Chapter 9. The Quest for Magic.
As Joey sat down and stated concentrating, Rose and Tomoko left him. He sat there for hours doing nothing. In the meanwhile everyone came passing by checking on him if there was any difference on him. But fore hours..days..and eventually weeks nothing had changed. The only thing Joey noticed that he was getting more patient than usual.
“I've been doing this for weeks now Krad.” Joey said while being alone with Krad in the men’s side of he house. “Its not that I don't like it, I don't get knives in my body, but there isn't any progress”.
“Be patient sir” Krad said while meditating. “This has been going on for 3 weeks now, even for you to grow more patient is a big improvement. Rookie's usually take years of meditation to even use the slightest big of magic.”. Joey sighed and walked out into the gardens. A lot has changed in three weeks in the house. There was a pond with fish, Nagisa finally started some training and Krad was being more open and honest to Joey. He sat down and closed his eyes concentrating on the same thing he did for the past few weeks. This time, there was something different. Although Joey did not notice it himself, Rose came check on him and saw very small blue shining striped on his body.
“I see, he is already making such progress. He truly is this powerful” She said with a serious and shocked look on her face. Joey started to see things while meditating. He saw a strange red and blue light.
“This must be the choice Rose was talking about.. Blue and Red, Purity and Corruption.” Joey looked at the lights for hour in his mind but he didn't know what to do next. In the meanwhile his entire body started showing Blue and Red marks on his body. Everyone came looking at Joey. Even Marcus who isn't interested in magic was curious on how this was going to end. Joey heard two different voices in his mind.
“Do you want to be a powerful master? I can give you the most powerful magic there is! Power to rule all!” the one said with a low voice
“Do not choose the path of corruption, there will only come sadness from Corruption, walk the part of the Pure.” another voice said.
Joey looked at the Blue and Red lights who seemed to be talking to him, as he thought about corruption the red light became larger, as he though of Purity the blue light became larger.
“So this is where I make my choice, my life, my path.” Joey said to himself.
The choice became harder every second he waited to decide, every time the words in his mind became stronger and loud, the low one screaming for power and the higher voice was talking about happiness. The decision was going to be hard for Joey. In the meanwhile everyone outside Joey's mind was looking at him. Seeing his body become more red every second. As if the corruption was taking over.
“Wait!” The higher voice said. “If you choose for corruption, every single person you know and love will be destroyed in the end, there will be nothing left to enjoy!” Those words hit Joey's heart and suddenly his whole body began to shiny in a bright blue light.
“Noooo!” The lower voice screamed and eventually faded away. Joey's eyes opened and the first thing he saw was that everyone was gathered around him.
“What’s so interesting? Its not like you've never seen me before” he said.
“Well Avo, you just found your magic” Rose said cheery while pointing at his body, showing light blue marks.
“What the.. what is this? If I wanted a tattoo I'd say so” Joey said while checking out the markings.”They look cool though.”
“They don't only look cool, their powerful too” Krad said while walking out of the house. 'These markings are the source of your powers, and a solid base for victory in any battle”
“I will train you in magic until you drop dead” Rose said while giving thumbs up. As the night fell Tomoko began doing some strange things Joey noticed. She was kind of following him around spying on him it almost seemed. As the night fell Joey didn't sleep but thought of what the next day would hold for him.
“Wake up you lazy!” Rose suddenly said while Joey was asleep for a few seconds. “We need to train you now! 200 years ago you were to most powerful magic user of all living beings and now your not even better then an ant!” Joey never thought Rose was able to make him feel worthless like that, he always thought only Marcus was able to do something like that.
“You hurt my feelings like that” Joey said teasing while he stood up. The two of them went outside and Rose started to concentrate. Suddenly four giant white spire like blocks stomped into the ground making some kind of magical barrier around them. Joey looked confused around himself.
“What are these for Rose? They look very intimidating to me” Joey said.
“These are for any magic that tries to come out, with these barriers it wont get out to hurt any bystanders” Rose explained. “Although I don't think you would be able to shoot any magic just yet.. on the other hand you are Avo.. so I just put these up just in case”.
“I see, well how does everything work?” I just open my hands and something comes out? Explain it to me” Joey said.
“well you just concentrate and think of a memory which is either bad or good. A good memory makes a pure and concentrated energy wave, but a bad memory makes an uncontrolled and more powerful energy wave.. of course the last one is most dangerous since it runs mainly on emotions which cannot be controlled at all times.” Rose explained. “Lets just use a happy memory to begin with to avoid some uncontrolled energy in the beginning”
“That sounds fair enough to me so what should I think about? There isn't really anything happy in my life, it was very boring until I went up here.” Joey said.
“Well just think about anything nice that happened up here and try to focus that into energy.”
Joey started thinking..thinking of the memories he had up here, he saw various moments..like how he mastered to punch wooden dummies and being praised by different people for a change, but those weren't really happy moments. Suddenly Joey started thinking about other things, like the time he saw his house destroyed and when he saw Jin, Krad and Marcus being in pain while Bahzaal almost strangled them. Joey thought of those moments and he focused them into energy. Rose saw he was making the wrong energy and tried to stop him.
“Avo! Stop now! If you do that you might blow us both up!” Rose yelled. But it was too late. Joey already fired out a massive blue wave of energy hurting both himself and Rose. As the smoke of the explosion faded away both Rose and Joey were lying down. Krad walked up to the barrier and raised it to enter the circle where the explosion was. “t seems he cant control his magic just yet, maybe.. he needs experience..not training..” Krad said to himself. He lifted the twp of them up and carried them to the house. Not long after that Joey found himself in the room at night. He stood up and looked around.
“Why am I born with my stubborn mind.. she said happy thoughts..” Joey said to himself. Joey went outside to look around at the explosion site.
“Wow, did I do all of this?..I'm a monster” Joey said to himself. He sat down and the middle of the tiny crater and quickly fell asleep.
The following morning Joey woke up with Krad standing over him.
“You lack experience in every side of your training.” he suddenly said.
“Good morning to you too” Joey said.
“Follow me” Krad said as he started walking out the Gates of Heaven. “Do you know why people on earth long ago sparred instead of trained?”
“uhm.. no?”
“They did that because the fighting they did would increase the fighting experience they would get. There would be a downside to it though, you could get hurt in doing so” Krad said.
“Then why wouldn't those people just train instead of sparring?” Joey asked while still following Krad.
“Well, as I said, they would become like you, inexperienced and unable to control your powers and will hurt other people quite easily” Krad said. He stopped walking in front of something that looked like a portal.
“Were here..this is the entrance to a great dessert of evil” Krad said. “This place was feared by heaven for many years.”
“The what do I have to do with it?” Joey asked.
“It wont be feared after this” As Krad finished his line he pushed Joey through the portal. “Good luck.