“What in Va’siel is that?” asked Sheridan, taking Hirmoy’s hand and backing away, all the while keeping his eyes locked on the creature.
“It looks alien,” said Aya. “Retreat slowly. There is no way of knowing how it’s going to react.”
The five wielders took a few tentative steps back. The all-seeing eyes of the creature followed them. It slid forward, matching their pace.
Suddenly, the squid opened its mouth and released a blood-curdling shriek. It was high-pitched, forcing Falcon to cover his ears to drown out some of the noise. A misty smog poured out of its mouth. It reeked of burnt oil.
“That’s it!” said Sheridan. “This thing is going down.” He twisted his hand up and then drove his hand forward. “Space forc—”
“Stop!” cried Aya, slapping his hand down. “You can’t wield in here. You’ll bring the ceiling down on us!”
Falcon could see that Aya was right. The creature’s simple shriek had caused the large pillars to tremble, raining down debris on their heads. He could only imagine that wielding would prove disastrous.
The squid did not seem to share in their fears. Falcon watched anxiously as it brought up all eight of its tentacles and swung them at them. It tore straight through a pillar, causing a thunderous echo to rock though the hall.
“Run!” yelled, Falcon, realizing that the whole building could come down on top of them at any moment.
Sheridan didn’t have to be told twice, even before he had yelled; he’d taken Hiromy by the hand and dashed away without bothering to turn back. The three reaming wielders took off after them.
They dashed the opposite way they had entered from, passing pillar after pillar with no end in sight. Falcon wasn’t entirely sure if they were headed the right way. He simply ran and hoped for the best.
Then, as if to make matters worse, a few feet ahead of them the hall came to an abrupt end. An intricate series of paths and bridges criss-crossing and floating over a dark abyss awaited them.
“Which one do we take?” yelled Sheridan.
“Just pick one!” said Falcon, eyeing the countless different paths.
Sheridan and Hiromy ran across a stone path that led them straightforward. Falcon followed, hoping it didn’t lead them to a dead end, or worse.
A resounding crash and the sound of rock breaking filled his ears.
Behind them, the squid had followed them. The stone splintered and collapsed under the weight of the five wielders and the creature.
Before he lost his footing, Falcon jumped to his left, landing clumsily on a much wider stone path. Beside him, Faith hopped as well. She miscalculated the distance and barely managed to grip the edge of the stone with one hand. Screaming, she reached out with her other hand and took hold. But Falcon could see that her grip was slipping, burdened by the fact that she was sustaining her entire dangling weight.
“I got you!” He reached out for. Her hand slipped, but before she could disappear into the dark abyss below, he took hold of her hand, holding on to her with grim determination. With monumental effort, he pulled her up to safety.
Exhaling with a strange combination of relief and tension, he looked around. Sheridan and Hiromy had already made the jump to a different, narrow path. Aya, who had always been scared of heights, stood stiff, her eyes shaky.
“Aya!” called Falcon.
She provided no answer.
“Aya!”
This time she turned her head toward him. The footing under her crumpled.
Falcon tried to wield the rocks under her, but as he did, the squid jumped, landing directly in front of him, shaking the fragile stone holding them up. He tumbled to the ground, expecting the worst.
Somehow, though, Aya managed to hop on the falling stones one by one, as if climbing a set of stairs. With a high front flip, Aya landed gracefully beside Sheridan and Hiromy.
The creature’s calculating gaze darted from Falcon to Aya. Clearly it was trying to figure out which group it was going to pursue. Silently, Falcon wished it was his.
To his dismay, the scalp of the squid opened and two steel, bird-like creatures emerged. They spread their wings, which easily covered over five feet in length. A long, bronze beak protruded from their eyeless head, and a large hooked talon emerged from their webbed feet. They screeched in unison and dove toward Hiromy.
Aya shot a burst of water at them, but the strange birds flew past it without even flinching.
“Run!” shouted Aya. She turned and took off. Falcon realized she was right. Getting in a wielding battle with three metal creatures while hanging over an unforgiving drop was foolish. At any moment the creatures, or one of them was going to break yet another bridge, sending them plummeting to their death. He could always try his space wielding, but in such a fragile place, he wasn’t sure he could pull it off without causing more harm than good.
An excruciating heat caressed his body, accompanied by a light. He turned to see the squid shoot a gust of fire from its mouth. Before it could reach them, Faith threw a rainbow-colored shield before them. The flames slammed against the shield and, with nowhere to go, shot out to the side, destroying other uninhabited stone bridges.
Faith’s hand landed on his shoulder. “We have to move before this thing destroys everything!”
Falcon stood, and together he and Faith sprinted down the bridge. He looked and noticed that Aya’s, Hiromy’s, and Sheridan’s path was taking them upward, while Falcon and Faith were descending even lower.
There was no time to stop now. He could only hope that they would find their way to each other.
