17 I just want to be normal

The Academy’s clock struck midnight. Ray was sitting on a sofa, stroking Rainbows’ fur. Even though the cat couldn’t sense his hand, she still seemed to enjoy it. He sighed. He had arrived barely one day ago, yet he already wanted to leave this place.

‘Hear me, Ray,’ his mom had told him back in Europe, ‘it will only last two months and you will meet with very interesting people, people with great futures coming from Amazonia, Starland, and the North-Wing, young people like you that will become the next generation of Heroes, maybe even the next generation who will protect our Rulers and protect the world. If you come, you will see that being among the elite is the best way to lead the life you want. If you close a door, you might regret it afterwards. I’m saying that for your own good, because I love you and want you to make friends and stop dreading your power. Just go see them train with your own eyes, and then you’ll decide what you want to do.’

His parents’ ways of thinking were so different yet both so far away from his son’s…

Very interesting people? There were just bossy, pampered, and lunatic people coming from great families from the three continents, nothing more.

Protect the world? Ray couldn’t care less and doubted that those brats would ever do anything good for the world anyway. Even though they tried hard to make people think they had authority all over the world, the Nyomin, the WHO, and the World Government weren’t that great at all. They were just an alliance, whose ties were probably way more unsteady than those of the Dark Alliance.

No, being with the elite meant nothing: they were people just like anyone. What was his mom even thinking?

“Close a door?” he muttered in the empty room. He smirked at Rainbows. “Ha.”

Life is full of doors we close and open. What is it to regret? What if I just want to be normal?

Make friends, she said? In two months? Did she think friends can be found under the pebbles, like worms? Also, wasn’t she the one who had practically forced him to get on a train and enroll at an experimental high school in Europe? She didn’t even seem to think that his son could have had friends in Farskyer City. Well, he had only one. But that was enough.

If his mom had hoped that his son would suddenly bloom and stop being shy… well, he wouldn’t. That was how he was. He had once read that, if everyone stayed true to themselves, then the world would be better and funnier. He believed in that. And he wouldn’t start doing things he didn’t want to just because others did them.

That was the theory. But it was hard not to go astray once in a while.

Sometimes, Ray envied Armen’s spontaneity. It seemed as if he didn’t need to think before making decisions, as if he didn’t fear the possibility that he might act out of character. His lips went up.

Introverted people think about things too much.

He left the sofa and went to open the window.

The Phoenix Academy was built directly on the orange Crystal supporting the whole Phoenix. It was said that Phoenix had been a continental city amidst the desert before the Big Blend. Now it had almost turned into a real phoenix crossing the Blazing Sea. Independent orange “wings” were flying on it, each of them supporting a house, or a classroom, or even gardens. Ray’s room was one of the highest, and he could even see the city’s lights on the main island. It was a huge city. The ‘phoenix turtle’, as they commonly called the Crystal under it, was moving on the ocean, its indestructible paws causing earthquakes every few hours as they touched the seabed and kept going around the Big Triangle Stream. Every year, it went towards London, then Buenos Aires, then Farskyer City, then started again. If anything, Phoenix Island was the most interesting thing he had seen since his arrival.

Well, the Academy’s architecture was impressive too, as well as the hanging stairs between the flying wings.

The regular students were on vacation for now, and all the classrooms were empty. As for the houses, they had been occupied by the Nyomin trainees. Their number was lower than he had expected. They were twenty-eight: one from Europe, two from Phoenix City, four from the North-Wing continent, twelve from Starland, and ten from Amazonia, of which eight were from the Farskyer Peninsula.

Well, it was an experimental program, after all. The Nyomin had likely kept the numbers low on purpose.

A fresh breeze swirled through the window into the room. Ray took a deep breath.

Six hundred meters. That was the maximum distance limit from which he could reach Armen through the necro-bond without any obstacle. He had checked it several times with Armen before departing—that was far from being as great as his dad’s capabilities, but it should be enough for now: although Yuutow Island was about six square kilometers, the Academy was built only about five hundred meters away from the main island. The necro-bond would only have to cross a steep slope covered with sponge-trees and three hundred meters of water… Ray couldn’t possibly reach the water station on the main island, but he knew that, as soon as Armen got to the beach in front of the Phoenix Turtle’s Neck, he would sense him.

That is, if Armen had successfully passed the examination, which was possible but not likely.

He looked up at the stars, twinkling in that vast and terrifying darkness vault. In comparison with Farskyer City, it wasn’t cold, due to some sort of mini climate that migrated with the island. Being so sensitive to cold, Armen would have liked it… if he had been still alive, that is.

Ray’s face darkened. He turned his eyes away from the stars and the crescent moon, shaking his head. That night, a fearful nightmare had haunted his dreams. He had had nightmares about darkness ever since he was young, but the ones he was having since the end of November were different. He dreaded his dreams…

Ever since he had seen Armen die before his very eyes.

He would always try not to think about it during the day, but just as he had no control over his power, he couldn’t do anything about his dreams. A throat cut in half, blood all over the place, and the inert body of his best friend devoid of any sign of life… Things like that would traumatize anyone.

