Hunter's Beginning (Veller) Read online

  It was kind of disappointing as she took a few steps down the narrow hallway that ran the outer edge of the building. It opened up into a large single room. The first thing she noticed was the smell; it was a heavy perfume or some kind of incense. It was like a thick, unseen fog that had substance and shape, and she physically had to push it aside to enter. Then there was the fact that the room was a complete mess. It was crammed from floor to ceiling with junk. It looked as if someone was trying to open a thrift shop, or possibly the remnants of a century old clean out of one of the castle’s cellars. There was everything from pots and pans stacked up against one wall to a full size skeleton hanging from the ceiling. A Ship’s anchor was leaning up against an old armoire and the head of a creature she could not identify was mounted over the door. There were herbs hanging from one rafter and a net with different size spheres on another, and scattered about were a mixture of knickknacks and curiosities. Book, parchments and scrolls seemed to occupy every flat surface within the room, creating walls of paper that she had to navigate. She had to move a rack that contained an assortment of walking sticks and an old sword to one side and when she turned the corner around a table that had a pile of strange little stone artifacts upon it, she found a bird’s cage lying on the floor with a rather irate crow staring up at her.

  - Aren’t you going to pick me up? -

  Kile stopped in her tracks and quickly looked around the room, but she couldn’t see anybody, although with this much stuff there could be an entire platoon hidden and she wouldn’t have been able to see them. She was sure she heard a voice as she looked back down at the crow. It appeared that they were the only two living things in the room, or at least she hoped they were the only two living things in the room.

  “Did you just speak to me?” She asked, crouching down beside the bird that continued to look at her with those dark eyes. “No, of course not.” She said to herself as she grabbed the top of the bird cage and stood it right side up.

  The bird fluttered in protest about being moved again, but it settled down quickly and quietly enough. There was water and seed all over the floor, but she had no intention of cleaning that up, that was the mystic’s responsibility, and he probably had some mystic cleaning arts to take care of it anyway.

  She looked at the table where the piles of books had slid over and pushed the birdcage onto the floor, or at least that was what she theorized from seeing the table where the cage must have once sat. Kile rearranged the stack of book to make enough room for the cage and then set it back into place.

  “There you go little one, now, let's see about getting that water refilled.”

  That was easier said than done, she thought as she looked around the room. There were a few glasses and container filled with various liquids, but in the domain of a mystic, one could not be too sure that what looked like water actually was water. She grabbed one of the empty beakers from off one of the tables.

  “You wait right here, and I’ll be back in a moment.” She said as she found her way back outside. The safest and closest place to get water would be the kitchen, so that was the direction she headed.

  The kitchen was already in full swing, preparing for the supper shift. It was hot, and it was chaotic, so she didn’t want to go inside, instead she used the rain barrel that was outside the door that Alex had told her about. The water was clean and cold as she filled the beaker before heading back to the mystic’s quarters.

  “Miss me?” She called out as she stepped back into the mystic’s domain.

  “No, not really.” The Yellow robed mystic replied.

  The sight of the man standing there among the junk, yellow robes in all almost made her drop the beaker of water. She had not passed him on her way to, or from, the kitchen, nor had she seen him anywhere outside. She had recognized him as the mystic that had given her the test back at the tower, but then Tree did tell them that he would be their mystic for the next three years.

  “Oh, I’m sorry sir, I didn’t mean you… I mean, I was… water… for your bird.”

  The mystic said nothing and just stood there looking at her in the same curious way he had when she had first taken the exam, the way one looks at a puzzle they’re trying to figure out.

  She moved past him to the bird’s cage and filled the water bowl.

  “Your bird was on the floor when I came in, I mean the cage was on the floor… well what I meant to say was that I heard the cage on the floor… no, actually I heard the cage fall on the floor when I came in… well… that’s… why I came in.”

  “Yes, the young are so articulate these days.” The mystic replied as he moved around the room, he appeared to be looking for something, and from the state of the room it was going to take him a long time to find it.

  Kile watched him for a while, and was surprised at how normal he looked. He didn’t seem to posses the same wonder that he had the first time she had seen him back at the tower, but then a lot of things were not what they had seemed to be back there.

  “Should I… be going?”

  “This is your appointed time is it not?” He replied without looking at her, and she wasn’t sure if she liked the way he phrased that.

  “Can… I help you… find something.”

  “I seemed to have misplaced my glasses.”

  This time he did turn to face her. She couldn’t put her finger on in, but for some reason he looked younger than the last time she had seen him or maybe just not as ancient He was still bald with gray hair at the temples and he still had the same thin sharp nose, but there was something about him that made him look… normal. She might have mistaken him for somebody’s grandfather. It could have been just the whole mystique of the tower back then, but he didn’t look much like a mystic now, he looked like an old man searching for his glasses.

  “Can’t you… just use your magic or something?” She asked him.

  “Young lady, I am a scholar, not a street entertainer.”

