FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter 6: Training

XxX

(Templar Training Ground, Codename: Playground)

Kai looked dubiously upon the alchemy going on before him and asked a question, the answer to which he feared. "You cook?"

"That's the fourth time you've asked me that Ignitus." Skylar growled.

"I know but... you. You cook?"

"Why is that so surprising?"

"Because it's you."

"Dragon I..." Skylar stopped, took a breath and pulled a small cup from his pack before he dipped it into the broth of the stew. Kai stared at it in distrust for a long moment before allowing Skylar to pour it into his mouth.

"Ohhhh." Kai quivered, letting out a low moan at the taste just as Ray and Ian reached the camp fire.

"What are you doing to my brother?" Ian wondered, rubbing his arms as he laid back against Kai's chest to fight off the chill.

"Proving that I can cook." Skylar smirked, offering the same broth to Ian and Ray, both were stunned at the flavour as the Templar spent a few more minutes tending to the stew. He stopped when Ian shivered again. "Are you cold?"

"Just a chill." Ian threw Kai a grateful smile as the dragon curled further around his brother. Skylar frowned at him for a moment long before dishing up the food and everyone took a moment to just enjoy the flavours before really digging into their meal. "This is really good Skylar."

"You haven't spent long on the Carrier yet but trust me by the time you move on you'll appreciate a good meal." Skylar warned them.

"The foods not that bad." Ian laughed, there had been times in the Academy where they'd been a bit short on fresh game, feeding a few dozen dragons with their hundred odd hopefuls wasn't the easiest at times.

"There's 'not bad' and then there's 'good'." Skylar said throwing a bone at Kai and watched as the dragon cracked it in two to get at the sweet marrow within. "Then again I think dragons would eat almost anything given the chance."

"Not far from the truth." Kai mouthed around a jaw full of bone and stew, Ian tried to settle his brother down but found mirth flowing through their bond and couldn't keep the smile off his face.

"Riders." Skylar muttered, shaking his head as Ray laughed at the pair. "Food to your liking Ray?"

"Ah yes sir, it's very good sir."

"It's just Skylar while we're out here Ray, no need to stick to formalities when it's just the team."

"Ah thank you si- Skylar." Ray corrected himself under the Templar's glare before poking at his stew for a moment. "So... Skylar, what exactly are we going to be doing this week?"

Skylar took his time to finish his mouthful as he thought it over. "We're going to be working on some combat skills and magic techniques. I'm going to spend some time with each of you and go over a few basics that you can build on in your own time."

"Our own time?"

"Yes, we have a few missions, but you'll be spending a lot of downtime on the carrier and I can't come and teach you during that off time, you need things that you can do yourself. Not to mention that as an officer I'm expected to have a team that can handle situations that would normally require a team of Sentinels or a company of Vanguard. We'll be getting more members but if you don't take charge of your own development after this and improve, I'll have to reassign you for more experienced riders."

"Seriously?"

"Yes, normally an officer wouldn't have been sent to capture a rogue like Drake we only did that mission because we were a new team. We're going to be expected to do far bigger missions and take much larger risks." Skylar explained. "I have two sentinels pegged to join the team after they've finished their current assignment. Two old friends of mine from the Academy, they'll add to the teams combat potential and I'm looking into getting a combat medic for support, maybe even another Ignitus."

"Another rider?"

"No just a dragon."

"Think you can handle two of us?" Skylar waited until Kai took a muzzleful of food before speaking again.

"Wouldn't you like to know." Kai spluttered choking on his stew under Skylar’s smirk. "We're going to be in for hard times if we don't improve and expand our roster."

"If we don't improve you mean?" Ian muttered, glaring at the Templar.

"I mean we all need to get better, myself included."

XxX

Skylar breathed, slowly drawing the crisp predawn air into his lungs as he watched the horizon gradually burn orange with the rise of the sun. The rest of the team were still asleep, there hadn't been much more conversation after they all finished their meal and Skylar encouraged them to get an early night, they were in for an intense week. He had no intention of running them ragged, he would get very little in the way of returns by doing that to them, but he wasn't planning on taking it easy on them either.

