Falcon cringed as he noticed that the woman’s clothes shred across her back. The thin skin over her bony spine grew bluer by the second, until it looked to be the same color as the very sky. As the storm raged, she whispered to her son. Falcon did not make out all of the words over the storm, but he did make out a few fragments of broken sentences. Things like, “Love you, Voly. Everything will be fine…” and toward the end, “Don’t change.”
When the storm finally subsided, the young Volcseck crawled out from under his mother. He tapped her shoulder. She tipped over and fell ramrod straight, facing towards the clouds.
“Mom!” cried Volcseck. Falcon felt his insides twist with agony. He himself had lost his mother around the age of the boy before him. Despite the knowledge that this boy was going to grow up to murder his own mother thousands of years later, he couldn’t help but feel grief for the pained boy begging his mother to speak to him. “Mom… Mom…?” With trembling hands, the boy reached for his stone. He clutched his emblem tightly in his hands. Tears ran down his cheeks, and he cursed out loud. Suddenly, the boy disappeared.
Falcon recognized the movement as chaos teleportation. Faith and Falcon moved with the boy. They now stood inside the old cabin, where a startled- looking man cowered by the wall.
“I didn’t know you were a wielder. I had no idea.” The man spoke in a rushed, distressed voice. He fell to the floor and held his hands before his head. “Show mercy. Give me a chance!”
“Did you show my mother mercy?” Volcseck’s skin grew a deep brown, and his voice became inhumanly deep. “Did she get a chance?”
Before the cowering man had a chance to answer, Volcseck shot a purple mass of energy from his hand. The line of power dug into the man’s forehead. It slowly dug into his body like a worm. Falcon saw the man’s skin rise and fall as the energy moved over his cheek, down his neck, and into his chest.
Volcseck smirked. “The power will eat your insides, nice and slow. You will die a most painful death, just like she did.”
The scene dissolved with a bright flash, and Falcon found himself sitting in the room with Faith. The serene aura surrounding him was a sharp contrast to the havoc he had just experienced.
“That was his first murder,” said Faith, in a low voice. She reached out and turned off the waning candle with her fingers. The vanilla scent gave way to a burning incense.
“What was the use of seeing that?” asked Falcon. “To show me that Volcseck and I are one and the same?”
“That’s not true.”
“How so? He killed his mother’s murderer, and I want to do the same.”
“You have a kind heart.” She rested her palm over his chest. “He doesn’t. He wishes to destroy, while you want to end him in order to protect the ones you love. Back at the prairie you showed it. You could have left me and gone after Volcseck. But you chose to stay with me. You chose your friends over revenge.”
“Of course. I wasn’t going to let you die. Besides, when we touch it’s always easier to control my rage. Your holy wielding makes that possible.”
“Yes, I know.” Falcon thought Faith sounded a bit sad, but he decided to not press the issue. They’d had enough grief for one day. “I want to show you a few more things, if that’s fine with you.”
“Yes, of course.” In reality Falcon did not see any use wasting more time seeing Volcseck’s past. But if Faith wanted to do so, then he wasn’t going to deny her. “But I think we’ve had enough dread for one day.” She looked at him curiously. “Want to join Albert and I? He’s supposed to tell me more stories about my mom and dad.”
“I don’t know.” Faith looked apprehensive as she bit her lip. “I wouldn’t want to intrude.”
He stood and pulled her up with him. “C’mon. I bet he even has some stories of your mom.”
Faith’s eyes lit up. “Really? You think so?”
“I’m sure of it.”
Falcon was glad to see his friend in such an upbeat mood, even if it was for only a moment.
Chapter 27
Falcon spent the next few nights with Albert in the
Lowly Scrap Heap.
Most nights he would go alone, but Faith would accompany him from time to time. Her emerald eyes would light up as Albert told stories of her mother. It could have been the most mundane of tales. A story of a simple day by the lake, or an afternoon out farming the crops, or perhaps a simple dinner at Falcon’s home. No matter what it was, Faith ate it up.
Falcon found that he was more or less the same. He awaited stories of his own mother with anticipation.
“Oh, look at the time,” said Faith hurriedly during one particular night when they kept on talking past midnight. “We had a meditation session and we missed it.”
Falcon thought he had gotten away with one of the boring sessions, but the next day Faith made up for it by extending their meditation twofold. By the time they were done, Falcon thought he was going to pass out. Sitting on his behind was not his idea of training.
