The Realm Protectors - Chapter 3: Chapter 3

Why in the hells is this damn labyrinth so big? I think to myself as I search the doors for room number 11. I must've taken a wrong turn somewhere...
"Avani Gipson?" Someone asks behind me. I spin around and see a man leaning out of a doorway. Engraved on the door is that damn number 11 I've been searching for.
"Yeah, that's me." I grumble. "I missed the door."
The man nods and motions to the doorway. I walk inside and look around at the wooden walls. So much wood, I think to myself. For some reason it's calming – the earthy smell of it reminds me of the woods back home.
"Go ahead and stand on that X there on the floor." The man says. He leans against the wooden desk against the wall. "My name is Mr. Kruse and I'll be administering your test."
"Cool," I shrug.
"Do you have any questions before we begin?"
"Only if I get a prize for asking."
Mr. Kruse smiles at me. "I like your attitude, kid. Now, go ahead and close your eyes. Listen carefully to my instructions and this should be easy."
I close my eyes and listen as Mr. Kruse keeps talking. "Cup your hands like you're holding a bowl. Good. Now, I want you to picture a well filled with power. Do you see it?"
I feel my face scrunch up in concentration as I build a well in my mind. It's overgrown with moss and vines, crawling up mud-caked stones. "I see it."
"What's inside of it?"
I look into the well in my head and see–
"Dirt."
Mr. Kruse chuckles. "Dirt?"
I nod. "And... and rocks. And there's moss too, smooth green moss that's rippling like water."
"Good, Avani, that's really good." Mr. Kruse says. "Now, I want you to stick your hand into that dirt. Slowly."
I take a deep breath and slide my fingers into the dirt. It's cool and just the slightest bit wet, like it rained recently.
"Open your eyes, Avani." I open my eyes to see branches growing up from the floorboards, sprouting buds and blooming cherry blossoms as they grow up towards my hands.
"I can control earth!" I laugh. Kruse nods.
"Yes you can. Remarkably well, if I might add." He looks up from the plants. "Now I want you to take your hand out of that dirt, Avani."
I close my eyes again and slide my hand out of the dirt. I feel the branches recede into the floor and suddenly I feel pulls on my subconscious.
"What's that pulling feeling?" I ask, turning towards Kruse. As I ask the question I can already sense the answer.
"Earth elementals have the ability to sense life." Kruse explains. "What you're feeling is the life forces of the things around you."
I lower my eyes to the little sprout in my hands. "What's this?"
"I'll take that, actually." Kruse says, opening up a little box with my name on it. "Don't worry, it'll be returned to you at the Welcoming. It's the first spark of your element. A keepsake."
I nod as he slides the box in with a crate of other boxes, all with different names on them. He hands me a green card from the desk.
Avani Gipson
Dorm 245
"What's this?" I ask.
"That is what you give to a teacher behind one of the desks in the Dorm Assignment room." Kruse explains. "Just take a left from the door and keep going until there's a split. Take another left and keep walking. You'll know the room when you see it."
I open the door and call "Thanks," behind me. Back into the labyrinth. Only this time it's easier. I can feel the wood in my subconscious, connected to me. I can follow the feeling of where each corner is, I can sense the numbers burnt painfully into the doors. I'm in the large room in quick fashion and join the dwindling line of students waiting to be assigned dorms or whatever. A teacher waves to me and I walk up to her. She smiles at me, a bulging baby belly half-hidden under the desk.
"May I have your card?" She asks. I hand her the green slip of paper and she reads it quickly before handing it to a girl in a purple outfit behind her.
"Follow me," the girl says breathily. Her silver crescent moon earrings swing as she leads me outside. The sun is bright on her hair, bright silvery white with sparkly strands of pink and blue. It's braided away from her face in the way I usually do mine before football games.
"I like your hair," I find myself saying.
The girl smiles. She doesn't seem to be much older than me. "Thank you. I'm Lyra."
"Avani," I reply.
"You are very muscular," she blurts. I rock back on my heels, slightly surprised, before barking a laugh.
"Yeah, I play a lot of sports." I respond. "You're quite blunt, aren't you?"
Lyra shrugs. "It's simply an observation I made. You will like your physical kinesis classes, I bet."
"Physical ka-what?" I ask.