That was why he went all out on dinner last night, they'd be surviving off of porridge and high energy nutrient paste for the next seven days. As well as any fresh meat that they had the energy to hunt but that wasn't a priority for Skylar.

He waited for the sun to start to peek over the horizon before he put the book he’d been reading away and began to move about the camp, starting the fire up again and throwing the porridge and paste together into the cooking pot. It wasn't pretty, but it would do, and he could do with a good helping of it himself. Skylar hadn't slept when the rest of the team had finally dropped off but stayed awake to watch the stars with a cup of tea. He'd been honest with Ian last night, they all needed to improve but Skylar's training was much more in his own mind. Caleb wouldn't tolerate him screwing up another team especially when there was nothing wrong with Ian and Kai, if he was being honest with himself Kai's aura actually felt calming to him which freaked him out. He needed to find a way to... not entirely get past his problems but to not force them onto every dragon that he came across. Also, as intimidated as Kai was of Skylar the Ignitus was clearly open to improving their relationship. As he stared down at the sleeping dragon however, Skylar realised that that was going to be easier said than done.

Once the sun was fully over the horizon Skylar dished up breakfast and rubbed his face, trying to put some energy into his movements, a quick pulse of magic throughout his body did wonders to stave off the fatigue but he was going to enjoy his bed once he was back onto the carrier. He hated this place, he'd never been able to sleep in the shadow of the lone mountain here and even he felt cold sometimes. Ray gave a long yawn and stretch when Skylar nudged him awake with a bowl of steaming porridge.

"It's not much compared to last night, but you'll be grateful for it later on." Skylar said.

"Thank you." Ray mumbled, the tiger looked around the camp and frowned at the sun. "You're the first up?"

"You're surprised?" Skylar asked, he took a bowl for himself and Ian, leaving the majority in the pot for the dragon. Speaking of, Skylar looked to the riders Ian had slept leant back against his brother's chest and the dragon had curled around him protectively.

"Skylar." Ray hesitated. "I can wake them if you'd prefer?" Skylar blinked, looked over at Ray who looked much more awake as he stared at Skylar's right hand and the arcs of lightning twirling around it.

"Damn it." Skylar snarled as he gripped his hand and willed the magic to regress.

"You really don't like the Ignitus do you?" Ray mumbled.

"We all have our issues." Skylar muttered visions of fields on fire and blood red eyes flashed to the front of his mind.

"I'll wake them." Ray offered.

"I've got it." Skylar snapped, before he took a breath and winced as he forced his magic down. "Eat your breakfast."

"Sir."

Skylar didn't bother correcting Ray as he grabbed the pot from the fire and walked up to the riders. He dropped Kai's share in front of the dragon and punched him in his foreleg, not hard enough to hurt but enough to be felt. He may be hoping to somehow befriend Kai, but he wasn't there yet. Ian was jostled awake by Kai moving around to see what had hit him.

"Five more minutes." Ian whined.

"Now."

Skylar looked to the dragon as Kai sluggishly opened his eyes and blinked up at Skylar. He felt the dragon's aura shiver at the sight of the Templar stood over him and Skylar didn't bother hiding his satisfaction at the fear he caused. That probably said more about him that be really wanted to admit but he hadn't slept he was allowed to be vindictive.

"Morning?" Kai mumbled.

"Breakfast is ready." The redhead said, passing a still barely awake Ian his food and letting the dragon investigate his own share. Just as the Templar was about to make some tea, he heard the whine.

"Kai." Ian admonished, hitting his brothers’ neck.

"Problem?" Skylar asked as he looked between the two brothers.

"I was hoping that you made breakfast." The dragon whined sullenly as he took another muzzleful of his food.

"I did." Skylar said, genuinely confused.

"Oh."

"I think that he was hoping for more of last night's wonder." Ian chuckled as he slowly ate his food, gradually becoming more awake as he did. "That was amazing cooking by the way."

"Yeah is there any left?" Kai asked, his eyes bright and hopeful.

