Vega considered to end the day and continued to spent his night sleeping. The moon had came out shining upon the darkness in the night. Coming outside, the academy went silent and the weather turned cold.
Instead, the pathway brought Vega to the port again. He hated being in the port, but that was the only way for him to meet with his mentor. Even at night, people were still crowding over at the stalls spending their hard-earned money from their journey in the afternoon. Grilled fish, shells, even birds laid unorganized in different stalls. Of course the most crowded stalls were the one selling different kinds of food.
After wandering through some stalls looking at things, Vega lead himself close to the stone building stood alone higher than any other buildings. It was not only the sheer size of the building, the materials or even the design were totally different.
Placing his medal to the formations, it shook and let him inside. The security was tight, Vega even had to go through another formation before he finally arrived in front of the intricate wooden door. He knocked the door and waited for several minutes before it slid open giving way.
When he stepped his foot inside, the door slammed itself close. And at first Vega had to adjust his eyes with the darkness inside. The room only had one huge lamp hung from the ceiling powered by sigil which wasn't enough to let the room brighter.
Even though Vega saw the windows outside, it was located on the second floor where he was still forbidden to step his foot upstairs.
Even though the room was huge, it didn't have any furnishes filling the room. The only thing that was there were only some pillows scattered on the floor for guests to sit and an huge desks in the corner for Professor Addilyn to put his priced collection of teapot and ceramics.
He had a cold sweat looking at the ceramics and hoped for the best not to break it again. He pulled the pillow close to the wall and sat down waiting for his mentor.
When he closed his eyes, Vega heard a buzzing sound from several places that turned into a song when he focused his attention to the sound. The melody was interesting making him curious to why he didn't realize the melody before. Frowning, he focused harder at the buzzing melody and finally recognize the faint music emitted from the special places.
The sound of hidden things. The melody was really faint and Vega was sure that his mentor hid something behind those sound formation. Vega opened his eyes and waved his hand to pry open the formations but it wont bulge. He even activated his air blade but it dissipated when it approached the spot. The vibration was stronger than his own vibration making the melody to sound more high-pitched than it actually was.
His mentor descended from the second floor threading carefully step by step. Her green robe fluttered around her as if she moved through the air. Sometimes the robe brushed to the stone stairs helped Vega to relax watching his mentor. Even though she wore her usual cold expression, this theatrics of her helped her to gain a huge advantages when meeting her guests.
"What are you doing here?" Her sharp tone brought Vega back thinking his mentor was still the ruthless and cold dragon.
Vega pushed himself to stand upright and answered, "I need your help with something."
She tilted her head waiting for him.
"Uh," he whispered fiddling his robe but steeled himself to speak louder. "What I mean is, I need to know other sound spells."
"Alright then. I can teach you that, but you have to prove yourself that you're able to create your own melody to make me relax."
"But--"
"That's it. You can try doing it here and use the books to keep you company." His mentor waved her hand creating a blast of air dispelling the buzzing sound in the room.
The room transformed. The pillow disappeared replaced with a comfortable sofa set on carpet that has a huge drawing of a long snake with whiskers that seem to thread the air gracefully with its long body. The snake coiled hugging something around its belly. Even the walls had some shelves rest on the wall containing several books with different thickness.
"What is happening?" He gawked at the change in the room. Vega felt his heart beat loudly and some air already gathered around him.
"The heart of stone, boy! Fast!"
Vega concetrated and steeled himself. The wind started to dissipated before breaking anything in the room.
"Something is wrong." Professor Addilyn frowned, jumped approaching her apprentice. "No this is a sound curse. What happened?"
Vega also frowned, he never heard anything related with sound curse. But he did lose control too easy when the room changed. He shook his head not understanding.
She then poked his head several times with her fingers and traced some symbols in the air and muttered. When nothing happened, she took out her zither plucked some strings creating several high-pitched tones ringing inside his ears. The sound was too similar with the siren's scream from Mistress Lorainiard.
The ringing stopped and Vega felt his head clear.
"A siren's curse!" Professor Addilyn snapped. "Ah, use the books as long as you like. I just need you to finish your own song." She slammed the door behind her.
Vega nodded toward the door.
"Don't forget to put back the book where you find it. Don't let it scatter. If you're tired, feel free to sleep on the sofa." A sound from his mentor came to his ears, even though she already went outside.
Vega nodded again. Even without the reminder, Vega was too afraid to practice around these valuable materials. After agreeing, his mentor went back up to the second floor leaving him alone.
The collections weren't as much as the library. But at least most of the books offered a whole different knowledge. He picked one of the book randomly. It contained the explanations of the Air Elements.
'Ever since the first time Mernoralin changed the perspective of magic, the air elements are still consistent throughout his explanation. Despite the growing concern the air element is too similar with the sound magic, the guild never abolished the air element. Of course besides being used to transfer sound, the air element exist in all of us. It's transparent nature helps us to breath unconsciously. Mernoralin described the air that we breathe as oxygen. Perhaps a weird name but when explained cleary, he gave us another examples of carbon dioxide when we exhale. With that explanation...'
Vega frowned flipping the page of the book in his hands, he never heard something called oxygen before, and even though it existed, he never heard the theory as a well-known knowledge. But on the third page he read a passage that explained why the term were not widely used.
'...After he wrote those interesting passage, the guild tried long and hard to understand the differences between oxygen and carbon dioxide. But until now, now one can understand the differences between the two. Since then the air element describe as something 'free' and 'flexible' by the guild. It means…'
Closing the book Vega let himself to take a deep breath and massaged his forehead. The whole theoretical knowledge was something interesting but didn't help him understand about the air element. What he knew was using the spell model to activate the air blade.
After spending his time skimmed several books, he found the book he was looking for about the theoretical knowledge of music. Even though Mernoralin invented new words: 'harmony, melody, and rhythm', but the knowledge he created were the same like the one he got from the meditation exercise. That if you break down all the melody, we can break down the tones into seven major tones.
From the explanation, Vega found out that relaxing music had to have three basic elements. Slow, long, and random. The 'slow' related to match the heart beating slower. The 'long' related to the way the body adjusted to the rhythm. The 'random' related to how your mind will stop predicting what was coming to make your mind stopped thinking and finally relax.
Taking out his flute, Vega tried different melodies making him instanly forgot the situation around him. He remembered the sound of the relaxing ocean, the chiming of the wooden tube from Master Drior, and the swishing sound of the sand moving under his feet.
Addilyn nodded standing on the stairs listening to the relaxing melody coming out from the jade flute. Her apprentice had the mind to understand the most abstract theory in music and make his own relaxing melody. She hoped the relaxing melodies could be Vega's main spells avoiding himself from living the traumatic experience while learning sound magic.
She twirled her fingers and stack the books from the shelves next to her apprentice. These were the books that helped her to understand basic sound magic the first time she took on zither after being separated from her own mentor, Krimitak. She personally chose those books because the books were older than most of the books the guild created while influenced by the crazy theory from Mernoralin.