New World - A New Beginning

Chapter 10: Amongst the Dragons (1)

I wonder how my family is doing. They were probably moved to Eloria as refugees and given shelter there. Then again, both my parents were A-rank adventurers, so I doubted they were in a financial crisis right now. Come on Jay, think about it from an emotional perspective! I tried recentering my attention to how they were doing, rather than their statistical wellbeing.

They were miserable. A knot of guilt crushed my heart as I realized the situation they were in emotionally. To them, I was dead. Both Jane and Bruce Cadmium had lost their firstborn son at the age of four. No parent should bear witness to the death of their child, and yet, the two adults who had loved me unconditionally were experiencing that grief right now.

Sorry, Mom. Sorry, Dad. I have something I need to do, after that, I'll come back to you, I thought as the clock in my room struck four. I got up from my rather large bed, at least for an adult's standards. In the body of a five-year-old, it was like I was sleeping on an ocean of endless sheets. I put on the clothes that the maids had left me, which consisted of simple black pants and a black shirt with a golden line straight down the middle made out of silk. Compared to the old ragged garments that I had on the way here, these things felt like heaven.

I suddenly felt something deep inside, like a split part of myself was rejoining the entirety, and I sighed.

"Here she comes," I muttered as the door swung open furiously.

"Good morning, Jay!" exclaimed Asthia as she tackled me to the ground. I groaned at the weight.

"You're heavy."

"Are you calling me fat?" she asked, clearly annoyed at the comment.

"Maybe. Are you coming to practice?" I asked, instantly switching the subject. Never make that comment to a girl, I thought, taking note.

"Of course! Mom is already there, let's not keep her waiting!"

Asthia, clothed in a simple yet elegant white gown with golden laces that matched her platinum hair flawlessly, led me down the massive castle to the courtyard. Selena was an extremely strict teacher, but over these past few months of training, I had come to really enjoy having her as my instructor. Even though she was strict, she remained calm and understanding when I failed, something I had never experienced before.

It was true that my aptitude for sensing bind was off the charts for somebody my age, but concerning the actual use of elemental magic, I was still a complete beginner. I was, however, an extremely fast learner.

"Come on, Jay. Are you really going to make the Empress wait forever?" she teased.

"S-sorry. Something just tackled me in my room," I answered ironically, looking at Asthia.

"Shut up," she said, avoiding eye contact with her mother at all costs.

What amazed me during these months was how the dragonkin, the guards, and even the royal family had come to accept my presence. I had expected it to be extremely difficult to become close to any of them, but it was actually easier than humans.

The memory of war had never faded, but they were all open to a new start, a fresh page in their relationships with other species. If only humanity and the others felt the same way, all I could feel from them was fear.

The training started once again with physical enhancement and breathing exercises, it seemed everyone in Auroria held this in high regard. I suspected that the condition of the physical body had a direct correlation with controlling bind, and anyone unfit could even damage themselves if they overexerted their bind control.

Selena also had an extremely different approach to bind, and through her method, I had learned how to convert the white strings of bind into any basic element. My level of manipulation was still extremely basic, but through the practice of basic spells such as 'ember' and 'splash', I had begun to understand how bind worked.

What most races believed was that you awakened with a specific attunement, but Selena didn't see it that way. She speculated that bind was always neutral, and it was through different forms of manipulation that it was converted into an element, and this allowed me to manifest all the basic elements with relative ease.

Even with this technique, nobody in history had controlled more than three elements. Seemed like I was... uh... special? All I remember from the day I had successfully manifested my fourth element was Selena screaming like a little kid at how I was her greatest student, a true prodigy, and then I think I went unconscious from something jumping on me in glee. (It was definitely Asthia)

Fire and wind were easily the two elements I was most effective with, and so Selena and I decided to focus on those two while sticking to the basics for the other two, water and earth. Today we were supposed to learn an intermediate fire spell, supposedly named 'tornado'.

"Okay Jay, you want to visualize a disc of flames around you, acting as both an offensive weapon but also a defensive shield," explained Selena as she backed away, Asthia promptly following.

I closed my eyes and pictured the image. It resembled a flower, like a bud bursting into bloom all around me. I was the bud, the center of gravity. I let bind flow through my body, the strings of energy inside my veins being coated in a deep red tone, burning with fiery intensity.

I opened my eyes, energy swirling within my pupils as I released the stored up energy in my body in the form of a flower.

A massive burst of flames followed, roaring all around me as they encircled me, spreading outwards like a petal. I willed the flames to extinguish, the bind instantly losing its attunement and causing the flammable reaction to die down immediately.

Selena clapped, pleased with what I had just accomplished.

"First try! I must admit, your aptitude with fire and wind is something I have never seen before," she said, making me flinch ever so slightly at the compliment. I wasn't great at other people praising me.

"It's all thanks to your teachings," I quickly added, shifting towards complimenting Selena.

"Mom, can we go play now?" asked Asthia, her eyes suddenly glistening with purity.

She's using the same technique I used with Jane! That's cheating!

"Sure, honey. Jay, make sure you're not late for practice tonight," she added as I waved goodbye.

I had been spending time every day after morning practice with Asthia. She kept telling her parents we would play, but what we really did was experience incredible things such as wyvern riding (I had learned that dragons were the names of the dragonkin, while wyverns were the 'actual' dragons) or running on water, and once we were exhausted we would just walk around and talk.

Well, it was really Asthia that did all the talking, I just walked around and listened while taking in the breathtaking wonders of Leras. Even if all I did was listen to Asthia, it was a time of my day that I had come to enjoy, even look forward to.

No responsibilities, no death battles, no decisions to be made. It was just me and Asthia, and the endless things she came to talk about.

"Tomorrow's the ceremony," she said suddenly as we walked down one of the wooden bridges connecting two islands.

"Is that a bad thing?" I asked.

She shifted uncomfortably at the question. Why was she so tense about the ceremony? Her father had told me that she kept delaying the ceremony to find her a knight, but nobody ever knew why. I stopped in my tracks and looked right at her.

"Asthia, why don't you want a knight? Getting protection would only be good for you-"

"Because I've already made you my knight!" she shouted suddenly, her cheeks velvet in embarrassment.

It took me a while to process the information, but I started to understand everything that had remained unclear for so long. I wasn't angry with her, I didn't really mind in the first place. What I didn't know was how the royals would react to their only daughter choosing an outsider as her knight.

"When did you do it?"

"W-When you were sleeping in the cave," she answered, avoiding all sorts of eye contact. It made sense that she was embarrassed, but I didn't think much of it.

"I see, so this isn't recent," I said, scratching my chin while I thought of a possible solution. "I think we should tell your parents. It's better than them finding out firsthand during the ceremony," I concluded.

Asthia knew this was coming and just nodded. She knew that confronting her parents was a step that she was going to have to take, she wasn't stupid.

"By the way, what does me being your knight do anyway?" I asked, genuinely having no clue what it meant in practical terms.

"We share a link through our souls. We can kind of feel what the other is feeling, feel when the other is in danger or not, feel each other's presence. That kind of stuff," explained Asthia, but I could tell there was something else to it, something more significant that she still wasn't disclosing.

I waited patiently, knowing that Asthia was going to reveal it eventually.

"I-It also affects the knight. You see, Jay, you're... not human anymore."