Chapter Two: Newbie Town

As soon as the wispy man said his piece the majority of the carriage bolts out the open door with desperation to escape the overwhelming power he’s releasing, but also caution to avoid getting too close to him and invoking his ire. By the time they were done fleeing the carriage there are only five people in the carriage including me. The others left are George, Damon, Julian and the wispy man who’s watching the others line up outside the carriage.

The man turned to regard us four, his face a statue for a moment before cracking the barest hints of a smile. He then said in his raspy, dry voice with the barest hints of humor. “Well, well well looks like we actually got some talent this year, not some score of weakling with aspirations for greatness.”

He then stops and stands very still and looking us each in the eyes before releasing a wave of power before moving on to the next of us in the carriage, by the time he was done with George he’s sweating profusely and Damon’s looking like he’s about to pass out but he holds his ground. Which is fairly impressive for the boys, considering they didn’t seem to have any combat experience, but on the other hand I feel only slight annoyance I’ve faced worse from my dad by just being around him daily. Julian also seems alright, but he’s fully awake now with an observant glint in his eyes.

The wispy man then turned around and jumped off the carriage, and said with his back turned to us “Alright big boy and pretty boy I know you two are the ones to put those holes in my walls, because,” he drawls dryly, while gestures with one hand towards Damon and George and one towards the others “the other two are too weak and those weaklings over there look like they can barely fight a rabbit, and so by method of deduction I have concluded you two are the culprits, am I correct?”

It wasn't too surprising that he deducted that, and not like I was hiding it in the first place. So I gave the wispy man a nod and waited for him to say his piece.

“Alrighty then glad you're so honest big boy, but one thing” in an instant he moved and threw something sliver towards me and I just barely dodge it and heard violent a crash throughout the carriage a moment later. Looking towards where I just dodged is a foot long sliver stake connected to a chain which led back to the wispy man who had another chain for his other arm which is also going into the carriage where the stake was being held in mid-air by shimmering air mere inches away from Julian's face, which was scrunched in concentration and also bleeding from the nose.

“Folks around here aren't very receptive to property damage around here, and not many are as nice as me to not go after the vitals, so watch yourselves I'd hate to see such talent go to waste. Oh and I expect you to have paid for the damage to my carriage before next Newbie Gathering otherwise us three are gonna have problems, and by the way, the names Rashid in case you’re wondering who you need to pay.” Rashid said nonchalantly before retracting his chain stakes and leaving, and going to the next carriage down the road to do what he just did.

As soon as Rashid left I took a look at where the stake hit... and saw the hole he left was bigger than mine. That sent a wave of excitement through my veins if he’s that strong that means I can look forward to the future. I look to see if everyone else is still breathing… and they are. Georges seems alright but his smile seems strained though, and Damon is gathering his and Julian’s stuff, Julian seems okay and his nosebleed stop, but looks pale... well paler than before. Seeing everybody ok, I gather my bag from underneath my seat and then hop out of the carriage to go gather with the rest of the novices.

I took a good long look at Newbie Town and prairies surrounding it. It’s like looking at a sea of emerald green surrounding the town, with the occasional wildflowers patch, trees, brambles and the road we came on to break it up, further out though I could see the outline of a forest and mountains.

Newbie Town is just what the name implies a town, but a large town with a larger wall and smaller wall outside it with farmland surrounding it almost looks like a small city. With the rest of the those that are currently waiting on to be let into Newbie Town, I notice that there are a couple hundred of us here, but they won’t let us in till all of us are gathered here, apparently, Rashid is taking his sweet time scaring the others. By the way, it’s still all guys over here since they have the girls gather on the other side of town. I start to chat with George about nothing in particular to past the time, while Julian had disappeared with Damon a little while ago to find a place to nap.

It took another hour before a Rashid’s voice rang out through the crowd and said “Alright newbies here’s what I want you to do,” the crowd goes deathly silent as we turn towards him. He stood tall next to the Newbie Towns gates and points his arm to the side before saying “I am going to divide you all into four group, starting with A through F. And A get the fuck over there!”

Everybody with those initials hurries over to where he pointed, including me and as I waved goodbye to George for now, who waved back sadly.

I arrived almost at the front, only a tall, thin boy manage to get there before me who looks back at the rest of us with a prideful smirk. I looked towards Rashid making a smacking gesture with my hand, and he nods with a raspy chuckle. So I smack flyboy on the back of the head and his head violently jerks forward and he falls down and a muffled groan can be heard a second later…. What can I say I’m a sore loser? Rashid then bursts out with his dry laugh, and I can also hear the shivers going down the backs of the other novices.

