Azyl Academy (Elemental Gatherers Book 1)

by Chris Vines

  I centered myself and found the entry point to the brain meridian. I pushed a small stream of Aether into it, and watched as it flowed into me. The Aether first impacted my thyroid, and I felt it release some hormones. My heart began to race, and then slowed down again as the Aether flowing into it corrected for the increase in my metabolic rate. I felt energized and ready to move! The Aether stream continued on, moving throughout my brain. As it flowed in a circle through my brain, it seemed as if time stopped. The feeling ended, but everything around me seemed to be moving slightly slower. Weird. I think this made my brain slightly faster. Well, this will take some getting used to. I thought.

  Once the Aether made a full cycle through my meridian, I decided to stand up and walk in a circle. Standing up took two tries, as my brain was now moving slightly faster than my body. Yup, definitely take getting used to. I slowly walked in a circle around the bench before sitting down again. Next one, I thought as I grabbed some Aether to open the kidney meridian.

  Again a stream of Aether left my center, this time leaving the lower left portion of my center rather than the top. The Aether moved through my left kidney and I could see impurities gathered into the flow of Aether. These impurities flowed down the tubes from my kidney to my bladder, where they were deposited. Ugh, now I got to pee! I thought, watching the Aether move through the rest of its cycle. The impurities from the right kidney were cycled through the meridian, and looking closely I could sense that my kidneys were working more efficiently than before. They also produced hormones to increase my red blood cell count, which should improve my endurance even more.

  Okay, first bathroom, then food, then class. I thought, hurrying to the restrooms in the classroom building first. I was running, using the skill taught yesterday, faster than I had ever done before. Hey! I got the rune down! I passed everyone I had breakfast with on the way back to the dining hall. “Hey, got to eat some more. See y’all at class!” I shouted at them as I sprinted past, only to kick myself as no one I knew of around here said ‘y’all’. A quick second serving of oatmeal and eggs was followed by more sprinting. I was the last to arrive, but Counselor Stojka had spoken to Counselor Sila and he waved me out before I could apologize for being late.

  As I was saying, today we will be learning a series of movements and runic focuses to improve gathering speed called the Eight by Eight Gathering Form. First, start in a straddle stance,” he explained, showing us how to stand. Everyone imitated him, standing in a line on the PT field. He showed us a series of movements that made me think of Tai Chi, with each position corresponding to a runic shape we were supposed to draw by circling the Aether in our centers.

  There were a total of sixty four positions shown, each associated with an element, eight positions per element. Sixty four runes needed memorization, and I got them down almost immediately. Wow, the brain meridian opening has made my memory nearly photographic! This will make studying so much easier. No wonder Jamila learned to read in only a couple days! I thought, excited.

  Of course, just because I could remember them didn’t mean that I could draw them, or perform the motions correctly. After an hour of explanation and demonstration, Counselor Sila and the Mentors had us all start trying while they wandered among us correcting motions and watching us draw the runes. It was possible for them to see the temporary runes drawn through Aether flows.

  “Good, now move the right arm up higher, just a bit more,” Counselor Sila instructed me as I worked through the first eight moves. The technique was able to be separated into sets of eight, with each set having a small improvement in gathering speed which stacked with the gains from the previous set. Counselor Sila proceeded to help me get the first eight moves nailed down along with their Runes. I could feel my Aether refilling, pushing towards the Mist boundary again.

  Class was dismissed once everyone had gotten the hang of the first couple of moves and we were informed that we would be focusing on this for the rest of the week. “I want every one of you to have mastered at least the first two sets of this series by the end of the week. Come find help if you need it.” Counselor Sila said as he dismissed us. After bowing, almost everyone left the PT fields for the Grotto.

  I went looking for Counselor Stojka, who gave me the all clear to open up the rib cage meridian during this meditation period. “Eat a very large lunch and dinner afterward. If you can open up your skin meridian tomorrow you should be able to advance to Mist by Fire Day. That would make you the first to advance here, though seven came into the school already at Mist level.”

