After a moment of still silence the meditating man eventually replied. His deep, firm voice soft and rustic...

Yet he didn't move, didn't raise his head or acknowledge her presence, he simply replied.

Silenced followed, for another quiet moment that was all that was said.
The defiant wind-flow soon slowed and eventually died down.
Then the younger man with tattooed markings on his face stirred from his position sprawled out on the floor. His wide eyes roll from the sky to the newcomer, suddenly he sat upright, looking at the girl he spoke with a gentle smile.

"Brunhilde, that's an interesting name. What brings you here?"

"Avy" he says reaching out his hand in casual greeting. "And just how old are you?" he adds in with curiosity.

@Azereiah

Brunhilde's pen made a wild flurry of markings across the journal page it was opened to - detailed sketches, descriptions, feelings, sounds. A volume of information condensed into an image, with all relevant knowledge strewn across it in an extremely easy to understand manner. She seemed slightly unfocused as she wrote, hardly seeming to care at all about the older man's very short response, except for that it revealed a small sampling of his personality.

Many moments passed as she completed her initial reaction entry, and she flipped back to a much later page, where further notes were scrawled in relation to the current day. She had been doing this every hour of every day for years, and the practice combined with the subtle enhancements via wind manipulation that sped her pen made it quite obvious. Further page flipping occurred at Avarius's first question and she scanned the pages almost instantly - and her eyes lit up with a vague sense of sadness for a split second before her smile reappeared.

She looked up again, seemingly looking through Avarius, and responded.

"Education, mostly. I'm from up north, family sent me here so I could learn in a less hostile environment."

Brunhilde took Avarius's hand and gave a firm and friendly handshake. The whirlwind around her hand weakened as she did so, but Avarius could still feel a very heavy pressure from it regardless. Were he to look, he would notice, in very ornate red lettering upon a white spiral, the message 'Check the Journal' on the back of her hand.

At his last question, Brunhilde flipped the journal's pages backwards with a small puff of air, and a look of mild surprise crossed her face. "Seventeen, apparently."

@Azereiah

Avarius smiled, both amused and interested by the happenings before him. He watched intently, his curiosity ticking over silently in his head.
"Mostly?" he questions, pushing her answer further.

"Well then if you are ready to start you are going to need to free yourself of all your things first!" he gestures towards a nice spot near the tree. If Brunhilde tries to keep any 'non-necessary' items Avarius will give her a menacing glance but only push it once.

Avarius crosses his legs in front of himself and looks to Brunhilde with all his attention.
"alright then, can you please demonstrate to me all of your elemental skills?"
He watches without judgement giving the occasional nod of encouragement.

---

"Enough." Spoke the monk, breaking his silence and interrupting Brunhilde's last display. He lifts his head, the glint of his eyes piecing the shadows cast by his hood.
"Atop the tower is your supplies for the class, you will need them for the first lesson."

Avarius raises a hand with his eyebrows as he tries to catch Brunhilde's attention to share a thought. First he nods agreeing to Vallen's statement.
"Sorry, I should have mentioned it before, as a first year student of 'Air' you may only take the stairs of the tower, use none of the other methods."
He looks up towards the tall tower soaring in the sky. Seriousness takes his face.
"That is one of the few rules I must be adamant about."

"Mostly?"

The gears turned in Brunhilde's head, each click sending a jolt of information and understanding. She didn't need to refer to the journal (as much) for this one. "I also wanted to meet other people like myself. It's much easier to make new friends if people don't think you're a witch. Anyway, I'm pretty sure we're running a bit behind on schedule."

"Well then if you are ready to start you are going to need to free yourself of all your things first!"

Brunhilde placed her sack on the ground, happy to be rid of it for the time being. The stupid thing had at least a month's worth of supplies in it, courtesy of her parents, despite the fact that it was only a three day trip. She kept her journal and pen, as they were more or less a part of herself. If they didn't like it, oh well.

"alright then, can you please demonstrate to me all of your elemental skills?"

She nodded once, and first demonstrated on a loose page the degree of precision that she could attain with air manipulation by quickly and roughly sketching the tree behind them without touching the pen.

