Authors: Rain Oxford
“What about traveling?” I asked.
He frowned at me. “My legs work perfectly fine. I can
walk and run as well as anyone.”
“I grew up in a world where the world was run by cell
phones. People met, dated, and even married on the internet. Everyone knew
everyone else’s business with a click of a mouse and Facebook. It wasn’t all
bad, though. I could make friends on the other side of the world and never step
a foot outside. Then there were credit cards, because cash wasn’t easy enough
to steal.”
I shook my head. “Ignore him, Yaden, he gets like
this. He will go on and on talking about something and you have no what he is
talking about because he isn’t really talking to you. He rambles.”
“It sounds like he misses home.”
“He grew up on Earth, but moved to Duran three years
ago. Now he lives at a place that has no electricity…”
“No plumbing, no TV, no laptop, no internet,” Dylan
finished in English. Yaden frowned, not understanding English, but Dylan just
went on as he put Sammy to bed. “Duran does not even have
soda
. Of
course, I never met an obese sago. But that might have more to do with there
being no fast food and less to do with sugary drinks. Hey, am I rambling?”
“A little. It’s okay; nobody is listening,” I said.
“I have heard about Earth. It is said to be the world
that never sleeps, that it never goes dark,” Yaden said.
“That would be a fair accusation,” he snorted. “We
are the world that never sleeps, never goes dark, and never shuts up. Not just
the sounds and signals we constantly send into space, but the sounds people
make in masses… Most people don’t like the dark. Our children sleep with lights
on, at least in the United States. If the world were dark, people would see it
as a sign of the end. It isn’t really the dark, though; it is the silence that
follows.”
“Come with me, I want to show you something.”
We followed him outside. The cabin was in a tree on a
platform, sort of like a porch that wrapped all the way around. Facing out of
the tree, we could see the sky above the treetops. There were billions of stars
and nebulas.
My father had once taken me to Shomodii, where I
could see the sky without the city lights. I watched the stars for hours and
decided it was the most beautiful thing. This was even more beautiful. It
wasn’t just stars; there were nebulas out there, clouds of outstanding color.
“Can you see this on Earth?” Yaden asked.
Dylan shook his head. “Never. When I got to Duran, I
would sit for hours on end, night after night on the clear nights. Most of
Shomodii has no electricity, no street lights, so you can see billions of
stars. But not like this.”
“We are people who appreciate what we are given by
nature, because we are given everything we need. I will leave you to peace and
bid you a quiet night,” Yaden said before leaving.
It was a bit too cold for me, so I gave up and went
inside. Dylan checked his book before we went to bed, distressing that there
were clearly fewer names than before. “I don’t feel any different. That was the
first question Nano asked me about it was if I felt less powerful.”
“Maybe things haven’t settled yet. The names may
reappear when you heal the world those people belong to.”
When I turned the light out, it was very dark. I
settled down into the bed, only to sit back up when Sammy started crying. Dylan
tried to comfort him, but the baby wouldn’t settle until Dylan laid him in bed
next to me.
In no time at all, we were asleep.
* * *
I woke to the sound of arguing in a foreign language.
When I saw that Dylan and Sammy were still asleep, I bounded off the bed. I had
to stop them before they woke Dylan. He needed more sleep if he was going to do
any magic healing.
Two men stood arguing right outside the cabin with a
crowd standing back. One of them was Yaden, and the other was a stranger. When
I came out, they both stopped yelling and turned to me. Yaden looked
apologetic. I could smell the relief he felt that someone else was there to
take the attention off of him, but he was also worried over having woken me.
“I am sorry to disturb you, master fire-user, but he
would not leave.”
“Are you the one who healed the water tribe?!” The
stranger demanded in fair Sudo. The man was slim and tall with short, slick
black hair that kept falling into his eyes, which were light blue with a
silvery sheen. His robe, the same silver-blue as his eyes, draped from his
shoulders, held closed with a clasp at his chest. I was not close enough to see
the symbols on his clasp, and he was lucky for that.
“What’s it to you?” I asked in English. He looked
entirely confused. “Who are you?” I asked in Sudo.
“I am Davsi, master air-user and priest. I demand to
know who would heal the water tribe and not us!” he yelled.
Sammy started to cry.
I don’t know if it was the time of morning, the tone
of his voice, the smell of his slimy intentions, or the sound of Sammy crying,
but something snapped inside of me. My eyes and claws shifted, my teeth itched
as they became sharp, and my fire rose. Whatever had stirred in me before had
woken and all I could feel was power and anger. I would kill them all for
causing me distress.