  She pulled a small bag off her hip and reached her arm up to the elbow into it. Holy moly! I thought as my eyes got huge. Where did her arm go!? That bag is only five inches deep! She pulled a small bottle out and shook a pill out of it, before looking up at me. Seeing my face she asked, “Never seen an extended bag before?” A quick shake of my head caused her to laugh. “An application of a high level inscription allows for a bag to be extended by up to twenty times its original length. Here, take this before you open your meridian.” She handed me the pill she had taken out and shooed me off.

  There were only a few people left on the field, finishing up the first eight moves of the Eight by Eight Gathering Form. No one I knew was in sight. Okay, time to go, I thought as I started jogging, heading into the Meditation Grotto to the Metal and Earth focused area I found yesterday. When I got there, the dragon bench was occupied by someone. What was his name? Grr, the memory provided by the brain meridian opening is not retroactive. Ah, yeah, Sihirb Akil, he is in Jamila’s group class.

  Walking quietly, I sat down on the lion bench and relaxed for a bit, tracing the designs on its back. I pulled out my water bag and swallowed the pill given down. It felt like I had swallowed a lump of dirt or a brick. Hmm, I forgot to ask what this pill does. I quickly circulated my Aether and moved to open the rib cage meridian. As the Aether flowed, a light burning sensation trailed it, and I saw the bones growing denser. Changes to the marrow increased blood flow and red blood cell production. My breathing got slower and deeper as the meridian influenced my diaphragm as well as the bones. The lump in my stomach dissolved into nutrients that moved to the bones being affected by Aether, filling in the gaps of what my body had stored.

  Huh, I wonder why everyone isn’t given these pills to start with, I thought as I watched the nutrients flow. The sudden spike of pain when the burning sensation dramatically increased forced a grunt from me. Oh, that’s why. The pain only lasted for a minute before tapering off, but it took all my willpower to keep opening the meridian and not cry out during that time. After the pain faded, I could see the meridian was fully opened and there were no cracks or signs of damage. Oh, that’s another reason why, I thought as I saw small signs of impurities left over in the meridians that impeded the flow of Aether slightly. I guess Counselor Sojka thought it would be okay since I have the Meridian Cleanser pills.

  I opened my eyes to find the small clearing empty since Akil had left sometime during my meridian opening. Just before I got up I started coughing and hacked up a small bit of blood. “Ugh, that was not fun. Note to self, don’t take pills without asking what they do.” I mumbled to myself before stumbling off to lunch.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  After a refreshing lunch with a bunch of my friends, with Louis expounding on how excited he was to learn blacksmithing, we went to the forge building. The forge building was just beyond the classroom building on the main path. This campus is huge! At least three times the size of the Academy back on Earth. The forge was squat, only two stories tall, but its footprint was nearly four times as large as the other buildings around it. Numerous chimneys dotted the edge of the roof, with smoke billowing from several. The main doorway was a double door that opened outward, with doors nearly twice normal size.

  Opening the doors revealed single large hall with pillars holding up the ceiling, with a couple of walled off areas to the left and right. It was surprisingly well lit, with balls of Aether-fueled light
set throughout the ceiling. There was a quiet ringing of metal on metal, with the occasional hiss of hot metal meeting liquid, but it was much quieter than I had anticipated. A Mentor was waving all of us to head to the back of the building, where a large group of students was clustered.

  As we walked towards the group, I could see people talking but could not make out their words. About five feet behind the closest person, I saw a line of silvery metal embedded in the floor, with copper colored runes etched into it. Stepping over the line resulted in a rush of sound that staggered me for a second. Oh, they have enchantments set down to reduce noise. Man, magic solves a lot of problems. Though I’m sure it creates its own set of them. Like magic Beasts that terrorize whole cities.