  -They’re in his skull.-

  “What skull?” Kile asked.

  “Skull, what are you talking about?” The mystic replied with a note of confusion, it was never a good idea to confuse a mystic.

  “You said they’re in his skull.”

  “I did?”

  The mystic turned to the far side of the room where an assortment of bones and jars full of floating parts, of which Kile did not wish to know about, sat on a long table. He took the top off a large grinning skull and pulled out a pair of thin, wired rimmed glasses.

  “How did you know they were in there?” He asked her as he perched them on the end of his nose.

  “You said there were there… in the skull.”

  “No, I said no such thing.”

  “I… thought you did.” Kile replied.

  She could have sworn she heard someone say it, and she knew it wasn’t her. She turned and looked at the crow that was now drinking water from the bowl, it definitely wasn’t him.

  “Do you often hear voices?” The mystic asked.

  “WHAT? No sir, never.” She replied. Great, now they think I’m crazy she thought. Was that how they were going to get her out of the academy? Tell everyone she couldn’t become a Hunter because she was a few sandwiches shy of a picnic.

  “Maybe… I should go now.” Kile said as she started for the door.

  “Not so fast young lady, you have an appointment.” The mystic said as he motioned her toward a large overstuffed wing backed chair.

  Kile looked at the chair, and then at the door to freedom, as much as she would have liked to make a run for it, she knew it would only postpone the inevitable. She took her seat, sinking down into the chair as the mystic searched through a stack of books. It didn’t take him long to find an old dust covered volume and he set it aside.

  “My name is Morgan Vain, you may call me Morgan. As you can see, by the robes I wear, I am a scholar from the Mystic’s Tower, and it is my responsibility to teach you the use of your edge.” He opened up yet another book and qui
ckly moved his finger down the page. “You are one Kile Veller of Riverport.”

  The one and only, not like there was anyone else willing to take her place.

  “Yes sir.” She replied.

  “Yes… I remember you from the exam.” Morgan said as he closed the book and stroked his chin.

  Of course you remember me she thought, I was the only girl taking the exam.

  “I don’t mind saying you interest me Miss. Veller.” He took the seat opposite her, his yellow robes falling about him; he sat there looking at her in a very strange way, a way that made her extremely uncomfortable. It wasn’t as if he was actually looking at her, but rather looking inside her.

  “Has anything you can’t explain happen to you in… say the past four years?”

  “I don’t understand sir.”

  “Most mystic influences reveal themselves within a child, around the age of ten, or eleven. In girls it has been known to happen earlier. Even now there is a young girl, not much older they you are, studying at the Tower, she has shown remarkable influence in stone, wind and fire as early as five years of age, she is even now learning the sphere of water.”

  “I don’t think I have any influences.” Kile admitted.

  “Yes, I realize that, and yet…” He trailed off as he rose from his chair and made for the armoire beside the ship’s anchor. He pulled out a small box and brought it over to where Kile was sitting. Setting the box down, he carefully opened it to reveal a milky white glass sphere about a foot in diameter.

  “I don’t suppose you know what this is?” He asked.

  “No sir.”

  “No, I didn’t think you would, but then I have been surprised before. This is a meditation orb, used by the mystics within the tower. It is not something that we ordinarily use on… shall we say, those that don’t have an affiliation with magic.”

  “Non-mystics.” Kile replied, although she wanted to say normal people.

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right, but it goes beyond that. Those mystics, such as myself, who have multiple influences must learn to silence those spheres that we do not wish to work in, especially those that are counterproductive to the arts that we wish to use.”

  He lifted the orb from the box and it began to glow, changing in color and intensity. It moved from reds to blues to greens, then yellow and back to reds as they swirled into one another. Kile couldn’t keep her eyes off it, it was almost hypnotic.

  “The purpose of the orb is to aid in the focus of a particular influence.” Morgan said as the sphere slowly began to turn a soft shade of blue. “If, for the sake of explanation, you wish to work a healing, which is influenced by the sphere of water, then you would use the orb to focus on your water influence. When you can turn the orb completely blue, it means you have silenced the other arts, and are only influenced by the sphere of water. It would be counter productive if you tried to use a healing art when you were still influenced by the sphere of fire. The sphere of fire is in direct opposition to the sphere of water.

  “Left to its own devices it has the ability to measure the strength a mystic has in any given sphere by how intense the color of the orb becomes.”

  “So, if Daniel held it, it would turn blue.” Kile reasoned.

  “Well, I’m not really at liberty to say, but if he did have a strong water influence, then yes, the orb would turn blue, but it only works on those that have a strong influence, that is why we do not use it during the exams. Cadets usually have only a slight grasp of the sphere they are influenced by, the orb’s color change would be ever so slight as to not even be noticeable, and so we use other means to test which sphere a cadet’s edge should be honed in.”

  “So… if I held it…”

  “Good question. You failed every test that I gave you. You have absolutely no spherical influence that I can detect. Do you understand what that means?”