Her second display was simple hovering, three feet above the ground - completely motionless, as a further display of precision. In addendum, she created a fairly large and weak gust of wind that rustled the tree's leaves a fair bit.

"I've been working on this last one for... I think seven years or so. Maybe eight. I'm pretty sure I've hit a wall with it, though."

For the third and final display, she returned to her pack and pulled out an 8x8x2" oak panel, and aimed away from any people in the area. She tossed it high into the air, spinning it around its flat axis, and dropped into a forward stance, defensively holding her journal across her chest. As the panel dropped, she threw a single punch, striking it dead center. The sphere of air around her fist broke forwards on impact, sending a narrow spray of coarse sawdust and splinters out of the other side of the board. The piece of wood fell to the ground with a vaguely fist-shaped jagged hole in the middle and cracks running along the grain of the wood.

Before she could say anything further, she was interrupted by the older man. "Enough. Atop the tower is your supplies for the class, you will need them for the first lesson."

She stood at attention politely and nodded once.

"Sorry, I should have mentioned it before, as a first year student of 'Air' you may only take the stairs of the tower, use none of the other methods. That is one of the few rules I must be adamant about."

"Reasonable. I expect untrained students would have... 'accidents', were they to try anything faster. I'll be back shortly."

After writing their words in the journal, she retrieved her bag and stuffed the remains of the oak panel back into it, then made her way towards the tower. She spotted the base of the staircase and walked up very carefully. She wasn't used to heights, having never seen a tower in person before, so she was as careful as she possibly could be. Good god, this was a tall tower. The walk was a lot more exhausting than it should have been, owing to the forty-odd pounds of junk she carried with her.

At the top of the stairs, she came to the air elementalists' dormitories, reopened her journal, and searched for an empty bunk that appeared to be designated for first year students. Not many students were there, and there was nobody she felt such a strong urge to speak to that she would risk angering the older man near Avy. Dumping all of her unnecessary things on what she claimed as her own bed, she found that she had forgotten to ever throw away any of the beefstick wrappers she'd accrued over the past few days of traveling, and quickly stuffed them into a trash can. Sadly, the beefstick wrappers had made most of her things smell utterly delicious, and she marked in the journal that she would need to wash everything thoroughly.

She searched the dormitory for first-year students' supplies as the journal instructed her and found a single set, which she claimed and shoved into her bag. Not once did she bother examining what was in the supplies, as she trusted whoever had put the label on them. She hoped that there would be other students at the lesson when she returned, and made her way back down the stairs.

@Dark Light

"Since you appear to be my only new student this year, we can realistically focus on any aspect you choose." He said, fingering one of his wooden darts. "That is, after you've got the basics down, of course. The first step towards mastery is respect." He said, letting flames slowly creep along his arm. He started to walk away towards his office, signaling for her to follow him. "Fire is quite possibly the element most reliant on your emotions. Should you let yourself get too full of rage, it will go out of control and hurt yourself and those you care for. Should you feel reluctance, your flame will sputter and die." He continued to speak as they walked together. They got to the door that said E. Kessinger with a fire symbol below it.

He pushed the door open, and walked into the room that had large windows along one wall to flood the room with light as the day broke. Along the far wall was a display case with multiple weapons on dispay. A set of black gauntlets etched with runes, a katana paired with its dark blue sheath, a large two-handed warhammer with spikes on either end, and a curved longsword that had a long chain hanging off the pommel. "Before you ask, no, I am not a collector. It's somewhat of a tradition for the fire teachers to leave a weapon of their choice, usually a duplicate they have made of their preferred weapon, on display in this office for the following teachers to appreciate and sometimes learn from." He pulled out a drawer and took out some paper and a pen should he need to take any notes on bringing supplies for future lessons. "So, any more questions before we begin?"

@Azereiah

For a class on the element of Air the supply bags were quite heavy and came neatly stored in a backpack.
As Brunhilde approached the duo it would appear they hadn't moved or even spoke during her absence.