Flyboy gets up a minute later groggily and turns around while rubbing the back of his head, and scowls at me and looks like he about to says something. So I lean forward till my face is inches from his and glare at him with a wide, toothy and vicious smile and I can see the fear fly through his eyes as he pales, and then he turns around with a speed that I could envy and says nothing.

Rashid, once he stopped laughing, then proceeds to organize the rest into three group with letter G-L, M-R, and S-Z. I turn around to see if I could find Damon, seeing as this is probably how we're given groups and that we would be stuck in the same group for the next three months, I rather know were the only person that knew me in the group was for at least for my own safety.

Rashid’s voice snapped my attention back to him “Alright Newbies get ready because we’re about to go into Newbie Town!”

The gates to Newbie Town are not that big in fact maybe fifteen feet high and thirty feet wide but more than enough for four rows of teens to go through with room to spare. As Rashid marched us into Newbie Town I feel a little underwhelmed, it’s not an ugly town but it’s far from being impressive it looks the same as any other large town I’ve been in, till I notice something… It the people. The people here all carry themselves in a way that speaks of a shit ton of combat experience and strength and they all looked fit and healthy as I pass them by, oh and all of them have weapons. Some wave as us with a smile and others glare and scowl at all of us novices taking up the streets, but most just ignore us and carry on with their day.

When I notice the guards I feel a deeper surprise, they look even tougher than the townsfolk, these guards moved swiftly and silently and stepped in time with their brothers in arms with their movements speaking of even further extensive training and strength. Their equipment also looked to be top notch and well taken care of.

These are some strong guards. Not that I’m saying most guards are weak mind you, just some of those city guards could miss a couple meals, and these ones, in general, were some of the toughest look guards I’ve seen individually and they worked together, which probably had to if they had to deal with townsfolk like this.

When I stop gawking at the townsfolk I looked down the road to see the plaza, which most towns had in the center and where this one was too. The plaza here is a thing of beauty with a bubbling spring in the middle that shot out of a small bluff of rocks into a large pond surrounded by greenery, wildflowers, and plenty of trees. The center of the plaza looked like a small forest and stretched a couple hundred yards in all directions looking more like a small park than a plaza.

But outside the mini-park was the real plaza which rather than reflecting nature's beauty reflected the beauty of civilizations with two rows of white marble pillars surrounding the forest and one surrounding the plaza outside it. In between the pillars is a marble roof with carefully carved ceiling windows to allow lighting and benches carved into the pillars, and to top it off was in each of the cardinal direction a sundial.

The plaza is impressive and as we marched towards it, it became more so. But my fellow trainees would probably disagree about that being the most impressive thing there, for as we got closer to the plaza we could see people in the water swimming and when we got even closer we saw they’re the girls trainees, needless to say, we all sped up as fast as Rashid would let us.

We arrived about five minutes later in the plaza, and Rashid stops us and said in his raspy voice “Alright boys break time. Relax but make sure to stay in line, because the real trainers will be here soon and you don’t want to make’em mad.” He stops and looked at us all for a moment before saying with a hint of humor “Oh, and enjoy the view.” While gesturing towards the pond before walking back towards the gate. And enjoy the view we did.

While looking at half-naked girls is nice, my attention got sidetracked by the other art around me the columns have tons of carvings on each one of them. Some show stories of times long passed, like knights fighting dragons and saving damsels in distress, to a knight being shanked by a thief and having his armor stolen, and other such stories.

Eventually, I got bored of looking at the columns to look at the sundial, it’s a little past 4. I then turned to look at the swimming girls, only to hear from the other side that their trainers were coming, while it sucks to watch them go, I gotta love watching them leave. But perversity aside I hope that meant that our own trainers are gonna get here soon there’s only so much standing around I can do before I get bored.

As I kept waiting and the trainers had yet to show, I contemplate smacking fly boy up the head again. Not that I want to bully the kid, just It might thing interesting down the line if he became my rival over something like that or maybe got a posse together to fight me, or something like that because if I learned anything It’s that if you push someone far enough they’ll fight or flight. If he fought well good I could use some exercise, if he flighted though it’s possible that he could return to fight me, and possibly in greater numbers. Which would be fun of itself.