Skylar spared Ray a look at the tiger's chuckle before he fixed Kai with a mild glare. "No, you ate it all, this will serve you much better. I assure you."

"Shame, that was really good."

Skylar nodded at the compliment before he looked to Ian. "Are you feeling better?"

"Better?" Ian asked clearly not following what Skylar was trying to ask.

"You were cold yesterday. Remember?"

"It was just a little chilly."

"Ian your magic keeps you warm? If you get cold that means that the temperature is so low that your magic can't tolerate it, or something is wrong with your magic." Skylar pushed he didn’t want to let this go, Ian had stood in a blizzard and not so much as blinked, a mild night outside shouldn't even be a consideration for him.

"I'm fine Skylar." Ian laughed and looked around the camp nervously. "Really I'm good."

"He's alright." Kai backed up, through the dragon couldn't completely hide his unease from Skylar.

"Okay,” Skylar relented. “But if you any issues let me know okay? I can help with these things."

"Yeah thanks but I'm fine. Really." Skylar wasn't convinced but let the matter drop, forcing a different answer out of Ian wouldn't do any good. Instead the Templar watched the team eat their breakfast carefully picking at his own food as he ran over what he planned to do with them. Ray was an artificer, so he wasn't planning to force too much combat training onto him just a few sword forms and some intensive sparring for experience.

Ian on the other hand was in desperate need of some more advanced teaching, he had an impressive amount of magic despite not being a Templar or a Sentinel, but he clearly didn't know what to do with it yet. Skylar knew that it was going to be a head ache to give the boy something that he would be willing to use, however. His initial armament of blunted arrow heads and what basically amounted to a club had been a joke in Skylar's opinion. Also, the rider was hopelessly naive about the reality of the world, but Skylar didn't want to completely crush that part of him, that just seemed cruel. There were a few things that he could show Ian that weren't killing techniques, but he would need to work himself to the bone to make them work.

That just left Kai, again the dragon had an impressive reserve of magic to work from just like his brother, but feral dragons were more difficult to work with magic wise. Most Ignitus just went with their natural size and strength when it came to combat, augmenting it with their magic and breathing fire on everything else. That was usually enough to deal with anything that came their way. Kai was a bit young for that though, he was a capable flyer and had strong magic, but he was still small and quite a bit weaker than his brethren on the Endurance. He could fix any issues with his size by perfecting shapeshifting and in theory he could get up to par strength wise by augmenting his body with his magic. The only problem was that kind of increase would be critically taxing on his reserves and couldn't practically be sustained. Skylar needed to help Kai come up with a stop gap until the dragon was fully mature and could actually throw his weight at an enemy.

He knew what he had to teach the whelp, he just hoped that he could get through it without seeing red and doing something stupid because Kai already reminded him so much of...

Let me cut them

Skylar felt the tremor run through him and hissed, he gripped his arm and kept the magic down with a force that surprised him, he would not be ruled by a damned shadow. The lightning thankfully didn't appear, but he had made enough of a scene for the others to take notice.

"That keeps happening." Kai voiced, much to Skylar's frustration.

"Yes dragon, do you think I haven't noticed the spasms and involuntary magic reactions?" Skylar snarled walking away from the camp and towards the stream running along the edge of their clearing. He needed to wash up and try to calm down.

XxX

"What is his problem?" Ian hissed when Skylar was out of earshot.

"You apparently." Ray smiled, eating his porridge as he watched the sun rise.

"No, I mean seriously what is his problem?" Ian pushed.

"I don't know why he hates your guts any more than you do Ian. He only took over from Lt Darfang six months ago and he didn't like you guys from day one."

"Lt who?" Kai asked.

"Lt Darfang, she was the Templar XO before Skylar, she got promoted and Captain Harris brought Skylar in to replace her. All I really know about him is that he's young for a Templar officer, at least that's what the other Templar have told me and even they don't know a lot about him. No one on the Endurance has served with him before so..." Ray shrugged at the riders.

