All of them including mentors were still stunned from the beauty of this place, Ulma was the first to ask "What is this place?" With wide eyes she could not stop feeling at home in this place. "Like Mr Alsian just explained, it is the grove of the circle and moon - a place of perpetual balance!" The voice of the elven woman still at the altar resounded.
She gracefully got up from her praying and walked towards the group before stopping and giving them a deep bow. "My name is Trisphyra Lathalas, but you can call me Triss! The grumpy Mr on the log is Alsian Fayt or as his true name Alsian Concor Shard." She gave them a full on smile while Alsian just saw there with his mouth open. She gave him a quick eye when she realized things had just gotten silent.
She opened her own mouth. "Oh..." She quickly turned to the group again, "Please forget about his full name! You didn't hear it from me." She blushed slightly but the damage was already done so she tried to play it off with a nervous laughter. Before looking around and finding what she needed to move on from the subject.
"The young looking mage over there is Wiz'zoma!" She gestured toward the mage covered in flowers that was slowly walking toward them. The youths all took a moment to snap out of all the information. "Wait... Alsian Fayt... Samuel Fayt? Huh!" Sonya seemed embarrased suddenly and Alsian walked closer to the group.
"Uncle Alsy!" Sonya suddenly strutted forward and gave Alsian a big hug to which he patted her head. "I can't believe I never figured it out before, I mean I have not heard your last name that many times from dad... but you have the same last name as Samuel? Are you related? Is he your long lost son? Or a secret lovechild?" Sonya would have kept talking so Alsian put a hand over her mouth.
"My cousins child." Was all he said making Sonya calm down almost as if she was disappointed in the revelation and took a few disgruntled steps back. "So why are we here exactly?" Erica asked before anything else crazy happened. Alsian sighed "To train, what else? All four of you have extreme potential for great things. I needed to train my relative and tell him more about our family, Triss really wanted to meet the elven queen of the woods." Alsian gaze turned to Ulma who recoiled in horror. "How do you know?" She stuttered every word.
"You are safe here young queen!" Triss said in a reassuring voice. "We will never do you any harm and we would rather die than spill such a secret... even though it might not be a lot coming from me who spilled Alsians..." She proceeded to wave at him with a hand.
"I wanted to meet you personally! Because I wanted to help you train what none of your mentors have the capacity to do... No offense to any of you of course!" She was quick to add. Triss really seemed nice and caring, not only that but her markings betrayed her good will nature of a druid that tends to nature.
"I intend to train young Ulma, Alsian intends to train Samuel and Wiz'zoma is going to train the other two with the help of you four mentors. I know you may want to go with your respective student, but there is not much you can do to help Sam and Ul, which is why we called them here in the first place. Do not worry there will be plenty of time for you to teach them the rest of the craft, but in their fields of expertise they need us." Trisphyras words hurt the respective mentors a bit, but they fully understood what they meant.
Ul's mentor was no great accomplished healer of life, and Bregane knew that Alsian had already intended to teach him some lessons in the future, Alsian had been the one to entrust Samuel to Bregane in the first place so he didn't bat an eye in front of the other mentors, instead he just nodded.
"Well, what are we waiting for! Perhaps I can teach all you young'uns something as well." Wiz'zoma laughed and Tere raised an eyebrow and remarked. "Young? I am 354 years old kiddo." As soon as she said those words Alsian roared in laughter and grabbed Samuel by the shoulder to indicate for him to follow. While Tere stood there in confusion with the other mentors.
"Ulma. Please follow me!" Triss said to the young queen and she did as instructed, they started walking down a path deeper into the forest, but before entirely leaving the glade she turned around. "He might look young but he is the oldest person here! Don't be afraid to punch him if he plays pranks on you though!" The mentors didn't know what to find the most disturbing, the fact that he was the oldest, the fact that he played pranks or the fact that they should punch him if that was indeed what he was doing.
Perhaps it was all of the things combined. Tere could not help herself though. "How old are you then?" She said with a voice filled with spite and Wiz'zoma just chuckled before replying sarcastically. "Well KID, I am somewhere in between 780 to 800, I lost about a dozen years worth of memory, or at least the unimportant parts during those years, so I don't remember my birth date." He quickly walked forward and tapped Tere on the forehead with his staff and shapeshifted into an old man with long white beard and hair.
Samuel saw the old man just as turned around to look at his teammates before leaving the glade in the opposite direction to Ulma, he saw the old wizard that had teleported him into the Nicodravi headmasters room the first day he went there. "That douchebag!" Samuel muttered to himself. Thinking of the day he would get back at him for just teleporting him into a room and dropping him on the floor.
A few minutes walk later and he had imagined many ways to get back at him and he realized that they had walked into another small glade not too different from the first one. Alsian quickly walked to a tree stump that had been remade into a large chair instead and motioned for Samuel to take a seat on another stump or the ground.
Samuel did as instructed. "Well you must have plenty of questions for me by now!" Alsian had promised to tell him more when he had gotten into the college and was well on his way. This seemed to be it, so Samuel thought back to all the things he wanted answers too and asked.
His first question a simple one.