The First War Mage: City in the Sky

I stood in place, breathing heavily. My arms and shoulders were bruised and aching with every motion, Tulip had not held back in the slightest when it came to sparring now. And when mixed with my entire body being burnt from the exposure to sunlight, my skin reddened and raw, I felt more than a little miserable. Especially after being at this training for close to an hour.

I had my dominant leg forwards along with my arm from the side side, both hands firmly held to my blade whilst I watched Tulip’s motions. I had managed to hit her a grand total of three times, all three were such bare minimum, glancing blows that they could hardly even be counted.

I took a step forwards, swinging over my left shoulder in a downwards strike aimed at Tulip’s neck. Her arm flashed up with her blade in hand, deflecting the blow to the side she used the momentum to spin her opposite leg up, throwing a hard kick into my side that I was barely capable of dodging by hopping backwards and nearly falling over.

“Do you have to hit so hard?...” I whined, my body was aching to the point that I was genuinely worried about being hit more.

“Hitting you hard makes you learn how to block, don’t wanna get hurt, don’t let me hit you.” Tulip bit back with a smirk. “Just be happy I’m not Lotus, she would be going way harder than this. Can’t list the number of times she broke bones to get her point across, thankfully we had good healers.”

I just grumbled in disagreement. Though it was mostly my body disagreeing, I saw the logic in her reasoning. I was getting better at blocking and dodging thanks to the fact that Tulip was leaving bruises when I didn’t.

Lost in my own thoughts I was hardly paying enough attention to save myself from a hard strike on my shoulder, a shout of pain escaped as I fell to the ground. My grip forced loose from the blow as I fell to one knee, my left hand moved up to grip my shoulder as I groaned in pain.

“Ow…”

“Sorry…” Tulip muttered out as she put her sword to the side, it disappeared after a moment to shift into her ring. “That’s… Enough for today, can you still move it?”

“Yea…” I muttered out through tightly grit teeth, I rolled my shoulder around, I felt the bones grinding on each other. “I’m gonna practice my magic a bit more… Before I go do anything.”

“Alright, I’m gonna go get cleaned up.” Tulip had a regretful look in her eyes, she looked at me for a few moments before she moved off towards the hallway with the bathroom.

I let out a sigh once she was out of earshot, rolling my shoulder more to try and work the pain out of it. I took several breaths to push the pain away before pushing to stand up, grabbing my practice blade and it disappeared back into my ring whilst I walked forwards.

Back in the center of the small training ring I sat down with my legs crossed. It was a process to find any form of comfort as it felt like my clothes were borderline attacking me. The painful itches of my skin that was made raw and red by the sun.

But, the longer I focused the easier it became to focus on just my magic. I just worked on cycling my mana, not doing anything in particular but trying to just grow more used to simply controlling it. Moving with each pulsing beat of my heart seemed to almost make my mana respond easier, though I couldn’t quite be sure about it. Continuing with this rhythmic beat I kept myself firmly lost in my thoughts.

My mind was wandering through the paces of the past few weeks, the sudden changes. My mind focused upon magic more than anything else, I still felt like I knew nothing of it.

Another breath entered my steady rhythm of breathing, my heart beating like a drum to keep tempo in the back of my head. I slowly pushed my mana to the surface of my skin, an attempt to slowly get used to more than just the unfiltered burst of raw energy.

a subtle crackling sound like that of paper being crumpled fizzled across my skin. I felt the tingling heat like that of lightning, opening my eyes the sight that graced them was rather similar to such.

Tulip had said my Attuned Element was Electricity, and I could now see it clearly. The blur of pain and adrenaline when we had broken free, the least of my concern was paying attention to my magic in that moment.

Yet now I could see it in its full glory, arcs of lightning ran across my skin, bouncing up from my arms just to curve back down to my skin. The soft blue hue ignited, illuminating the dim shadows underneath my body.

I watched curiously as every pulse of my heart left the electricity to surge with its static pulsing noises growing with each beat. Opening my hands the arcs jumped between my fingers slowly and gracefully.

With a sigh I let my mana settle, and slowly withdraw back into my body.

“That was interesting.” Tulip spoke from my side, looking over slowly I offered a smile to her.

“Watching that entire thing?” I asked slowly, unwinding my shoulders and working out the stiff tension that had grown throughout my body. It must have been over an hour that I sat in that same position.

“Only the last bit. Honestly it's impressive, you know.” Tulip stated calmly. “Learning magic so quickly. It's beyond just being a prodigy, it takes even excellent people years to learn half of what you just picked up in the last few weeks.”

“Only because it's been I learn it or die trying.” I remarked as I stood, wincing as the burns returned to grow more painful once more.

“Even then it's still impressive, if anything that makes it more so. Also, they have a cream in the bathrooms, it's a healing salve that helps with the sunburns.” I nodded at Tulip's calm words. “And don't worry yourself too much, we should be safe here.”

“Alright.” With nothing else to say I dragged myself to my feet fully, I walked towards the bathroom with exhaustion filling my bones.

A knowing anxiety still filled the back of my head, this couldn't be it, could it? So much had happened so quickly and it felt like we were so far from getting back to Berinia.

But those thoughts were pushed to the back of my head when I heard flowing water.

The bathroom was like a massive pond, water gushing in from points in the wall with hot tiles making up the floor, heating the water to steaming, with the room covered in a fine haze.

I wasted no time to undress and get into the water, only taking a solemn few minutes to undo the remaining bandages covering my left arm. A long scar still remained, red and raw where the bolt had shot clean through my arm.

Turning to the mirror beside the water I began to examine myself whilst the water rolled around my body.

Other scars from abuse long past were healing slowly, lashes of blade and whip from the guards in the prison. My wrists and ankles slowly clearing of the skin worked down to the bone by metal cuffs, alongside no longer quite looking like a walking skeleton.

With a slow breath drawing in I closed my eyes, letting myself enjoy the moments of peace.