"How old is he?" Kai asked, he looked the same age as Ian, at least from Kai's perspective he never had been very good at telling those sorts of things about humans or terrans for that matter, they were considered old when they greyed weren’t, they?

"I don't know but I do know that he's had almost a decade of training before he came to the Endurance."

"How do you know that?”

"Well he's an Earther not Terran born so he would have had to do the mandatory classes about Terran culture and history, that's three years itself. The Templar's told me that Sentinel training is three years long with the basic Templar training being another three on top of that. Then there's the Officer training which is an extra two years, none of that can be skipped either from what I've heard."

The brothers exchanged a look, the rider Academy was meant to be three years long, but they had aced most of the first year and finished it in two. Even that was a massive amount of time from their perspective, they'd enjoyed their time, but it had been stifling all the same. Even if they didn't cover combat in the Terran culture classes Skylar had three maybe even four times the amount of magic and combat training when compared to them. It was an eye opener for the boys to be sure.

"The Endurance isn't his first posting either, so he has some experience, no idea how much though."

"He never said anything about being born on Earth." Kai said.

"Yeah because he's been so forthcoming about everything else." Ian muttered darkly, he steadfast ignored the glare that Kai sent his way. He had no interest in learning about Earth just because he supposedly came from there, he couldn't remember life before the Ignitus, and he didn't really want to either. The dragon growled before getting up and heading after Skylar. "Where are you going?"

"I finished." Kai explained by holding up the pot where his breakfast had been, he was going to wash it out in the stream, or at least try to, he hadn't actually done dishes before. They weren't really an Ignitus thing.

He made sure to give Ian a rough mental shove as he left as well, Earth had always been a sore subject with his big brother. Kai didn’t know what started it and Ian never told him, the dragon always thought that it was because of Ian’s family back on Earth but his brother had broken down and had a panic attack the one, and only, time that their dad had brought up going to visit Earth. Since then it was a taboo subject in their cave. It was probably only sheer fear of Skylar that kept Ian from exploding when the Templar asked him about it during their mission.

Kai stopped once he got to the stream and caught sight of the Templar again. Skylar was up to his waist in the water using a cloth to clean himself, his clothes laid out on the grass next to stream but it wasn't his nakedness that made Kai stop, anthros were all too prudish in his opinion anyway what was wrong with a little skin, it was the wide ugly scar that stretched across Skylar's back and curled over his right shoulder. It looked like a burn.

Kai wasn't an idiot, he figured that Skylar probably hated dragons because of some kind of bad encounter with one of his kin but that scar looked vicious!

"You're staring Ignitus."

"Ah sorry." Kai fumbled for a moment not sure what he should do but he just couldn't take his eyes off of that scar. "I thought you didn't burn." He kicked himself as soon as the words were out of this muzzle, of all the things he could say!

"Not anymore."

Kai nodded, wordlessly moving down stream to wash out the large pot and desperately tried not stare at the Templars back. Now that he knew an Ignitus had attacked Skylar, Kai was more curious than ever to find out what happened to him. He also felt bad for pointing out what was clearly a problem in Skylar's spasms.

"I'm sorry!" Kai blurted after a few minutes getting a surprised look from Skylar at the exclamation. If dragons could blush Kai would have been lit up like a lantern as he struggled to justify why he just screamed at the Templar. "For that... Well for saying... Your arm... I... I'm sorry, it was... rude?"

"Are you asking or telling?"

"Both?" Kai grimaced at the light whine in his voice, he really didn't know how to talk to Skylar, the Templar scared the scales off him. He could feel the lightning of Skylar's magic along his senses all the time whenever he was nearby and its scared Kai. It scared him that Skylar clearly didn't like him, hated him in fact, obviously because of whatever happened to give him that scar. It scared him that Skylar would never be able to look past his species when Kai, despite his fear, thought that Skylar was awesome. Sure, he had been angry when Ian had decided that they were going to be staying on the same team as Skylar but that was more out of fear than anything else. After thinking about it for a while though, Kai realised that there was more to Skylar and when Ian told him about how Skylar saw teammates he'd been torn. He'd freely admit, no matter how embarrassing it was, that he wanted to be part of a team that had deep feelings for each other. He'd seen it once in the clan caves when a rider Kai didn't even know came back to celebrate the birth of his partners whelps, his entire team had been there, and they were like a big family. The dragon pushed those thoughts to one side and refocused on Skylar, the redhead was patiently waiting for him to get himself back together. "I'm just sorry okay. Stupid thing to say."

