With Olympus in sight, Al dashed forward, his mysterious, new-found, strength pushing him along at a speed that could keep pace with cars on the highway. The wind rushed through his hair as he ran. He let out an undulating shout of pure joy and laughed as the landscape around him slipped behind him and the mountains ahead rapidly grew in size.
"What happened to me?" Al laughed, jumping and kicking off of the trunk of a tree in midair, sending him soaring in the opposite direction. He was moving in a way that would make an olympic sprinter and gymnast jealous.
"Your body has simply begun adapting to using numen. You have just reached the first stage of numen use, which has changed your body from within to become more adept at using, and sensing numen. It comes with the added bonus of increased strength, senses, and mind. However, I warn you not to overestimate yourself, there are countless beings and creatures more powerful than you."
"First stage? How many stages are there?"
"Forgive me, 'first stage' was a figure of speech. Some do stratify mystic abilities into stages, but these are arbitrary, and fickle, things that don't translate well into reality. If you asked a chef, for instance, what stage they were in at cooking, could they give you a concrete answer? They may cook as a profession, but their skills might pale in comparison next to a passionate home chef. Likewise, numen classification is only used as a rough guide for teaching abilities, spells, and skills."
"Well, what stage am I at, roughly speaking?" Al asked, testing out his numen abilities now by whipping up a small tornado and sucking up a patch of gravel from nearby.
"By the Atlantean standard, Holy Stage. After which is, Dragon, Hero, Demigod, God and Titan Stages. Each stage is separated into two halves, Initiate and Adept."
"Which stage are you at?" Al asked, curious whether an actual god would be at God stage or not.
"Titan Adept, though, as I said, it's arbitrary. Those above Titan stage would still be measured as a Titan because the number of mystics whom reach that stage are minuscule at best. As such, there was no reason to measure beyond that. As I said, do not put any stock into stages, merely temper your abilities to the best of your ability."
"Yeah, yeah, I got it," Al replied stopping the wind and spiral of stones with a flick of his hand.
"Anyways, I'm here, Olympus. So... am I just climbing to the top, or...?"
"I've not been here for thousands of years. Your guess is as good as mine."
"Great!" Al threw his arms in the air in disgust. "So, I guess I'll just climb a mountain then. Not like I can ask for directions."
--
A couple of hours later, Al's nose, which had been filled with the scent of dried grasses and the cloyingly sweet scent of tree sap from the forest, filled with a horrible smell, as if someone had gathered the socks from athletes around the world and dumped them all in front of him. Loud bellowing and grunting emanated from the woods nearby, quickly followed by 3 large figures that dashed across past Al, squealing at the sight of him and darting onto another path that led deeper into the woods up the mountain. From the quick glance he got, Al saw that the bulky, muscled, figures were wearing only loincloths and, strikingly, only had one eye a piece.
"...Cyclops?"
A few seconds later, another group of figures came dashing out of the woods, each person wearing a clean white tunic and sandals. They stopped in the clearing chests heaving, Instead of Cyclops, a single girl and 2 boys around Al's age looked around the clearing. Their clothing, which looked as if they had come from shooting an ancient period piece, wasn't strange enough, each person held a unique weapon at their side.
The group was led by the tallest youth, a lithe and muscular boy with short cropped brown hair and a pinched look around his eyes. He balanced a long spear over his shoulder, with a spike on one end and a wide, curved, blade on the other. Behind him, the other boy, a short, dark skinned boy, also with short cropped hair, stared at Al with a wary look on his face. He clutched a large, two-headed, battle axe in his sweaty fingers.The girl had pale white skin and vibrant red hair, quite at odds when compared to the two Mediterranean-looking boys in her group. She was around the same hight as the shorter boy, though thin and gracefully where he was stocky and thick. She wielded a strange sword that looked like a combination of broadsword and rapier. It was as wide as a broadsword at the hilt, but tapered into a point at the tip of the blade.
"Who in the hells are you?" The tallest youth spat, hocking a thick loogie onto the floor.
"Nevermind him," the girl gasped, still out of breath. "The prey is getting away."
