Book 2: Chapter 7

Cyil, Helather and Henri had a nice supper. Conversation was light and filled with charm. When they were done, Cyil retired to his room and began to meditate.

Cyil sat cross-legged on his bed and closed his eyes, emptying out his mind of distracting thoughts. Instantly, Cyil could see with his mind’s eye the elemental particles in the air. There was fire, wind, earth, water, light and darkness particles. They moved about, each at their own pace, as if they were alive. Watching the elemental particles dance about, Cyil was reminded of his first time seeing them and an idea came to mind.

“Come!” Cyil commanded. At first nothing happened to the elemental particles, not even the water particles. Then, slowly, the elemental particles stepped aside to make way for troops of shiny silver particles that materialized out of thin air, as if they had teleported there.

“These are space particles,” Cyil murmured. He no longer had his original body so he didn’t think it would work, but it worked! Cyil didn’t notice that there were no gray death particles mixed with the silver space particles and he quickly tried to absorb the space particles. The space particles happily and obediently ran to Cyil but as they touched his body, they bounced right off, leaving the spot they touched a bit numb.

The space particles refused to assimilate no matter how hard Cyil tried and he could only give up after his whole body was numb. Cyil guessed it was because Mahoj’s body didn’t have the Space attribute so the space particles couldn’t enter it and shifted his attention to absorbing the other elemental particles.

Baccaus had told Cyil about the inefficient and potentially dangerous result of absorbing elemental particles that are not your own but Cyil still wanted to try. “Just one of each element,” Cyil thought playfully.

Cyil willed for the fire particle to come but it refused to budge. When Cyil saw this, he mentally slapped his head and dispersed the space particles that quickly vanish as soon as how they appeared.

With the space particles gone, the other particles resumed their regular course of action and Cyil successfully absorbed a fire particle.

As the lone fire particle entered, Cyil felt an unpleasant feeling well up inside of him. This was the complete opposite of that euphoric feeling he had when absorbing those space and death particles long ago.

The awful feeling only continued to grow worse the longer it stayed within Cyil.

Cyil was of the mind to just ‘spit’ the fire particle back out, but he grit his teeth and began to extract the energy held within the particle.

The extraction process was grueling, much similar to his previous endeavor of using the rhombus stone to dig the dirt off Arina’s grave. This was a single fire particle Cyil was focusing on, but the amount of time and effort he had put in was 10 tens longer than the absorption and extraction of his first time meditating.

When Cyil finally finished the extraction process, the miniscule amount of energy he had gotten amounted to virtually nothing, not helping him increase his mage level one bit.

“So slow,” Cyil let out a long breath, clenched his teeth and moved onto the next elemental particle: wind.

The wind particle’s sensation while being absorbed and extracted was better than the fire particle’s; the time it took to extract was also slightly faster and the amount extracted was double the amount from the fire particle. Double, but still not even making a dent in increasing his level.

Despite the clear effects of absorbing other particles, Cyil continued with his experiment.

Earth particle.

Light particle.

Dark particle.

Then finally, the water particle was absorbed. This time, as the water particle entered his body, Cyil’s body felt like a thirsty person finally having licked a drip of water. It was hungry for more, but Cyil resisted the urge and focused on only that single water particle.

Accordingly, the results were much better than from all the other particles. Cyil quickly extracted the energy and didn’t feel awful while doing so.

Now that Cyil was finally satisfied, he began to slowly absorb the water elemental particles from the surroundings. Picking and choosing out the water elemental particles from the massive amount of other particles was a grueling task. Cyil wished they would just separate themselves by type or make way for the water particles.

As this thought struck Cyil, an idea blossomed in his mind. “If this works then my absorption process will be really quick! Although my extraction time will remain the same, this will help a lot.”

Cyil quickly willed it and the space particles blinked into existence once more. Just as the elemental particles began to make room for the space particles, Cyil began to viciously absorb all the surrounding water particles. The water particles that were trying to move away froze in place, both being pushed and pulled. Other nearby elemental particles bumped into the water particle and also felt the attraction force, thereby freezing in place with the water particles.

Cyil focused and called out, “Water, I only want water particles!”

The other elements didn’t care for Cyil’s call and continued to be frozen in place. Cyil felt beads of sweat roll down his head as he focused even harder. Then, one by one, the other particles slowly separated from the water particles and were pushed back.

A human shaped cast of glowing blue lights now hovered around Cyil’s sitting body.