On her second last approaching step Avarius calls to her
"What would you like to do right now?"
At that exact same time Brunhilde will experience a split moment of disorientation, because as her foot comes down it will find no connection or friction with the ground as both feet are gently pulled out from beneath her.
There was no gust, no trip hazard, no pushing tipping force or warning yet she would find herself in a near unavoidable falling situation.

Neither teacher figure seems concerned irregardless of the outcome. Avarius does bring himself to stand and stretches out to the sky. His hair falls around his shoulders and he runs a hand over it pushing it all back except for a feathered braid.
He approaches Brunhilde, when she is gathered, and places his hands on her shoulders, with a quizzical look he states, as if only just realising.
"You are quite short." he then proceeds to test her weight by lifting her to her tippy toes.

@Dark Light

Regardless of the weight of the class supplies, it was still not terribly much compared to having carried what amounted to a waterproof sleeping bag, twenty cans of beans, an absolutely silly amount of books, wooden panels, twelve sets of clothing, a brick in a pillowcase (for self defense), a sack of rice, and seven years' worth of medical paperwork bound in a locked binder - all of which were now sitting on her bed up in the tower. Brunhilde was still bothered by the weight, as she had already forgotten what carrying the previous luggage was like - or indeed that she even had brought luggage.

Apparently she was already in class, and was supposed to meet the air teacher back by the tree she had supposedly been at previously. The journal never lied, so despite having only the vaguest clue of what was really going on, she made her way there. She recognized both faces as those in the journal anyway - the younger one being marked as 'Avy'. Strange name.

As she approached the two men, she heard the younger of the two call out to her. "What would you like to do right now?"
At the same moment, she lost her balance, and not-so-gracefully fell forwards mid-step. A flash of confusion broke her concentration on what she was trying to do that moment, and she realized she was falling before she could identify what had happened. She quickly formed the cushion of air she had spent so much time hovering on beneath her on the way down, and narrowly avoided faceplanting into the ground. One of the cyclones around her hands neatly clipped an inch of grass before she stabilized her motion and pushed herself upright with the air cushion.

She took her last few steps and brushed herself off, this time opting to walk on her own air, actively attempting to prevent such mishaps in the future. Her face was red with embarrassment as she placed her class supplies on the ground and scribbled the happenings down in the journal, underlining the phrase "Watch your step, moron" three times.

"I think... I would like to stay upright, sir. Yes, I think that would be the perfect thing to do right now. Maybe I should learn to be a little bit more aware of what's going on around me, while I'm at it."

Judging by her tone of voice, she seemed to be rather annoyed - but she kept herself in check, and stood at attention as her old martial arts teachers had taught her up north, her right hand behind her back and her left clutching the journal.

"You are quite short."

Brunhilde's eye twitched at the observation, but she remained at attention as Avarius checked her mass. She was somewhat used to it, though she couldn't quite remember why. Her doctor up north did this sort of thing occasionally, as the scale in his office had been an older, purely mechanical model, and didn't properly register under a certain weight. "The book adds twenty-five pounds."

@Azereiah

"The book adds twenty-five pounds."

"Yes" he replies with a soft laugh.
"and if you are never going to part with it we may as well consider it a part of you." Avy then let's go of her and takes a few steps back.

"So it seems like most, your first grasp on the element is 'guidance'." there was a soft tone in his voice indistinguishable between disdain or disappointment. "Unlike what the others might teach my theories are not noted or recorded in any 'registered' books. I focus on the three aspects of elementslism... But that radicalism is for another day."
Avarius looks to the floor and begins to pace. Seemingly stuck or merely contemplating how to proceed. Thoughts having wondered too far ahead. His eyes dart to his still silent friend and back to Brunhilde

"Tell me as best you can, when you hover what is happening and how are you doing it? Just then for example, softening that fall."

@Dark Light

Brunhilde continues standing at attention as Avarius speaks, and flips the book open when he mentions three aspects of elemental manipulation, quickly scribbling down his words, and a few small footnotes.

"Tell me as best you can, when you hover what is happening and how are you doing it? Just then for example, softening that fall."

