The Journal Chronicles (Excerpts)

Throughout the early days at the Academy, I went through trainer after trainer. I began to get annoyed, not because I knew I was difficult to deal with, but how this prestigious academy couldn’t find anyone adequate to deal with me. I started using it as a badge of honor, challenging and even scaring off many of these trainers. After a series of trainers, they brought in this older man who looked even weaker than the others before him. I did my usual where I lulled him into a sense of control over me, then spontaneously fire hand beams that they would have to instinctively deflect, and I would keep strategically bringing them to the brink of fear, then stopping at the last minute, laughing out of entertainment. In shock, they would look disgustingly at me and always proclaim “good luck finding someone to train you! You reckless bastard!”.

            This old man, I knew, was going to be an easy target. I still lured him to think he had control. He seemed just as annoyed as I did.

            “Greetings. My name is Mayas, and apparently I’ve been sent here to instruct you”, he said casually. I continued to sit there and let him talk.

            He glanced over to me. “So you’re the one they say is ‘untrainable’, huh? The prodigy?”. He looked at me for the first time and his eyes went up and down, gauging me. “Hmm. You don’t look like much. Maybe the Academy has gotten softer than I thought.”

            I wasn’t sure how to take that, but I used that as fuel to get my energy going.

            “Eh. Not worth my time. See you around, kid.” He got up and started going towards the door.

            I saw this as my opportunity to get my fun while his back was turned. I focused all my energy towards my hands and had the intent to just knock him down and laugh as always as I fired at him. My anticipated excitement quickly turned to surprise when he turned back suddenly, and reflected my beams right back at me and knocked me down. Impossible, I thought. A reflection spell takes at least a few seconds to do, and he barely had one second to react, much less do the spell.

            He immediately turned to me and glared at me, “Is that all you got?” completely unphased by the spontaneous attack from me. Now it was turning into genuine anger, as nobody mocks me and gets away with it. I formed more energy in my hands and fired again. He brushed it off, barely moving a hand. The more he deflected, the more angry I got, and the harder and faster I fired, but it still did nothing to him. In fact, he started steadily walking towards me, tossing all my fire beams like they were nothing.

            “C’mon! If you’re trying to hit me, than hit me!” He was in complete control, and I couldn’t deal with it, so I started letting my anger control me, which meant my magic was going everywhere as well. Damage from my firebeams were going everywhere, but I kept firing and firing. When he got close enough, I tried to hit him with my fists, which he routinely proceeded to block all of my swings. When he finally had enough, he grabbed my wrists and let me struggle to release myself from his grip. “You done yet?”.

            I didn’t want to be, but my body was. I had expelled every ounce of energy my magic had at the time and collapsed. He remained standing there, completely unaffected, looking down at me. I was about ready for him to gloat about his triumph. “You’ve got spirit, kid. I can see that. But that’s not enough to be the greatest.”

            “What is?” I asked, in-between my deep breaths.

            He raised his eyebrows, curled in his lips, turned, and started walking away.

            “What is?” I asked louder. He continued walking away.

            “WHAT IS??” I screamed. My anger propelled me to get up and run towards him and demand an answer. I wasn’t about to let him walk away like that. Right when I got to him, he turned to me and grabbed my collar, halting me. He looked straight at me as intense as I’ve ever seen with anyone else.

            “Desire, Andreas. Desire. It’s only when you want it more than anyone else; only then will you receive it.”

“You’ll need to get a wand”. He said.

            “A what?”

            “A wand. It’ll help you control your power.” He handed me a wooden stick. “Use this.”

            “It’s a stick.”

            “Yes.”

            “What can I do with a stick?”

            “You can use it to focus your power onto it. However, you might want to seal it to you.”

            “Seal it?”

            “Yes. You’ll need to get it sealed by pulling a spell on it so it knows to receive your magick and no one else’s.”

I kept looking back and forth between him and the stick, still confused as to why he handed me a stick that I could find anywhere in the woods.

            “…it’s a stick.”

He ignored my comment and just stared at me with a blank look on his face for a few seconds. Afterwards, he went over to get one of the many different spell books. “I usually don’t introduce the idea of wands to a trayee so soon, but… you need to have one. God knows what kind of destruction you’ll cause if you don’t.”

I still held the stick in my hand. It was hard for me to believe that such a small item such as that could help contain all the raw power that I had. I just blew a huge gaping hole in the middle of the observation room. It was difficult to see how something that small could contain that much power. I was having difficulty, and I am much bigger than this stick.

“Take the wand with your right hand.” He asked. I did as he asked.

“Now, raise it up to the sky.” I did.

“Now, say the phrase ‘hoc est meum’”. I repeated what he said: “Hoc est meum.”

“’Non nemo non. Non nemo non. Non nemo non’.” I again repeated after him.

“Say again: ‘Hoc est meum’” Repeated like the last ones.

After I said the last part, I waited to see what would happen. I was waiting for some sort of spark, or poof, or something, but nothing happened.

“Did… did it work?” I looked at it. It looked the same as before.

“That was just to seal it to you. It’s not activated yet.”

“Activated? What do I have to do to activate it?”

Instead of reading it to me, he just lifted the book to show me. He pointed to a paragraph. “All of this…”

“-that’s not too bad…” He flipped the page.

“All of this…” This time pointing to the whole page. My eyebrows raised. He turned to the next page. “…all of this…”, turned the next page, “…and all of this.”.

“Three pages worth of spells? Really?”

“And I cannot say them for you, or else my power and magick would go into your wand, and you wouldn’t want that.”

“This is ridiculous!” I threw the wand against the bookshelf.

“Huh. Surprised you didn’t break anything this time.” He said flipping through the pages without looking up.

“Why does it have to be so difficult?”

“Everyone is different. They all have different powers, different abilities, different… temperaments… all of them and more need to be included in the spell so that the wand knows who’s magick to possess.”

“This is stupid.” I started to walk out of the book room.

“You need one. That much power could really hurt, or even kill someone.”

I froze in my tracks. I was reminded of what I did to Rosie, my sister. I couldn’t let that happen again, especially not to Annie.

“I’d really consider doing this.” He added.

I was still contemplating leaving, but at the same time, I knew what he said might be right. It was getting too powerful for me to control, and not doing it might make things worse.

After a short moment of me standing a few steps from the doorway, he approached me from my right side. He offered my wand in his hands and looked at me with an assuring look.

“You might want to carve it as well...”