The next three months Ciaran spent in constant training with the siblings.
Eleftherios insisted that he should learn how to fight before he learn how to feel for his element. They spent their time together in constant sparing. When they weren't sparing the boy would run mock Trials to get a new feel for his abilities.
Verdania on the other hand stayed true to her words and bleed him. She said that before the boy was ready to come into contact with real Water training he needed to be able to feel his own fluids. Blood being the prime target of their training.
This also doubled as a healing session for Ciaran. His mentor told him that if he wanted to progress in any meaningful way, she had to undo what was done to his body. One chunk of flesh at a time.
The process was excruciatingly painful for the boy, and Eleftherios couldn't bear to look every time his sister was cutting up their student. Ciaran begged for pain relievers many times, but he was denied.
"You need to feel how your blood is supposed to flow Ciaran. The medicine will just hinder your progress." She told him.
It didn't take long for the boy to get to know the siblings personally. Eleftherios acted like a hardass but was very soft with him. He threatened to beat him repeatedly during training, but at most the boy got a few bruises. They went slow so Ciaran could get used to this new style of body movement, and get accustomed to the changes to his body.
On the other hand, Verdania was the exact opposite. She looked caring and gentle, but the boy learned to fear her. With a motherly smile, she would cut him up, and tell him, in a roundabout way, to shut up and just take it. The woman's brutality knew no limits, but he could tell she had no malicious intent.
After two months of her treatment, his body became stronger, and his first fish scale appeared on his arm. Ciaran was startled as she had not injected him with anything strange, this was a natural response to his body. Until then the boy, deep down, still wished that they were lying to him. That all of this was an elaborate plan to mess with his family. But after the first, there was a second, and a third, and so on.
It became impossible to delude himself into thinking that his mentors were messing with him anymore. On the third month, he had finally come to terms with his situation. He could finally sleep without his Big Sister putting him on the dreamless spell.
From then on, Verdania put an illusion spell on him, so that no one knew what he was, and he returned to taking lessons with his friends.
Naturally, his friends were more than a little curious about where he had been for three months.
"I had a mental breakdown. Stayed in my room and cried myself to sleep. I am ok now don't you worry, I came to terms that I am not Ciaran Clades anymore." He said, the meaning of his words went over the heads of his friends.
Both Rayon and Sunny didn't press him anymore after that, but Clara was far from satisfied. She had grown accustomed to smelling his dishonesty and waited for an opportunity to talk in private.
"So what is up? I know you Ciaran, you are not above admitting to crying, you are more than that, but only if it benefits you. What have you been actually up to?" Clara pushed him, and she pushed him hard.
For weeks on end, she would ask and he would dodge, but it never ended. In the end, he gave her another half-truth. He told her he was keeping himself busy at the Maze. That the teachers had left him alone because he was in a very vulnerable position, and he took advantage of that.
"Mrs. Elizabeth does her best, but she teaches us things both of us knew already. Without the Library, it would be useless for me to attend her lessons. I came back only because I got lonely and I missed you three" He said, and she looked at him funny.
She didn't press him further, but what she heard worried her. People said Ciaran was a great liar but she knew how to infer the truth from his words.
'He said that he missed "us three" not his family. Also, the way he told me he had been lonely was a lie. Where have you been Rony, and more importantly with whom? ' She saw through his bullshit but didn't call him out on it because when he had said that he suffered a mental breakdown, she knew he wasn't lying.
Fortunately for the boy, she didn't catch on to his wordplay on his name, or she might have actually gone to question his parents.
Another month passed, and with that came the Summer Break. The students would go back to their families for three whole months. Ciaran on the other hand would have a different sort of 'break'.
"Now that you have more time on your hands, it's time you got to know my territory a bit better." Verdania told him.
It is worth noting that she was against letting him back with the humans, but Eleftherios insisted he needed contact with his friends. The two of them argued a lot about that, but in the end, Verdania relented. Her younger brother never opposed her, so he must really think that their student needed that so she allowed it.
Now that the distractions were out of the way, it was time for the boy to experience a part of the real world, the one hidden from him until now.
Needless to say, Ciaran was over the moon. He enthusiastically asked her question after question, and for once she answered without popping a blood vessel even after hours of interrogation. Eleftherios instead was panic personified.
"Rony I am bound to this place and I can't come with you, please be careful. Your sister will keep you alive, but that is as far as she will go. When we were growing up she was even more merciless, but her edges have only dulled slightly."
She wants you to shed your human nature as fast as possible, and that means you will come in contact with some magical things. I know you. You will get absorbed in your exploration, but please promise me you will be careful."
The man nagged him for days on end until he got the boy to swear a few oaths. Even then he got his sister to promise she would not let things go too far.
She was slightly annoyed at the accusation, but she still swore she would keep him safe.
"No permanent harm will befall our young don't worry." She said.
By the way, she had worded that, Ciaran finally understood why his Big Bro was so anxious. It seemed bleeding him wasn't the worst thing his sister would do to him this summer, and wasn't that just the stuff nightmares were made of?
"What have you planned for me, oh kind big sister of mine who doesn't want to cause her little brother pain? "He asked.
'Ever the drama queen this one.' She thought and chuckled.
"You don't know magic yet, but since Eleftherios pointed out you need friends your own age, and I believe they shouldn't all be human, we are going on an adventure to find you one."
"I am not going to lie to you Ciaran, it is too early for you to mean people of the other races, but that is not what we will be doing. We are going to find you a familiar." She said, and Eleftherios's face paled.
He got a chair to grow out of the ground and sat on it, his face in his hands.
Ciaran couldn't figure out if he should be jumping for joy or running for his life.
Both of his siblings had a familiar. They said every mage had one. His sister's was a white owl. And his brother's was a green serpent. They said that both of their familiars had a true body, but they appeared as regular animals in front of the boy.
Supposedly his sister's owl could travel the whole continent in a matter of minutes and his brother's serpent was as big as the whole city in its original form. Both familiars lived in the souls of their respective masters. And therein laid the problem.
"And how exactly will he get one, when he can't control his soul? Are you just going to jam it in there and pray it doesn't kill him? "
"Well now, how did you guess my plan Eleftherios, are you learning to read your sister's mind now or what?" She grinned at that, not a kind smile this time, a vicious grin.
'Thank all the Gods and everything else that probably exists.' Ciaran thought. He had learned that when she showed viciousness like this, his sister was only messing with them. It was when she said frightening things and smiled like a saint that the boys knew it was high time for them to shit themselves.