Skylar spent a full minute just looking at Kai before the Templar nodded and went back to bathing. Kai wasn't an expert when it came to reading other people's auras, he could barely read his brothers and they were bonded, but when the tingling of Skylar's dipped so Kai didn't feel the need to scratch at his scales, he figured that he had done something right.

When Skylar was finished bathing, Kai had to stare as the Templar casually boiled the water away from his body with a small spike of magic.

"How did you do that?" Kai asked, as a dragon he was naturally hotter than other species, but he couldn't make water steam off his scales like that.

In way of an answer Skylar held up a hand as it was engulfed in flames, the fire rolling along his skin harmlessly. "It's a variation of this, basically it's low level fire magic across your entire body."

"Can you teach me how to do that?"

"I could do. If that's what you want." Skylar admitted as he secured his pauldrons back into place. "You have a choice to make actually."

"I do?"

"Yes." Skylar glanced back towards the camp and Kai couldn't help but wonder what was going through his mind. "You're young, you get that don't you? You still haven't fully matured yet am I right?"

Kai flinched he didn't like where this was going already. "I'm not a whelp!" He hissed.

"That's not what I asked." Skylar stared at Kai until the dragon dropped his head.

"It will be another year, maybe two before my last layer of scales comes in." Kai admitted, he knew that this was going to come up at some point, everyone had told him that he was too young that he wasn't ready or strong enough.

"Really?" Kai's head snapped up at the surprise in Skylar's tone. "I didn't know that."

"Then what did you mean?"

"I was talking about your physical strength, not your scales." Skylar explained making Kai's heart clench. "I didn't know you grew in different scales as you got older."

"Ah yeah, as a whelp our scales are like soft leather and as we grow, they shed and harden until you get your adult layer." Kai admitted, scratching his neck this was not going how he had hoped it would. "Why were you asking about my strength?"

"So, you're going to shed your current scales at some point?" Kai wanted to groan, he also wanted Skylar to get back onto topic he hated talking about his own growth it was embarrassing.

"Yes, I'll shed these when my last layer begins to grow underneath, it's itchy and awkward and can we talk about something else now please." Kai whined.

Skylar actually cracked a smile at Kai when the dragon whined but took the hint. "You're weaker than the other dragons and smaller so we need to talk about how we're going to fix that."

"Letting me just grow isn't an option?"

"Takes too long, we need a solution now."

"And you have one?"

"I have two which is where you have to choose. On the one hand we can work on increasing your magic reserves, I have several cultivation techniques that will help you out with that and from there you use that magic to augment the strength of your body."

"That sounds alright."

"it has downsides." Skylar admitted, holding up his flaming hand. "If you choose to just amp up your reserves now your control will suffer drastically."

"We can't work on both?"

"Ideally yes, I'd give you both exercises to work on but-" Kai caught the way Skylar's eyes looked him over and couldn't help the well of bitter disappointment that bubbled up inside of him.

"I'm too little."

"You’d need to spend two hours working on control for every hour on augmenting and you don’t have the kind of time you’d need to make that work so… Yes, the bottom line is that you are too little." If nothing else Kai appreciated the honesty, people had been stepping on his tail about his ages for years. "But there's a second option."

"Yeah?"

"I teach you how to do this." Kai blinked as Skylar’s aura rippled and the templar was engulfed in a blazing halo of fire. The Templar snuffed it out with a heavy breath and took a moment to collect himself. "That's a lot harder for me that it will be for you. The Ignitus have a ridiculously potent fulcrum when it comes to fire."

"Don't I need better reserves for that though?"

"No. You have enough to be able to do this with ease, you'd need to increase your reserves for the strength because it's much more taxing. Once you have the technique for this down, you should be able to use it very easily."