He had realized a lot of things since then. How easily life could be destroyed. How valuable friendship was. How mortifying was not being able to control a power that could have saved his friend’s life. How frustrating it was not to master necromancy as he wanted to. Also, he had promised himself to find a way to free an undead from its master’s leash. Was it even possible? Makler Vod’s books seemed to insinuate it was, but according to his dad, no one had done it so far: ‘Giving your familiar its freedom is a nice idea, very revolutionary, as expected of my beloved son, but I’d advise you against researching about it, Ray: necromancy is dangerous and shouldn’t be taken lightly. Also, even if Armen would be able to survive without you, undeads can’t sense anything, they don’t have survival instincts. What if he were to become a Fury? You wouldn’t be able to do anything against it. He would be as good as dead, if not worse, for he would most likely become a murderer by draining people’s lifeforce. He would go crazy. Just accept it: a necromancer and a familiar are tied with sacred bonds, and the one in charge of them is the necromancer, Ray: you decided to revive him as an undead. Complete resurrection is not possible, and you know it. Your only way to free him is to teach him necromancy. And even with that, he won’t be totally free, just like Uncle Adrian. Remember there is a hierarchy in necromancy. Masters are masters; familiars are familiars. The law of nature cannot be altered.’

All his words made sense. They were rational. Ray was well aware of that. Yet…

How could he possibly teach Armen necromancy? His friend did show some interest in the books Ray was reading, but he would always say something like ‘whoa, and you understand all those scribbles? I don’t get a single thing! Haha, thank goodness I don’t have to learn anything of this or I would die… Wait, I’m already dead, hahaha!’.

Yeah, there was no way he could get Armen to learn advanced levels of necromancy. He would rather search for another method than make Armen struggle endlessly for something that didn’t even seem to bother him.

As a gust of wind entered the room, he suddenly felt a tingle in his mind, and he forgot everything he was thinking.

He fastened his eyes on a group of lights that had just appeared on the main island’s shore. He held his breath.

The necro-bond had been relinked. Armen was there! Should he try to speak to him despite the distance? But he didn’t want to startle him… He began nurturing the bond, wondering impatiently how Armen was doing. How did he even pass the theory test? No, but his hardships weren’t over yet. The Nyomin trainees had spent the whole afternoon discussing what sort of training they should do to welcome the ‘Independents’. They had decided by vote that they would have them cross the Phoenix Turtle’s Neck to reach Yuutow Island, then would divide them among the houses: Starland, North-Wing, Amazonia, Phoenix—the sole European trainee was excluded from the competition. At first, Amazonian trainees insisted that they should be the ones taking care of them, but then things got complicated, and they just agreed to let the Independent trainees go with whoever caught their badge and took it to the Academy.

That was just hazing. Ray had kept silent during the meeting, but internally he had been gaping at those ‘elite’ trainees who were speaking about the Independent trainees as if they were just some lackeys, some extra pawns.

Anyway, he could know where Armen exactly was thanks to their necro-bond, so he didn’t worry too much. He would just have to find him first and sneak back to the Academy with him.

Rainbows meowed.

“Yes, he’s here,” Ray said. “Your brother is here.”

He stopped as he was patting the cat’s head. Did he just call Armen a cat’s brother? Geez… The fact that he had to nurture both of them the same way was affecting his way of thinking… That was dangerous.

“Wait here, Rainbows.”

She looked at him intently, wagging her tail with slow movements. The cat could understand some of his orders, not really through words, but through their necro-bond. He shut the door behind and started going down those strange staircases that connected the flying wings like a spiderweb.

When he reached the main square, almost all the trainees were already here, waiting for their instructor Addison the Viral to give the start signal. Among them, the North-Wing trainees stood out: a tall and muscled four-armed human, a woman in a suit, and a twelve-year-old kid in a white lab coat were bodyguarding a blond girl. Ray had suspected her identity from the start, but after the meeting in the afternoon, now he was sure: that obese, whimsy, pampered girl was none other than the daughter of the Nyomin’s director Lovecryce. She was the reason why they had kept the location of the training secret until the last minute; not only that; she may be the biggest reason why that experimental training had been organized.

Mom could have told me about that…

“Oi, Ray!” Lei Sunclaw waved at him, sauntering closer. “Did you see Linah and Axel? No? Those guys… They will be late for the hunt. By the way,” he smiled, “I guess you’re after Armen’s badge, aren’t you? I’m not gonna let you have it.”

Ray stiffened.

“Why?”

“I want him.”

“You can’t have him. He’s not an object.”

“Mm. Anyway, if I get his badge, I’ll take good care of him. I’m curious about his body… Aaaaargh!”

“What did you say?!” Linah had just sent a punch at his brother. She menacingly passed her arms over his shoulders. “Curious about whose body? Did you finally hit that age already?”

“What do you mean, already? By the way, that hurt!”

“I told you to stop bothering Ray.”

“Aya-aya, I wasn’t.”

The two siblings were bickering at each other when, suddenly, Ray felt the necro-bond vanish.

He turned pale.

The hell? What does that mean? Armen is supposed to be getting closer, not farther! What’s going on?

Then, the instructor raised his hand.

“Trainees! The badges hunt…” he lowered his hand shouting: “STARTS!”

As some Nyomin trainees rushed to the exit, excited like children going to a treasure hunt, Ray stayed behind, puzzled.

Where on earth did Armen go?