  It means she was right all along, that she had no mystic arts. At least she’ll be able to give Daniel one last I told you so, before they throw her out of the academy.

  “I’m not sure I really understand what it means. If I don’t have any… arts…”

  “Then how can you possibly be able to graduate the academy?” He finished for her. “There is a common misconception among laymen, and even some scholars, that all arts can be classified using the eight sphere system, do you remember what they were?”

  “Yes sir, there were the four common ones of earth, fire, wind and water, then there were the two that were not as common, they were… wood and metal, then there were the two that didn’t fit in… light and dark.”

  “Very good Miss Veller. It’s nice to see that some cadets can listen. Now, as I’ve indicated before, these are just classification set out by the Mystics centuries ago to better understand and study the mystic arts and are more like guidelines than anything else. The four basic… are just that, basic. They represent the most common forms that the mystic arts can take. All the students here at the academy, are influenced by one of these spheres. The sphere of wood and metal are in opposition to one another, and are not nearly as common, in fact, the last mystic to train within the sphere of metal passed away nearly eighty years ago. The spheres of light and dark, although more common than wood and metal, are not edges that a Hunter can really learn. They are more… shall we say… life styles. Do you know where you fall into this Miss Veller?”

  “No sir.”

  “Neither do I, this is why I want you to hold the orb.” Morgan said as he held it out to her.

  “It’s not going to… blow up or anything if I touch it… is it?”

  For one brief moment, the old mystic smiled.

  “That would be something different. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure what will happen. Depending on what color the orb takes, we will know what sphere you are influenced by. Do you remember the young girl I spoke about earlier?”

  “The girl studying at the Tower.”

  “When she first came to us, we were unable to ascertain what sphere she was influenced by. Although we knew it to be a powerful influence, even the orb was unable to tell. When she held the orb it turned a shade of gray, which was not a color we were familiar with. We came to a startling conclusion; Emera was influenced by not one, but by all eight spheres.

  It is not uncommon to be influenced by multiple spheres. All the mystics that train at the tower are influenced by at least two. I personally can claim control of three in varying degrees of intensity, but to have someone who is equally influenced by all eight spheres is rare indeed.

  “So, that’s what you think, that I’m influenced by all eight spheres” She asked.

  “No, I do not believe that to be the case. There is only one individual in every generation or so that can claim to be influenced by all eight spheres, and that position has already been taken, but it is possible for you to be influenced by two opposing spheres in equal intensity that they appear to cancel each other out.”

  Kile wasn’t sure if she liked the idea of multiple influences, especially ones that were canceling each other out. She was having a hard enough time grasping the concept of having one, let alone two. Although, now that she thought about it, the idea was kind of appealing. She slowly reached for the orb that Morgan held out to her, it was now a vivid red, and as she placed her hands around it. She closed her eyes, not wishing to look at it, or the mystic. As her fingers touched the smooth surface it felt warm, almost alive as it throbbed in her hands like the beating of a heart.

  “That… was not what I expected.” She heard Morgan say.

  She opened her eyes slowly, and looked down at the orb. Where once the colors had swirled so hypnotically while in the hands of the mystic, in her hands the sphere was empty. There was no color, no light; it appeared to be a simple glass ball.

  “What does it mean?” She asked nervously.

  “I do not know.” Morgan replied as he started to rub his chin in that mystic fashion.

  “Can I put this down now?” She asked
, still holding the orb at arm's length.

  “What? Oh, yes of course.” He said taking it from her. The moment his fingers touched it the colors began to form once again, creating swirls of reds and blue, to where the orb was almost purple. Even when he placed it in the box the orb turned back to its original milky white color, but at least it still had a color.

  “What does it mean?” She asked again

  “It means you don’t fit into any of the eight categories. You, in fact, fall into a ninth category.”

  “A ninth category, but you said…”

  “Yes I know what I said, that there were only eight categories, but I also said that they were just classification set out by the mystics who needed a way to… pigeon hole their studies. Have you every sorted anything out Miss Veller, anything at all?”

  “Yes sir.” Kile replied. She could remember a time back home when she was helping her mother in the kitchen and they sat there one night sorting through all her grandmother’s recipes, and how her mother told her that when she grew up and had a family of her own, her grandmother’s recipes would be handed down to her, so that she could pass them down to her daughter. Kile had to wonder if that was ever going to happen now.

  “When you sorted, did you ever have something that just didn’t fit. It just didn’t quite fit the requirements of any one category.”

  “I’m a miscellaneous!” Kile exclaimed in a stunning realization.

  “I’m afraid so. You child are an enigma, a puzzle. You don’t fit into any of the categories, you have no influences, you are, as you so aptly put it, a miscellaneous.”

  “But then, if that’s true, then I have no edge.”

  “I did not say that.”

  “You said I had no influence.”

  “That would appear to be correct.” Morgan said, placing the box with the orb back into the armoire beside the rusted anchor. He began to slowly pace the floor, still scratching his chin.