Chapter Eight

Chapter VIII

My head was aching too much. I closed my eyes tightly. I didn’t want to see my surroundings. What if I’d end up in another world? No. After a few seconds which felt like years, my head stopped spinning. I felt a solid ground beneath me but my eyes will still tightly shut. I heard nothing for a minute.

“You do know you could open your eyes already,” I heard Darnell’s voice and I smiled as I opened my eyes. I unconsciously let out a sigh of relief. “I’m shocked. You got in.” Darnell told me. I looked around and saw Blaze.

“Y-your eyes aren’t green anymore.” I stuttered. What was going on with the change of their eye colors? Did my eye color change, too?

“What?” he said shocked.

“They’re light brown, too.” I told him. I was actually expecting someone to say my eyes were lighter than its usual color.

“Wow. Looks like something’s going on with us that we don’t know.” Darnell said.

“So, should we get started?” I asked and they both nodded. I let them do whatever they needed to do. I asked Darnell to teach Blaze the simplest magic first. Even the simplest magic for Goronians look like it’s so hard and powerful, well, Darnell did it like that. He said that it would make your opponent distracted for a while. That was the simplest he could think of.

I was happy that Blaze was able to do it right away.

“That ought to keep your opponent distracted for a while and then you could do some other things while he’s distracted.”

“I wish I could do some magic. It all looks so awesome and I really want to help.” I said once we all decided to go back to my world.

“Well, it’s not yet too late, right? I know it’s silly but, why don’t we try and let you do it?” Blaze suggested. I looked at Darnell and he nodded. Blaze went to the corner where I was earlier.

“Don’t you guys even use magic wands or anything?”I asked as we went to the place where Blaze and Darnell trained. Darnell laughed. That was the first time I saw him laugh, he would usually smirk or let out a silent and small one but this time, he really laughed. “What?”

“We don’t use that. Do books in your world say that magicians use magic wands?”

“No, but wizards do.” I said, smiling. He mouthed a “whatever” and asked me to stand up straight.

“Okay. First off, you should relax. This is kind of silly but think of happy thoughts,” he said and so I did. “Calm down, relax… close your eyes. You should be determined to distract your enemy. Repeat this in your mind: To distract,” I did exactly everything that Darnell asked me to do. But I have a problem, distract isn’t the word in my head; to hurt is. “Now do exactly what Blaze did earlier.” Darnell asked me. I did. I pointed my ring, middle and index finger at Darnell as I opened my eyes. All shades of brown swirls went out of my fingers and it blew Darnell away. Maybe 50 feet away from me… and counting. I was shocked so I put my hand down. Just then, Darnell stopped flying away from me. I looked at Blaze; he was looking at me weirdly. Blaze and I ran to Darnell. Adrenaline was rushing through my body so I ran so fast. Faster than I could imagine.

“S**t, s**t. Darnell! Are you okay?” I said as I helped him stand up. He looked like a bully just beat him up. “Oh my! I’m so sorry! I didn’t know what I was doing. And I�"” I was panicking too much that words couldn’t stop coming out of my mouth, but Darnell cut me off.

“Nerice, Nerice… It’s okay! I’m fine!” he said as he stood up, still with our help.

“No you’re not! You look terrible! It’s my entire fault.”

“No, it’s okay. I could heal myself. Remember, magician?” he said smugly. “Or if you want you could heal me yourself.” He smirked at me. I felt Blaze glare at him.

“How do you heal anyways?” I asked.

“Same, only you think of ‘to heal’ and you don’t actually hurt me.” He joked and I laughed. I couldn’t stop myself at all. I did the same. I tried my best to think of to heal and I was able to do it. I pointed my three fingers to Darnell and I could see a transparent ball appear out of my fingers and it swirled around Darnell’s body. Darnell and Blaze looked at me weirdly.

“What?” I asked them, totally not understanding their look.

“Do you know what you just did?” They said in unison. I shook my head, mouthing the word “no” shyly.

“First, you just threw me away 50 feet from you… and counting if you didn’t put your hand down and you just healed me… to much healing though,” I gave him a confused look. “You’re just human and you’ve got really great magic! Magic a lot of Goronians can’t do. Are you sure you don’t have a Goronian blood in you?”

“I swear I don’t have Goronian blood of something, unless my mother is and I didn’t know. Is there a way so we would know if someone is Goronian?” I asked them.

“Yeah. What’s your mother’s name? Full name.” Darnell asked me.

“Maria Cleofe R. Lopez.” I said as Darnell mouthed the name and closed his eyes. After a few seconds, he opened his eyes.

“No. No one in your bloodline is a Goronian. It’s weird, how you could do that. That never happened. A pureblood human being able to do Goronian magic.” Darnell explained.

“Well maybe it had something to do with your eyes. I mean, she was the only one able to change your eye color, right?” We all agreed to that. That signaled the end of this day for us. We decided to go back to my world already. We all went back using the portal, this time I went in first, followed by Blaze and then by Darnell.

“I’ll go home now.” I said as a farewell to both of them.

“Wait, I’ll bring you home. Wait for me outside.” Blaze said. I nodded and went out of the room. I tried to listen to what they were going to talk about.

“Darnell.” Blaze called out.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t think that just because I allowed you to train me and that I decided to help you with this Goronia thing, we’re already okay. I’m doing this for Nerice and my mother.” Blaze said.

“I totally understand that…brother.” With that, Blaze opened the door and I hurriedly stood up straight, looking like I was just innocently waiting. Blaze brought me home and luckily, Gena and Gerald were nowhere to be found.

“Are you mad at me?” I asked Blaze before he left.

“Why would I be?”

“You just left me all alone earlier.”

“I’m sorry about that. I don’t know what got into me,” he sighed. “But everything I said earlier was all true.” He smiled. I nodded as we waved goodbye at each other.

This was the most surreal day I ever had. 

Author's Note

Shortest chapter in the whole novel... so far.