"Each ability is given a name. Space elementals, like me, practice Spatiokinesis. Earth elementals practice Geokinesis. Each kinesis has two classes: physical and theory. Physical kinesis class is when you practice your abilities in your campus training center."
"Please tell me that's not the only physical education class."
"No, there's also physical education. That class is blended with other elementals in your sect."
"What's a sect?"
"A sect is what we call each grade here in the Realm." Lyra explains. "You are a first sect, I am a second sect."
Lyra leads me onto a sidewalk lined with rocks of all shapes and sizes. At the end is an arch made of intricately carved stone, and beyond that is a circular area with multiple buildings. A skyway extends over our heads, bending down to dock in a building in the middle of it all.
"This is the Earth Campus, where earth elementals like you train and live." Lyra explains. "I will take you to your dorm. You have two roommates."
Lyra leads me into a large brick building covered in vines. A plaque above the doorway marks it as the Earth Dormitories. Inside is a rustic, cottagecore-looking lounge area. There's a small library to one side, and a cafe on the other. Lyra leads me into the elevator and presses the button for floor number three. Sounds of the forest surround us as we rise, the glass wall behind us offering a view of the rest of the Asavanra campus behind us. The doors open and we emerge onto a large floor that splits into two sides. A sign on the wall reads ← 201–300, 301–400 →. We turn left and walk a little ways down a hallway before taking a right.
221, 237, 243, I count in my head until we reach dorm number 245. I say thanks to Lyra, who nods and turns back down the hallway. I open up the door to see a surprisingly large room. There's a pile of pillows that look like mossy rocks in one corner, and a door in another, revealing the bathroom. Another door behind the pillows leads to a walk-in closet, and three lofts are pressed against the back wall, each with a desk underneath.
"Wow," I breathe. Two girls walk in from the closet and one of them jumps.
"Sweet Uzima, you scared me!" The one who jumped says. She smoothes her afro back from her face. "You must be our third roomie!"
"Well who else would she be, Gem? The great goddess herself?" The other girl scoffs, her hair braided back into neat crochet braids. She turns to me. "I'm Vermont. This is Gemma. We're your roommates."
"Avani," I reply.
"You're otherborn, aren't you?" Vermont asks.
"How'd you guess?" I ask.
"You're wearing a t-shirt of a school we do not know of." Gemma says simply. I look down at my Westwood football t-shirt that I forgot I was wearing.
"Right," I mutter.
Gemma jumps as a crackling sound comes from a speaker up in the corner.
"All students to the auditorium, I repeat, all students to the auditorium for the Welcoming." A voice says before shutting off.
"Well then, let's go." Vermont says. We all walk back down the hallway with other girls and meet with the boys – apparently staying on the other side of the floor – and walk down the staircase at the end of the hallway. Three flights later, we emerge into the lobby and out into the Earth Campus.
"That's a lot of people." Gemma's eyes are wide and she seems to shrink in the crowd of teens.
"That's because it's not just first sects," Vermont points out. "There's second, third, and fourth sects here too. See, there's my brother." She points to another boy with her same dark skintone and dreads. "He's a thid sect."
I look around to see that a lot of the earth elementals look just like us: dark skin and thick black hair. I point this out to my roomies, and Vermont nods.
"The first earth elementals that came here were black, like us. That's why most elenative earth elementals are black." She says. "But we do have a fair share of light skinned otherborns." She points out a group of kids a little ways away from us, with light skin like Ciana.
We continue down the path, other groups of students joining with us as we make our way to the auditorium. I spot Lyra talking to two other girls dressed in purple and I wave. She smiles at me and waves back.
Finally we reach the auditorium, entering through the giant stone arches. We follow the crowd of teens into the stands and we all take a seat. I'm not surprised to see some extra seats – this place is gigantanormus. There's gotta be around twenty thousand students here, and yet you could fit fifty thousand more in here, and that's just counting the seats.
"Holy shit," I breathe.
Gemma tilts her head. "How can mammal excrement be holy?"
"That's not what I meant, Gemma." I laugh. "It's a cuss."
Gemma scrunches up her eyebrows. "You use cuss words to–"
"Gem, otherborns cuss at everything." Vermont snaps.