Anyway just as I was going to hit flyboy, I felt a pressure in the back of my mind and I lower my hand. I turn to each of the cardinal directions and I see our trainers appear out of each one. They all took their time getting to us while sauntering over like they had all the time in the world, but they still got here fairly quickly. When they got over here they took their places in front of one of the lines of boys. The one that appeared in front of mine is a giant of a man, even taller than me standing more than seven feet tall and built like an ogre, and by that, I mean with enough muscle to feed a small village. He’s wearing a huge sword on his back that he made seem natural on him but would look sorely out of place on anybody else, but otherwise was wearing casual clothes with a leather jacket and sunglasses. I didn’t bother to pay attention to other trainers. because my focus is honed to a razor's edge and my instincts are going wild telling me to keep an eye on this giant of a man.

The strong guy looks at us and unleashes out waves of power, which felt weaker than Rashid's so I feel less than impressed, but I could feel everybody around me seize up with fear, as the sensation of having someone vastly stronger than you staring you down overwhelms them, an apt comparison for them would probably be a toddler that was being stared down by a bear. As he finishes staring us down, he turned to regard the other trainers and nods. He then looked at us again and said in deep and low, rumbling baritone “Alright you guys are group Leo, follow me.” He then went towards the west side of town and we follow.

We follow our trainer who led us down the western side of town, it didn’t look all that different from the south side of town we came in through aside from a couple of shops and fewer people as we went farther down the west side but I suspect that it would be very empty where we’re going, and I suspect the same would probably apply to the other groups no matter where they went.

Sometime later we got where ever we were going, I’m not really sure how long it took since I got pretty bored and kinda stopped paying attention, but we got there and I knew that because the trainer bellows “Stop!” causing us all to halt in place. Snapping out of my thoughts I look around and find myself extremely underwhelmed because where we had arrived is a huge, overgrown lot. I had an Idea why we're here but was hoping I wasn’t right, though I was looking at it in case I’m right. What the trainer said next dashed my hopes and confirmed my suspicions “Alright newbs, this here lot will be your homes and training grounds for the next three months.” While wearing a smug grin.

I let out a sigh, so much for hoping for an actual home for once. But it wasn’t all bad this was how I lived my life to this point anyway, wouldn't be all that different from camping and I already saw a pretty good looking piece of the lot for me to stake my claim. It’s towards the wall bordering the lot. While I was thinking on how I could turn my lot into a home the trainer spoke again “Alright newbs, I gonna let you guys hang out for a little bit, and I’m gonna head up to the guild and get things set up. So you newbs go an start your pissing match to see who will get the best piece of dirt, oh and there better be blood by the time I get back.” the trainer said with a hint of steel in his voice than sauntered away down the road.

I took a good look at the lot, while yes it was full of weeds and plants, it’s also flat and wide taking up a good portion of the block, and is right next to the west gate. So there looks to be enough space for us all to live comfortably and train, and taking a look behind me quickly I saw there seem to be a hundred of us or so. After taking a look at the rest of the newbs I dart off the to lot to stake my claim, while the rest of them were still confused I really want to get to that piece I had my eyes on. As soon I darted off to the lot the rest of them did the same, wanting to get their piece as well.

The piece of the lot I had my eye on was the corner of the lot with a big pine tree sticking out right and bare ground surrounding it for a couple of yards and plenty of wildflowers and such surrounding it. I made sure I was the first to get there, kidney punching and tripping anyone who seemed to catch up with me or looked to be close to passing me.

When I got there, I stop my sprint and turn my back to the tree and gave a death glare at anyone who looked like they were about to come over here. When it seemed that no one else was coming to stake their claim I relax for a moment and sit down. As I was sitting down I look through my sack and took out some jerky to eat, and some chalk. After finishing the jerky, I got up made a fifty by fifty chalk square around my tree. After doing that I removed the wild plants from my newly claimed home, separating the edibles from the inedibles, and then putting the useful ones into some smaller bags in my sack. I then put the inedible and relatively useless wild plants next to hole I made by the tree.

This all took maybe an hour, and I noticed that the trainer still had not come back. Looking around I saw some others working together to fix some their mini lots and some fighting over them. But as I was looking around I noticed a large group coming over to my lot looking to have about ten people. Well looks like I had been targeted, well I did take one of the best and largest pieces of the lot.