She looks to the journal again and checks the index, then flips to a page roughly in the middle of the book. She quickly scans the page, and conjures a very light breeze aimed towards her own face, clearly concentrating on what she's feeling as she does so. The breeze stops momentarily, and a sort of staccato rhythm of air comes in across her face, as she tries to think of how to describe it. She then allows it to stop and looks back up at Avarius.

"I feel the positions, the movements, the consistency, and the emotion of the air around me. For instance, when I entered the academy grounds, the air felt much more powerful than elsewhere, regardless of the force of the winds. More... Energetic and calm at once, if that makes sense. My attention was drawn towards you initially by the feeling and scent of the currents you were toying with."

She starts pacing, thinking hard on what exactly she does. Up until this moment, it's mostly been unconscious actions and reactions. "I can't quite get a solid grasp on how I manipulate the air. It's all very vague. Perhaps the easy way to put it is that I will it to do something and it does it, but it almost feels more like I'm having a conversation. Or an argument. Take your pick. When I hover or stop myself from falling, I feel as though I'm telling the air exactly what it needs to do, and the motions it needs to perform to do it. But to do that, I have to listen to it first."

She stops pacing and turns back towards Avarius and his assistant. "Perhaps what I do is a bit too simple and heavy-handed. It's very straightforward, even if I can't rightly explain it."

@Azereiah

Avarius proves to be a good compassionate listener and seemed to grow excited with the answer, not due to any scholarly impression or surprise but more so as that was the reply he had been hoping for and anticipating, allowing him to move on.
"While we choose to reject many of the technologies of the rest of the world we cannot deny their functionality, here is a lesson for you to learn in your own time. How does 75 tonnes of steel remain in the sky and how does that differ to your technique."
And Avarius left it there at that, truly for Brunhilde to ponder in her own time.

As he spoke Avarius had moved around and positioned himself over her bag, lightly rummaging he removed a tall glass jug containing a small bag of unusual balloons, a fist sized bag of coloured powder and a compact folded up inflatable kids pool.

Avarius smiled widely as he separated each unusual item and lay them on the ground, watching the girls reaction.
"First we inflate the pool." he says handing her the crumpled rubber.
"Then we need to fill it with water."
He looks to the jug still on the floor that everything came packed in. He then turns his gaze back to Brunhilde and a mischievous gaze twinkles in his eye.
"But... "he taunts." It needs to be the water from atop the tower."

It would easily be a four or five trip run up the tower.
If it seemed like he was tediously finding excuses for her to climb the stairs, that's because he was.

"and remember, our class time is limited, the sooner this is ready the more time I have to teach you"
He gives her a playful wink and sits himself down once again. This time closing his eyes.
Brunhilde in her awareness may notice that Avarius is less than half an inch of the ground, barely noticeable by perception as the blades of grass respond as though under a mans weight and no residue gust is present.

@Dark Light

"While we choose to reject many of the technologies of the rest of the world we cannot deny their functionality, here is a lesson for you to learn in your own time. How does 75 tonnes of steel remain in the sky and how does that differ to your technique."

The question was swiftly jotted down in the journal. The answer was simple enough - perfectly balancing the center of mass of the steel against the strength of each part of its support structure, which more or less was exactly what she did when she hovered. As a child, she had learned from her father the basics of physics while watching and listening as he fixed the stone walls, wooden and thatched roof, and doorways of the stable and the main farmhouse - which is exactly where she got the idea for hovering in the first place.

She smiled - those lessons from her father were from before her head injury, and the memory was one of the clearest she had, so even though she wanted to remember the question being asked, she didn't need to refer to the earlier portions of the book like she had with almost everything else.

"First we inflate the pool." he says handing her the crumpled rubber.

Obediently, Brunhilde funneled a gust of air into the pool's air intake nozzle, inflating it in seconds. She lightly tapped the stopper on the intake port with her foot, closing it.

"Then we need to fill it with water. But... It needs to be the water from atop the tower."

She raised an eyebrow and looked to the tower. A note in the journal mentioned that she was supposed to take the stairs, annoyingly enough.

