Guardians of Plaxas

Chapter the Sixth: Opal

"First," Carrie instructs. "We must find your source of magic. This may come from a river, the ocean, trees, people, buildings, metal, dirt, light, darkness, almost anything. But with your source of magic, we'll know how to teach you and what to teach you. Then we can get you started in training,"

Beside me, Kaitlynn raises her hand. Without being called on, she says, "So, how do we figure out what your source of power is?"

Carrie looks at her. "Good question, and one that many people ask. We must simply test. We'll test with earth, with the ocean, with all the basics, and if we still haven't found it, we'll test the harder things, like love. Hope, joy, belief. Even war, and death and doom."

I shudder at those. War, death, and doom? Why would you ever want to train that?

"We'll test you each with different people, until we find what you respond to the most. We'll begin today and test ten materials a day. Any more than that and you'll all be exhausted. Your trainers know how to handle this. And we begin now,"

At least 100 people flow from a door to the left of us. They all wear the usual uniform of the Chosen, a short brown vest over a black button down shirt, with white pants. The uniform looks ridiculous, and I'm sort of dreading having to wear them.

We're all split up so that we each have a trainer. There's people from ten different towns here, with all different personalities, some like Sydney, who are snobby and stuck up, some who are nervous and shy, like Vernon, some who are gossipy like Gabriella, and so on. What I'm saying is, there's so many different kinds of people here.

My trainer leads me out into the courtyard in the middle of our school. We have a courtyard. In our school. This is amazing!

There are several other groups in the courtyard, but they're spread out, so we have enough privacy.

The trainer, a middle-aged woman with blue hair, bends to the ground to pick up a handful of dirt. She holds it out to me as it trickles between her fingers. "We'll start with this," she says.

I look at her. "W-what do I do with it?"

"Try to make something happen! Some sort of magic thing. Try to make it move, make it jump out of my hand! You're a Chosen, you'll know what to do!"

But am I a Chosen?

I concentrate on the dirt, hard. It jumps a little to the left in the woman's hand, and my heart jumps along with it. I've done it!

But the lady tosses the dirt to the ground. "Nope. Let's try water,"

She takes a water bottle from her waist pack and opens it, pouring some into a small divot in the rock between us.

"Make it flow," she tells me.

The water sloshes a little, but nothing else.

Material after material is rejected. Some, nothing happens. Others, the material moves a little bit, or more than a bit. But the lady insists we keep trying.

Across the courtyard, I watch other kids use their magic to create a wave from a puddle, or create a sculpture of stone using only their mind. They create whirlwinds from leaves, or spears from ice.

The sky grows dark as the sun begins to set. My trainer and I are the only ones left in the courtyard. She's getting tired and grumpy. I'm annoyed, too. Why can't my stupid powers just reveal themselves?

Someone emerges from the other side of the courtyard, and when I get closer I realize that it's Carrie/Nails. She wobbles on the cobblestone in her high heels.

When she gets closer, my trainer nods her head at Carrie. "Ma'am, we haven't found anything yet! It's hopeless! It's like she has no magic,"

I wince. Maybe it was a mistake to come here in Ruby's place. Maybe Ruby would have done better here than I am. Maybe I should tell Carrie right now.

Carrie shrugs. "It'll come along in time. We usually have at least one person like this." she kneels down and takes my hand, looking me right in the eye. "I promise you, your power will come. We'll just have to be patient. Now come along and join everyone for dinner,"

I follow her to the school dining hall, a vast mass of people currently. I search for my friends, but it's in vain until Carrie....I don't even know, but at one moment I'm standing next to her and the next I'm sitting next to my friends.

Bella jumps as I appear beside her, dropping a piece of bread into her soup. "Oh man, Ruby you scared me! Is that your power? Teleportation?"

I think for a moment that it could be, and I brighten. But as I look over at the teacher's table, Carrie winks at me, and my heart sinks.

"Hey, watch this!" Kaitlynn cries. She holds her hand above Bella's bowl of soup and the bread slowly floats out of it. It hovers just above the bowl for a second and then drops back in, splashing Bella with soup again.

"Your power is splashing soup everywhere?" Bella asks, wiping her face with a napkin grumpily.

Kaitlynn laughs. "No it's magnetic force! I can pull basically anything from anywhere if I concentrate hard enough on the object!"

Bella scoffs, but she looks a little jealous.

"Watch my power!" she cries. She holds her arm out in front of her, and suddenly her hand falls off. Everyone near us screams, including me. Bella smiles and lets her hand wiggle around the table just to freak us out before grabbing it and reattaching it.

"So what's your power, Ruby?" Kaitlynn asks me.

"I-I don't have one yet," I say. "We couldn't figure something out," I feel weak from my day's training.

Bella pats me on the back reassuringly. "It's okay, Ruby. They'll figure something out. I'm sure you'll find a power,"

And I feel much better.