Wow, lame title eh? =.=
Anyways,
Intro
[spoiler]
“…Steady your hand.. and focus,†said a hushed yet monotone voice.
From anyone else’s viewpoint, this would have been a strange sight. A small girl lying down, sniper’s position staring with her cold eyes down the sights of a mana cylinder and her father, her trainer who resembles nothing of as a parent and is one in name only.
“Remember about the mana density, remember what I’ve taught you,†drones the same voice.
The girl stiffens up as she hesitates for a moment, inhaling and concentrating to feel the presence of mana in the air around her. With a suitable readjustment found, she exhales; the decorated barrel of the mana cylinder emitted a stronger blue which meant there wasn’t enough power before. Her trainer wrinkled his eyebrows as he watched the simple mistake in silent disappointment.
Last night was overcast and thus mana precipitation was lower today. I guessed it made sense as to why the others weren’t as energetic this morning; they do rely on the moon after all.
Scanning across the range, it took me a while to fix my gaze on what faced the business end of the cylinder; a simple practice target.
It was over six hundred meters away.
The sound of a heartbeat is essentially the rhythmic closing of one way valves as they naturally stop the backflow of blood during the violent contractions of the heart. It’s said that the more a person trains in silence and concentration, the more that person is aware of their own heartbeat: No matter how quiet it gets, you can never shut off the thuds that proclaim your life. When you ignore the outside noises, the only sound with you is your heartbeat; a marksman trains to live with this enemy so that the blood that runs his life doesn’t ruin his aim. This girl is a trapped soul in which a one way door stops anyone from reaching her; and at the same time, there is nothing on the other side to push her through those doors.
A loud crack stopped me before I could congratulate myself for coming up with that analogy. A blue tracer lasted momentarily and showed the path the icebolt took, it didn’t look like it deviated very much from where it was fired; shot in between heartbeats indeed. From the azure plume that drifted up from the barrel of the cylinder, the girl waved her head from side to side with a worried and confused look as she struggled to see the result of the shot. This was one of those rare moments where you could ever see any kind of weakness from her. Usually they were short-lived but this time her face continued to look anxious.
She didn’t miss, but she didn’t hit her target either: the shot was underpowered.
A real prodigy indeed.
Before he left, her father muttered some words, none of which I could make out but it didn’t take a genius with acute hearing to understand what he was saying.
The plume of mana continued to rise and dissipate until it wasn’t possible to tell the difference between it and the air we breathed.
Long after he left, the barrel rose up again to shatter the air: again and again, with shorter intervals each time until they stopped entirely.
I spent the next five minutes peering over the practice range; blue streaks spoiled the face of the scenery.
From my own viewpoint however, this was just another day.
[/spoiler]
Update:
Jan 18: Intro chapter added.