Chapter 8: Gray fog

Aion was now five years old and had been living in Flame King City for two years now, in these two years he had continued to study books on arrays and formations and had advanced from the basics to more complex books but he could not use this knowledge as Elemental energy was necessary to creat arrays.

Even though Aion could move around the different elemental energies he could not do so proficiently enough to creat arrays as it was extreamly difficult, But this was just temporary as when his core was formed he would be able to use his own elemental energy to make the arrays and formations.

He had also continued to sharpen his hand to hand combat skills every night but after a year because he was able to manifest swords and other weapons his teacher had begun to teach his how to wield a knife as a sword was still to large for him, and in one year he had gained great proficiency as every night he would train for close to six hours without stopping. As for friends he had only made one, Paul Waterbear the son of a nice couple who ran a small inn, WaterBear Inn.

Aion's lack of friends stemmed from his eyes as most children his age were afraid to look into the dark and gold vortexes, the gold one was still fine but when a child looked into the dark one they would be terrified, Paul however Wasn't scared of Aion's eyes as he thought that it made Aion look cool.

But aside from those things Aion was now very excited because in twelve days he would go to one of the spirit tests. These test were held by the kingdom every six months in order to test children for their spirits and could only be done by the kingdom as it required a spirit crystal that would show ones spirit and whether or not One had an elemental affinity.

Humans ranked their spirits from fist rank to ninth rank, first being the lowest and ninth being the highest, these rankings depended on the auxiliary effects of the spirit such as faster development of a core or weapon mastery some higher spirits would even give people unique attacking methods.

But Aion didn’t care for that because although he thought having a high ranked spirit would be great he was still had a small lingering fear that he would not manifest a spirit.

His grandpa on the other hand did not worry and told him that if that happened he could rely on his teacher but did not tell him how, and even his teacher did not know what his grandpa meant when he said this.

Currently Aion was sparing with his teacher to gain combat experience, while thinking of all that he had done in the last two years and how in a short time he would be able to condense a core, distracted by his thoughts his teacher hit him with the pommel strike to the head.

“Your distracted, Aion pay attention to what your doing.” In response to this Aion nodded and held his dagger in a reverse grip in front of his chest and took a stance ready do defend or attack at any moment.

“Good your focused now but let's stop, what's the problem?”

“Spirit test.”

“If that's still bothering you I've got something to motivate you instead. Let's wake up Alexander first I'll show you a fight on a higher level.” Aion was still somewhat reluctant on waking the sleeping knight as he had in the past attempted to force his mother into being his pet or slave, nut with his teacher here the sleeping knight couldn’t pose Aion any threat.

So he began to run towards the knight and kicked his sleeping face while willing him to wake up, the kick moved the knight far enough from Aion where he could back up and move to the side of his teacher.

He kicked the knight not because of malice or anything similar but because in the two years that Aion had been training with his teacher, regardless of how much noise they made the knight never woke up. Seeing this David laughed.

“Kid I think he would have been woken up by you just willing it this is your soul after all.” As Alexander woke up a ball of golden liquid with some gas around it flew out of his chest and next to the dark liquid ball that hovered above them.

“We'll seeing this confirms it that dark one is my core while the gold one is his.” As he spoke the golden core rammed into the dork one and both pushed against each other.

Aion looked at the two cores in astonishment because as the cores clashed they slowly released a very small amount of dark gray mist, this mist gave Aion the same feeling of belonging that he hadn’t felt in a little over two years, it was the same energy that he rammed into during the fight between the two knights.

But didn’t have long to think about it or try to grasp it as the every sleeping knight was awake and begun shouting.

“Where am I? I am Alexander Percy Cross grandson of the High Priest of the Church of the descended Angel and I demand answers!” Saying this he looked around only to find Aion and David standing not to far from him.

“Commoner you did this! You brought me here, I demand to be released and after your head will be mine for imprisoning a knight commander of the Church.” Hearing all this David couldn’t help but laugh, after all he was more or less already dead and had accepted what had happened but he knew that Alexander would not and he planned to use this to his advantage for the moment to instigate a fight and show his disciple a high level of skill in the usage of the sword.

“Well sir knight commander unfortunately the information you desire is only held by this kid and to speak with him you have to best me.” As he finished saying his part he tossed a sword to Alexander and taking one for himself, these swords were the weapons Aion had made in preparation for the fight between the two knights.

“Kid pay attention to the fight after an hour put him back to sleep and then we will continue your training.”

“Un” Seeing the exchange between the two Alexander grew furious and looked towards Aion.

“Kid help me escape this place and I'll speak to the church to spare you and your family from death for trapping me in this place.” Alexander spoke to Aion because he knew that wining agains David would be impossible but he also had confidence that he would not be harmed as he was the grandson of the high priest, and David as a knight of the Holy Sword Kingdom could not inflict any major wounds on him let alone kill him.

