Authors: Rain Oxford
Dylan narrowed his eyes. “Did your kid just reprimand
me?” I knew he wasn’t really angry because he called Sammy my kid and because I
smelled no anger. Dylan often covered surprise with sarcasm.
“He takes after his daddy; no common sense
whatsoever,” I responded, using his own lines.
“Well, he learned to hit from his mommy.”
“Apple!” the baby interrupted. Everyone stared at him
until he hid his face in my shoulder. I could feel he was upset.
Dylan handed me the box of wipes to put back in the
bag. “We’re not fighting, honey, we were just playing,” he said to Sammy. Sammy
didn’t lift his head, but rolled it until he could look up hesitantly.
Shiloh and Emrys must not have gotten the message
that Sammy did not like yelling, because they started arguing in another
language, obviously about Dylan. I felt the disturbance in the energy around
Sammy an instant before both Shiloh and Emrys went flying. They landed with
twin grunts a ways down the stream.
“Good throw!” Dylan encouraged. Shiloh didn’t look
very happy of Dylan’s praise as he wiped water from his face and climbed to his
feet. Emrys was a little slower to get up, but I felt no irritation from him.
“What a wonderful child; so violent,” Emrys said.
Argument shelved for now, we followed Emrys through
the forest. Shiloh seemed rather distracted and mumbled about needing to get
back to his world.
“Oh, enjoy this as a vacation, Shiloh,” Emrys said
when he had heard enough.
“This is not a vacation.”
“Why not? Enjoy life as you can.”
“You enjoy life too much. You should focus more. The
others call you frivolous,” Shiloh argued.
Dylan rolled his eyes.
Emrys looked deep in thought, then smiled. “I like
that. It is much better than ‘boring,’ or ‘old.’ I would like to always be
known as frivolous. When I am too old to act childish, then I think I should
retire.”
“Noquodi do not retire!” Shiloh demanded.
“Old and boring men do. Dylan, have you decided to
join the council that Shiloh wants to create?” he asked.
Dylan shrugged. “I guess I probably will.”
“Great,” he said with delight. “You will run the
council, and then when we Guardians become old and boring men, you can retire
us.”
“I agree with you, but I don’t want to be in charge.
Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional. Being in charge requires
growing up. There is still a lot of exploring to do before I pick a plot to
settle down in,” Dylan said.
I caught Shiloh’s eye and knew he was thinking the
same thing as me. “Do all Guardians have an immortality complex?” I asked.
“No, not all of us,” Emrys answered for him. “Just
those of us who lacked a nurturing childhood.”
“Emrys and I grew up in the same village,” Shiloh
explained. “The monks who raised us also taught other children, but we were the
only Guardians, so we were different. We were much more powerful than the
others, and dangerous to them. The monks made us train all day and work at
night until we fell asleep exhausted. There was no time to play or be creative.
They were not actually told which of us were from Malta and which was from
Vaigda. I developed a love for technology and magic, and Emrys focused
everything around nature and spirit, so they figured it out and sent us to our
worlds when we were fully trained.”
“It is Vaigdan nature to create more than you were
given. The people of Malta make the most of what we are given and are thankful
for it.”
“What about sago and human nature?” I asked.
“Sago and human nature are both to survive everything
that is thrown at them and thrive from it,” Shiloh offered. “I have always felt
that human and sago were the most alike of all people, most likely because
their Guardians are…
were
brothers. Are we lost?” he asked as we came to
the same creek we had started out at.
Emrys looked appalled. “I could never get lost. I may
not know where I am, but I am never lost.” He looked around and frowned. “I may
not know where we are now, but we should definitely go this way,” he said,
pointing up stream.
“Why is that?” I asked suspiciously.
“The stones are smoother than the ones that way.”
It was difficult to tell, since I couldn’t see
through the rushing water, but I took his word for it.
Dylan nodded. “Good enough for me.”
I smelled it just as Sammy called to Dylan. He was
pointing off into the woods, but when we looked, we couldn’t see anything.
“There’s something there,” I said to Dylan. “It smells sour and smoky; there’s
something really wrong about it.”
“And is it hungry?” he asked.
