Images.
"You little…" Amelia burned furiously.
"Don't blame me for being rude to you, you started it first, Amelia. I only wanted to help"
"It's Princess Amelia, you fool!"
"Princess Amelia!" A guard called out interrupting the conversation. "Princess Aurora has sent for you, she is in her chambers, Your Majesty"
Amelia struggled to calm herself and answered the guard dryly "Okay, I'm coming"
She turned to Ava glaring at her with piercing eyes "Your judgement is for another day, filthy lowlife" she whispered and sashayed angrily shoving her aside.
Ava looked at her for a moment, it had obviously hurt her when she mentioned her weakness in magic. She truly pitied her and believed that if Princess Amelia continued putting effort, she was going to level-up too.
Ava further supervised the decorations and arrangement of the garden. Then she finally left for the training ground.
It was surprisingly empty, with only two few guards in the entrance watching after the ammunition. This was to Ava's advantage as she had intended to be alone anyways. Her curiosity was at its peak.
She came forward to where the swords were arranged and picked one of them. It was surprisingly heavy as she pulled it on the floor making a loud screeching sound. She had seen Prince Neville and Princess Aurora use it the other day, it looked so cool the way they had both shown their sword fighting skills.
She brought the sword above her head and demonstrated some of the things she had seen Neville and Aurora do that day. Trying hard to mimic them as perfectly as possible. She had a very retentive memory, sometimes even photographic and it made her learn things faster than most people could.
Ava admitted to herself that she was having fun, even if she wasn't really dressed for the activity she found herself doing, as she was wearing a rather long kimono gown, her wavy brown hair even got in the way sometimes.
As she moved the sword completely immersed in what she did, a strong force rushed into her veins. It made her shiver at first, as her mind formed a lot of unexplainable images at once.
She saw the silhouette of a man whose body was emanating a strange dark green mist, a mass number of horrifying dead bodies lied before him. She saw another image of burning houses and lands people running around in dire confusion. She became more perplexed as she saw Sir Asher, a younger version of him this time, he was carrying a child who cried violently in the rain. Every image she had seen was dark and mystifying, extraordinarily detailed and yet confusing and hazy.
The worst of all was that the images had made Ava's head ache excruciatingly. She had had this experience before but it wasn't as terrifying as this.
"Argh!" She groaned, holding her head with one hand as the images kept on reoccurring in her mind.
She flung the sword she was holding aside with full force and staggered back noticing that the two black dots on her lower arm were glowing.
Neville walked into the training ground, just in time to dodge a fast flying sword which was headed to his direction. If not for his extra-ordinary reflexes, he would have most likely been sliced through by it. Who had been training so dangerously?
He picked up the sword and saw that the person's hand had deeply dented the hard steel handle. He raised his brows in surprise.
He walked further in and found Ava in a very distraught state, she was obviously in full battle mode as her entire body glowed, it wasn't a good idea to be in battle mode when it wasn't needed, especially for someone in such a lower level. He could sense the aura of her magic even if he wasn't close. Her magic was different and strong, too strong for someone in level two, Neville thought.
The strong force that overcame Ava gradually died down as the images stopped coming, her headache was still there but it wasn't as intense as before. The glow on the two spots died down as well, Ava looked at Prince Neville who stared at her perplexed.
"I…Im sorry about the sword" Ava apologized, struggling to overcome her weak body.
Neville stood "You're crying"
"A…Am I?" Ava touched her cheek, feeling the tears that flowed freely from her eyes. She instantly cleaned the tears; her face had gone scarlet already.
"Are you okay?" Neville asked as he came closer to her. Trying to understand what had just happened.
"I don't think so…" Ava's voice trailed off as she felt her knees completely weak and she struggled to stand right. Soon, her vision blurred, her eyes struggling to look at Neville who was holding her from falling.
"Ava?" Neville said her name as she slowly closed her eyes.
And then everything went blank…
...
Neville carried Ava to her room. He looked at her face, fear and discomfort was written all over it. He soon called the royal physician who had assured him that everything was going to be fine.
Neville walked to and fro in the palace courtyard trying to figure out what had happened to Ava. Yes, it was completely normal to feel extremely weak after using your full magic powers for the first time but he felt Ava's case was very different because Ava's magic was extremely different. He had encountered shapeshifters and weilders a lot of times and their magic was not like this one.
"Neville" Aurora called walking up to him, she had a worried look on her face. "I heard what happened to Ava, is she okay?"
"She will be" Neville simply said.
"Why are you so restless, are you sure she's fine?"
"She is, Im just baffled by the fact that she levelled up so quickly" Neville confessed.
"Well…you're her teacher, so…"
"Yeah I know. That's not the only thing. She went in full power mode before she fell unconscious, I saw her Aurora, her magic isn't ordinary"
"Is she using dark magic?" Aurora asked.
"No, that's not what I mean, but_"
"Look Neville Aurora cut him "You're just overreacting, her style may just be a little different and that's okay"
Neville nodded reluctantly; he didn't agree with Aurora's theory.
In any way.