"Hey dude...I got a question..."
Jamie looked inquisitivly up at Atlas, who sat on the back of a torn, damaged couch, watching a small television across a dirty, unkempt room.
They'd returned to Atlas' home after their little fun. He lived alone with his father, and the two of them had very little interest in cleanliness.
"Yeah?" he replied, not looking down at his crony, obviously more interested in the television then his so-called friends.
"When we were kickin' on those guys...the Bats and Knives...where'd they come from?"
Atlas seemed to pause for a second, the confident, in-control look dissapearing from his face. He turned slowly to look down at Jamie, his face twisted in confusion.
"I...I don't know. Mine just...appeared in my hands, right when I was thinkin' I needed one..."
"Yeah. Magic."
Evan and the others still sat in the same alley, though Sean had produced bandages and medicines that he'd just so happened to be carrying at the time, and helped to clean them up. Evan was staring with puzzled intent at the man who'd just informed him, that apparently, he had an 'Aura', and the ability to utalise magic, potentially of the 'higher order'.
"You're telling me you don't know?" Sean asked, as he finished wrapping a bandage around Blake's leg. So far, he'd fixed up Blake, Daniel and Evan himself. Now, however, he simply threw the bandages to Jade with a look of disdain.
"Fix yourself up..." he said, moving back across to Evan, kneeling before the sitting teenager.
"Tell you what. I know a little about this kinda stuff. So...meet me in the school's basement storeroom tomorrow morning. If anyone asks...tell them I'm helping you catch up on some maths work, or something."
With that, he rose to his feet, and walked slowly from the alley, leaving the others behind to help Jade bandage his wounds.
"So...when will you teach me something a little more useful?"
Blue chuckled to himself. The kid had learnt so much, in just a few days. Not only had he mastered every spell he was shown, within three attempts, he'd also made astonishingly insightful observations on the nature of many of them, and even managed to modify one of the spells to achieve an entirely different effect. Blue was no teacher, and he'd only taken two apprentices, both of whom had died in the purge. But Joshua seemed to learn at almost triple the speed they had. In a way, it was frightful.
And, through all this, that dwarfing black aura had never once dimished in size, or in hue. If anything, it had grown slightly.
Blue was intent that Joshua never learn even basic Necromancery spells. He hadn't even told Josh the true nature of his magical talent. It was his belief that the boy was smart enough, that if shown a single spell, he could probably extrapolate from that to a whole range of effects.
There were two primary types of magic: That was, Effect, and Energy. Effect spells consumed energy to sustain themselves, and were a definate technique: A shield effect spell would create a shield. Effects tend to be confined to specific classes, for example, only Defenomancers, like Blue, could use the types of barriers and shields he could. However, some basic effects could be used by all classes.
Energy, on the other hand, was both unique and shared. Energy spells convert energy into the auratype of the user, and then manipulate that energy, with the basic example being a simple energy blast. Energies of conflicting classes would have varied effects.
So far, Blue had only showed his 'apprentice' some basic effect spells. He hadn't even touched on Energy, and he had no intention to. In fact, he'd already reached the limit of what he'd wanted to teach the boy, the basics of controlling and manipulating his power, preventing an accidental release.
"I'm not sure...if I will..." he said hesitantly, glancing down at the young man for a second, then reiterating: "I...I'm a Defenomancer. I don't really know much about Necromancery."
The young man's eyes widened, as he mouthed the word. Blue suddenly realised he'd made a terrible mistake. He hadn't told Joshua he was a Necromancer yet. Now he'd let it slip.
"I'm...a Necromancer?" he asked, looking away from Blue, deep in thought.
"So...how was it. Was he gentle with ya'?" Blake asked, as Evan walked slowly across the yard to their table. Jade looked pissed off about something...but it wasn't their problem. Besides, they all wanted to hear about Sean's 'magic'.
"Yeah, you guys used protection, right?" Daniel spoke up, grinning across his face.
Evan paused by their table, looking down at the trio. A smile crossed his face, and he burst into speech, talking loudly and incoherantly for a second before Jade put a hand on his shoulder and drew him down to the bench, amidst the stares of their classmates.
"Calm down...now, tell me. What happened?" he asked calmly, and Evan, shuddering in anticipation now, said only one thing:
"He showed me...he showed me myself. One year, three months from now."