  Louis was looking over to our left, where a third tier student could be seen hammering away at an anvil. After a couple hits, he held up what looked like the start of a sword. He shook his head and put the sword back on the anvil, then placed his hands on the side of the anvil. A few seconds later, the air around him began wavering with heat and the sword started glowing a cherry red again. Well that makes things slightly easier, I thought as he started hammering again.

  “Greetings students. I am Counselor Kowalski and will be the instructor for those of you who wish to take up the art of Metalsmithing and treasure creation. Today is mostly going to be a demonstration of the various aspects of our craft. Mentor Kowalski, my nephew, over on the anvil there is currently fashioning a sword, Mentor Hodowca will be demonstrating smelting and ore refining. I will be demonstrating alloy creation after Mentor Hodowca. Mentor Boulan is creating a halberd over there,” Counselor Kowalski introduced a number of different Mentors since there were forty freshmen there to see the introduction. Well, Nicky is here as well. Going to avoid him as best I can. We were divided into groups of ten and sent around, where the Mentors explained what they were doing and demonstrated their explanations. I made sure to join a group that went in a different direction from Nicky.

  My group was sent to the blast furnace first. Hmm, they are making pig iron here, and then alloying it afterward, I thought, remembering back to a Chemistry elective I had taken in Metallurgy. It was interesting to see how they used Inscriptions rather than bellows and to keep the heat at a constant level. After creating the pig iron, they added various different materials to it and smelted the iron again.

  One example was Icy Sand, a type of sand permeated with Ice Aether, that made the quenching process quicker. This made a harder material that would Channel Ice, Air, and Water Aether better. This is really cool. There are so many things you can mix together to get different Aetheric properties. Though they haven’t mentioned anything that would be like steel. I wonder if they haven’t figured that out yet or just have a different name for it. Hmm, how to introduce that? I mused. Huh, would it even be an improvement over some of the Aether alloys they have?

  My group rotated over to the anvil where Mentor Kowalski was finishing the sword. He described how he would shape the metal, making sure that the heat was uniform using the heating runes in the anvil, while flowing Aether through the hammer into the sword. “By adding Aether, you strengthen the metal and allow it to acclimate to Aether flowing through it. This way, you can use Aether techniques through the weapon. This is also why making your own weapon lets you use more Aether at a time through it. The weapon you created was attuned to you during creation,” he explained to us. The rest of the afternoon proceeded with us seeing different techniques for Aether insertion, learning a formula for smelting, and seeing how polishing was accomplished on the finished sword.

  Leaving class, Louis declared “This is what I want to study. Have any of you decided yet?”

  “Not yet,” I told him, “as I’m interested in this and Alchemy and Inscription. So many interesting and powerful things you can do. I’m probably going to focus on either Alchemy or Inscription, though.”

  Jon piped in “I want to study Alchemy. Finding new ways of producing strengthening elixirs will let workers unload and load ships faster, which would help my family’s business and all the other businesses in the city.” We continued to discuss our plans for classes after the introductions as we headed to Physical Training class.

  The group of us walking split up when we reached the PT fields, with some heading to their instructors and others heading towards a set of training dummies set up. I went to see Mentor Jameson to demonstrate the final Form on my memory stone. The memory enhancement from opening my brain meridian definitely helps me learn faster. I waited a bit for Thomas the floozy to demonstrate his Form first. Dang it, the floozy beat me. He successfully moved through his form, slashing and stabbing with both ends of his double-bladed sword in a neat pattern that would be difficult to attack through. After he finished, he was sent over to Counselor Might to demonstrate it again.

  “Come on over Aiden, show me what you have learned.” I nodded and bowed to him before stepping forward with my right foot and drawing my trisula, with a slash from the right one. A series of blocks, parries, and stabs follow as I end up circling partially around him as I stepped through the Form. He nodded and smiled as I continued, and congratulated me when I finished. “Good, now head over to Counselor Might and demonstrate again. Afterward, he’ll unlock the next portion of the memory stone and give you a one-time pass to the armory to pick out an advanced technique.”