"Oi outsider, you better not be here to steal our prey," The stocky kid said, raising his axe over his head, the copper colored metal glinting in the sun. "This is Olympian territory."
"Steal your-" Al shook his head, watching the weapon carefully, his arm reaching for his own knife slowly.
"No, I'm here to...join...I guess?" Al finished, aware of how flimsy his argument sounded.
What was he supposed to being doing here anyway? He had been so focused on getting here that, now that he had arrived, he wasn't sure exactly what to expect.
"Join us? You?" The tall boy smirked, looking at Al's bedraggled appearance. "Olympus isn't a homeless shelter."
"You try running for weeks without a shower," Al flushed, brushing some of the dust off his worn garments, noticing that the girl was looking at him curiously.
"Ah, then that smell here is you? And I here I thought we were chasing Cyclops. Looks like we've been led on a wild goose chase, Yiannis," The tall boy drawled, clapping the stocky boy, Yiannis, on the shoulder.
Yiannis chortled, though his smile didn't reach his eyes. They were still narrowed at Al, looking at him as if he expected him to roar and charge at him at any second.
Numen rushed through Al and he narrowed his eyes in anger.
"This from a guy who looks like he sewed his clothing out of a pillowcase."
"These are the official clothes for apprentices at Olympus," the tall boy snarled, glaring back at Al.
"Running from what, exactly?" The girl asked Al, stepping between him and the tall youth, trying to defuse the situation.
"They called themselves the Knights of Elysium," Al said, glad to be making some progress in the conversation.
"The Knights!?" Yiannis said, eying the woods around them as if expecting them to materialize out of the tree trunks as he said their name.
"You didn't bring them here, did you?" The tall boy accused, stepping around the girl and leveling his spear at Al.
"Yes, they're all hiding behind that bush over there," Al said, rolling his eyes, nodding his head at a sad little shrub with most of its leaves wilted and dead.
"You think this is a game, chump?" The boy snarled.
"No I don't," Al replied, grabbing the shaft of the spear and pushing it aside. "But do you honestly think we would all still be here talking now if the Knights were here?"
"Saber, enough," the girl said, placing a hand on the tall boy, Saber's, spear arm. "He's right, if they were here, we wouldn't be talking about it.
"Maybe," Saber admitted, reluctantly lowering his spear after the girl narrowed her eyes at him.
"How do we know you aren't just a spy and are going to lead them to us later?" Yiannis grumbled, still peering into the woods for nonexistent Knights.
Al reached around his neck and lifted the pendant that Calandra had given him over his head, holding it by the chain, he held it out to the girl.
"Calandra gave this to me. She and Kuzma told me to come here."
The girl handled the pendant gingerly. The silver chain hung over her fingers as she traced the designs etched into the translucent, yet vibrantly blue, stone.
"This is hers," she confirmed, hesitating before giving it back to Al. "Why didn't they come with you?"
Al bit his lip and turned away.
"They stayed to fight the Knights."
"Oh," the girl said quietly, her face falling.
"And you, our brave hero, left them to fight on their own and ran here?"
A flash of anger, quite literally, exploded out of Al, sending the three youths flying away from him and creating a crater in the clearing.
"What are you doing?" Saber shouted, leaping to his feet and thrusting his spear at Al, who caught it one-handed and held it in place with ease, to a shocked Saber's surprise.
"One more word," Al threatened, voice quiet, murder in the air.
Saber flinched, letting go of his weapon and retreating a few steps before stopping and looking disgusted at himself. He glared at Al but said or did nothing else.
Al flipped Saber's spear in his hand and threw it at his feet, imbedding the point deep into the soil.
Yiannis and the girl had stood up, Yiannis staring at Al warily, as he would a wild animal. The girl, however, merely stared at him with a sad, curious, look.
"Now that that's settled," Al said finally, breaking the silence. "mind taking me to the sect?"
"I'll go," the girl said, gesturing for Al to follow her. "Saber, Yiannis, you should head on. We've already lost too much time tracking the Cyclops as it is."
Without looking back, Al followed the girl up the path they had emerged from and up the mountain.