Gatekeepers Book 2: Galeforce

Theravor sighed as he spotted yet another large black lightning bolt came crashing down in the distance from where he sat in his throne in the top box. “Draycos still hasn’t managed anything past all or nothing?” he muttered to himself as the distant thunder reached the coliseum. The sunlight reflected off of his gold-edged crimson scales as he shook his head. “I didn’t expect the boy to struggle so much with his magic.”

It was the early afternoon of the third day since Draycos’s match on the first day of the Prisoners’ Games. The games had been proceeding smoothing, and the first round would be finished by the end of today. That meant that even with Draycos’s match being the last one of the second round, he only had another full day at best to learn control over his magic.

Unlike during his training with Zero prior to the assessment exam, Draycos’s magic training has been going quite poorly. The first day, Draycos was unable to even figure out how to release his magic at all, so he and Vertex decided to recreate the steps Draycos went through during his match with Brock in an attempt to summon his magic power. That had been successful, but every single time it happened, Draycos lost control and let all his power burst out at once, leaving him completely drained. The black lightning had been crashing down so much the last two days that it didn’t even faze anyone in the coliseum anymore.

“That brat still has no control whatsoever, do he?” Vinzgar commented from the seat next to Theravor’s, looking off towards the distance with his bloodshot red eyes to where the lightning had crashed down. The dark grey, almost black, dragon was the head of the Killwing royal family, and considered to be Theravor’s rival for the throne. “That’s pathetic; he performed so well during his training with Zero, I thought things might work the same way with learning to use magic.” Vinzgar shook his head in disappointment. “It appears that I was wrong.”

“It apparently has to do with the process they’re using to summon his power in the first place,” Boreta, the head of the Managuard royal family, interjected. Her lavender-scaled fingers tapped on the armrest of her seat, jangling the gold hoops hanging around her wrist. A necklace inlaid with three glittering rubies hung around her slim neck, and a butterfly wing-like fin tipped off her tail. “Draycos hardly has any aptitude for magic and can barely even call upon it, so they’re just repeating the steps he went through during his fight three days ago. Every time they do that, though, Draycos ends up being enraged and blows off everything at once, leaving him completely empty on magic. They’ve already gone through a whole pouch of those mana-restoration pills that Theravor bought from me.”

Zero shook his head. This small blue and white dragon was the head of the Vizard family, and probably the most muscular of the dragons present in the top box. He wore a pair of blue goggles atop his head, and various tools hung from leather straps wrapped around his waist. A fluffy white cloth with several black stains hung around his bulging neck, and his brown leather shorts barely fit on his legs. “I’m honestly surprised he’s having so much difficulty with this. I thought he’d be able to handle almost anything with the way his training went with me. But he comes from a world that has no magic at all, so I guess it would make sense that he’s having a hard time with this.”

Vinzgar snorted. “Let’s hope that he can at least learn not to blow off everything he has at the very beginning before his next match. But I have my doubts about that....”

“You did it again, Draycos,” Vertex reprimanded him, shaking his head with a hand over his face. “You’ve made no progress at all the last two days; do you realize how important it is for you to learn at least a little control before your next match?”

“I’m telling you, this is hard!” Draycos wheezed, laying flat on his back on the ground of the rocky island as he gasped for breath. “I’ve only been able to summon my magic after I get extremely agitated, but then I’m just running on all cylinders and let everything go at that point.”

“Running on all cylinders?” Vertex tilted his head in confusion, not understanding what Draycos meant. He shook his head again. “Never mind that, it’s probably a saying from your world. Anyways, stop making excuses on your inability to control your magic. It’s unbecoming for you.”

“Unbecoming? Did you seriously just say that?” Draycos grew irritated by that remark and sat up, glaring at the dragon. “What am I, your grandson or something? Don’t tell me if something is unbecoming of me or not! What’s it matter to you?”

“Enough!” Vertex commanded, slapping the ground hard with his tail. “I’m not the one wasting precious time here; it’s already almost the end of the third day since we started this training! You don’t have time to make excuses! If you truly want to help the Dragon Council find the real thief of the Orb so you can walk freely, then stop trying to avoid taking blame for your ineptitude with magic and control it and your anger already!”

Draycos said nothing and just stared at Vertex in silence for a few moments, his eyeballs threatening to pop out of their sockets.

“What?” Vertex growled, annoyed at this response.

“C-control my anger?” Draycos stammered. He crossed his legs and put a hand on his chin as he looked at the ground, clearly thinking hard.