  “Thank you Mentor Jameson,” I said with a bow before heading over to Counselor Might. There were two people in front of me, the floozy and Akil, who had a battle axe as his weapon. Watching Akil was a lesson in controlled strength, as his axe flowed through his form. That thing must weigh fifteen pounds, how does he move it so fluidly? When it was my turn, I performed the same as before, despite the jitters of acting in front of a group of people.

  “That was well done. Let me see your memory stone,” Counselor Might said, holding out his hand. I gave him the stone, and he held it up to his forehead. The stone glowed for a few seconds, and then he handed it back to me along with a small token. “Study hard, and practice hitting the dummies with your weapons. You will need to get a feel for how they behave upon an impact by the end of this week. Before next class go by the Armory and pick a technique to study.”

  I took back the memory stone, bowed, and walked towards an empty dummy. When I reached it, I settled into a front stance and drew my trisula. I proceeded to slash and stab the dummy in both front and reverse grip for the next half hour. The first few times didn’t go well. I dropped one weapon on the second hit and had to shake my hand out. I slowly grew used to the feeling of impact, and worked on minimizing it on slashes. Amazingly, no matter how I beat on it, the dummy healed up within seconds of me stopping my attacks.

  After that half hour I decided to go focus on studying the next set of motions, mostly from lack of oxygen. Even taking it easy, slashing and stabbing for half an hour has left me more tired than running a 10k, I thought as I walked over to an empty spot away from anyone practicing. I took a minute just to breathe, getting my heart rate back down. You know, I doubt I would have lasted half as long if I hadn’t opened so many meridians that help with endurance. Once settled, I pulled the memory stone out and placed it to my forehead.

  I watched as the same student learned a series of moves, starting with combining a block with one hand and an attack with the other. “Two weapons can mean twice the defense, twice the offense, or offense and defense at the same time!” came a shouted line from behind my viewpoint. After they worked through every permutation of attack and defense at the same time, the trisulas uniqueness came into play. A move for catching an enemy’s weapon in between the main blade and the outer tines was practiced. You could catch with one weapon to direct the enemy’s weapon away from you, or both to attempt to either disarm them or break their weapon. I watched as the instructor blocked a longsword and shattered the blade in the middle using her two trisulas. Holy crap!

  The next technique shown dumbfounded me though. It was a technique for charg
ing Aether in your hands, sending it into the trisulas, then stabbing forward and pushing to send a pointed burst of Aether straight forward for nearly ten feet. Sword light! Semi-ranged attacks already! I excitedly watched as the student would stab and slash at a dummy like the one in the field from about eight feet away. I was so excited that I pulled the memory stone away from me and ran over to the nearest dummy. I positioned myself so that no one was in a line away from me through the dummy, in case it worked and I missed, and started trying to emulate the student from the memory stone.

  I centered myself and slowly took a stance, holding a single trisula in my right hand. I dragged Aether from my right arm meridian into the palm of my hand and pushed it into my weapon. It didn’t work. I moved the Aether to my index finger, which was resting just before the blade began on the hilt. The Aether slowly moved into the weapon, so I moved my fingers to be touching the metal rather than the hand-grip. This way I was able to flow a steady stream of Aether into the weapon until it was full. With a grunt, I pushed more Aether into it, shoving the Aether forward as hard as I could while stabbing forward.

  A blob of Aether squirted out of the weapon and landed about a foot in front of it with a sizzling sound. Well, that was anticlimactic. Okay, what went wrong? Serves me right for being in such a hurry. I thought, pulling out the memory stone again. “Hmm, it seems like he is controlling the Aether in the weapon. As he charges it up, some of it is moving in a circle, reentering his hand and flowing back into his meridian. Let’s try just making a circle of Aether flowing into the weapon and back out first.” I mumbled to myself, before stepping up to the dummy.