Vallen: The Marking (Vallen series #1)

Chapter 16

We didn't get lucky until the beginning of a snowy December. We had finally located the Welt family in the giant book. It had taken up most of our time, that was the time we didn't spend in class or under a massive pile of homework. We got to hear most of our classmates rave about all sorts of stuff they got to do, while we stayed in the library to look through dusty old books.

"Look!" Alaric pointed. "He's still alive!" I looked over and saw that he had indeed found him. It looked like Gregory and his wife Penelope had six children here, but moved back to Germany.

"We can't leave school without getting sick." Alaric pointed out the obvious. "We'll have to write to him."

In the meantime, not a lot had happened in our gift searching class. One person in our class, a boy named Roy Lum, had the gift of extra strength. Everyone felt sorry for him. He seemed pretty down for the rest of the week too, but once he started in gift enhancement he seemed to be in better spirits. He said the class was amazing, he got to meet other students with the same gift and even learned how to make it better and better. What had once seemed like a horrible situation now turned into a blessing, he had a very strong connection to his gift. If he trained hard enough he could really make something of himself.

Four more people found their gift. One student had the gift of fire, two girls had the gift of ice and the last person could make other people levitate off the ground. It was so cool to see, but still only a level two gift because it was so common.

This week we started with level three gifts. Some people still thought they were too low to hope for, but I was starting to think that level three or four would be right up my alley. Common enough so I could learn how to control them easily, but not as low as level one or two. Eldon told me it was better to hope for more. Both he and Darius had level four gifts, and his parents never shut up about it. Their parents' gifts weren't a whole lot better than theirs. But it was 'the way the family pride works' according to him.

After language class, we stayed behind to talk to Professor Klasson. She helped us once she heard we were planning to write a letter to someone in Germany. She just assumed that it was a relative of Alaric's, and we didn't bother to correct her.

She told us that there was a special kind of paper in the service room on the fourth floor. The paper had the school logo stamped on it, so Alaric's distance relative could realize we were legit. We thanked her a thousand times and made our way up to the fourth floor.

We walked through the graveyard, where we could hear people cry this time, and passed all the offices. The hallway ended in two dark wooden doors, which had 'private chambers' painted above it in golden letters. It was where the teachers lived when they weren't making our lives miserable.

"Ten coins if you go in there." Alaric said to me. Coins? I hadn't even thought about the Vallen currency. Who was even paying for my education?

"Though as tempting as that may be, I prefer to keep my head on my shoulders thank you very much." I responded. The door right before the private chambers was the one we were supposed to have. The room was filled with enough papers to last a lifetime, as well as pens, ink and other school necessities. However, we were looking for paper with the school logo on it, which we couldn't find.

"Why not just go for this?" Alaric said, grabbing a blank piece of paper.

"Because," I said, pushing a table out of the way so I could inspect the rest of the room. "It was like Professor Klasson said. Anyone could write a letter pretending to be me. If he has any brain cells in his head he'll see the school logo and realize that I found out about my parents." I accidentally knocked over a pile of boxes that contained erasers. Hundreds of them went flying through the room.