"and remember, our class time is limited, the sooner this is ready the more time I have to teach you"

She nodded. This sort of thing wouldn't be terribly hard - she was used to helping her family around the farm. Less used to the stairs and the students moving up and down the stairs, but the jug itself wouldn't be a huge problem. At least, assuming the jug itself was even necessary.

She picked up the jug as she assumed she was supposed to, and returned to the top of the tower where she had dumped her things to find the womens' bathroom - which, thankfully, wasn't only intended for a single person, but rather was a respectably sized and fully equipped dormitory bathroom. There were two walls that faced roughly the right direction, with a few small windows with frosted glass. She checked to see if any of the windows could open. The ones near the sinks could, while the ones near the showers couldn't - which was pretty reasonable, she thought. Still, the window was awfully small, and she certainly couldn't do what she needed to with it. She opted to check out the balcony at the common room, where one of the senior students was practicing his flight. She waved to him and he waved back, and she took a look down below at the school grounds, where she was able to see Avarius and the swimming pool - a perfect target.

She returned to the womens' bathroom with the jug and turned on a cold faucet. Nothing particularly special about the water, but directions were directions. A few ideas crossed her mind on how to get the water down the fastest way possible - some of which would only have really made sense were she a water elementalist, such as using air to try to funnel a stream of water down into the pool. The last idea, and the one she liked most, was to turn the water into a fine mist and use air manipulation to guide it into the pool.

She cupped the water in her hand and stepped over to a drain in the middle of the room, where she threw the water into the air, testing a few different shapes of air currents to see what would work best, before settling on a conical vortex like a tornado. A couple layers spinning counter to one another would ensure the water would be scattered finely enough to be moved by the air itself, she found.

Satisfied, she filled the jug, walked to the balcony, and dumped the jug over the rail, straight into the air vortex. It took a bit of concentration to try to gather the winds carrying the resulting mist (as there was quite a lot of it), and she undoubtedly lost a good 40% of the water, but it mostly worked. The real trick was trying to get it to go all the way down to the rubber pool, where she would have difficulty feeling the air.

The gears ticked in her head as the spinning torus of air carrying water vapor hovered over the balcony. Perhaps she wouldn't need to feel the air from near the swimming pool. Might be easier to use a sort of tether as a feeler around the water vapor, so she could feel and instruct the torus as necessary without needing to extend her senses too far. She settled on this solution, and moved a very thin line of air to envelope the torus. Moving two things at once was simple enough - like threading a needle, or playing a guitar.

She used the tether to move the water vapor bundle down to the rubber pool almost as if she were fishing or flying a kite, and guided the water vapor into the pool, where it rapidly condensed into a thin layer of water.

She did this two more times before she decided that it was beyond her to do it efficiently or quickly, and opted to use the jug properly instead. It was a good idea, but she simply wasn't able to manipulate vapor well enough or stretch her manipulation far enough yet. Power wasn't the issue - she had plenty of that, as evidenced by her ability to effortlessly shred hardwood. It was her ability to listen to the air that needed further improvement.

The journal had gotten slightly damp from the water vapor shenanigans, and she wiped off the pages before writing down her (very short) notes on the failed experiment. She filled the jug properly and hovered it down the tower stairs with her, carefully avoiding any accidental collisions with other students or spilling the water. When she got to the ground floor, she skated across the ground as she had done earlier, intending to avoid any 'accidents' the teacher might try to cause. She dumped the water in the pool and returned upstairs, where she refilled the jug, and she repeated the process two more times before the pool was finally full.

Nearly out of breath from literally running up the very long stairs several times in the past several minutes with a jug and a massive book, she looked up to Avarius again. "Finished. Finally." By the sun's position, the entire process apparently took roughly fifteen minutes - far too long. Were she more skilled, she felt that she could have done it in under three minutes.

@Azereiah

Avarius gave her an impressed smile. There was a gleam in his eyes as he softly spoke, and not just from the splash back spray from Brunhilde's water stunt.
"In some aspects you are defiantly beyond a first level student and would fit in well with the second years attempting to further blast more and larger torrents of wind to your will."