It was for this reason that he found himself enjoying his training with Aya a lot more. Unlike the boring candle-lit rooms Faith trained in, Aya chose to exercise in the Missean training fields. Some days they would train in the forested grounds. Others they would work across the plains of the desert grounds.
His exercises with Aya did not last, however. She was convinced that the training wasn’t doing Falcon any good. He was inclined to agree. Aya could focus her energy enough that even the devourers, who had the ability to nullify wielding, could not stop her from using her water. She tried to teach Falcon, but it quickly became apparent that he was no good at it.
Fortunately, Albert found a solution to this.
“The other way to defy the nullifying powers of a devourer,” said his brother over a drink, “is to unload so much energy that the creature won’t be able to suppress it.”
“Is that what you do?” asked Falcon.
“I can go either way” was his brother’s answer. “I fortunately have enough power to muscle through the barriers the devourers put up, and enough focus to simply deliver the energy in precise points around their nullifying walls.”
“Of course,” said Falcon, not really surprised.
With the permission of Empress Latiha, Aya examined the Missean wielders and found the ones that showed the most command over their energy. She them took them and chose the best to train in ways to work around the devourers barriers.
Falcon didn’t know how she had gotten hold of them, but Empress Keira had stones that once had belonged to the Scaiths (the official name for devourers). As Aya trained the soldiers, she would walk around, randomly placing the stones beside an unsuspecting wielder. The closer the stone was to a person, the harder it would be to wield. The poor chosen soldier would then have to locate the stone, using only his energy that was being suppressed.
The few that passed the test were chosen to be part of the Elite Focus guard. These soldiers’ job would be to take out the Scaiths quickly in the case they showed up on the battlefield.
Falcon gazed in admiration as Aya stood before the three dozen wielders who had passed her rigorous testing. Falcon had always been the one that Zoen had chosen to lead missions, but seeing Aya in action left little doubt that she too was a natural-born leader.
“In many ways,” she said, “you will be the most important line of defense on the battlefield. If Scaiths are summoned, it will be impossible for our armies to wield. You can bet the Suteckh will have stones that will allow their wielders to be able to use their abilities.”
“How come we don’t use a similar stone?” asked a soldier from the crowd.
Keira, who stood beside Aya with her bears, answered. “Each Scaith produces said stone. I’m in possession of some stones that will allow us to wield, regardless whether Scaiths are nearby or not.” She opened her hands, revealing circular black orbs. There was a small sigh of relief from the soldiers. It was quickly squashed by what Keira said next. “The Scaiths that I got these stones from aren’t the same ones that the Suteckh are bound to bring into battle. Therefore they are useless to us. We need the unique stone that each of the Scaith’s produce, and you can wager your life that we won’t be able to get a hold of ‘em. There’s no telling where the Suteckh could be hiding ‘em.”
“Most likely they will be in possession of the Blood Empress,” said Aya. “And if we know anything from previous battles, it’s that she’ll be at the rear, far from reach. It will be up to us to take down the Scaiths quickly. If we don’t, our wielders will be dealt a crushing blow. We will not allow that to happen, will we?”
The three dozen wielders who stood in three lines of twelve raised their right hands and shouted. “No, ma’am.”
Seeing Aya work so hard inspired Falcon. He asked for his own group of soldiers to train and was granted one. He had experience fighting the Suteckh, which was something Latiha valued greatly.
When he showed up to the desert training field, the scene before him was not what he’d expected.
Laars, with his usual wide nose and shaggy hair, was standing before a group of men and women. The skinny girl, Lenka, was there as well.
“Hello,” said Lenka. She waved her gangly arm in the air, as if Falcon could not see her standing a mere three feet away from him.
“What are you two doing here?” asked Falcon. He had no problem with Lenka. She was a bit loud at times, but she was nice. And she was a Void wielder, like himself, which meant they had spent countless training hours together. Laars, however, was a different matter altogether. Laars had taken a dislike to Falcon ever since he first stepped foot at Rohad Academy. The pompous earth wielder never wasted an opportunity to remind Falcon that his brother was a traitor. Their rivalry had lasted throughout their childhood and carried on into their young adult lives.
