Xenarra: The Dragon Throne - Chapter 45 The Mage Tower

As I reached the door I heard the voice of the sword spirit in my head.

“You are not going to leave me in this carriage are you?”

Turning around again, I saw the sword hidden away into a side compartment, obviously someone had gotten it for me and moved it here.

‘I am glad someone moved this for me, if they didn’t I probalb;y would have ended up leaving it back at the rangers training area.’

Once I had the sword, I turned around and left the carriage. Once I was outside of it on the cobelled ground, I was gobsmacked. All I could see was a massive tower, leading up into the sky. It had multiple different colours. Some of these were black , white, silver, bronze and there were so many more. I couldn’t even see the top of the tower as it passed through the clouds and continued to rise up.

Around the tower though, it wasn’t empty. It was far from it. There were tens of massive halls, each looking completely different. Coming in and out of them were hundreds if not thousands of people all in the mages robes. Surrounding these halls, were multiple smaller buildings, these all looked similar but each one had a small difference.

Not only that there were lots of open spaced area’s, some of which were covered in greeny and seemed really peaceful others seemed barren and plain. But on them I could see people casting spell after spell, each one dealing lots of damage to the ground before the ground healed itself.I then heard the sound of a voie coughing behind me. I quickly turned around, surprised that I didn’t even notice the presence of the person being there.

The person in question was Lars.

“Lars, is that you?”

The person I called Lars frowned for a second as he peered closer to my face, then he stepped back as his face lit up.

“Adoh, is that really you? I didn’t recognise you at first. You look so different and that carriage is special to say the least. We can catch up later hopefully. I got to get you registered. So could you follow me.”

I followed him into one of the smaller buildings near to the gate. The gate itself seemed and looked ordinary, except for all of the runes carving all of it. This reminded me I was in a different world now. Not the world of the army, but the world of magic, the world of the mages. Around the gate were knights. They were covered head to toe in heavy plate armour, all of them were using short swords and shields. The only way to differentiate them were the different coloured plumes coming out of the top of their helmets.

After entering the building for my registration. I noticed loads of different tools around the room, each one was emitting runes almost as if the runes were constantly activating and being drawn into the air, like I had seen the old man do, when he opened up the hidden passageway. Walking up to the desk, Lars greeted the mage who was behind the desk. The mage looked at me after him and Lars had finished speaking.

“I am Master Zohaifa, the master of the element of lightning. You can just call me Zohaifa.”

Master Zohaifa looked different to everyone else I had seen so far. His skin was much darker, not only that though. His eyes were drastically different, his eyes were blue. As I looked at them briefly I thought I was looking at a bolt of lightning. It made all of the hairs of my body stand up.

He walked over to one of the devices on the side of the wall. He indicated for me to walk up to it. The device itself was a bronze colour and was shaped like a massive staff. Apart from that it had a small crystal which I would have to put my hands on to, then it had two crystals put embedded into the shaft and at the tip of it, there was a bigger crystal embedded there.

Touching the crystal as I had been instructed to do, the whole thing lit up. There were a myriad of colours that appeared. The first was a bright red colour, then a pale grey and finally the last colour which appeared in the crystal at the top was a mixture of the red and grey and emitted an aura that reminded me of the destruction on the battlefield. As each of the colours appeared I saw, the Master mage noted down each one that was except for the last colour though. He just looked at it and did nothing else.

Next he moved me over to another device, this one was much smaller than the other one. But there was still a staff and a cysta in it for my hands and a bigger crystal at the tip of the staff. Like the previous staff I put my hands into the crystal, which lit up, flying through various different colours before stopping at a bronze colour. He wrote that down as well.

Then he looked up at my face. “So looking at your eyes you must be a part of one of the great clans, could you please tell me which one?”

I froze for a couple of seconds before looking down feeling slightly ashamed. “I am not from any of them, I am one of the forgotten.” After I said that he looked up at me, with a hint of pity in them, but as I looked at him, I worked out quickly that pity was not for me.

“Well, those clan basterds will be sorry, they are missing a talent such as yours.” He then chuckled to himself for a few minutes, when he stopped he looked at me again. “You have a high affinity for fire and death. Your perception, which is how we measure your talent is at the bronze rank. So you know the highest is gold the lowest is white. You have the third strongest perception possible. You will have a strong future. Remember though your affinity just means you will have an easier time using those sort of spells, you can still use any element you wish.”

After he finished speaking, he looked at Lars and told him to take me to the hall of elements.

Just as I was about to leave I turned and looked at the Master. “What was the last colour that appeared, what does it mean? It reminded me of the battlefield.”

As he looked up at me, he sighed. “Honestly, I wish I could tell you. But I as well as everyone else have no idea what it means at all. All I know is that it has some link with Qi and that is it.”

Lars led me out of the building after that, and began to lead me to the grandest looming of all of the different halls. “I am amazed, Adoh currently you have the sixth highest perception of all of the apprentices here. I don’t think you know, but that is amazing. Even if your affinities are impressive, fire is fairly common here due to the dragonblood lines that everyone has, but the affinity for death is rare. I wonder how you have it. Your ancestors must have been interesting. The only way for affinities to appear is generally to bloodlines or a blessing and I doubt you have been blessed by death.”

He began to go on, like he did back in the carriage when I was heading to meet my uncle. I smiled slightly as I looked around. ‘It is so different here compared to the army, it seems so peaceful.’

It didn’t take long before we arrived in front one of the halls, Lars told me to wait where I was as he went to find someone. A few minutes later I saw him coming back with another person. This person stood in front of me for a minute before walking off into the hall. Lars told me to follow him. As I got near to the hall, I could feel the mana radiating off of it, even without trying to sense it.

As we arrived in front of the doors, the man I had to follow walked in, I followed him in, then I was shrouded in darkness.