Chapter 11

The training had been going well. In the areas I was training in, that was. For the last twenty days, there hadn’t been a sign of Light or anyone else teaching me to master my ability.

My control over my core had been improving, although not at the rate I would like. The threads had thickened yes, but I still couldn’t get any closer to the core itself. The training was taking time but I could still feel my improvement as time went on.

My weapon training and combat training, in general, was where I excelled though. After getting over the initial shock of my weapon, I had practised with it diligently, not letting the fact that my weapon was literally a symbol of death get in my head or deter me in any way. Nova was an excellent teacher, his only drawback being that he was a little set in his ways. But the centuries of experience in combat shone through in his teaching and I was able to become quite proficient with my scythe in due course.

It was while I was going through this rigorous training that Light showed up. I wanted to strangle him but held myself for two reasons. One, I was sure I wouldn’t be able to do it. Two, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t get strangled myself in return.

Light greeted me with an exuberant smile on his face as if he hadn’t left me hanging for twenty days. I could barely keep my annoyance in check as I looked at his grinning face. All I wanted to do was knock the grin off his face with a well-placed punch. But my meditation had also helped me to get better control of my emotions.

But my irritation must have shown on my face as Light continued grinning sheepishly, saying, “I am sorry that I wasn’t here for twenty days. But something major came up. Hopefully, it’s taken care of. But now that I am here, I promise that I will leave no stone unturned in helping you get mastery over your ability.”

He continued, now with a serious look on his face, “I think you should be starting your ability training now anyways. Your pitiful control over your core when you came here would have made things much more difficult anyways. Why don’t you describe to me what happened when you used your ability the first time against the griffin?”

I did as I was instructed and described to him, in exact detail, what had happened when I had confronted the griffin. I told him how I had seemed faster than the griffin and how everything the griffin did seemed sluggish.

He thought over what I said, before stating, “So you were controlling the flow of time and making the griffin slower in its actions. Interesting. It sounds like an area of effect ability to me. wait right here while I bring some things to proceed with your training.”

He was gone for about ten minutes before he returned with what seemed like a bag full of leaves. I was looking at him like he lost some of his mental acumens while he was working on whatever he had been doing for the last twenty days. The look on my face must have been weird because Light burst out laughing.

“Don’t worry, I haven’t gone crazy. Just an experiment. What you have got to do is use your ability while I throw these leaves into the air. We will see how far your ability spreads when we see which leaves is falling regularly and which are not. Ingenious, right?”, he finished, the look on his face suggesting that he wanted a cookie for his efforts.

We proceeded with his idea and he was right! Till a certain point, the leaves were falling much too slowly, as if they had forgotten that they had to follow the laws of gravity. But after that threshold, the leaves were descending as they were supposed to.

Light shouted, excitement evident in his voice, “Bravo! Now we know how far your ability works. There’s one problem though. You weren’t concentrating on controlling your core while you were controlling your ability. Try the exercise again but this time work on controlling your core as well.”

We repeated the exercise, this time with me trying to control my time as well. But I found, much to my dismay, that controlling both at the same time was a nigh-impossible task. My control over one of those two things always seemed to slip away as I was focussing on controlling the other.

Light said that I would eventually reach the point where I could control both effortlessly, but it required a lot of trials and errors to split up my concentration in that manner.

So that’s how the next week went. Boring meditation, tedious ability control, and thrilling combat practice. Nova had even made me incorporate my ability in combat and weapon training, suggesting that focus on my weapon and ability at the same time would help me at the ability-control practice. And it did. I was beyond grateful to Nova the first time I could do both core control and ability control at the same time.

I wish that was how my time at the council headquarters ended. Boring but filled with learning experiences and me getting stronger. But it didn’t. And like it always seemed to be happening nowadays, the harbinger for this change was none other than Emma Turner.

It was the day before I was set to leave the council headquarters, my month-long stay complete. I was just coming out from the arena after my session with Nova when I encountered Emma. It seemed like the effect she had on me by her sheer presence hadn’t seemed to wane in the slightest. I was tongue-tied and unable to initiate any conversation with her. But this time, keeping up with her unpredictable theme, she took the initiative to engage me herself.

“David. Your stay here must be coming to an end, right?” she asked, seeming to have genuinely forgotten that I was staying there.

“That’s correct,” I replied, seemingly losing all of my ability to have a normal conversation.

“So, how has your time over here treated you,” Emma enquired, a calm smile on her face.

“Great. Everyone has been great.” It seemed like my vocabulary had shrunk to about fifty words, fifty words I could say safely without embarrassing myself.

“Good. I hope you had the chance to see all that the council headquarters has to offer.”

I was flabbergasted. I had seen only the meeting room, my room and the arena. I didn’t know this place had anything else to offer.

I said, “Not really. I was busy with training this past month and didn’t really have the time.”

My answer seemed to surprise Emma. She said, “Really? Then there is one place you really must see before you leave.”

And without waiting for my response, she started walking away from me, as if she was certain I would follow her. She wasn’t wrong but it would still have been great to be asked.

We went through hallways completely new to me. There were dozens of rooms that I hadn’t seen before and big facilities I hadn’t had the chance to explore, facilities like a huge lab that looked straight out of a sci-fi movie. But we didn’t stop at any of these rooms, no, instead we kept walking until we came across a big jungle of sorts. The ground was massive, easily the biggest ever I had ever seen, with many resources and several sections it had been divided into. The whole area was bordered but the sheer vastness of the landscape would have been enough to drop my jaws.

But no, it was the occupants of this area that had me struggling to keep my bearings intact. You see, the whole area was occupied by miasma-monsters. Monsters who weren’t rushing to attack me the moment they saw me. Peaceful monsters, what an ironic concept. They were simply lazing about as if they were used to just having two Untethered walking amongst them. The whole thing had me at my wit’s end.

“Ehm, Emma, I don’t know if you have realised it yet, but this whole forest or whatever this is occupied by miasma-monsters. We are literally covered on all sides.”, I said, urgency apparent in my voice.

Emma looked back at me nonchalantly before saying, “Oh, I know. This is the familiar garden, after all.”

There were two problems I had with that statement. First of all, this was in no way, shape or form, a garden. Secondly, the familiars?