"I've never seen an Ignitus do that before."

"I have." Kai jerked at the tone and couldn't help looking to Skylar's shoulder where that scar was now hidden beneath cloth and armour. "Yes."

Kai had to swallow, part of him wanted to say yes because it was a cool bit of magic and honestly if it did that to Skylar it must be powerful but on the other hand it was the magic that scared Skylar.

"I think I should-"

"I'm going to show you how to do both, along with cultivation methods to increase your reserves and exercise to improve your control." Skylar cut in, stalling Kai's worries mid thought. "No matter which one you choose to focus on you should know how to do both, you can work on the other one on the side and gradually improve if you want.”

“Oh, Okay.” When was his age ever not going to be an issue in his life? Or was he really just expected too much too soon, he was only thirteen after all. The punch in the snout made him yelp and grip his muzzle, tears building in his eyes. “Wha- “

“Will you stop with this ‘I’m too young, I’m too little’ bullshit.” Skylar growled. “you know that I have your files from the Academy, don’t you? There were over a dozen recommendations and notices saying that you should be kept back a year or two because of your age but you aced every single test that they put in front of you. You not only graduated early but some of the best test results that those stuck up elders had every seen.”

“Skylar.” Kai mumbled, his chest tightened as he struggled to think of something to say. “Thanks.”

“I’m just telling you the facts; do you think it was chance that you ended up on the Endurance?”

“What do you mean?”

“There are over a thousand Riders in service at the moment. I didn’t pick just anyone to be on my team. I picked the two that have talent and hard work dripping from them in droves.” Kai was finding it hard to breath and it made it even worse that is was all coming from Skylar, the man who claimed to hate dragons. “Now let’s go before your brother thinks I’ve killed you and floated your corpse down the stream.”

And the feeling was gone.

XxX

The first day was a level above and beyond intense. Skylar told them that they were going to be sparring with him but with one small twist, they were to come at him with everything that they had. He told them that if they didn’t attack with the intent to kill, he would rip them apart.

They hesitated, obviously, and he made them pay for it. It took Skylar less than ten seconds to completely overpower them. Ray and Ian were sent flying across the clearing and left struggling to breath when they hit the ground. Kai was thrown back from Skylar by a brutal barrage of lightning.

"Let me make something perfectly clear here." Skylar shouted, making sure that each of them could see him clearly. "I outclass all of you in every single aspect of combat, Skill, Speed, Power etc, etc. I am at a hundred you are all at one... combined. If I'm telling you to come at me, it's certainly not for my benefit its for yours."

The templar glanced over when he saw Kai struggling to get back to his paws. "So, what's it going to be whelp? Are you going to fight me or run home to daddy?" Kai roared as he threw himself back into the fight.

Skylar destroyed them.

For the next three hours the templar fought with them, he picked apart their fighting styles, corrected mistakes in stances and form with painful reminders to demonstrate why they should be doing it right. He threw around an absurd amount of magic like it was child’s play and then threw around some more just to prove a point. He only stopped when Ian, as the last man standing, collapsed under his own weight, drenched in sweat and vomit because even throwing up didn't make Skylar stop.

"I think that will do." The Templar admitted, he looked around at the scorched, blasted and burning clearing and had to admit he was impressed, they held out longer than he thought they would even Ray had really given it his all after being throw over Skylar's shoulder for the seventh time. He left them to drag themselves back towards the camp, where Skylar was making lunch for them all, even after all the magic he had thrown around the Templar had hardly broken a sweat.

The Riders and artificer had to stare in awe as he spent an hour working through his own exercises while they ate and recovered. They might as well have been sat in the centre of a lightning storm from how much difference it would have made to what was happening in front of them. It was exactly for this reason why he was a Templar. Skylar Ventaris was terrifying.

He showed mercy and didn't beat them to a pulp for the rest of the day instead he showed Kai how to practice forming flames from his magic outside of his body and running through hand to hand katas with Ray and Ian. All three collapsed into a happy heap when he finally announced that they were done for the day and no one complained about their third helping of porridge before passing out for the night.

