Needs End

Alya was roused from her sleep by a deep knocking sound. She looked around for nearby souls. One was only a small distance away. Some souls were a a little further away, but what caught her attention was the overwhelming amount of small lights behind her.

She opened her blue eye to find herself lying in a comfortable bed. White walls and dark, wooden furniture filled the room. The knocking originated from the brown door with four squares embedded into it. It opened as a black-haired boy stepped into the room. Joy carried a small silver tablet. Cheese and a few slices of bread layed on top.

He covered what had happened. Alya had slept for multiple days. In the meantime, the slaves from the village had moved to a new location. After they haddefeated the large squad of soldiers from Solias, the original plan was to settle in the large village, but news arrived when Cal and his platoon came back.

The large city of Kyrna had been left empty, they had fled to escape their otherwise inevitable starvation. About a thousand people had started travelling up north, freeing up the large city. With them, they had taken all resources and burned down important buildings, but that did not stop the revolutionaries from settling in.

A few hundred were already cleaning up the city. Unlike the now fleeing locks, that beeing the people who supported, lived and fought under king, the revolutionaries wanted most of them to continue living in the country side so they could never be caught inside the walls without any food. Yet, people continued streaming in. Just like before, the cities were planned as the assembly points for markets and trade, even if there were no rivers nearby.

Another piece of good news was the raid on a convoy that had happened a week before. Most of the magic academies burned large parts of their libraries, only fleeing with the rarer tomes. They used multiple carriage, guarded by soldiers and the magic teachers to secure their voyage to the northern parts of the country.

One of these had been caught, the soldiers and mages were defeated and most of the tomes they had curried survived the fight. These tomes were now beeing distributed to the largest colonies, including the city of Kyrna, where a select amount of revolutionaries could use them. There were meeting of these students, often young adults with a strong, healthy physique, at the training grounds. There were two of these so called classes. One was taught by Joy, which surprised Alya, but the boy had trained using the tome the longest and could give the most insight for now.

The second class was taught by an older man who used thousands of small particles of dirt or sand for his spells. This was because the tome's cover had a cream color and showed a square slowly dissipating into smaller parts, which seemed to drop to the ground like sand.

Alya followed Joy to the training grounds on a wheelchair they had found in a small workshop. The sun had not yet climbed over the large walls. Joy's class started early in the morning. She saw a few familiar faces. Alongside a few of the women from Hopkins', Talon the ice mage was also there. Like always, his face was unmoving. Joy looked at the man from the corner of his eyes before climbing onto the podium.

"We will continue to work on the first three pages. As you know, you can ask me anything, maybe I'll have answers. Also, we have a newcomer who might be able to tell you a little bit about magic..."

Since most of learning spells comes from understanding, the class only went for about an hour of poeple trying the spells and exchanging ideas they had come up throughout the night.

Alya decided to visit the second class, as well. So people could attend to both, they started at different times of the day. It was close to midday when the group assembled. The group's average age seemed a little higher and including Talon, Alya saw a few people from the air magic class.

In reality, learning multiple types of magic at once was pointless since understanding one spell in a tome made all the others of that tome usually easier. A lot of tomes, like the two they studied had no real connection to eachother, so trying to learn both might slow down anyone but very talented people.

Alya knew she was not one of those talents, she decided to take the second, the dissolving magic class only. Especially since she still had her own tome.

To her surprise, the revolutionaries seemed to hold a different opinion of her.

"With this you will become part of our main forces." The man in front of Alya had a normal cyan soul. He held a red surcoat in his hand. Like Cal had, who she had been acquainted with in the dissolving magic class, a black lockpick was knitted into it.

"Unlike the keys, who command differently sized forces based on their component material, you can make your own spezialized force as long as you report its numbers and uses and follow the keys' orders." The man nodded and walked away.

"I didn't even see you at Hopkins', good to see that at least one good fighter lived. Just so you know, my and my good fellows' specialty is killing people without fighting them." Cal smiled at Alya, who reciprocated by smiling back. "Be it assassination or clever techniques to fuck with the opponent, I'm sure you'll never see me fight a fair fight." He lifted his hand towards Alya, "Welcome to the army, beautiful."

"Thanks." She shook his hand, it was a little sticky, but she kept smiling.