.

The next place Trip investigated was the cave. The moment he arrived he knew that there was something special about the place, but there was no source of light. However just looking at the stalagmites and stalactites he was amazed. It was beautiful and he was confused by how such things could have been formed. He investigated for a while longer, but he couldn’t find anything special.

And so he went on to the blue hill. The moment he arrived he felt the air getting thicker; he found it harder to breathe the closer he walked to the top of the hill. When he reached the top of the hill he saw a small light coming through the grass. Trip’s eyes flashed as he realised that this was undoubtedly the place where the source of the light was.