The sound of breaking glass erupted behind them, and Falcon knew that the squid had ripped through the shield.
His chest heaved as he continued to sprint, not bothering to look behind him. An unexpected scent of oil returned. The scent was so strong that he could practically taste it in his mouth.
The dark liquid flew past him, creating a curtain of oil before them.
It’s trying to get us soaked in so it can burn us easier.
Despite this information, he knew he had no choice but to run through the sudden dark waterfall spread before them. There was no stopping now.
Inches from touching it, a light flew from Faith’s emblem. It created a perfect oval path through the oil. Faith and Falcon hopped through. Even in his haste, he couldn’t help but admire her focus.
The squid emitted an angry gurgling shriek. It was obviously growing frustrated at its inability to trap its prey.
A faint light appeared on the horizon. There were nearing the end of the path.
Falcon dug deep and put his all into the final stretch. He could feel Faith’s heavy breaths beside him.
The light grew in size, until it revealed itself to be a small opening into yet another room. The stone path trembled with increased tenacity. Falcon and Faith had to crouch just to make it into the entrance.
The squid had no such reservations. It threw its massive body through the air like dead weight. It crashed into the wall, destroying what was once a small opening and turning it into a massive circular hole on the wall.
A lightning display burst from the creature’s eyes and tentacles, and for a second, Falcon expected it to simply fall into a heap of rubble. Instead, however, the squid whipped the tentacles at them, almost taking Falcon’s head clean off.
Another tentacle flew toward him. This time he hopped over it and, in mid-air, called on the power of lighting. Surely this beast wouldn’t be able to handle that.
Yellow ripples shot viciously at the creature. It brought all its tentacles together, essentially creating a shield. The suction cups under its tentacles lit up, as if sucking in the attack.
He felt the energy inside the creature increase.
Great! I just brought it back to life!
The squid moved its tentacles aside and opened its mouth, shooting a ray of strange energy from it. Falcon wind wielded the air under his feet, shooting himself up and clear out of the deadly attack. Simultaneously, he summoned raw energy from the tremendous pool of power he had to call from. A gust of wind, so large that even he was surprised by the size, shot from his hands. It slammed into the squid, sending the creature crashing loudly into the wall.
The wall splintered in a thousand places. Water crept inside every hole and crevice.
Oh no!
He could water wield, but Faith could not.
He turned to her, but in his haste he did not notice the sharp sound of the wall erupting, sending a chunk of rock flying toward his head.
An unexpected spasm of pain assaulted his forehead. His world turned into a blur. He made out the smell of salty seawater. He thought he saw a blurry person coming toward him, but his head was reeling so much that he couldn’t be certain.
A freezing cold came over him as he was engulfed in a wave of water.
Have to water wield. Have to—
With that thought, the water rushed into his mouth, as everything turned dark.
Chapter 19
A warm burst of air blew into his mouth, raising his chest an inch. Falcon heard the muffled shouts of Aya calling to him. Then another puff of air blew life into his lungs. His eyes snapped open, and he found himself staring up at the worried faces of his four friends.
With the exception of Faith, everyone else was standing. She brought her soft lips down on his and blew, sending the now familiar gust of wind racing into his lungs.
What is she doing?
He had no opportunity to voice his questions. A sickening sensation of liquid traveling up his esophagus made it impossible to speak. He clutched his chest, heaved loudly, and sat up, just in time for an eruption of water to surge form his mouth.
Faith let out a low scream. She brought up her hands and put up a small bubble. The water bounced from the shield and back into Falcon’s face, soaking him entirely.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, looking down apologetically. “My muscle reflex sometimes gets the better of me. Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” said Falcon, in a quavering voice. His chest ached, and his head felt as if it had gone into a duel with a dozen hammers, but the thought of Faith’s tender lips on his drowned out any thought of the pain.
They stared at one another, nervous and silent.
“Sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have passed out like that.”
“No, I’m sorry,” she said almost instantly. “It took me so long to get you out. You almost drowned.”
“I think Hyatt would gladly risk drowning more often as long as he gets you to nurse him back to life every time,” said Sheridan, smirking widely at Falcon. “Am I right?”
Aya pressed her lips together.
“Why would he want to risk drowning?” asked Hiromy, looking at Sheridan in confusion. “He could…” She gasped in an overly dramatic fashion. “…die!”
“What I meant to say was that—”
Falcon jumped into a standing position. “It’s fine, Sheridan. No need to go into details.” His face flushed. “I think we all know what you meant.”
“Hiromy didn’t get it. I think I should explain better.”
“Better yet, explain how we got here,” demanded Falcon, eager for a change of subject.
“The wall crumbled, letting in the seawater,” said Faith. “You were hit by stray piece of rock and passed out. I tried to get to you before you swallowed too much water, but that squid kept coming after us, and it swam much faster than me.”
