Once again after painstakingly sitting through my afternoon lessons, the bell for the end of classes sounding although it was a whole minute late. I'm not saying classes were boring, but since we were still only starting classes this year, our lessons were all introductory. So everything the teachers were teaching was in the boring phase. I only wish we could be in some magic school where there would never be a dull moment in the class and people could actually make mistakes that resulted into explosions or really ridiculous hexes. Or that's at least how I would imagine a blunder in a magic class.
Regardless it was time for football practice and I had Thomas to deal with. the new had no doubt already reached him and I would have no idea how I was supposed to deal with him in this situation. I was walking in uncharted territory. I didn't know how this was going to play out. All I knew was that I was going to be against him the moment he decided I was to leave the Purgers. They just had information that I was not willing to give up. If this information could help me get closer to knowing the history of Jekyll and how he almost defeated Travas, then I would have to stand my ground on this one.
I finally got dressed and waited for Kendall before we jogged onto the pitch. The first thing to penetrate our ears was the sound of the coach's booming voice, "Everyone is doing twenty laps around the field, I want no slackers. Everyone, but Johnson," he said or more of yelled.
"Yes coach," I replied like the humble lamb I was.
"Don't 'yes coach' me, you're doing forty laps and double all the drills I put everyone through and make sure you keep up with everyone or else you'll be doing a lot more than that," he yelled. I could hear the other players snickering and laughing behind my back. They all did a good job of hiding it. All of them except for Kendall who was visibly out of air.
"Sorry man. I just hate to be you right now," I ignored him and picked up the pace such that I was twice as fast as everyone else in order to keep up. I soon realised that was a mistake as the coach moved on to his next shouts. It's like his vocal chords were magically enhanced or something.
"What is the meaning of this? Are you all telling me that you are going to let Johnson run forty laps in the same time that all of you are going to run twenty? That's pathetic, all of you, pick up the pace," he yelled.
Realising this, I decided to devise a plan. I reduced my speed to save up on energy so that I could at least be able to speed up on the tenth lap and make good time before the coach noticed. Well I knew just how deeply flawed my plan was for a person who didn't have magic to back him up, but then I would have to make it look like I couldn't catch up to them anyway. I jogged at the same pace with the whole team until we got to the tenth lap where I decided to speed up. I tapped into the source of magic that I had now become unconsciously aware of being located in my gut.
I tried fuelling my body with magic, but the magic simply wouldn't flow no matter how hard I tried. I then tried the old fashioned way of tapping into my super-speed when I had just learnt about it, but even then I found no sensation of everything around me slowing down. I realised then just how much trouble I was truly in. Who knew being human without magic could be so scary. I had no idea how much endurance I actually had and this meant there was a possibility I may not make it in today's training. I tried using my magic again just to be sure it wasn't all a fluke.
"What's wrong, Kevin? You look more winded than usual yet we have only begun training," Kendall asked matching my pace. I had still kept my pace faster than the others in order to finish the laps faster, but I was burning through my energy faster than I liked to admit.
"My magic won't work," I told him and watched his eyes go wide.
"That's not possible," he said.
"I'm not kidding about this. I can't access my magic," I told him amidst short breaths. My resilience without magic seemed to have dropped since the time I started using my speed for most of my needs. It was as if there was nothing I could do to access it and my energy was slowly waning.
"Well, can you hold out till the end of training then?" he asked.
"I'll have to," I told him before their laps came to an end and I continued with my laps. The coach soon had everyone going through a whole lot of drills that put the jogging to shame as simply a warm up. I knew he would not let me off the hook so easily and was going to keep punishing me until he was satisfied with me missing out on his training.
.......
I lay in the locker rooms after the training room after I was done. I say so because there was no one left in the entire pitch by the time the coach decided to let me go. Yes, I had failed to finish the training drills that the coach was trying to put me through. I tried my best but my energy was far less than I had anticipated. "You have to stop dodging our training. It would also help if you would also jog a bit in the morning," the coach had said as I lay sprawled on the pitch exhausted.
I finished showering and got out of the locker room to get to the basketball court. Exhaustion set in quicker than I would have liked, but as usual there was nothing I could do about it. Only thing I could do was ignore all the pain and push through till then day was done. I had a faint awareness that the rest of the artras had been present during our training session, but that was beyond what I was capable of thinking about during the time I endured my coach's torture techniques. I finally got to the basketball court and found the Purgers all huddled together in groups. They all fell silent when I arrived making Ryan come up to me.
"You took your tome," he said, "I was starting to think you were going to bail."
"Training was harder than usual today," I said.
"You don't fool any of us. With your magic, it should be easy for you to play football," he said casually as if magic was something that everyone possessed. I looked around and noticed the rest of the Purgers were back what they were doing before I arrived.
"So do you guys always move together?" I asked.
"No not really, it's just that you joining us is a special occasion that everyone must attend," he explained.
"Okay, so how do you normally carry out your lives?" I asked.
"Well, you would know that if you agreed to come with us," he said, "I will ease you into it."
"What do you mean by that?" I asked him.
"Follow me," he ordered and I quickly followed him to the cars that we had taken the day before, "and don't worry, we won't reach the destination we were going yesterday.
"Hey, Ryan, what of the rest of us?" one of the Purgers said.
"Oh you guys can go home. I'm afraid introductions will wait a bit," he said.
"There shouldn't even be any introductions," another spat.
"Don't rush him, you all know what he has been through," he said taking on an authoritative tone.
With that said, the rest of them got into the cars and drove off leaving me with Ryan and his two cousins, Mindy and Heather, "I really want to assume that you are all related, but there are just too many of you to believe that assumption."
"Don't throw it away just yet. I have to tell you this, but what do you remember now that we exposed to a bit of where we were supposed to take you?" he asked. I narrated to him the two extra memories that I had remembered along with my uncertainties about them for example why I had referred to my mother as Mrs Sarah instead of mum and why Charles was so angry.
He took some time to ponder over this as well as his cousins Mindy and Heather who for some reason had stayed quiet all this time, "The others are getting restless," Mindy stated.
"What do you mean?" I asked. What was so important about my memories that I had to know? I knew that for some reason I knew Ryan when I was younger, but I hadn't had enough time to find out anything during the times when I had access to those memories. I also didn't have much control over what I could remember from that time which only helped fuel my curiosity.