Every time I summon my power, I go berserk and go all or nothing. The reason for that is because I subject myself to extreme anger every time I use it. I need to change my line of thinking whenever I do this. Instead of setting myself off by thinking about the past, maybe I should get myself fired up by thinking about how I’ll use my anger in the future…

“I think I might have an idea, Vertex,” Draycos said after a few moments of thought, looking up at the dragon towering above him. “Can you give me another one of those pills or whatever they are? I want to see if I’m right about this.”

Vertex glared at Draycos, obviously still annoyed about their verbal exchange moments before, but he still reached into a small brown leather pouch he held in his left hand and pulled out a small cube-shaped object. It looked almost exactly like a sugar cube, except it appeared to be made out of translucent pale blue glass instead of white powder. The object was a mana-restoration pill that the Managuard family created and developed about sixty years ago. They completely restored the mana of an exhausted magic user upon consumption, but the materials required to make them were rare, and they weren’t used very often due to the price. The king himself provided them with two pouches, but they had already used up one of them, which was equivalent to the price of gearing a hundred royal soldiers with brand-new armor and weapons.

Draycos opened his mouth and Vertex flicked the pill into the open mouth with pin-point accuracy. Draycos swallowed the pill without crushing it and waited as the exhaustion faded away from his muscles.

Magic in this world had a physical connection to the magic user’s body. The Magicka System was the system in which magic flowed throughout the body, and it overlapped with the bloodstream system. The larger the bloodstream system, the more magic one would have. Therefore, it was a general rule of thumb that the larger a creature was, or rather, the more blood it possessed, the more magic it could possess. That’s why the dragons in this world were so feared and respected; they were the largest civilized creatures and possessed many times more magic than any of the other races.

“I sure hope you know what you’re doing this time, Draycos,” Vertex growled as he peeked inside the pouch. “We only got about a dozen of these pills left; we can’t let any more go to waste.”

“Got it,” Draycos replied. He placed his hands on his knees and closed his eyes as he concentrated.

Up until now, I’ve only been thinking about my past and how much I hated the mistreatment I’ve received. That’s where the problem probably lies; I’ve been getting myself too worked up. If I can find an emotional state in which I’m angry enough but not so much I let my emotions get the better of me…

A smoky black and blue aura visibly appeared around Draycos’s body, but Vertex noticed that it wasn’t nearly as intense as it has been in previous attempts.

Concentrate. Draycos could feel the anger and resentment begin to creep into his heart as he continued to work himself up. The aura was slowly growing denser and darker. Focus. Don’t forget the reason you’re getting yourself angry for. Don’t think about the past; just focus on what you’ll do in the future. If I lose control now, I won’t be able to do anything in the future. Relax, and yet get angry...That sounded so stupid, I can’t believe I just thought that to myself. Never mind that; just don’t lose control…

After about a minute or so, Draycos slowly opened his eyes when he heard Vertex clapping. There was a relieved smile on Vertex’s face when Draycos looked up at him.

“Finally,” Vertex groaned. “You’re not blasting off completely like you have been till this point. What happened? What did you do differently this time?”

Draycos checked to see if the black-blue aura still enshrouded his body and stood up before answering Vertex’s question. “Up until now, I got myself worked up over my past and all the crap I’ve dealt with,” he responded, dusting his hands off on his pants. “I think that’s where the problem was; anyone who’s had a life like mine would have no way of not getting pissed off if they stewed over it. So, I thought about what I might do in the future.”

“Huh?” Vertex was perplexed upon hearing this. “I don’t understand. Are you saying you just thought about the anger you might experience in the future instead of what you’ve already experienced in the present or past?”

“I guess so. Honestly, I don’t really get it myself.”

What the hell? I can’t make heads or tails of what this brat is saying. He doesn’t even know what he’s saying, either. Vertex shook his head to rid himself of these thoughts, as they were liable to just bring about a headache if he continued to think about it.

“Either way, you’ve finally managed to not let all your magic blow out at once after summoning it,” Vertex announced as the aura around Draycos’s body faded away. Vertex checked the sun’s progress in the sky to see how much time they had left for the day. “Let’s spend the rest of the day repeating what you just did so you don’t forget the sensation of it, and then I’ll have Zero join us tomorrow to help you learn some basic Enhancement Class techniques. Learning Conjuration Class skills would be too much to ask for in one day, especially with your skill level.”

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?” Draycos retorted. Vertex looked at him and cracked a smug smile.

“It means exactly what you think it means. You have no talent with magic.”

“Shut it.”

And so things went on like this until the sun set and Draycos’s third day of training came to an end, marking the results of his first bit of progress in learning to use magic.