“Where is it?” he asked, his eyes darting about nervously. For the first time, he got a good look at the area around him. They looked to be washed up in the shore of a beach. There was a cliff to the right of them. A large plot of sand spread outward over three hundred meters, and then was replaced by lush pasture. There were no trees in sight. Instead, blades of grass the size of a child and long-stemmed yellow sunflowers covered the land.
“It was crushed by the same tumbling rocks that hit you. It’s stuck at the bottom of the sea. At least it was the last time I saw it. If we’re lucky, it was destroyed.” Doubt filled Faith’s voice. “After that I put up a bubble and tried to swim to the surface. I managed to cover a few miles, but it was too hard. I had to put a bubble around us, but the currents and pressure made it impossible to move.” She looked down, her expression saddened.
“Don’t beat yourself up,” said Aya, patting Faith’s shoulder reassuringly. “You got him halfway up.”
“So how did we make it out?” asked Falcon.
Aya pointed at a cliff that rose beside them. There was a large hole a few feet up which, judging by the amount of sharp edges and steepness, was next to impossible to reach. “We followed the path we had found up and came out through there. My guess is that there was once an opening here that led to the pass, but the Golden Wielder sealed it when he trapped the Onagas. Sheridan had to blow open that small hole there. After that, I focused my mind and pinpointed yours and Faith’s faint energies under the ocean.”
“You found us
way down there
?” Falcon asked, genuinely shocked. They were but a small speck in a vast body of water filled with the living energies of thousands of sea creatures. He couldn’t imagine ever coming close to pinpointing an energy reading with such precision.
“It wasn’t too hard,” said Aya. “You both have very unique auras.” Falcon was certain she was referring to Faith’s holy and his chaos. “I then simply water wielded you to the surface.”
Aya spoke with an air of normalcy that made it seem as if her energy detection was a thing of everyday occurrence. He realized that even with the gift of the Golden Wielder, he would never be able to pinpoint energy levels remotely close to her level.
“I can’t believe you got knocked out by a piece of rock.” Sheridan chuckled. “And it happened only minutes after getting a shield that protects from
all
earth attacks.” He burst out in another fit of laughter.
Despite his near-death experience, Falcon cracked a smile. “I guess it only works for wielder attacks.”
Once Aya had pulled out the water from their clothes, they all headed down the prairie. Along the way Sheridan told him the story of how Aya and Hiromy had each dispatched the metal birds by bringing down pillars of water over them. For some reason, in his story, Hiromy came out as the more heroic of the two girls. While Aya had simply thrown a lot of water mindlessly at the bird, Hiromy, in Sheridan’s words, had expertly judged the amount of liquid she needed to render the creature helpless. With graceful ease she danced a deadly dance as glittering drops of aqua surrounded her, converging into precise sharp spears that demolished the bird in a single hit. He moved up and down, flailing his hands and screaming as he dramatized the events that had occurred.
Hiromy seemed to enjoy Sheridan’s exaggerated tales.
“Do it again. Do it again!” she ordered. As they walked down the winding path that cut through the prairie, Sheridan obliged, repeating the entire dramatization over and over again. Every time he told the story, Hiromy’s feats became more and more unbelievable.
Falcon did enjoy seeing his friend Hiromy happy, but he would be lying if he said he wasn’t finding the story a bit unbearable after he heard it for the twelfth time.
Sheridan finally stopped talking when they came upon an old man struggling to push his wagon. The wheel had gotten stuck in a puddle of mud.
“Go, I say,” ordered the leathery-skinned man in a frail voice. The two dark horses made a half-hearted attempt to pull as the man pushed from behind. After the failed attempt at getting the wheel loose, the man threw down his straw hat in frustration. “Garn darn good for notin’ colts, should have never spent any coin on you two, but of course I just had to listen to that old hag back at home. ‘We need a good pair of horses,’ she said. ‘They will make the—’” The man noticed the wielders approaching. He grunted defiantly. “I have no money, you young good-for-notins’. Robbing me will get you notin’. You hear that? Notin’!”
“We had no intention of robbing you, sir,” said Faith.
The man eyed Faith for a second. He stood in silence, as if struggling to decide whether he believed her or not.
Finally he said, “If you’re not thieves, just what are you doing so far from the city, anyhow?”
Judging from the sweet-smelling bread that emitted from under the covered sheet over the wagon, Falcon could only assume the man was a merchant. A baker. His raggedy white shirt and trousers only further confirmed this.
“We’re Rohads,” said Falcon, pointing at the dragon insignia on his chest. “See?”
The man smiled widely at the sight of Falcon’s gray emblem, which only increased his wrinkles so that his face looked like a crumpled sack of potatoes. “I see you’re a void wielder. No doubt you could work a little bit of your earth magic and get my wagon unstuck?”