“No”

“You heard the kid take up your sword. Let's give the kid a nice show a fair warning though using elemental energy in this place is impossible.” Following his words David Dashed forward towards Alexander while bringing his sword above his head and delivering a strong over head slash to Alexander, exchanges like this continued with David attacking and Alexander doing his best to defend of dodge.

Aion excitedly watch this fight, he could easily see that his teacher would win in every exchange of blows and although he was moving while following the sword forms that he had taught Aion, his teacher would change the angle or hight of the form to adapt to his needs instead of following the forms perfectly, similarly he saw that Alexander also followed some pattern, likely a set of defensive sword forms.

Thirty minutes into the fight Alexander began to attack recklessly as he noticed that while he did feel the sword cuts it didn’t damage him and started to wildly attack forgetting about defense, in response to this David began to parry or divert every sword slash that came his way.

“Kid listen this is important, if you have an enemy who wildly attacks don’t block directly with your weapon, because unless you have a high rank weapon that won’t break or your significantly stronger than your opponent you need to parry or divert your enemy's blows that way your weapon won’t break.”

Hearing this Alexander back pedaled until he hit an invisible wall and shouted furiously.

“Commoner! You dare use me as a tool to teach this child! Who do you think you are, who is he to use me as a tool!” David was somewhat surprised as e thought that Alexander would continue fighting for a while longer before giving up and making his empty threats.

“Well from what I understand he is the grandson of the necromancer who you sent to kill me.” Alexander was startled by this and began to recall the last things he could remember.

“You… Your dead… I saw you turned into a death knight with my own eyes before… Before that accursed necromancer set you on me.” To Aion his grandpa was someone who was equal to his parents, those he thought of this way we're very few being only his crow family, his grandpa, and his teacher so hearing someone talk bad about one made him extremely upset.

“Kneel.” With one word Aion had imposed his will showing his dominance inside his own soul making Alexander fall to the ground on his knees.

“Apologize.” Hearing this Alexander tried to resist but spit out an apology.

“So..rry.”

“Un.” Actually the only reason Aion hadn’t done this while Alexander spoke to his teacher was that he had called him a “commoner” which his teacher told him that he was, so although the word coming from Alexander carried malice and contempt it was true. Following that David spoke once more to Alexander.

“Think about it if you saw me die and I'm hear with you with a kid who rules this place what situation does that put us in?” David deliberately made his words very cryptic as he had said before his death that he would hate and curse the church and kingdom that he had sworn allegiance to in death and that was precisely what he intended to do.

“Now kid can you chain him up or something along those lines so I can have someone to talk to while your awake it get dull.” This wasn’t really the reason he wanted Alexander awake but telling Aion that he wanted to make a fake deal with him to train Aion in exchange for release was out of the question as Aion was rather honest and would not lie in order to get what he wanted.

“Un.” Aion Agreed to this as he saw ho problem with it and spoke once more. “Chains” after he spoke Alexander was rapped in sturdy looking metal chains.

“Then let's continue your training. Did you notice anything in the fight that would help you?”

“Un, stances change.”

“Good you noticed, remember the stance should change to suite your needs you shouldn’t wait until you can use a stance’s form perfectly in order to use it.”

“Teacher gray energy fog.” Now that he had time Aion once again focused on the gray fog of energy that gave him a feeling of belonging, he pointed it out to his teacher at the same time he made images of the time he dived into the two fighting Knights to show that it was the same kind of energy.

“Hm so that's what you felt that made you dive head first into such a dangerous situation? See if you can move or have any control over it.” Aion then began to move the fog of energy around without any problem it felt to him as if he was moving his own arm or leg, it came completely natural to him and even though he was able to move around other elemental energies that was like pushing a huge bolder while this felt incomparably easier.

Aion was so immersed in this feeling that he continued until his grandpa called him for breakfast and it was after that he made his greatest discovery. But before he woke up his teacher told him one last thing.

“Kid we ran out of time today, so tomorrow I have something to show you as I've memorized four books of the most powerful warrior techniques, these are what allowed me to reach the grand stage so fast while keeping the foundation of my core solid. I am able to manifest them in here if I focus so think about what element you want to train in after I show you these, although the third one is questionable it will work even if you don't have a spirit.”

Once he finished his breakfast and the small list of chores he had, Aion went to his room planing on falling asleep but his excitement kept him awake.

During the time when he tried to calm himself down he focused his mind and found that he could all out the elemental energy to himself outside form the place where his soul was.

That night when he told his teacher this Aion was told in a very serious manner by his teacher that he should not use this energy in a wasteful manner as he only had a limited supply as it was produced by the two cores and they did not replenish their energy stores while being cut off from outside his soul where the various elemental energy’s gathered.