Avarius repositions himself in front of the small pool and tips in some some green powder. It disperses amongst the water but doesn't dissolve, leaving a green cloud floating still.

"Unfortunately we need to tear that knowledge and instinctual processing back and start anew and raw. This is a longer path, and now is an appropriate time to decide if you are willing to spend many countless hours pursuing a perfection you might never achieve in place of the instant gratitude gained from flashy forceful power."

He pauses and looks up to the short girl. "While there is nothing wrong with their methods it does become quite limiting." Avarius motions to the green cloud in the water.
"It is not quite a one hundred percent accurate representation but treat your hand like your will and move the coloured cloud."

---

After some frolicking and splashing and the undeniable disbursement of the chemical cloud in the now tinted water, If Brunhilde hadn't tried pulling instead of pushing the cloud Avarius will hand her some red powder and instruct her to try.
The exercise was purely one for observation and to open the concept many young wind elementalists didn't consider. Something other than head on force, the effects of pulling instead of pushing.

Even though in this experiment it proved only mildly more efficient and still dissipated afterwards, the closest thing to success would be achieved by not touching the cloud at all and moving water away causing a pull on the cloud as it ran into the empty space.

"This, this is guidance." he says as a soft breeze runs past them.
"It is where you currently excel, so I want to avoid that until we find balance so it does not become a crutch that hinders your learning of the other aspects."

Avarius holds out the ballon bag
"What's your favourite color?"

Madison

She was admiring the weapons on display, her mind creating battle scenes in her head in order to give the small collection a life of its own. Madison smiled at the thought that maybe one day she may be able to display such prowess, but she still had a long way to go.

"No, no more questions from me Mr. Kessinger," she replied. "I just want to learn how to better control fire. Not that I can't control my emotions, that's not what I'm trying to say, but admittedly, I get distracted from time to time." Madison held out her hand and after a subtle wave, a small flame appeared dancing around her hand. "I only hurt myself once, just a small burn on my arm after a lesson I had with my father. I was concentrating too hard in attempting to perfect the technique I had just learned, and I forgot to connect with the element. By the time I realized I wasn't going to pull it off, it was too late." She put the flame out, and looked at her teacher in the eye. "If I can't prevent self-injuries, how do I expect anyone else to be safe around me?"

@Xandrya


"Well, the easiest method to basic control would be to learn how to siphon your power through objects safely." He said as he pulled out a lower drawer and withdrew a simple wooden dowel, handing it to Madison. "Use this, and try to light the tip like a candle. Maintain it and don't let it engulf the dowel, only keep the tip ignited." He walked over to the windows and took off his happi coat, letting the sun's heat soak in. He held up a fist and one by one raised a finger, igniting a different coloured flame as he did so on each finger, sometimes crossing them and mixing the colours. "Something like this is essentially cosmetic gimmickry unless you learn how to hide your flame." He laid his hand flat palm up, the flames seeming to extinguish. He grabbed a piece of paper, held it to his hand, and... it ignited. "This is extremely difficult to do, chances are you won't be able to do this properly and safely until your later years here." He leaned against the windowsill as he watched Madison attempt his first little test.

Kano Hargor

--------------

The teachers filtered out slowly with their students, a low attendance this year it seemed. Not that sheer numbers meant anything to Kano anyways.
There were enough kids for himself to handle at the moment anyways, and any more might pose the risk of taking his attention away from everyone's over all growth over the coming weeks.

Kano listened to the introductions of his new students even as he scanned the crowd for the two familiar faces of the dark students. Looks like neither bothered to attend their first classes.. Hr mused silently. They would both be disciplined for the minor disrespect. For now, business at hand.

Turning to the students seated on the stairs, kano clapped his hands to get their attention.

"It appears our last two have decided to be tardy. I'm not the kind of man to keep the majority waiting for long, though."

With a wave of his hand the floating melding of ice and shadows dissipated back to where he had called them from, with the water flowing back to the river outside and the shadows swirling back to every corner of the room, and into the hood of Kanos robes.

"Everyone link hands with your fellow students and follow me in an orderly fashion."