For the longest time after Falcon had posed the question, Laars simply stood there, scratching his long brown pants. There was something different about him. He didn’t have his usual condescending look, or his smug smirk. He finally broke the silence when he extended his hand and said, “Empress Latiha send us to assist you. She has entrusted you with three hundred soldiers.”
“I think you’re supposed to shake his hand,” said Lenka.
Falcon snapped out of his shock and noticed that, indeed, Laars was still holding his hand out.
“What is this all about?” asked Falcon with suspicion. Something was not right. Laars had always thought himself superior to Falcon. And now Falcon was supposed to believe that Laars took a spot as his subordinate without the slightest form of rancor? Surely Laars had something up his sleeve.
“Nothing,” his rival answered. “When I met Faith, she opened my eyes to what I had bloodied become, and…” He looked down at the ground. “I didn’t like what I bloody saw.”
Falcon took Laars’ hand, though years of being berated by him kept him on his toes. “Yes, she can do that.”
As they settled down and commenced the training, Falcon kept expecting Laars to challenge his authority, but to his surprise, it never happened. In fact, Laars followed Falcon’s orders by the letter. If Falcon asked him to take a group of men and go over running or wielding drills with them, he would comply without the slightest sign of defiance. If he was asked to go fetch weapons, he would do so in an instant.
As the days passed, Laars only became more helpful. One day, when Falcon had stayed up too late with his brother the night before, he showed up to the training three hours late. When he got to the desert fields, he was surprised to see that Laars, with the help of Lenka, had carried on the training with no hiccups. A number of soldiers were running over the long hills, others were working on target practice, and many more were locked in duels.
As soon, as Falcon arrived, his hair a messy heap, Laars reverted command back to Falcon and settled in as his aide.
With Laars’ cooperation, Falcon was able to focus more on overall strategy. Aya was focusing on a small select group of enemies—the Scaiths. Falcon, however, wanted his soldiers to be ready for anything. The Suteckh had many fearsome enemies they might bring into the battle. He needed them to be able to adjust on the fly to whatever was thrown their way.
So, after a week of basics, he moved over to training against a certain creature Falcon had experience against.
“They shapeshift?” asked a young female soldier disbelievingly when Falcon explained the dark creatures’ affinity to change their tar-like bodies into any shape imaginable.
“Yes,” said Falcon. “They’re conjured by dark wielders. Each one can take out over a hundred regular soldiers. Physical weapons are useless against them.” Falcon recalled how back in Sandoria the dark creatures had sucked up the swords, quivers, javelins, and spikes that landed on their bodies.
“We’ll just earth wield, then,” said the timid soldier.
“Most wielding won’t work either,” said Falcon. He noticed most of the soldiers’ expressions drop in disappointment.
“There is a way to defeat them,” he said before they lost all hope. “Do I have any fire wielders here who can wield blue fire?” Falcon counted about thirty soldiers raising their hands. It was not surprising, considering blue fire was a very advanced technique. He didn’t even bother asking if anyone could wield black fire. He was certain no one had reached that level. “It will be up to you, blue fire wielders, to take out the dark creatures before they cause too much harm. Extreme levels of blue fire should be enough to boil their tar bodies to oblivion.”
“You learned this in the battle of Sandoria, sir?” asked an ashen-faced soldier. He had a lumpy body and even thicker arms and legs. “Is it true that you met Shal-Volcseck?”
For a moment, Falcon refrained from answering. Volcseck was not what he wanted to speak about, especially to the soldiers. Nonetheless, he decided to be honest with them. “We have had a few skirmishes from time to time.”
He might as well have told them he defeated Volcseck with one hand tied behind his back. The soldiers looked at him with sudden admiration as if he were some type of legendary hero form their childhood books. They spoke in awed whispers. Falcon felt his face grow hot. He was no one to look up to, and he definitely wasn’t a hero.
“Listen,” he said, attempting to diffuse the admiring looks he was getting. “We need to forget about Volcseck and concentrate on the Suteckh. They’re the ones who may attack the city, after all.”
“What kind of other creatures should we prepare for?” asked the chubby soldier.
Falcon was about to answer, but he found himself unable to form words. It was then that he realized that he didn’t particularly have much knowledge in other creatures, soldiers, or weapons the Suteckh might be utilizing.
If he wanted to get more answers, he was going to do something he had long ago promised himself never to do again. He shuddered at the thought. He was going to have to step foot inside a library.