Falcon sighed. “It’s
not
magic!” If there was one thing he hated, it was when some misinformed person would erroneously refer to the natural ability of wielders as magic. He wasn’t some type of magical wizard. He was about to go on a long rant debunking the baker’s flawed views, but the man did not seem the slightest bit interested in what he had to say.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” The man pointed at the wheel. “So. Can you do some of your mag— er… wielding?”
“Since you asked so nicely. How could I refuse?” Falcon hardened the mud. Usually it would have taken him a few seconds to get the dirt to solidify fully, but this time he did it in the mere blink of an eye. The power Aadi had passed to him was obviously having some profound effects.
His newfound speed did not go unnoticed. Sheridan and Aya both looked at him with an impressed gleam in their eyes, and Falcon couldn’t help but relish the small amount of attention he had gotten, especially from Aya. Especially after all the days of drifting by invisibly.
Even the baker looked dazzled. “That was amazing! The void Rohads back at Missea aren’t nearly as fast.”
“What void wielders?” inquired Aya.
“I haven’t seen them much, but the century queen hired a few Rohads as protection. Three to be exact, two void wielders and one earth wielder. They came from the Rohad academy of Ladria. Three other ones were sent from the Rohad academy of Belwebb. A fire and lightning wielder, if I recall. Can’t be too sure.”
Falcon took this as good news. If the empress of Missea had hired extra security, then perhaps she was already aware of the threat the Suteckh posed. Having her join against the Suteckh might be easier than he’d initially thought.
On the way to the city, they traveled alongside the baker, who provided them all with a loaf of soft bread. They devoured it eagerly as the man proudly spoke of the century queen who, according to him, had been ruling over Missea for over one hundred years. It sounded far-fetched, and Falcon found it hard to believe that he had never heard of this one-hundred-year queen before, but then again, he never really paid much attention in class. The fact that Aya wasn’t questioning the man led him to believe that he was indeed speaking the truth.
“She must have been very young when she took over as ruler,” said Sheridan. He took another bite of his piece of bread, and then, noticing that Hiromy had finished her piece, offered his remaining loaf to her. She took it happily.
The baker nodded. “Oh, yes. Emperor Tanul died when she was seventeen years of age. She led Missea through the scorch that nearly wiped out all of Va’siel, and was a personal friend of the Golden Wielder.” There was pride in his voice. “With her, Missea has enjoyed the most prosperous era in its history.”
As if planned, as soon as the baker stopped speaking, the massive golden gates came into view. They were twice the size of those from Missea’s sister earth capital, Sandoria, and much more luxurious. Falcon judged the gates to be over seventy meters in height.
“Shiny gold!” cried Hiromy.
“Oh no, little missy,” the baker corrected. “It’s not real gold. It simply looks that way. The Golden Wielder knew that having real gold walls would only bring out the worst in people. Can you imagine? Sections of the walls would go missing every night. But you won’t find stronger walls anywhere else in Va’siel.”
Falcon could see how Hiromy could have mistaken the walls for real gold. The yellow from it glistened, nearly blinding him. There were wavy patterns running along the bottom of the wall, and at the top there were wide crenels that were no doubt used to launch arrows or wielding attacks in case the city needed to be defended. Silently, he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. The small dirt path they were taking converged with dozens of other paths that led to a wide stone road. The road led them directly through the gate into the city. Unlike ever other capital city Falcon had seen, Missea did not have two double doors at the center. Instead, it had a massive archway, with no sign of the thick wooden doors that he had come to associate with the cities. As they neared the entrance, he continued to look for them with no luck.
“There are no doors,” said Aya, noticing his confusion. “When the city needs to be closed, the earth wielders will raise the rock barrier from the ground.” She pointed at the area directly under the gate and, sure enough, there was a twenty-foot section of the ground that was a deep black, a sharp contrast to the mostly yellow stone path. “Earth wielders wield the wall in position from below.”
Falcon nodded in silent admiration. It seemed like such an ingenious idea that he wondered why other cities hadn’t adopted a similar form of defense.
After a short inspection by the city guards, they made their way into the city, which was buzzing with hectic activity. There was so much going on that, to Falcon at least, the entire scene seemed to blend into a sea of people, horses, mules, vendor stands, dust, and wooden cabins.
“Sure smells earthy!” said Sheridan, taking in a deep whiff of the air.
Falcon thought it smelled more like horse dung than earth.
“What now?” asked Faith. “I don’t think we can simply go up and seek an audience with empress.”
“We can if
she
goes with us.” Aya motioned at Hiromy, who was walking hand in hand with Sheridan. “She’s a princess, after all. Royalty should have no problem gaining an audience.” Aya frowned as she glanced at the princess’ clothing, which was ripped in many places and stained with dust, grass, and oil. She then took a look at her own beaten-down wardrobe. “I think we should get a change of clothing first, though.”