Most students disliked this part, but personally it was more for his amusement. Too many were concerned with themselves and not the well being of others. Linking hands had kept most off balance, trying to do as told while fighting that potential rebellious attitude ever so slightly.

Satisfied, the group sauntered after their teacher as he took the stairs down to the main floor, exiting the giant open doors and into the clean fresh air. The sun was out in full force, promising a very hot day.
The group progressed without any word from Kano until they reached the far edge of the school grounds. The open field spread out in every direction, a stone fence enclosed off the grounds from the outside world. Standing nearly 15 feet off the ground and almost as thick, it was an almost natural Wall.

In the shade of the Wall and well away from the main School grounds was a pond. Roughly 6 feet deep, over 30 feet long, with the stone Wall putting it in confortable shade.

Besides what each Student brought, the area was desolate. No desks, chairs, chalkboards, nothing. Just a shallow pool of water.

"Right then." Kano turned to the students. "Water students. Strip down to your underclothes and get in the water. Your first lesson will be control."

Most first impressions were often strange. To sit in the water all day was always taken as bizarre and easy. The lesson now focused on the shifting of the mana rich waters. Few came this way except for lessons, and the pond was ice cold as it was urged from deep in the ground, a series of rivers flowing below the mountain.

Without caution the excess energy of the water itself could become violent. Drastic changes in temperature, sudden freezing to spots of boiling water, and the outright inability to control ones own body were often seen in the alarmingly tranquil waters.
It was up to the students to learn that the water was not theirs to command. It flows with you, not bends to their will.

"Lightning elements are harder to train. Your powers are volatile and often self destructive. Your powers are not dependant on nature and harnessing its energy as most other elements do. You are batteries, storing it in your bodies. What I need you to do now is go for a run. Use your electricity to flow through your body and disperse it with every running stride you take. Pace yourselves. Get a proper feeling for how your body is creating the static energy you are turning to lightning and try refocusing it productively."

The main reason for this exercise was to burn through their reserves. When their energy was at its absolute lowest, borderline empty, they could begin learning how to create the energy at will. A valuable lesson that would follow them into the next task.

"lastly.." Kano turned to the young Aetherist and stared at her intensely. "You will be focusing on Sight. You can clearly see the energies but you cannot yet discern their properties. You house every known element in your frame and manipulate it to create an effect."

As a demonstration, Kano pointed his hand at the small pond and felt it answer his request. Invisible to the eyes of anyone but Aetherists, the nearly colorless energy flowed out from the pond towards his hand, flowing until it had formed a swirling smoke in his hand.

"Now, if you look very closely, really focus, you can see the slight blue tint of the essence. That determines the strongest outcome of its use."

Focusing his soul onto the smoke, it ignited into a controlled ball of flame. With a bit of focus, you could see the essence of the aether energy shifting from the very light blue to a reddish brown before it ignited into the fire. In a minutes time, the smoke had faded into nothingness along with the flames.

"focus on seeing the finer threads of the energy and try to gather a tiny portion of it. Whole the others work, watch how the energy swirls about them as they use their powers. When you feel ready, gather a small bit of energy and try refocusing its properties."

Madison

"Hm, alright then, let's give this a shot..." Madison held up the dowel so that it was about a foot away from her face. She eyed the tip, concentrating on it, then noticed the blurred figure in the background slightly shifting. She trained her sight on Mr. Kessinger, the dowel now being the blurry object, and she rehearsed what he had said to her just moments ago. Here goes nothing, she thought to herself as the focused on the dowel again. This time, Madison kept her concentration and with ease, she lit the tip of the dowel, the orange flame dancing wildly and giving off a steady flow of heat which warmed Madison's face, although not to an uncomfortable point. She now concentrated on keeping the small flame at the tip, her eyes narrowing as her mind was barking off orders, something she couldn't control at times. Slowly, the flame grew less wild, taking up less space as Madison had wanted it. She was nearly about to complete her first assignment when a loud knock on the door broke through the silence. Madison gasped in response, the flame disappearing along with her concentration. She looked at Mr. Kessinger with disappointment as she lowered her hand, thinking that maybe she'd have to redo her assignment all over again.

