COMPLETED Remembrance of Self | Fantasy | LGBTQ

Chapter 14

The red sister hid Haiden well among the bloody shadows that stretched along the courtyard. He crept crouched down and pressed tight along the walls of the once white castle, now crimson with bloodlust. Haiden gently brushed the waist high flowering shrubs that guarded the ancient colossal building. The rustle gave him comfort as not even the wind dared dance on a night like this.

Stop that, Screech warned. He'll hear us.

I can't help it! Haiden pulled his hands from the shrub. Watching closely as Master Uligarth patrolled the stone tiled ways, several lightstones circling him, he had lost his favorite lamp he'd carry on patrols in favor of levitating the stones at the Headmistress' insistence as she shamelessly and publicly berated the old man in front of the entire Academy as it being too pedestrian. As always, even in the delightful tempered warmth of Spring the old man was a ball of blankets. Haiden never understood why he prefered the blankets over simply Wielding himself warm but to each his own he supposed. Were the students of the Academy not accustomed to the unusual senile man they would have surely passed him for a creature of the night. His sagged face riddled with wrinkles poked slightly from the blankets in an everlasting frown of displeasure. I'm nervous. Haiden's stomach lurched within awaking the sudden urge to visit the lavatory even though just moments before leaving the comfort of his room he made sure his bowels were empty, just as Screech suggested.

Haiden sighed in relief as Master Uligarth passed making a sharp turn to the left around the corner towards the inner courtyard. That meant he would circle back to this exact stop from the gardens in roughly one hour.

You're certain this is the spot? Haiden nervously asked.

Yes. Screech certain. The creature looked up at the wide tall windows at the very top of the castle. Even Haiden recognized them from when he was in the Headmistress' office, but something in him wanted to find a reason to abort the mission which they painstakingly planned in the course of the last couple of weeks. It had taken Screech multiple nights to scout out Uligarth's nightly route around the grounds and make sure that the Headmistress was not in office that night. It turned out she was quite a workaholic. Only leaving her office when it was strictly necessary. Screech had noted her secluded used bed behind the one of the back bookcases. But, as luck had it, Screech overheard Headmistress Helena discussing her plans over a Bonding stone about meeting someone at midnight at Devil's Tongue tavern in the center of town. It had never occurred to Haiden that Bonding stones could be used in such fashion and what was even more out of the ordinary than the ever so scluse and mysterious Headmistress was meeting someone in the dead of night outside of Academy grounds. He had never thought of the woman as someone who would sneak about. He wondered what business she had with the mysterious person, but nothing came to mind. He knew little to nothing about that terrifyingly powerful GrandMaster wielder as had found out from Rwoy.

Just then, as if on cue, Haiden saw a cloaked figure hurring on the stone tiled ways towards the tall metal gates.

Coast clear, Screech said after the figure was well outside the Academy grounds.

Are you sure this is safe, Screech? I know we practiced and all that, but it's one thing floating a few inches above my bed and another thing going a few hundred feet into the air. Haiden clenched his palm over his stomach. He looked up at the window and the distance seemed ever growing giving him slight vertigo.

Yes! Screech confident. You can do it. Just like practiced. Look Screech. Follow Screech. It said and with a wiggle of its deformed appendage floated past Haiden towards the window.

Haiden tried to calm himself as much as he could and closed his eyes to concentrate. He drew upon his reserves of Fios and felt the static prickle his skin like a gentle whisper of power. Just like how Screch had shown him, instead of sending his energy outward and away, he sent it inward first, then around himself, enveloping his body in a safe cocoon of energy. At first Haiden was reluctant to believe Screech that he could fly, or rather levitate, but it had seemed that there were actually multiple ways to achieve this incredible feat. Even if he had levitated objects before, levitating objects had at its core the concept of using your body weight as an anchor and If the object in question was heavier than your weight, levitation was simply impossible, levitating oneself was an entirely different application of Wielding. After deliberation on the nature of the mission at hand, they had settled on the most minimal and silent way to do so, which incidentally was the hardest. Haiden had a very difficult time to understand the basics of what he was doing. This was by far the most complicated spell that relied on concepts he had never even heard of before. Screech soon realised his disjointed way of speaking was not suitable for in depth explanations and frustration bubbled within the both of them. He had to rely on the same technique he had used back when he showed Haiden how to conjure light. Though he feared he would dissipate as it took took much energy, Screech was reassured by Haiden to take as much as he needed to maintain his form. Slowly, but surely, Haiden began to understand the concepts that Screech was feeding directly into his mind. It was an exhausting ordeal for both Haiden and Screech, It took a total of seven days of late nights and canceled plans to finally hover a few inches from the ground, but only lasted seconds. The hardest concept to grasp was that energy carried different charges, negative and positive, carrying itself over through motes, though identical in every way regardless of charge, the energy would interact in so many different and strange ways with itself and the world around it depending on the charge. It baffled him how the brilliant Master Wielders had no inkling of this concept even though it seemed they toyed with the two charges in spells without even realising it. When he finally wrapped his mind around it, it seemed so easy. Such an elegant solution. The spell that would allow Haiden to levitate used the repulsion and attraction properties of the two charges of energy to supply lift. Same charges would repel each other while opposite charges would attract. He would then control direction and speed using his body and various methods of propulsion be it shifting the currents of air around him, force blasts, pure energy release, and even controlled explosions to achieve actual flight. First, Haiden needed to surround himself with negative energy and slowly push it against the ground which always had a negative charge of natural energy which would repel his own same charged energy, while the sky above held positive natural energy to attract. He incrementally increased in intensity as he maintained concentration on the negative charge of his cocoon of Fios. Although in theory, once understood it sounded simple enough, although in reality the execution was quite difficult. Changing polarities of your energy was an intense concentration exercise. Fios is by nature positive. It felt wrong to change polarity and it was hard to maintain. But once he achieved a constant flow of negatively charged energy his feet left the ground. The next thing he had to do was to make sure he remained steady on course without too much turbulence. One wrong push in the wrong direction would ruin his concentration making him plummet to the ground from a few hundred feet. Haiden didn't yet know how to control the aircurents around him, which would have been the best option and most silent of all, so instead he opted for gentle bursts of force blasts to keep steady.