They stopped around the chalk line I had made around my land, they were just standing in the knee-high grass as they waited for someone. The person they were waiting for appears as the small crowd opened up to let a thin, brown-haired youth with fine clothes and a haughty look on his face come on to my land crossing the chalk line. He looked me in the eyes and said with a sneer “My brutish friend you have done a fine job of clearing this land here. I would be quite pleased if you would hand it over to me,” He pauses and looks me over “maybe even pleased enough to let you join my little group here. So what do you say?”

My answer was quick and calm “Thanks, but no thanks now get off my land.” I looked him in the eye and glared. This made him step back a little but he held his ground glaring and step forward inches away from my face saying lower and full of edge “Now listen here brute, I came here with the best of intentions to allow one such as you to join me, all at the low cost of the hovel here a small price for allowing an ascend to greatness by following me! Now I shall ask you in a way that brutes like you can understand-” Is what I guess he would have said if he had finished, but he didn’t finish as my fist hit his face and his face hit the ground. I crouched down and look him in the eye and said perfectly calm but with while sneering “I afraid that I’ll have to turn down your offer, I’ve got my own plans for greatness.”

After saying that his little posse looked poised to rush to his aid but he raised a hand and they stopped.

He looks up with eyes blazing with anger and defiance, he spoke once again without the arrogance just low, bitter and cold “Alright brute you’ve made your point now allow me to make mind. Regret making the enemy of an ability set holder of the Dis house, and attacking me, Acelin Dis scion of the Dis house.” He then raised up with one hand pointed at me and another at his posse, the one pointed at me with a sickly yellow fog, and the other one pointed at his posse a deep red fog. Shit, he is an ability set holder and a noble one too.

I try to charge forward to knock him senseless again before he can release his ability, but too late he released both patches of fog.

The moment the sickly yellow hit me, I hated it and Acelin. I almost fell over retching out my stomach, and the world felt like it was spinning around me, I began to see dark spots at the edge of my vision. I hit myself in the kidneys and then relaxed my body and allowed myself to focus on the pain to clear my head. I felt better almost instantly, and none too soon Acelin’s posse was on me covered in that red mist.

They attacked like wild animals, there was no unity just a desperate need to maul me it would seem. But they were easy to avoid, stumbling over each other. I saw an opening charged towards them sending a punch to the stomach at the one closest to me, he buckled over instantly the red mist dissipating and skidding over out of my land, the red mist seemed to intensify on the rest of them attacking with greater ferocity and speed, but still senseless. The next one I hit took it a little better than the first but was launched outside my property as well.

As I dealt with the rest I was left with only two left on my property, including Acelin, the last one standing was practically armored in the red mist and the yellow mist on me had practically vanished. He charged at me trying to claw my throat out, but I danced over to the side and elbowed his side causing some of the red mist to disappear, leaving a small patch of open. I had to dodge before I could advance, as the red mist guy tried to hit me again, but as he struck his arm out I grabbed it and pulled him into my knee and into the opening, the result was instant the sound of bones cracking as my blow landed with the mist no longer guarding him. He keeled over and passed out, I then picked him up and tossed him out. The only one left was Acelin himself, who looked at me slack-jawed, I then got to his level and looked him in the eye said with hard and cold “Now I think that you’ve made your point you should crawl off my property before I throw you out like the rest of your boys.” I pointed to the pile of knockouts outside my property “Now do I need to do that?” He shook his head and said calmly “No, I am beaten.” And he walked off the land and raise a hand at his posse and a blue mist comes out, which raises his posse raises who get up with glassy eyes and they leave.

I waited before they were out of sight before, before darting behind my tree and retching up my guts. When I returned to the other side of the tree I saw a familiar face. He’s a slight boy, of average height with black hair and green eyes dressed in brown and black, It took me a moment to then realized it’s Damon the servant boy to Julian. He was waiting at the edge of the chalk line I drew. He was waiting for me it seemed, He spoke but did not move with his voice level and monotonous “ The trainer has been spotted down the street.” His green eyes boring into me as he looked at me and saying “Good job defeating Acelin, he’s a power hungry moron who been trying to recruit Master Julian and me for years.” He then pauses for a second then adds “ Next time though He will be back though with gifts instead of force though” I was a little taken aback from how much Damon’s talking, when we were on the carriage the only thing that he said was that he was a servant boy or something else too. But he seems to know a lot about Acelin though.

“Anyway,” he began to talk again still flat and monotonous “we should walk back to the front before the trainer arrives.” Still taken aback I went with him.

