Chase was walking through the early morning halls of Phoenix Academy, his sword swinging stiffly by the makeshift scabbard that Gemini had crafted him.
The school was usually quite empty at this time, and rarely anyone was ever awake before the Pyrothar lit up the sky.
With a dramatic yawn, he made his way to his first class of the day. On his way he studied the marble architecture of the grand halls.
It had been nearly a month since Chase had learned of the reason for his lacking when it came to finally summoning Sparky.
He had truly hit a roadblock, and did not know any shortcuts or other ways that he could resort to.
So in the meantime he had decided to just train as hard as he could, and hope that eventually his true affinity would make itself known.
Every single day when he had free time, he would spend most of the evening either at aetherball practices or games, and then spend the early stages of the night in the courtyard.
If he was ever caught he would probably get into a lot of trouble, but he had gotten quite good at sneaking around in the past two months.
Speaking of Aetherball... Ever since Chase and Gideon had joined the team: They had not lost a game yet, and have even blown out the last three teams they had face.
Granted, Equan had done most of the heavy lifting; however, Chase had plenty of assists to his name already, and seen that as a win.
In fact, he had not even scored his first goal of the season yet.
On the wall to his right, was a wooden board that had a bunch of different scrolls pinned all over its surface.
It was hard to see, considering neither of the suns had awoken yet.
Chase didn't see this as a problem though, as a small ball of fire began to caress his finger tips.
It still hurt quite a lot to use, but he had grown mostly used to the pain. Now his strange flames had finally become his tool, and not something that he had to be careful about losing control of.
The lowest piece of paper on the board listed several dates, some with red circles around them.
For example, the Skytide game from last month had a large circle around it.
However, his expression grew dim once he seen the game that was going to take place at the end of the week.
An abnormally large circle that looked like it had been marked with blood, surrounded a name that brought back some terrible memories...
'Frostfang...'
Chase didn't know a lot about the different kingdoms on the vast continent of Vallmora, but he did know that Frostfang resided in the far northern part of the continent.
A sense of dread radiated throughout his core, as he glanced at the small black letters next to the date that spelled out "Away Game".
He had never been to the north, but he did know that any type of cold was absolutely terrible.
His experiences within The Dark Forest spoke for that heavily.
He shook the thoughts out of his head, to notice that the magic lights of the academy halls had flickered to life.
"Oh right."
He had completely forgotten why he had even left so early in the first place.
Well, more like two reasons.
Firstly he had to go and steal the cheat sheet from Professor Luke's room.
Then he had been summoned by Headmaster Leander, to meet in his office before classes started.
Eventually, he made it to his Social Society classroom, and slowly creaked the door open. Praying to the gods that Poppy hadn't decided to show up extra early today, he peaked his head in.
Thankfully, the lights were off and the room seemed empty. Other then the strange creatures made of dust that roamed around the tops of the desks.
He remembered the first time he had seen one. It had been earlier that month, when he decided to show up earlier then usual.
He had lazily walked into the classroom, set his things under his desk mindlessly, and was about to pass out.
Until he looked up to notice that a spider made of dust, that just so happened to be the size of his hand was looking directly at him from the other side of his desk.
After that, he had grown quite grateful for Poppy's charity cleaning service.
He was swiftly scouring around Luke's desk, when he finally found a paper with all of the test answers marked on it.
The handwriting was terrible, and he had mistaken several Ts for 4s, which he didn't know was possible until about a minute ago.
Then, scaring the ever living crap out of him. Someone barged through the door at terrifying speeds.
All he had heard was a loud slam, and a girl's frantic yelp.
He had thrown himself on the ground next to a pile of used cigarettes, and waited a couple of seconds. He heard several things crash, and maybe even the shattering of one of the mosaic covered vases.
'Oooh Blackmail!'
He thought curiously, while sneaking one of the cigarette buds into his uniform pocket.
Then he decided that it would probably be smart to take a peak over the desk, to see what in the hell was going on.
Of course he had not expected to see that Neveah of House Evermore was death gripping a sword, while cornered by multiple table sized dust bunnies.