The Beast Within

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Haneul stretched out his hand as well, not sharing Ceraun’s enthusiasm.

He calmly took in the other Mage’s features, a bright, well scrubbed face with a glowing blue-green scar behind his left eye, he also looked extremely friendly.

Ceraun’s smile stretched wider at this, his smile slanted to the side as he took Haneul’s hand.

“Try not to kill him.” Adrik muttered under his breath as their hands made contact.

“Of course not.” Ceraun smiled brightly at Adrik. “I hope.” He added with a slight frown.

Haneul could not have expected what was to happen, there was no warning as Ceraun’s eyes did not glow, remaining their usual flat black.

The moment their hands made contact, streaks of lightning rushed up his arm to the rest of his body, stunning the Mage, his eyes immediately rolled to the back of his head as he dropped to the ground in a dead faint.

"That was fast." Adrik muttered, moving closer, he kicked Haneul to his back to check if he was still breathing.

"At least he is still alive." He noted, dragging the passed out Mage to the slanted rock so he could rest against it.

Haneul’s hair was fritzed out but his wild, dark, hair was already tousled enough so this difference was not so evident.

"We should get to practicing before he rouses." Adrik said reasonably, readying himself to begin to train.

Debris was sometimes washed up on the river bank so it had not taken them long to find supplies like discarded ropes and nets, which they used to drag rocks around.

Ceraun was constantly struggling to keep up with Adrik who easily bested him at whatever activity they tried their hand at.

They kept this up for the entirety of the morning, only stopping to rest briefly.

Haneul was unconscious for the whole time, deeply dozing under the shade of the rock.

"I wonder what it would be like to be drafted into the army." Ceraun mused during one of the few, short breaks of rest they had.

"Most likely as bad as being sent to labor camps, if we don't die in the training camps then we will end up dying on the battleground."

"You are just cheery and optimistic, aren't you?" Ceraun muttered with sarcasm, watching the other Mage drink sagely from his flask.

Adrik shrugged. "Someone has to be realistic."

Ceraun stared into the distance, the river was wide enough that he could not see where it ended on the other side. "But what if we got strong enough to defeat every Magical creature in battle…"

"Sounds like one of your airheaded musings." Adrik immediately dismissed. "Plus 'if ' we were to get that powerful, which would most likely never happen, non-Mages would kill us, simple."

Ceraun fell quiet again, his brow furrowed in concentration as he fell deep in thought.

He knew that fighting against the non-Mages was inescapable if he wanted to save the Mages before they were all wiped out but he was not stupid, he knew he could not do that all by himself.

Ceraun fell backwards against the ground from where he was seated, arms tucked underneath his head as he stared up at the clear, sunny sky.

Staying alive was so hard, keeping everyone alive an impossibility, survival was hopeless…

It just fueled him to train even harder, he could start a rebellion and get other like minded powerful Mages to fight alongside him.

Since their Pillar families were all wiped out, they would have to rise up to save themselves from possible extinction.

Maybe they could even use the magical creatures to their advantage, not all could be evil… he started to think and just as fast, he cut that line of thought down.

A shard of pain laced through his heart.

No! The non-Mages weren't their only enemies, the magical creatures also had to be defeated.

"More stupid thoughts, eh Feyrer?" Adrik broke him out of his absorbing thoughts, getting up to stretch his sore muscles.

"Get off my back, Adrik." He grumbled, getting to his feet as well.

He was improving slightly with controlling his abilities but his trajectory was still as bad as the first day he started to train, which was just a day ago but Ceraun wanted to see fast results.

The sun was already heading to the west when Haneul finally awoke, they had already stopped training, Ceraun felt dizzy with exhaustion and Adrik had practiced too hard with his powers and was squinting hard with how much his head ached.

It was this scene that Haneul woke up to.

He scrambled backwards when the first thing he opened his eyes to see was Ceraun and Adrik staring at him curiously, seated on smaller rocks a little distance away from him.

He flinched when his back hit the rock he had been resting against. "What happened?" He asked suspiciously, giving them dirty looks.

"You slipped and fell in the river." Adrik said bluntly - he had taken a wild guess that Haneul didn't know how to swim, he could only cross his fingers and hope now.

Haneul’s hackles went down at this, checking himself over to make sure he was in one piece.

"Wait." He froze, shooting them both a glare. "How do I know you didn't push me in?"

"If we did, why would we save you?" Adrik asked reasonably and Haneul went silent.

"You were kicking so hard, you nearly drowned us both and by the time I got to you, you had already drank a lot of water." Ceraun layered on a little thick but Haneul looked believing enough.

"Anyway." Adrik concluded, hefting himself to his feet. "We wanted to go back a long time ago but we could not leave you here." He shrugged nonchalantly like he and Ceraun hadn't been praying that the knocked out Mage should wake up, lest they got in trouble.

"Oh." Haneul mumbled, getting to his feet. "You have my thanks." He added under his breath, walking off like he was still disoriented.

Ceraun and Adrik watched him go.

"Think he will be okay?" The fair haired Mage asked absently.

"I don't see that being my problem." Adrik said flippantly, going to the river to fill up his flask.