Damon went back to being silent as soon as we left my camp, I thought the little guy was odd, he didn’t talk much and when he did he spoke like he was somewhere else or talking about someone else even when he’s talking about himself. But besides that, he seems alright, and I enjoy the silence.

As we walked It wasn’t long before we arrived at the edge of the lot and saw as our trainer arrived. He was carrying a large, and heavy looking wagon behind him, with one arm. He stops in front of the lot and drops the wagon behind himself. He looked us over quickly before saying irritatedly “Get in line newbs! It’s too hard to count with you all spread out like this!” We did as we were told and got into one line, once we did that he started counting, and then proceeded to grab every second person till there were two lines, and then did the same to both lines till there were four lines of twenty-five, I didn’t have to endure that humiliation though probably would have made me fight him if he grabbed me and moved me around. And I’m not so sure I can take him… yet.

Once he was done the trainer looks satisfied and then shouts to grab our attention, not that he didn’t have it already. He still shouting loudly “Alright newbies, I’m gonna pass out these packs here,” patting the packs in the wagon “ and I want you to hand them back till everyone in your column has one.” He then proceeded to hand them out till everyone had one.

He then shouted again to get our attention and pulled out a clipboard and proceeded to list Items in our pack. “Alright let me explain what’s in those packs there, first off there's a tent and mosquito net in there and a bedroll, a voucher for a set of leather armour and iron weapon of your choice at the guild, a voucher for a year’s worth of breakfast and dinner, you’re on your own for lunch. A month’s worth of bath tokens again from the guild, you’re expected to be making money to pay for yourselves by the end of the month and finally, you’re never gonna believe this, another voucher for some clothes at the guild.” Our trainer seemed a little out of breath but went on to say “Alright you guys are free to go set up your tents, but I expect you all back in fifteen minutes.”

As I didn’t want to waste any time as I went sprinting back to my little camp and set up my tent, and then did something very important, I took some rope out of my sack climbed into the pine tree and tied it to a high branch and attached my sack to it so I didn’t have to carry it anymore or worry about it and then hightailed it back to the trainer, I was one of the first back and took my spot at the front of the second line.

The others arrived a little while later, and soon we were back to full numbers. With everyone back the Trainer once again spoke up. He took a deep breath and said “Since we got the time let me tell you how things are gonna go down for the next three months, and nine months after that. I’m gonna offer training six days of the week from dawn till noon so that I can teach you how to improve your fighting skill, and I expect all of you to appear at least once a week, during these three months you all need to show your best to impress so that you can get someone to mentor you after my three months of training you are over, so they can pass on skills and show you how to get a better class and so that you don’t get sent to front lines at the end of the year for doing nothing with a class like soldier, their boost is only like two times effectiveness not much better than a novice class, anyway if you can get a good class you can choose to do whatever want like stay here, go adventuring or whatever. Doesn’t that sound so much better than being a soldier!” Our instructor said exasperated but continued to say “Oh, I just realized that I haven't introduced myself I’m Mars Partan. Anyway let me explain what class you all are gonna have for the next couple of months it’s called the novice, the class isn’t very special only giving a fifty percent effectiveness bonus, but that does mean you'll be fifty percent stronger, and it’ll help you get strong enough so you can get a better class!”

I was a little confused with all this information, but just nodded my head and smiled while it digested. I was frankly happy with all the free swag I had gotten, as I never look a gift horse in the mouth. Mars spoke up again “Alright let's head on down to the guild.”

The guild was not that far from the plaza, just had to head slightly north of it till you saw a large building that said The Union’s Guild of Classers or The UGC. The build was large and board taking up all of the block that it's on. But was relatively unimpressive on the outside, being very bland and squat. When we arrived in front of the building before we enter Mars stopped us and said menacingly

“I expect you all to be on your best behavior, no snark, smartassery or assholery to the workers in here, and more so to clerks, all I want to hear is yes ma’am or sir, if I find out that any of you misbehave or treat any of the employees in here badly I’ll hunt you down, skin you and tie up the corpse in front of guild and wear your pelt as a trophy. These people in here have enough going on as it is, don’t make life harder for them!” He said practically snarling. Mar’s than ushered us into the guild, I was then awestruck with how big it was in there, It had electric lights and air conditioning, and the clerks all worked at computers, all these I’ve rarely seen but the others didn't seem all that impressed, the lucky bastards were probably used to it they probably also had a Phone or some of those Enchanted Items people obsessed over.