Skylar really was impressed by them, he hadn’t started easy on any of them but aside from the happy groans when they were allowed to drop not one of them had complained. The templar smiled up at the stars as they slept and wondered what to torture them with tomorrow. He understood a little of what Caleb had been trying to tell him months ago, having minions was fun. He couldn’t help his chuckle as he pulled out his book, the light was still good he could get in a few hours.

The second day followed a similar pattern to the first, after he forced the three to bath. If ‘he’ could smell them then he knew that the rider, Terran and dragon could smell themselves, hell Kai could probably taste it. He spared with them one at a time and had the other two work on Templar crystals that he had brought with him. They were small cubes that fit in the palm of one hand that would emit a random amount of magic, the trick was to accurately sense how much magic and infuse the same amount. In this way to practiced sensing and controlling one’s own magic. They turned a simple red and green for fail and success.

That afternoon he set Ray and Kai working on the Axanar, kai needed the practice with the full set and Ray needed time to recover, he was a technician not a soldier or warrior.

"So, what are we going to be doing today?" Ian asked because he was the one who got the pleasure of working with Skylar that day. Kai hadn’t told him what happened by the water yesterday, but he had been driven and much, much happier when he came back to the camp. Even getting his tail shoved up his tailhole by Skylar hadn’t dampened his mood.

"Give me an arrow." Skylar said twirling the arrow around in his hand before slamming the flat tip into Ian's forehead. The Riders world went black for an instant before he could see once again and glared at Skylar, that had hurt!

"What was that for?" Ian stopped when he couldn't feel the arrow and Skylar wasn't holding it. "Where-"

"Just watch." Skylar ordered, he snapped his fingers and the world exploded, the grounds of the clearing shattered like a plane of glass and began crashing away from the pair. Ian felt his heart leap up into his throat a he fell back, this... this was beyond anything that he had seen Skylar do!

When the trees began to crumble into dust and Kai, Ray, Sam, Davros and his father limp and lifeless that Ian stood back up.

"This isn't real, is it?"

"No," Skylar admitted as he spoke the background shifted again so that they were stood atop a snow-capped mountain. "I charged the arrow with my magic, this is an illusion and it's something that I want you to learn how to do."

"You want me to do this to another person?" Ian asked, he had never even thought about this kind of magic, he didn't even know that it could be used like this. "Is this all inside my head?"

"Yes, as far as the other two are aware we're just looking at each other." Skylar said. "Now you need to have almost perfect control to maintain an illusion and to be honest I'm awful at them, the only reason that I can do this is because you're not resisting, and I literally jammed you in the forehead with an arrow."

"So, you're not going to teach me?"

"I have a book with the details in it and I can offer advice but honestly Ian, it's not my area. I'm surprised that I was able to make this with no problems." Skylar explained. "What we are going to do it train you to resist them."

"How does that help me?"

"Full immersion illusions like this one, if they're done right you can get the target to not even realise that they're in one but at the same time if/when they do you can use force to keep them in it." Skylar glared at the surroundings. "Which is what I'm doing right now. With a few modifications you could use your arrows to form a connection between you and whoever you shoot and put them under. There are other types of illusions as well, ways to affect balance, cause nausea and it can be used with other types of magic. With some work it's very a versatile."

"So why am I learning to resist them?"

"Well when you get down to it resisting or oppressing, it's still a battle of the mind. This will be good experience to have." Skylar rolled his shoulders and Ian flinched as the world started pulling itself apart. "Shall we get to it?"

XxX

"My brain!" Ian moaned, they had spent hours duelling each other in their minds and it was clear that Skylar wasn't joking about not being very good at them. Ian beat him out of his mind almost as much as Skylar managed to maintain the illusion. "I'm sore in places I didn't even know existed."

Kai huffed struggling to roll over without taxing his drained muscles. "Tell me something new." Skylar looked up from his book and shrugged, now was as good a time as any.

"Samantha and I had sex that's why she hates me."

Three pairs of eyes slowly panned to the Templar.