A deeper sniff made my nose hurt. “No, but it’s
really angry.”
“Whatever it is, three Guardians and a trained wizard
can handle it, I’m sure,” Shiloh insisted. Emrys looked thoughtful, but not
worried or overly confident.
“Maybe we can calm it down,” Dylan said. “Look into
the forest with your dragon eyes.”
“We’re not going to start calling it that,” I
insisted, knowing at the same time that I was wasting my breath.
I reached into myself for the heat that was always
there. My fire was unlike any other magic I did; nominal energy came from the
world around me. My fire answered, but instead of drawing its heat outside, I
let it swirl with anxiety for the threat. I had never discovered that I could
control my energy inside myself like this before the demon’s attack, but now it
seemed to become more and more second nature to me. It was also quite stifling
because I felt like there was so much more to it that I was missing.
The colors dimmed and shapes blurred. The scent
became even more overpowering and I could suddenly hear it shuffling in the
leaves. Emrys was talking, but I couldn’t focus on his words. Instead, I could
only watch the creature through the trees.
While the actual identity of the creature was
impossible to see through the thick forest, the aura of it could not be missed.
It glowed a dull yellow color, swirling with gray, brown, and red. I didn’t
know what those colors meant, but I disliked it immensely.
As the creature moved back and forth, I missed when
it broke through the trees. “Mordon.” Dylan’s voice finally got my attention and
the fire quieted down, returning my vision to normal.
The beast was beautiful. It had the head of an
elegant bird but had four legs and a tail. Resting upon the gleaming golden fur
were two wings. Its paws ended with sharp claws, currently digging into the
soft dirt. At the end of its swishing tail was a tuff of dark brown fur.
“So beautiful,” I said quietly.
“It’s a griffin,” Dylan said in awe. “I didn’t think
they were real.”
“They aren’t. They have been extinct for longer than
I have been alive.” Shiloh assured us. Despite our discussion of his existence,
the creature approached us calmly, entirely unafraid.
As it neared, it veered towards Dylan. I intercepted,
let Sammy down, and pushed him behind me. The child clutched my leg and peaked.
The griffin made no move to change course and stopped only an arm’s reach from
me. As he sniffed me, I let my senses take him in again.
I was wrong; the creature was not angry so much as
distraught. He was lost or had lost something and he felt very hopeless. He was
angry, but not at us. There was also the essence of something even more
powerful than this majestic creature; the magical signature of a master wizard.
He wasn’t under the will of another now, but he had very recently gained his
freedom. What could have caused the overwhelming loneliness the creature felt?
I would never know, because Shiloh hit the
bird-hybrid creature with a ball of red and blue plasma. I knew plasma was
hotter than fire by thousands of degrees, so I wasn’t surprised by the
creature’s screech of pain. It collapsed to the ground and withered in agony.
“Help
him,”
I said in Dylan’s mind.
“No need.”
Even as he said it, the creature
climbed to its feet.
Almost no wizard was powerful enough to create or
control real plasma, but Guardians were the exceptions, as it appeared. “This
is impossible!” Shiloh said. “Griffins have magic against wizards, but they
stand no chance against a Noquodi’s power!”
“Actually, I think this is a modern Griffin, made to
guard a Noquodi,” Emrys argued.
“Absolutely not! Griffins are extinct!”
“I agree. But this creature was somebody’s decision
they did not make. At least not yet.”
There was no time to decipher the riddle as the
creature attacked Shiloh. Unfortunately, there was no time to do anything. It
was on Shiloh before anyone could react, and the instant the creature touched
him, they both disappeared.
I couldn’t even catch him before Dylan dropped to the
ground. My eyes changed as I reached him and I could see that while his body
still flowed with magic, the majority of his aura was missing. Despite that,
his heartbeat and breathing were regular.
My eyes returned to normal. “Is he speaking with
Madus?” I asked Emrys.
“With Enki, I believe. Let me help you get those
things off.” The Guardian pulled a small, metal tool from his back and quickly
got the bracelets off of Dylan, Sammy, and me.
Just as quickly as Dylan had passed out, he woke up.
