415 Comunication with the Devil

In his head, he was creating some type of ranking system based on the words that would have been used, and so far the best was himself. That was until Buinn got picked. And even he was struggling to interpret what the instructor meant by special. In a way it wasn't an outright compliment, that was clear because Buinn couldn't even summon his familiar. If he was to take a guess the word special in this situation was being used to describe his potential.

As Clark continued to go around, there were no better compliments given than the one to Rokene and Buinn.

'Looks like your skills aren't the only strong thing, but your talent with familiars might be good as well. Damn, maybe he was just one of those people that were gifted from the beginning. Never had any problems in his life, grew up in a good family and they decided to groom him into the perfect leader.' Right now, making his own conclusion, he was a bit resentful towards Buinn.

Returning back to the front, Clark began to speak once again.

"The first task we will be doing today is trying to summon your familiar, or at least that is the end goal. Some of you can already do this, and for others, it may take weeks or even months to achieve this." Clark explained. "But even for those that already know how to do this, it will be a good exercise for you all.

"What I'm about to say to you all now may surprise most of you, but there is actually nothing you can do in your power to forcefully summon your familiar. They have a mind of their own, they aren't crazy animals like beasts, but they are intelligent things. If they chose to not come out and help you, then that is completely up to them. So what this first lesson will actually be about is communicating with them. For those that already know how to do this, you can get to know them better.

"Communication with your partner is the key for a good understanding, for both of you. So now I wish for you to do as I do." As he continued to explain, Clark began to do the actions at the same time as speaking. He first sat down on the floor and asked the others to follow.

Crossed his legs and closed his eyes while his two hands were placed together as if one was meditating. "Okay, the reason we close our eyes when doing this is to have as little distraction as possible. Visuals, sounds, and all sorts can sometimes deter you from hearing your familiar. With time you will get better at this and you will be able to communicate with them without this."

Quinn was able to follow the steps quite easily, and his concentration was at this point almost flawless. He had pictured the symbol in his head clearly, and it was as if he was in a black room. The reason he found it so easy was because he did this every morning for the past month and a half. It was similar to his Qi training routine that Leo had left him.

When in the black room in his mind, slowly the mark started to turn into a type of mist, and slowly turned into the fairly large muscular figure with the long arms by its side and its dangling fingers that scraped across the floor.

"Why did you choose me?" Quinn asked.

….

There was silence between the two.

"You killed the wendigos, right? Why didn't you kill me?" Quinn asked again, hoping to get an answer.

The Boneclaw then turned its large body around and looked straight ahead at Quinn with its dead eyes. The two stared at each other for a while, not daring to look away, until finally, the mist appeared again and turned back into the same symbol that was on his back.

'Looks like he won't talk to me.'

Opening his eyes and looking around, Quinn had expected just like with the summoning, that most of them would have not been successful in communicating with their familiars, but he quickly realised that he was in the minority, as nearly everyone had their hand up.

In fact, the only other person apart from Quinn who hadn't raised their hand was the student who had summoned the worm familiar. But soon he even raised his hand.

"Teacher, although I didn't exactly speak to my worm, there were loud squishy and squashy sounds I heard coming from it, does that count?" The student asked.

"Actually, yes." Clark replied. "Although it's rare, perhaps your familiar is a little slow and does not know how to communicate in using the same language as us. When they attach themselves to us, usually they are able to naturally learn straight away, although others take some time."

With this, it meant that Quinn was the only person who was unable to communicate with their familiar.

"And what about you, young man?" Clark asked, interested to hear what he had to say, especially since he hadn't raised his hand.

"I couldn't hear anything." Quinn replied.

Quinn's reply didn't seem to shock him, or at least there was no reaction on Clark's face, so it was hard to tell based on this if it was a good or bad response. But they felt like at least they were a little better than him due to him being the only person unable to communicate with their familiar.

And honestly, Quinn couldn't blame them if they did see him this way, after all right now he was even lower than the worm boy.

With the first lesson over, Clark had told the students that they could start to set up their things in the tents by the side. If they wished they could continue to try to communicate with the familiars as a form of practice, but he also made sure to mention to not try this too much at the beginning in case of fear of annoying them.

They were just like people in the end, at times they wanted their free time and if one was to annoy them too much, then maybe they would purposely choose to not help or communicate with you.

As the students were picking a tent, Quinn decided that he would grab one next to Rokene, Rokene didn't say anything about this. His early detest for Buinn had changed after finding out he was unable to communicate with the familiar, perhaps his thoughts before were completely wrong.

Just as the night was about to end, Clark had decided to stop just outside of Quinn's tent.

"Can I speak to you inside for a second?" This didn't go unnoticed by the others, but they all thought that perhaps it had something to do with Quinn being unable to communicate with his familiar. Maybe he was going to try and give him some extra tips?

"Do you mind explaining to me exactly what happened?" Clark asked.

"Sure, I was in the space concentrating, and I pictured the seal in my head. I tried to communicate with him, asking him a few things. It demisted and showed me his true form. I asked it again and nothing else was said. It just looked at me and we stood there in silence before it went away and back into the sealed form."

Hearing this, a little smile appeared on Clark's face. "You don't have to worry." Clark replied. "You probably just skipped the next three steps. Usually, when one is to communicate with their familiars, they still appear in their mind in their closed form. Getting them to show you their true form is something different altogether. It seems to me that your familiar just does not wish to speak with you, not that you were unsuccessful with communicating with it.

"But it's up to you to make it talk to you. It will be pretty hard to find out its desires if you are unable to speak to each other. Perhaps this will take sometime, maybe a few days, maybe a week or even a few months." Clark said as he left the tent and started to head back.

As he zipped the tent back up, he could see that Rokene was listening in to everything that was heard.

"Damn it!" Rokene shouted out in jealousy and stormed off towards his tent. While he was inside, he decided to summon his little black rabbit once more.

Returning to his own larger tent, Clark decided that he would look over a few things. Most of all, he was interested in finding out just which family that particular student had come from.

"Oh, I forgot to ask him, or their names. I will do so tomorrow." Clark thought, but while looking at the name list he noticed something. The numbers were not adding up. The number of students that were at the training space and the number on his list. There was one more than there should have been.

*****

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