@Sif

@Dark Light

Markus sighed as he was told to hold the others hands for some odd reason by the teacher as he followed with them. Once they got to the grounds the teacher explained how he would train each of them and the odd thing was the way the teacher referred to us lightning users as batteries which if one thinks about it is fairly accurate.

The teacher told them that he wanted the lightning users to run and expends their energy with each stride they take. Markus could only assume that the teacher wanted them drained so they could go into the next lesson. He turned to the other lightning user and said "race ya was all he said before markus started to run. He made sure to do what the instructor said and every stride he took he made sparks fly from his feet to help spend all the energy. One thing was for sure running and spending his energy was tiring...

Everyone near the light teachers were assigned to one of the teachers of the element based on power and knowledge. Emi was assigned to one of the light teachers that was suppose to wander somewhere around the campus and hadn't been near the bundle of light students yet. The teachers hadn't been able to find the teacher either after a good search so she was free to do what she liked at the moment. Emi was kind of let down and decided to go look for him instead. She knew how he somewhat looked by descriptions of the others so perhaps she was able to find him.

After a run over the academy Emi didn't find him yet. It was a very big campus so it was no wonder that it would be difficult. She liked it though, looking around the campus certainly gave her an idea on where everything was. It also was a great way for her to power up with the heavy sun today. Some students were already soaked in sweat at this time of day and after the heavy work outs/ lessons. Emi didn't even flinch at the temperature, she thought it was nice and warm today, it made her look a little like a fire elementalist since they were a huge fan of the sun too.

Emi was amazed by all the different kind of elementalists, they were great in their own way and all had something special hidden in their ability to control elements. A lot of times she would stop for a moment to let herself be side tracked due to the amazing potential. She showed how much she liked it with some clapping and the likes but would not stay for a huge amount of time.

After a long trip her feet felt a little tired. She decided to rest at a bench or on the grass but before she could her eyes fell onto a petite girl. She was fiddling around with water and such even though her element seemed to be air. Emi took her time and watched the girl a little to see how well she did with her lessons. It did seem like she tried but her teacher thought her to think easier and simpler. Still the girl was doing her bestest, more than Emi at the moment at least. Emi carefully walked in on the two of them with her hands clutched to her chest. She said no word and instead made a weird quiet squealing noise.



Emi stretched her arms out at the girl and pulled her body in closer as she enveloped the girl in a hug. Her face snuggled against the head of the girl as pleased sounds formed from her vocals. It was only a short hug but Emi seemed quite pleased with it.



Emi averted her head away slightly from the girl as her cheeks reddened in embarrassment. Still she shyly smiled at the girl knowing she almost couldn't be mad. Right? Emi regained her composer and stood before the girl as she placed her hands bundled on her back.



Emi gave an awkward laugh as she rubbed the back of her head. Until now she hadn't considered that she might have interrupted the teacher his lesson and gave a quick glance at him to see his reaction. She felt a little bothered by the fact that she did and might actually have done something bad now. She got slightly more nervous and tensed up a bunch around him as she glanced at him each time. Now not to get scolded at.

@The ghost in black@Jangel13

'Hold hands?'
Why ok!

Kain instantly places himself beside Eria, "Teach said," he explains as he takes her hand.

Once at the location Kain listened to the teacher, sort of... A lot of the words didn't seem to concern him and the water did look nice.
Suddenly, "race ya. Kain snapped from his daydream and took off after Markus.
Kain was not one to pace himself, he had the temperament of his element.

He ran hard, his competitive drive burning deep. Failure not an option. Unlike Markus Kain was not expelling sparks into the ground, not only did he not hear the instruction but he didn't know how to.
But the more he ran, the more his feet thudded against the ground, the more his muscle's stretched and contracted, the faster his heart beat, the longer he watched Markus carry the lead in front of himself the more lightning energy began to grow within him, running along his nerves and exploding in his muscles.

Kain soon surged ahead but his physical limits were far smaller than his ambitions. Kain did not hold his lead for to long before he collapsed to a grinding halt across the floor. His leg failing beneath him.