Mars had us all sit down, while he went to talk with one of the clerks and returned minutes later, “Alright we’re gonna get your classes and guild cards set up in a moment, you’re all lucky that I pulled the short straw to get first place this year. Anyway, It’ll be a couple of moments before they are ready, now who’s gonna go first?” The clamor was instant, but I spoke up before anyone else “I volunteer as tribute!” I said loud and clear.

“Alright we got a volunteer, now the rest of you decided the pecking order.” After that Mars ushered me over to the clerk's desk to wait, while I was there the one of the clerks, a pretty brunette, brought out a flat grey card and told me to prick my finger and smear the blood on the card. I did as I was told and watched in amazement as the card rippled and showed me myself.I looked at myself in the card a rugged, but not quite a handsome boy stared back with piercing blue, that border almost on black eyes and with cross cropped black hair.

The card list just about everything you could know about me, from my age of sixteen, a height of six seven, and weight of three hundred pounds. But other than those it also shows my class and guild rank which is one.

The pretty clerk then told me about the guild ranks while I waited, with the lowest being one rank, and gets higher the better, but caps out a ten. She also told that I could take missions and commissions at the guild, but that the higher number the higher the danger. The clerk also told me about the stuff here at the guild, that this is where we would train with Mars in the morning, and how we would be observed, and that there was plenty of recreational activities here from swimming to sports, and classes you could sign up for at the guild like skinning, which I already knew.

The pretty clerk was nice and all but a little overwhelming, I was just hoping for the other clerk to call me back to get my class yet and as I thought this my hopes were answered he came back out and said he was ready for me, the pretty clerk scowled at him when he said that.

I spoke up as I got up to get my class “Well thank you miss clerk, but I must go now.” She spoke up almost immediately with a voice dripping with honey “Aww, so soon well come see me soon. When you come to the guild make sure to ask for Vanessa to get me.” She said with a wink and a predatory look.

I suddenly felt slightly violated, and followed the other male clerk, when I looked back at Vanessa I notice that she was helping next guy after me, and seemed much less friendly.

A moment later I was in a back room with a globe in front of me, the clerk, a mousy and somewhat average looking man, said friendly and calm “Alright Mr..”

I answer “Atlas Mule.”

The clerk just smiles and goes on “Alright Mr. Mule, what I’d like you to do is please smear a little bit of your blood on this Arch Wizard's Orb right here. Now if you’d like we have a pin I can prick you if you don’t think-” I answer him by savagely and painfully biting my thumb, and ripping off the top layer of skin on it. The clerk looks at me with bewilderment, and then confusion and shock before he shouts “But we have pins over here! Why would you do that!” I look away slightly bashful, before running over to smearing my blood on the orb while the clerk yells at and right before I touch it he screams “Wait don’t do that! I haven’t explained everything!” But too late I’ve already smeared my blood on it.

Everything goes black, for a second and then it’s not. I’m suddenly among the stars and I could see everything. I could see the sun and moon, my planet beneath me and so many other things too. I’m seeing a scope of magnificence and beauty that I have never seen before, this place among the stars. I feel like I could stay here forever just being and existing. But soon that feeling fades and I could feel a voice in the back of my mind, reminding me why I’m here. A depression comes after the joy, and I glumly accept I have a task to complete.

Then the stars start to move and take form. What was once a mass of formless stars becomes, images with the same complexity and realism as any great painting I’ve seen.

I could see a great, powerful and proud warrior beckoning me over and mouthing of the powers he could grant me, and I slowly floated over enticed by the allure of the power he promises me. But I couldn’t get to him something would jerk me back before I could get close enough to take the power he offers me.

I float away dejected from the warrior and I could see dozens of other star images trying to beckon me over, also say those offers of power but they each offer a different type, but something wouldn’t let me get close enough to take the power, and soon I felt myself guided to a new, but weaker image that offers strength too and I could feel myself being forced towards it, from inside myself and outside. This new image, took that form of a youth who could be seen doing several different jobs or fighting, but never doing it quite right but always learning and growing till he was on a path to become one of those other powerful images.

I realize what Image this is and reach out and grab the power of the novice and let it fill me as it flows forth.

I snap out of the place among the place, and the clerk had just said “thing!” I didn’t listen to him since my body then screams at me as pain blossoms forth from my core, and darkness overtakes my vision.