“Enki says that Shiloh is safe, but stranded on Enep. Enki is going to
negotiate with Enep’s god to allow us access to that world to heal it, so that
Shiloh can return to Vaigda. For now, we should heal Malta, because we could
get called away any moment.”
I helped him to his feet. “The gods should love you
for all the work you do for them.”
He shrugged and smiled. “I am a Guardian. It is my
responsibility to use my power to save the worlds, the books, and the people.
What does it matter if the world, book, or people aren’t mine? I help whoever
needs it, even the gods.”
“You hear that? You should be just like him when you
grow up.”
We looked over to see Emrys holding Sammy. I was a
little surprised to see that Sammy was okay with it, but he seemed deep in
thought. Did babies have deep thoughts?
“No way,” I argued, taking Sammy. “He should be
selfish and careful his whole life. He can grow up and work in a safe office.
Sammy, if you ever put yourself in danger like Dylan does, I will tell your
mother.”
“Oh, Sammy, you’d better listen to him,” Dylan
warned. “Your mom can be scary protective. I tried to go to work when I was
sick once, and I ended up on bed rest because I argued with her about it.”
“Are we still concerned about Shiloh, or can we move
on to saving Malta?” Emrys asked.
“Let’s go save Malta. How do we do it?”
“Malta has six tribes; these are the power centers of
our world. I can have Madus flash us to several of the tribes, but some of them
are too unstable, so we will have to walk. You can heal each tribe by using its
magic.”
“Explain ‘using its magic.’”
“Our world is based on nature, but has six divisions,
each that produces a different form of the mortal magic.”
“And by mortal magic, you are talking about nominal
energy?”
“Yes. When you go to this tribe, you need only to use
some of its magic to bond with it. You will then heal it through your bond.
However, the people of this world can only use one kind of magic. We are on the
outskirts of the water tribe.”
“So the people here can control water?”
“Essentially, yes. Some of them can make it rain,
some of them can control the entire water cycle, and some of them can purify
water for health or religious practices. You will understand more when you see
it.”
“Is this a Dagon thing?”
“A what?” I asked.
“People that are half fish?”
“Of course not,” Emrys insisted.
“Can I protest? I mean, can we just leave this one
alone?” I asked.
Dylan snickered, but Emrys took me seriously. “I
would really prefer we did not, as water is important to this world, but we can
if Dylan insists.”
He didn’t. The water city was pretty much what I
expected. We found ourselves on the edge of a cliff looking over a vast sea.
Cold wind drifted up through the mountain. Scattered around in the ocean were
huge cities, full of tall buildings and structures… all of which were made of
ice. They were cities made of ice.
“I can’t do it. Dylan, you will have to go without
me,” I said.
He considered me, then nodded after a moment. “I
know. You would melt the cities. Emrys, Mordon needs a safe place to stay
warm.”
“I do not understand. Why can you not come?”
“Because I can’t stand the cold. I never could. My
greatest power is fire, but if I use it to keep myself warm, I’ll melt the
city.”
“No, of course you wouldn’t. The tribe buildings are
built with extremely high melting points. You would sooner melt metal from your
world. Feel free to keep yourself as warm as you want.” As he said that, he
made a hand signal to the water, like he was beckoning it. And the water
responded. A fair amount rose to the edge of the cliff and formed into an
iceberg with a flat, smooth surface.
“That doesn’t look safe,” Dylan said. He stepped onto
it, though. Emrys stepped up next to him. There was plenty of room for me and
Sammy, but when I stared down at the sea below, breathing became difficult.
“I’ll take the elevator.” As soon as I said it, Dylan
grabbed my arm and pulled me onto the platform. He covered my eyes while I held
Sammy as tightly as I could without hurting him. I felt the icy wind and had to
suffer through it; I wasn’t about to use my fire while floating on a sheet of
frozen water.
The wind finally stopped and Dylan removed his hand.
We were standing in front of an ice structure that looked sort of like an
ancient Mokii castle from before the Reformation. I reached inside for my fire
and let it stir with the agitation of the cold. It felt like something else was
stirring inside me, though. It was almost like a sleeping entity that should
stay away. Something was changing in me the more familiar I became with my
fire.