Thirty-five years ago, in a country called Rouma, a pianist rose to fame for his tragic pieces. The people of Rouma named him the WindMaker because if you stood next to him as he began to play, you would start to feel a gentle light breeze form. He moved with suave and precision, just like the wind.
The WindMaker was so popular in Rouma that people all over the country would travel to faraway theatres to listen to his beautiful songs. His most famous piece, which he named "My Love. Eternal." was popular because it could make anyone cry.
Today, the famed WindMaker has faded. Rarely anyone knows him, even in Rouma. However, he sits in his music shop in Gouon, waiting to pass his flame on. His house was attached to the back of the shop, meaning that he lived there.
As he prepared to close shop and go to bed, he saw Paley walking through the windows. Excited, he rushed over to the door after Paley entered the shop.
"Hello, Paley," He greeted.
"Hello," Paley replied and walked with him.
"Take a seat," He pulled the stool under the piano for Paley, going over to the wall to get one for himself, "Last time, you didn't really let me introduce myself. My name is Livico Neidu." They shook hands.
"Can I call you Mr. Neidu?" Paley asked.
"Of course. Anyways, you wanted to learn piano?"
They began with learning the names of the notes. Then they moved on to chords. Neidu wasn't a big fan of memorizing chords and theory, so he simplified it for Paley. It began to rain as they wrapped up the lesson. Paley now knew most of the basics of music theory.
"Hold on. I'll get you a book to read." Neidu quickly left and came back with a handbook detailing music theory further, "Read this for homework. If you feel like learning the complex things."
"Okay, thank you." Paley took it humbly, "Would you mind if you played your best song for me?"
"I..." Neidu hesitated, "I don't think I can."
"Please?" Paley insisted.
"Alright," He seemed scared of playing the piece. Of playing My Love. Eternal. He prepared to play, glancing at Paley skeptically before clearing his throat and pushing down on the notes. He began by moving back and forth on three keys with his right hand, accompanied by a slower rhythm on his left. It was slightly joyful.
The rhythm on the left began to speed up, distracting Paley from the loudening right hand. As he sped up, Paley began to feel a slight wind. Neidu suddenly smacked down on the keys sinisterly. The rhythm slowed again after the unexpected beat drop, and this time it was full of sorrow. He looked up at Neidu's face; a tear began to form in his left eye.
The song moved to deeper octaves, slowly speeding up. His right hand jumped to the middle, and he played a loud tragedy that tugged at Paley's heartstrings. Tears streamed down Neidu's face as he finished the sorrowful piece. He sighed and ended it on a low note, wiping his face with his shirt.
"You didn't cry," He laughed awkwardly, "I must've gotten worse."
"No... That was a beautiful piece. If you don't mind me asking: what's the story behind it?" Paley realized that the sadness in the piece must've been personal.
"It's about my wife. She caught the Emerald Plague. She even took the vaccination for it, but- I don't know." His voice broke, "She was my joy. My life- this world took my life from me. I wanted to get revenge, but on who? The moon? The sun? God? Instead, I made this piece. I'd always loved playing the piano, but it was only after my wife died that I played for the people. I wanted to spread this song. I wanted everyone to hear my agony. That was my revenge." He sniffled.
"But now. No one knows who I am. No one remembers My Love, Eternal. And once I am gone, they will all forget me." He was old, so all this stress was doing his heart no good.
"They won't forget you. I'll make sure that even after you're gone, everyone will remember you and your wife." Paley reassured.
"Thank you, Paley. Anyways," He stood up and made his way to the back door, "I'm going to teach you how to sight-read next time you come over.
"I look forward to it. See you later, Mr. Neidu." Paley got up and left. Neidu watched him and then entered his living room, a messy room. It was featureless apart from a framed picture of Neidu's wife. She was a beautiful woman, brown-skinned with big dark eyes. He lit one of the candles next to it and sat down.
