A woman slowly walked towards Aria and Favian. She came with an elegant sway in her movement, and made absolutely no noise as she walked over. Her long hair fell all the way to her waist, revealing obsidian curls from root to tip. A scar pierced across her face, starting from the left of her forehead, and extending all the way towards the left part of her lips. Without this scar she would have looked like a princess with her toned cheekbones and her naturally pouted lips, which were covered in dark red lipstick. Favian could faintly make out that she was wearing some form of amulet under her collar. Her attire was a robe adorned with jewellery and embroidered almost everywhere. Aria looked at her with disdain, ignoring her presence after giving her a glare. If stares could kill, then this woman would have already died a thousand times over. The animosity which Favian could feel was thick like coagulated blood. These two loathed each other.
"Now now, no need to act so uninviting. I"m just here to introduce myself to your cute little student here. Well what"s your name?" she looked at Favian, waiting for a response.
"F-Favian madam!" he replied quickly, lowering himself to a bow.
The woman was quickly taken aback by Favian"s curtsy. He looked una.s.suming, and was still wearing tattered and worn-down clothes. He had yet to have the chance to change his look with a new wardrobe as Aria only had clothing appropriate for women in her closet.
"My oh my, how adorable you are Favian. How unfortunate it is for a gentleman like you to be stuck with that poisonous witch." she spat. The elegant air to her vanished and was replaced with a venom.
Aria was furious, blood boiled through her body and veins could be seen emerging on her face, giving her a ghastly appearance. Her snowy complexion was now filled to the brim with red. Energy undulated around her, and dark wisps started to circulate at a ferocious speed, aimed at none other than the lady with the scar.
Suddenly a man warped in between Aria and the woman. Favian had blinked at the exact moment when it happened, and thus had been startled, falling to the floor. The moment the man entered the area, Aria"s channelling of magic dispersed. She quickly knelt to the ground, and so did the other woman.
"Aria, Evelynn, what is the meaning of this?" he asked, his voice charged with authority.
"Nothing Master Egast, we were just exchanging some pointers" Evelynn replied, after which she winked at Aria and Favian, and quickly scurried away.
Egast was a rather tall and skinny man, who only looked to be in his mid-30s. He wore a charcoal coloured b.u.t.ton up shirt, with its sleeves only reaching to his elbows, and he matched this with black trousers and polished black shoes. His attire looked like it came straight out of an aristocratic family from Earth"s Victorian England. He also possessed a long grey cane, which was adorned at the top with a skull head and rubies for its eyes.
The scowl that had been present on his face was rather quickly replaced by a smirk after Evelynn had left, his eyes twinkled with a mischievous light.
*Cough* "How I detest those brats from the Dawn Academy, always trying to one up us just because we are the big bad wolves using dark magic. If only they would realise that light and dark are just two sides of the same coin, then maybe they"d not be ranked last out of all of the Big 6." Egast mumbled on.
"Oh Aria, didn"t see we had company there" his face blushed quickly, and he rubbed his head ashamedly after he noticed Favian standing up right behind Aria.
"Don"t worry about that, this here is Favian." She spoke nonchalantly, having gotten up from her kneeling position. Aria seemed to have calmed down by a large amount, and the ferocious atmosphere around her dissipated.
She moved closer to Egast and whispered in his ear, "He"s the one I sent messages about to the Academy, his magic core is indigo, but there"s some sort of irregularity in his core. It"s almost as if there are two different cores in his body, I was hoping you could figure out what is up with him."
Favian tried hard to make out what they were discussing, but to no avail. After a couple of minutes of Aria and Egast talking with each other in hushed tones, they finally finished their conversation. Egast slowly walked towards Favian, and started to look him up and down. Favian became fidgety at how much he was being concentrated on in this moment. Suddenly the system in his mind rang out an alarm, and he could feel his whole body being pierced through.
[Ding! Host being scanned by foreign object. Countermeasures unavailable.]
Favian had no time to react, he could feel pins and needles in his brain, and a wave of exhaustion completely took him over.
"Boy, let"s get going from here. It"s just going to get more boring the longer we wait around, so we"ll get you to the academy first along with Aria." Egast turned around and walked towards the edge of the cliff, with Favian and Aria walking close by his heels.
As they moved towards the edge of the cliff, Favian noticed the different emotions on the various initiates" faces. Some were ecstatic, jumping up in joy, whilst others were completely dejected, and looked like they wanted to jump down to an early death. Clearly making it into the academy with as many resources as possible meant a huge amount.
Slowly Egast stopped about 2 metres away from the cliff"s edge. The ground in front of him was devoid of any gra.s.s, unlike the rest of the cliff. A huge symbol able to accommodate a whole horse was carved into the ground in black, with the symbol looking like a hieroglyphic of a sun, however a large black sun. The summer breeze was completely halted in the vicinity of this hieroglyphic, and the noise from the outside world stopped.
"Favian, jump" Egast motioned for Favian to jump off the cliff.
"WHAT? Did I just hear that right?" he screamed in his mind. "I"m sorry sir, I didn"t quite catch that, did you just say I should jump?" he asked, trying to verify whether he was just hearing things.
Egast looked at Favian impatiently, and simply repeated his previous statement, however it sounded more like a command now, " Jump."
Favian"s heart sunk. So, he did hear right, this crazy man wanted him to jump down into an early grave. Frozen to the spot, Favian couldn"t decide whether to run away or to actually jump. This choice however was taken out of his hands after he hesitated for too long. With what seemed like a gentle nudge at first, he was flung almost 3 metres forward into his impending doom.
The ground beneath him disappeared, and his guts felt like they flew straight into his mouth. The sound of the wind rushing seemed to m.u.f.fle his loud screams. His heart was beating in overdrive, and the urge to p.i.s.s himself almost took over. With a THUD, Favian hit the ground.
Instead of darkness as he would have imagined it would be like if he died again, Favian found himself to be in a dimly lit room. He quickly stood up, checking himself to see if he had broken anything, as the lack of pain left him confused. "I"m somehow okay." He thought to himself.
As he looked around the room however, his heart sank once again. He was currently surrounded by cell bars. Only dim light was able to illuminate the area, and he seemed to be inside some form of a cavern. The air was damp and musty, and dust formed around the cell bars.
"f.u.c.k, where am I? Why am I in a prison cage?" his thoughts sprinted as he tried to figure out what was happening. Did the Academy figure out that he was reincarnated, and they would now use him for their own perverted experiments? Did he die again and was reborn in another body? These questions continually went through his mind.
A cackle erupted from within the cavern. A female voice echoed through the cave, " I finally have you alone here. I have been waiting for you to be separated from your little mentor". A hooded figure walked towards the cage Favian was stood in. He couldn"t make out what this person looked like under the hood, all he could tell was that the voice was very feminine, and that a necklace was hung from the persons collar. The symbol looked like two back to back half-moon crescents, parted in the middle by a thick line. An ominous aura was being given off by this symbol alone, and the longer he stared at the symbol, the more his mind fogged up.