Chapter 16: Training

Alex was utterly and completely confused. How on earth could someone survive underwater for hours? And what was meant by the cryptic words at the end ‘I understand now.’ It annoyed Alex that Trip was acting this way. He became frustrated at the fact that he was kept in the dark again. Luckily Alex did not take this anger out on Trip, and as he saw Trip run off somewhere he decided to release his anger by fire magic.

This was very much what fire magic was, chaotic power driven by emotions. Just by feeling the anger from Trip acting a certain way was enough to increase the fire magic power to twice its normal power. Fire magic was an incredibly good way to release emotions and Alex already felt much better after a little rampage.

At this point in Alex’s training he was still continuing with the chaotic training. From anyone’s perspective it would seem that when Alex was ‘training’ he appeared to just be throwing fire around all over the place. He also realised one extra difficulty in his training. There were many trees around and it was difficult to practice without almost destroying an entire ecosystem. Alex already knew that this was planned, but he was having a lot of difficulty with this aspect of his training. The entire time he had been teaching himself how to control chaotic powerful flames, and yet he had to learn to control it to an extent so that it did not set a forest on fire.

Alex was quite confused by this; after all, the entire point of chaos was that it was uncontrollable. This was the very thing that he did not understand, presumably all the powerful fire mages had the most powerful and chaotic fire, yet they must also have precision, accuracy, and generally good control over the fire.

So far Alex had been relying on his negative emotions in order to use fire magic effectively. Every time he tried to use fire magic he would think of his deceased family and every little thing that annoyed him and just let it all out, this caused powerful and chaotic flames.

“How can I use powerful fire magic without it being chaotic!?” He screamed while looking at the sky.

He looked at the sky and saw the sun. ‘The sun is so beautiful’ Alex thought. What was so beautiful about the sun? Well, the very essence of the sun is that it is a massive ball of fire, and yet it still looks so peaceful and beautiful on the surface. It was as if there was a shell around it, preventing it from exploding everywhere.

At that point Alex had a mental breakthrough ‘If I could control the fire in my magic not by making it less chaotic, but instead by entrapping the chaos. To have it be a concentrated and controlled form of chaos.’ He thought. In order to control chaos you must not allow it from spreading, so simply speaking it was controlling the amount of fire you released. The easiest way to do that was of course by making the fuel itself released in smaller quantities. This fuel came from his emotions, so he would need to control his emotions more if he wanted a higher level of control when it came to his fire magic.

Alex attempted to do this, but it was much more difficult than it at first had appeared. Controlling negative emotions was very difficult. Otherwise everyone who was feeling sad would choose to only be sad an hour of every day and happy for the other 23. People did not have control over emotions that easily. It required incredible amounts of training in order to reach a state where one would have control over their emotions.

While Alex was thinking of a solution to this issue Trip was running towards the pool of water in front of the cave. Trip was excited, because he finally understood what he had to do and how to do it. He proceeded to sit down in the water until everything but his head was covered, so that he could breathe. There was no reason to enter the other state again, as he now understood how to achieve similar results without having to nearly drown.

Trip closed his eyes and let his body drift from a sitting position to lying on the top of the water. He peacefully laid on the surface of the water and felt the strange feeling which he felt in the realm he was in earlier. At this point Trip displayed no emotion, no happiness, sadness, or anger. His face was tranquil, almost as if he was asleep. In order to get the hidden water particles to be attracted to him he had to show how he was a part of the water.

Trip stayed still for hours until he slowly started to control basic water magic, nothing difficult, he only created some waves in the water. This way he could start to learn how to gain control over the hidden particles without threatening them.

At first Grelin did not understand what Trip was doing ‘Has this kid gone mad?’ He thought, but eventually he saw the progress that Trip had gone through and was utterly shocked. ‘How could a child have gained that much progress in just a couple of hours underwater? I’ll have to ask him about this later.’

Several hours later Trip got out of the water, and he realised that he generally felt really calm. Strangely it appeared that every time he would train like this his mind calmed down incredibly much, Trip smiled at this, after all, to be more calm could only help for a water mage.

Trip dried himself off in the cave, and then looked around. ‘Strange’ He thought ‘Normally Alex would be back by now…’ Trip decided that he would search for Alex; he needed Alex to help cook some dinner.

Trip started to investigate around the area outside of the cave. After a couple of minutes he could hear several grunts from a couple meters away. Trip decided that he wanted to see what Alex was doing and decided to hide in a bush to see what he was doing without disturbing him. When Trip saw Alex he was shocked. He had never seen Alex this way before. Alex’s eyes were filled with such determination it was almost scary, he seemed to be in a state of full concentration. Trip kept looking at Alex and then saw Alex attempt a fire technique. What shocked Trip was how much Alex’s control over his fire magic had increased. ‘Has he been hiding this from me?’ Trip thought. The last time Trip saw Alex perform a fire technique was a couple of weeks ago, when he was just starting his special training, and back then it was completely chaotic, it would go everywhere without Alex’s control. Now, however, the fire was still rather chaotic, but it seemed to actually go in the direction that Alex wanted it to go. This was a shocking development, even Grelin was surprised.

What neither Grelin nor Trip knew was that Alex had achieved this level of control within a day of training. If they heard this then they would certainly be incomparably shocked. Alex had achieved this level of control by learning how to control his emotions better. Not in the sense that Alex had control over how much of an emotion he wanted to expend, but instead he chose to use different emotions to act as fuel for his fire. Instead of thinking of hatred, anger, and sadness which were emotions that were incredibly difficult to control. He instead looked at positive emotions such as happiness, joy, and pride. This way the strength and intensity of his magic had gone down a lot, but his control had become incomparably stronger.

When Alex appeared to be finished with his training Trip came out of the bush completely startling Alex and saying “Haha, you bastard! Who knew you had become so powerful already?”

Alex looked at Trip and snorted saying “What? Did you underestimate my abilities again?”

They both laughed as they walked back to the camp. Over dinner they talked about everything that they had learned over the last couple days. It appeared that these last few days had been incredibly productive for the two of them. It was quite comfortable for the two of them, they had no worries or responsibilities, and therefore they could just spend their time doing whatever they want.

Grelin was also satisfied with the two boys. Not only were they both incomparable geniuses they also were focused on training. He considered himself as a sort of teacher figure to the children so to see the two of them excelling was truly a beautiful thing. Grelin was also the only adult role model in Trip’s and Alex’s life at the moment, so in a way he felt a bit as a father figure to them as well.

He only wished that this time would last. Thinking back to his own family Grelin couldn’t help but feel slight loneliness. He did not know if there were any left of his kind or from his family. In his mind the only people he had in this world were Trip and Alex. He felt pain thinking that at one point he would have to leave them and be lonely once again.

After a couple of hours of chatter Alex and Trip decided to go to sleep. When they were sleeping they were completely oblivious to several pairs of eyes staring at them from far away, slowly sneaking closer and closer. They were so silent that even Grelin could not notice them. They slowly inched forward and eventually reached the sleeping bodies of Trip and Alex.

A deep male voice then said “Grab them and take them back to camp.”