"I found myself a good student." He talked to the picture, "I hope you'll watch over me when I teach him. And I hope that soon I'll watch over him alongside you, Laiah." He smiled wistfully.
After stopping by the weaponry store and buying two swords; one a large greatsword, and the other a normal, high-quality broadsword, Paley returned home at 10:00 p.m. He made himself a salad and read through the music theory handbook. Adimia slept peacefully on his left, and everyone else was downstairs.
"Paley?" Rauba came up the stairs hesitantly.
"Yeah?" He answered.
"I wanted to talk to you." She sat down in front of him on the bed.
"Oh, yeah. What'd you want to talk about?" Paley marked the page he was on and closed the book.
"Can I come with you to the mana zone from now on? Bacha always gets to go with you." She was shy, never really open about her feelings, so Paley had no idea that she felt left out.
"Sure, why?" He asked.
"I want to spend more time with you. You know, I was the one who taught you magic first."
Paley laughed lightly with his nose. "Okay, then. From tomorrow on, I'll take you to the mana zone. We can train our magic together." He petted her affectionately.
"Okay!" She nodded, excited, "And then one day, I can fight the demons beside you." She said. The statement made Paley's slight smile disappear.
"No, Rauba. I don't want you to fight them with me. This is... my battle. I'm sorry." Paley was worried that his fate as a Quimnia would bring harm to the orphans.
"But I want to help you." She insisted.
"I know, and I appreciate that. But I won't let any harm come to you. I can't." He saw that she was very bummed out by that, "Maybe, just maybe, if you end up becoming super strong, I'll let you fight with me, okay?" His words made her happy again.
"Hm!" She nodded.
Adimia was awake by now and had listened blankly to most of the conversation. He hated demons, but he found that he feared them much more. His magic was stolen, so he couldn't even slaughter them like he wanted to, let alone help Paley in the future.
However, he wouldn't give up yet. He still had something left to fight with: His body.
The next day, after lunch, he approached Paley, Rauba, and Bacha as they prepared to go to the mana zone.
"Paley, can I come with you guys?" Adimia asked.
"Sure, here." Paley replied quickly, throwing him the steel sword he bought on his way back from Neidu's shop, "I bought it for you."
"What? How much was it?" Adimia ran his finger along the sharp blade.
"24 gold coins." Paley walked out of the cottage with the others. Adimia followed them, carrying the sword carefully.
"No way! You spent that much for me!?" He asked, his eyes lighting up with gratefulness and disbelief.
"You wanted to be a knight, right?
"Yeah,"
"I'm assuming the first step of being a knight is to train with a sword, so I'll make a training ground just for you."
"Thank you, Paley!" Adimia exclaimed and walked with them to the mana zone.
They arrived there about fifteen minutes later, at the Fulguron's nest as usual. The canopy of leaves had begun to take a purplish color, and the tree trunks seemed thinner but taller.
Paley took out three fire runestones from his pocket. They were all glowing a deep red, though one of them was glowing whiter than the other two.
"You can go farther today, but not too far, okay?" He gave Bacha the runestones. She knew what to do with them as usual.
"Okay," She nodded and ran off into the forest, carrying an oversized bag.
Paley turned to Adimia and Rauba, who were waiting eagerly. "Can you go over there for a sec?" He pointed to the gap between the trees leading to the lake. They nodded and jogged there, climbing up the nest walls to stay out of his way.
Paley crouched and pressed his palms against the ground. There was an abundance of Amoreviola flowers, but unfortunately, they had to go. He took a deep breath and released a wave of faint light from his hands that covered the entire nest.
"Rise, Earth Golems." He said coolly, and magic circles of yellowish-brown light appeared, scattered all around the nest. A few moments later, bulky arms made of dirt came out of the ground inside the circles. Then, deformed, large humanoid bodies made of dirt climbed out.
