Arriving at the big tree the old man had pointed to, Maya
could see about a dozen boys sitting there chatting and playing around. They
all seemed to be from the ages of fourteen to seventeen, when she got near the
boys turned to look at her. One of them with black sharp ears and a long black
tail stood up to approach her and started sniffing her all over making Maya
uncomfortable.
"You smell.... different, what are you?" He asked.
Another boy identical to the first one also looked at her
face deeply then to her chest "I've never seen her before"
Maya covered her chest with her arms in displeasure before
saying "Smith rescued me from the forest, I will be staying here for a while"
A boy without any beast features asked "The village chief
rescued you?"
"Are you going to be his female?" Someone asked curiously.
"Am no one's female, I'm just here to learn" she said
sternly but she was still surprised at what she heard l 'Smith is the village
chief?'
"Huh? But you seem way past the maturity age, shouldn't you
be taking care of cubs at your age?" the black tailed boy asked in confusion.
At that moment the old man came into view "get away from
her, she's a fledgling just like the rest of you, that's all you need to know"
"But this female didn't attend the rite of passage with us,
is this allowed?" The black tailed boy asked.
"She became a fledgling last night, isn't that equivalent to
attending the rite of passage?-" The old man raised his brow at him "-and
Shadow, aren't you supposed to be attending the novice class? You are no longer
a fledgling you know"
Shadow's black cat ears drooped along with his tail "I won't
attend the novice classes without my brother"
The old man let out a troubled sigh, the two boys were twins
and never did anything without the other. Shadow was the talent of their tribe
but he was being held back since he chose to wait for his brother who still
couldn't call forth his inner beast without a stimulant.
"Alright, let's begin today's lesson. I wanted you to
practice basic combat with each other but for the sake of the new arrival let's
push that to later" the old man said as he ignored their groans of complaint.
He never played favourites and if you were late it wasn't
his problem but that day he was suddenly playing favourites making alot of
students look at Maya in disapproval.
"I will teach you the basics again, take this as your chance
to revise" the old man said without leaving any room for discussion.
"As l said, with the exception of Shadow, all of you here
are fledglings. Being a fledgling means that you are someone who hasn't made a
proper connection with your inner beast. At the age of 16 when you come of age,
you are supposed to attend the rite of passage to awaken your inner beast. Of course
some talented ones are able to awaken their beast before they come of age, just
like Shadow here.
This is a very important stage because it determines whether
you can control your inner beast or the inner beast will control you instead.
Naturally everyone has their own stimulating emotions, these stimulants can be
excitement, fear, sorrow, anxiety and so on, different beasts respond
differently to different emotions and are more sensitive to one particular
emotion than others.
Since our clan is
under the Darkfang tribe, most of our innate beasts are ferocious beasts who
easily get angered making anger the most common stimulant in the tribe. And the
key to controlling your inner beast is mastering control over that stimulating
emotion, if you can control your anger you can control your inner beast.
Failure to control that anger is equal to giving that inner beast control over
your own body, if that happens then there is no difference between you and the
non-shifting beasts.
By now you must all know which emotion stimulates your inner
beast. I want you to think of what makes you angry and when you feel that your
beast is about to awaken master that feeling. It begins at the centre of your
chest, concentrate and try to slow down the pace at which the beast energy
tries to spread to your whole body. That's how you master control over your
inner beast, don't let the energy spread around chaotically or you will lose
control of your beast." The old man gave a lengthy explanation.
All the students were sitting cross-legged as they
concentrated, beads of sweat could be seen running down their foreheads. No one
wanted to become a mindless beast so they were extremely cautious and nervous,
luckily their teacher was around, he could just knock them out so that they
would return to their demi-human forms. They could only become mindless beasts if
they kept on loosing control all the time.
Every time they let their beasts run amok without them in
control, the beast would gain more control while they lose. As long as they
still had a tiny bit control over their body there was still hope of not
turning into mindless beasts, so after trying a dozen times and still failing,
they would be advised against ever trying to shift.
Once they mastered the pace at which the beast energy moved
in their bodies, they could transform and be in control all the time.
While everyone was deep in concentration, Maya who was
mimicking everyone was confused 'isn't this supposed to be very hard to master?'
she thought as she controlled her energy to move at a very slow pace. The
energy obeyed her every command without a hustle, the only problem was that
when she tried to direct it to her whole body it dispersed.
[Insufficient energy for full transformation]
'So that's why' she gathered the energy again and directed
it towards her hands, she made sure to only guide the littlest amount to avoid
accidentally hurting anyone. When the energy reached her fingertips, she could
feel her nails elongating, when she opened her eyes she could see the familiar
white long claws from the previous night.
The old man had been paying attention to Maya the most, upon
seeing the white claws he was stunned.
'magnificent, she can already control her beast energy so
fast after becoming a fledgling yesterday?'
Suddenly a commotion rang out bringing the old man out of
his stupor, looking over at the group of students he could see a black panther
jumping at Shadow. Being a novice shifter, Shadow was able to easily dodge the
first claw swipe but it was unknown if he could still avoid the second attack
since he wasn't in his beast form. He might be a novice shifter but
transforming into his beast form still took time.
Luckily the old man arrived on time and knocked out the
panther, looking at the panther reverting back to his demi-human form the old man
sighed. This was the eighth time the poor boy lost control, he started thinking
of making him stop trying if he still failed a few more times.
When the boy woke up, he sat back down to try again but the
other students started complaining.
"Master please isolate Void, I can't concentrate with him so
close to me. I keep fearing that he will lose control and bite my head off" one
of them complained and the others all nodded in agreement.
Even the old man had thought about isolating him but he was
afraid it would affect his progress, but now that the others had all agreed he
had no choice but to separate him. Fortunately Shadow was still around and
comforted his brother, they sat down a distance away from everyone.
At that moment someone gasped "Look at the female's hands!"
Upon hearing this, everyone including the twins and the old
man looked over at Maya. Her hands from the wrist up were covered in soft
looking blue shiny scales and her claws kept on elongating then retracting at a
steady pace.
Maya's eyes were still closed, suddenly a frown appeared on
her peaceful face.
'why can't l control this bit of energy?'
She had been able to control the flow of the energy and was
able to direct it to her hands at will but now a bit of energy suddenly became
wild and was heading towards her head. No matter what she did it wouldn't
listen to her, this made her panic but there was nothing she could do because
it had already reached her forehead and split into two.
She suddenly felt extreme pain on the two points of her
temple making her snap out of concentration and start screaming in pain. She
could feel something growing there feeding on her beast energy.
After all the energy had been used up, the pain finally
stopped. She touched her forehead and felt the two little bumps on it, her eyes
widened in shock. She ran to a bucket of water to look at her reflection and
the situation was as she thought.
She was growing horns!
The two small horn like protrusions were white and seemed to
be shimmering with silver scales here and there. She also noticed that her ink
black hair was now ocean blue I'm colour and her eyes were also blue with the
pupil narrowed like that if a snake.
Her heart beat accelerated as she moved away from her
reflection, she suddenly felt her hands were different when she looked at them
she was horrified!
The previous night was dark and she was facing danger, she
didn't get the time to react to her abrupt changes. Looking at her monstrous
hands now, they felt so alien, she didn't want to be like that. She turned back
at the old man who was staring at her with a bright smile.
"I'm a monster"
"You are a genius!"
They said at the same time.