When the other elemental particles moved back a good amount, Cyil commanded for the space particles to disappear, resulting in the water particles’ mad rush towards Cyil. Not far behind, the mass of other elemental particles came charging towards Cyil, too.

Cyil was absorbing a massive amount of water particles and was almost ‘full’ when the other types of elemental particles made their way to his body. Cyil took note of this and he immediately stopped absorbing.

In his sweat drenched clothes, Cyil laughed to himself. His idea had worked! Cyil was proud of himself and kept this achievement recorded in his heart, waiting for the day he could tell his grandpa and grandma all about it.

Of course, Cyil didn’t know that his whimsical idea and its execution was something that was known as perfect absorption. This was something that could only be done by those with perfect elemental bodies, and although Cyil’s version was only a mimicry, it had the same concept behind its function.

Perfect absorption would allow a mage to absorb all of their respective element’s elemental particles without the need of slowly sifting through the other elements, as other mages had to do.

Any mage could call for their element as Cyil had done, but because of the density and near proximity of other elements, they would inevitably be dragged along with their element. That was why it was so beneficial to meditate in a place where your elemental particle was most abundant. This would increase your meditation speed up by a wide margin.

In any case, what Cyil had done was the first instance in all of Nakrul! A creature without a perfect elemental body had achieve perfect absorption.

Cyil didn’t know how big of an achievement he had accomplished and he merrily repeated this tactic for another time to fill him up and then began extracting.

Cyil was so infatuated with meditating that he only woke up when he heard a familiar knock on the door.

“Breakfast is ready, Mahoj.” Helather’s voice came from outside the door.

Cyil exited his meditation and felt refreshed, even though he was sweaty and smelly. “Already morning? I wanted to keep going,” Cyil said to himself, feeling that he would soon reach rank 2 level 3 as a mage.

Cyil opened the door and went to the dining table where a loaf of bread along with some cheese was waiting for him.

“The food smells good, mom!” Cyil said and broke a loaf in half and grabbed some cheese.

“I’m glad you like it,” Helather responded with a smile. “Eat as much as you want!”

“Where’s dad?” Cyil looked around the living room and didn’t see Henri.

“Your father is already at work. He said he wanted to quickly finish his project at work so he can come spend time with us.” Helather explained to Cyil as she watched him eat.

Cyil nodded with a stuffed mouth and decided he should tell his ‘mom’ the news now. “Mom, I have to return to the academy soon.”

As Helather heard her son’s announcement, her heart tightened but she still wore her smile. “Ah, that’s right. It’s almost that time again. When will you be going?”

Cyil thought about it for a second and answered: “Today. I will leave today.” Cyil had recalled from Mahoj’s memories that the term was beginning in two days and that the travel there would take two days without any incident. He was already late and only had someone else’s memories to guide him on his trip there so leaving sooner would be better.

Helather’s smile disappeared. “Oh.” She managed to say. Then, she quickly added, “do you need any money? I know mages have to spend a lot, and your father and I have saved up a good amount. We were just waiting for you to come home to give it to you…” Helather’s voice grew shaky but she finished her sentence.

Cyil got up and hugged Helather. He knew she wasn’t his mom but he didn’t want to see Helather cry. “Don’t worry mom. I have lots of money! I still need to go get my things from the inn before I leave. So I’ll go there now. I’ll see you later!” Cyil kissed Helather’s forehead and grabbing a loaf of bread, he dashed out of the house.

When Cyil left the house, Helather was like a statue having been frozen by medusa’s stare. Rubbing her forehead that already had signs of wrinkles, she felt truly blessed…

Cyil dashed out the door and through the new, but familiar roads with a wide grin plastered on his face. He thought back to his real mother and how she had always kissed him on the forehead and wondered where she was.

“I hope you’re safe.” Cyil prayed and reaffirmed his desire for strength.

As Cyil ran through the town to the inn, many people saw him and began to whisper.

Cyil ignored the whispers and reached the inn only slightly winded. This body’s physical condition was not bad, Cyil thought and Cyil walked in the inn, smelling the aromatic foods mixed with its sweaty, loud customers.

When Cyil entered, the noisy inn turned deathly silent. Cyil looked around and no one dared meet his eyes. Cyil felt a bit bad, but shrugged and went to the second floor and into his room.

The door was unlocked, as Cyil remembered Mahoj had kept it out of pride. Cyil pushed the door open and what he saw was made him frown. All of his things were missing and the room was a mess. However, the thing that made him frown was not those, but the two dead bodies on the floor. Cyil could see their faces from where he stood and he knew them. They were Ekraq and his wife!