"WOAAHH!" Adimia and Rauba watched in awe as the golems moved around. They moved crankily and flimsily, but, the two were still astonished by the sight of twenty golems rising around Paley, who stood with pride and coolness.
"Alright, Adimia. You're going to be fighting these guys." Paley overcompensated slightly, using up too much of his mana. But it was worth it because Adimia was almost tearing up with excitement. He readied his sword and began walking toward the golems.
Paley pointed at Adimia, "Earth Golems, attack Adimia." A flash of yellow light traveled up the golems, and they began walking towards Adimia. He laughed in excitement and sprinted towards them, swinging his sword with no skill at all. The sword managed to make contact with a golem, but it didn't even make a dent in the dense dirt.
Paley walked over to Rauba while Adimia had the time of his life. He held his hand out, she took it, and they immediately took to the air. He took her to the top of a tree, where he had destroyed all the leaves, leaving a nice open area with big branches to sit on. He didn't destroy too many leaves, just the ones that were too close.
"This is where I train my magic. I either practice a new spell or expand my mana." He said.
"How do you expand your mana?" She asked.
"Well, mana works a lot like your muscles. Just as how you can run until you run out of energy, you can use a limited number of spells before running out of mana. But, like muscles, you can keep reaching that limit and going as far beyond it as possible. I used to cast about 30 Firebolts before running out of mana." He took a seat on a branch to her side.
"And now?"
"609," The number startled her.
"Really!? That many!? In just like six months?"
"I'm joking," He laughed lightly, "I can do about 54."
"That's still so many. I can only do 12. Am I ever going to be a good mage?" Her spirits dropped as she realized the sheer gap in talent between her and Paley.
"You're still 7. You have plenty of time to get stronger, especially if you start now. Most people don't even start until they're 15." He reassured.
"I will try my best," She clenched her fists.
"You better. Let's get to training, shall we?" He walked over to her.
Paley trained all of his elements as usual, impressing Rauba with big fireballs, tornadoes, and other powerful spells. Rauba was exhausted by the time he finished with his training regime.
"Want to go back home?" He asked, and she nodded, "Come on," He picked her up and flew down, seeing that Adimia managed to damage the golems he created. Having Adimia train with him was another plus because keeping those golems up continuously drained his mana.
"Fall." He motioned his fingers downward as he landed with Rauba. The golems stopped attacking the panting Adimia and crumbled to the ground.
"Aw! I'm not done yet!" He turned to Paley, revealing his sweat-drenched face.
"I think you're quite done. You look like you just came out of a bath." Paley joked, "Hasn't Bacha come back by now?" He looked around for Bacha.
"She did come back, but then she went off again to look for some flowers or something," Adimia explained.
"Paley!" Bacha emerged from the trees on the other end of the nest, holding a bunch of white and red flowers. She began walking over but stumbled and dropped the flowers into the air. They were going to fall onto the ground, but a gust of wind took them away.
"My flowers!" She reached her hand out after them.
"Were they important flowers?" Paley flew over and helped her up. Her knee scraped slightly on the hard remains of the golems.
"Yes! I was going to give them to you," She pouted.
"Well, that's thoughtful of you," Paley thought she wanted to give the flowers to all the orphans since she picked around 8, "Come on, we're going to go home now."
"No, I want to get more flowers." She insisted.
"How about tomorrow? You can get some flowers tomorrow. I'll help you too." He offered and took her to Adimia and Rauba.
"Really?"
"Of course,"
"Okay, then!" She agreed.
"You two are coming tomorrow as well, right?" He asked Adimia and Rauba; they nodded eagerly.
That night, Adimia couldn't sleep at all. He silently got out of bed and took the sword from under his bed outside. He jogged to the forest, so impatient that he didn't notice Paley sleeping on the grass on the riverbank.
He went deep into the forest, where it was dark, but he wasn't afraid, just determined to get stronger.
'Paley needs us. As his brother, I must get stronger and fight with him in the future!' He thought and began to slash at the trees for the rest of the night.