Sheesh, calm down there Ver. I think to myself. So she's a little innocent and child-like. So what? I mean, if Ciana had ended up like that I probably would've snapped at her too but–
"Ladies and gentlemen!" Professor Grantwood's voice cuts off my thoughts as it booms through the auditorium. Once again, the acoustics are incredible. It sounds like I'm sitting right next to her, despite the fact that I'm halfway up in the seats and she's down in the middle of the floor. "And our genderless friends, of course." A cheer goes up from the crowd somewhere. "Welcome to the Asavanra Welcoming!" The crowd cheers and the teachers – spread out in a line behind Professor Grantwood – applaud. "If all of the first sects would please make their way down to the floor, that would be much appreciated."
I stand up with my roomies, along with thousands of other first sects, and we make our way down the cement stairs to the floor. We crowd on the floor and fidget as teachers stand in front of color-coded crates of boxes – one for each element.
"When I call your name, walk over to the crate that corresponds with your element and get your first spark. Then gather back here." Professor Grantwood says. She pulls out the paper she had earlier and begins to list off names again. Ten minutes later, she calls, "Avani Gipson!"
I work my way through the crowd and up onto the raised platform the teachers are on. I head over to the teachers by the green crates, and Mr. Kruse hands me my box.
"Miss Gipson," He says. I open the box to see my little sprout from earlier today inside a glass marble about as big as a quarter. It's on a silver chain, thin yet strong, and I unhook the clasp and clasp it around my neck. It bounces against my chest as I walk back to the crowd of people. As I look around at the other elementals in the crowd, some of them are giving me weird looks. It takes me a second to realize that my first spark necklace is bigger than all of theirs.
Odd... I think to myself. Not wanting to attract attention, I slip the pendant under my shirt. Ciana is called up next, and the students in the stands clap like they did for everyone else as she walks up to the gold crates. The teacher with the baby belly, the one who had taken my card this morning, hands Ciana her box with a smile. Ciana opens it and a light cascades from it, bright and beautiful. She takes out the necklace and hooks it around her neck before walking back into the crowd. She walks up to me and says, "Hi."
"Hey, look who's little miss sunshine after all!" I laugh. She smiles and holds up the pendant of her necklace, gazing lovingly at the little sun inside of it. Her pendant is as big as mine.
"I guess so," She giggles.
"So, why do you think our sparks are bigger?" I whisper to her, leaning in close to her ear. She scrunches up her eyebrows and looks around at everyone else's pendants and then back to me. I pull mine out from under my shirt to show her. Ours are almost as big as a walnut. Everyone else's are the size of average marbles.
"That's... strange." She agrees. "I'm sure Professor Grantwood has an explanation for it."
We sit together and watch as the rest of the first sects are called up to get their first sparks. Vermont and Gemma join us soon, and two girls come up to Ciana too.
"Ciana, this is Vermont and Gemma. They're my roommates. Roomies, this is Ciana." I introduce.
"Hi," Gemma grins.
"Nice to meet you both," Ciana smiles back. "These are my roomies, Dawn and Apalla. Ladies, this is my friend Avani."
"Nice to meet you," Apalla says. Her tanned skin seems to glow from within and her hair even has streaks of gold running through the dark locks. Dawn looks like the definition of sunshine: blonde hair, green eyes, summer tan, and a splat of freckles across her nose. I bet she has a southern accent too–
"Nice to meet y'all," Dawn drawls. Ten points to Avani. I think to myself. A southern belle. Vermont looks the three light elementals up and down. I can tell she already doesn't like them. Gemma is practically bouncing.
"Alright, thank you first sects. You may now proceed to your seats." Professor Grantwood says from the stage. The crowd of teens turns back to the stands and trudges back up to where they were sitting. Vermont is grumbling the whole way up, meanwhile Gemma can't stop talking.
"Oh, that Ciana was so sweet! And I just loved her roommates!" She giggles, afro bouncing. "And Dawn has the most incredible accent! Reminds me of some old Other movies my parents let me watch once. Where did you and Ciana meet?"
"Does it really matter, Gem?" Vermont scowls.
"We met in the nurse's office." I reply, ignoring Vermont and her attitude. What is up with this girl? "Or whatever it is you guys call the campus health center."
Gemma trips and stops in her tracks, making Vermont stumble into her.
"Gemma," Vermont growls. "Don't stop in the middle of the walkway!"
Gemma blushes but continues walking until we finally reach our seats. Vermont's grumbling has stopped, but now so has Gemma's talking, and I feel kinda bad for the girl.
"And now," Professor Grantwood says from the platform. "Let the Welcoming begin!"