“Mordon,” Dylan said sleepily from behind me. I had
smelled his approach, so I wasn’t startled. “They woke Sammy. Eat them, please.”
“Of course,” I answered. My voice was more growl than
anything and smoke came out of my mouth. I could see Yaden’s innocent and
gentle aura as he retreated, as well as smell his fear. The stranger’s aura was
not innocent, and he did not back down. I was more powerful than them, and
while Dylan may have been joking, I wasn’t. This new part of me was able and
willing to kill any mortal for any reason. Yet while this entity was so new to
me, it felt like I was so much older than I was before. It wasn’t settled yet;
I was still changing inside.
I made another growl, a final warning. I felt like I
should stay in between the man and the cabin, but I was perfectly willing to
just kill him. He still did not back down, so I moved forward. Even without
seeing his actual body, I could see enough to know where to strike.
“Mordon,” Dylan’s voice stood out against the rumble
of people and I stopped. “Sammy wants to be held and we decided I shouldn’t do
it, so you’re going to have to wake up,” he said.
I was awake. I felt like I had been asleep for a long
time and now I wanted to kill something. The man whimpered as I advanced.
“Mama!” Sammy cried out.
I stopped. I could kill the man later, but Sammy
wouldn’t be okay until I held him. He was probably too cold. I backed up until
I was next to Dylan before looking at him. His aura was truly a good one. He
wasn’t innocent or naïve, he would just never do anything he didn’t think was
the right thing to do.
“Don’t pick Sammy up with those claws, wake up,” he
said. Worry slowly stirred in him, but so did trust.
The entity, the part of me that had taken over,
suddenly became separate again… I was still changing inside. It now felt like a
separate being from me, and felt more so as it settled down. Its ire was
calming. One random thought that the demon might have possessed me after all
made the being feel humor. Like it was scoffing at the thought. It was an
incredibly powerful entity and it knew it well.
My eyes shifted back and Dylan smiled. “There you
are. Welcome back. Go get Sammy while I calm these people down.”
The creature inside me bristled, not at the command
but at the idea that Dylan would not need my protection. I had already judged
that they were a threat so they needed to be dealt with. Or maybe I hadn’t…
when had I decided they were they were a threat? I already knew Yaden was
docile.
“I want to kill them,”
I said in his mind.
“No, whatever is inside you does.”
I went inside and found Sammy sitting on my bed. He
stopped crying and held his arms out for me. I picked him up gently and the
entity inside me settled down even further. Sammy watched me with confusion,
looking straight into my eyes as if he were searching for something.
Finally, he gave up and laid his head on my chest. We
went back outside to find the air-user calmly explaining that all his people
were dying. The man squeaked when he saw me and the entity liked that.
“I will help your people, but I must help the land
people first, as I am here now. I will get to everyone.”
“My people are dying at this moment!” he demanded.
The growl started before I could stop it and the man
lowered his eyes.
“The people here are dying,” Yaden insisted.
Dylan looked at me. “I’m going to do my thing now.” I
knew he was telling me to keep Davsi away from him. “I want to be low to the
ground, but not in danger of falling into the swamp.”
Yaden took us to a low deck, just barely above the
murky water. Dylan sat right in the middle and I growled at anyone who looked
like they wanted to come closer.
“I need to do something to bond with the land in
order to heal it,” he said.
I searched around the deck until I found what I
needed, then picked up the small rock and threw it at Dylan. He instinctually
stopped it with his magic. “That wasn’t so hard,” I teased.
“Bite me.” He then focused on his task. We were
really starting to worry the land tribe; they would soon think all aliens were
crazy.
I could feel the change in energy all around me. The
entity liked the change and I was able to stop growling like a draxuni guarding
his pup. Dylan sighed and flopped to his side. He was not unconscious, just
tired. I dug into the baby bag to find another bottle of water, but it was the last
one. I filled Sammy’s cup, but before I could hand Dylan the bottle, Sammy
pushed his cup at him.
“Here, Dada.”
Dylan looked at the cup and laughed. “Thank you,
buddy, but you can have that. I’ll drink later.”
“You can have this,” I said.
He wouldn’t take it. “No, seriously, I think I would
throw up if I tried to eat or drink anything. Not having enough nominal energy
is making me feel nauseous.” He sat up and I helped him climb to his feet, then
put the bottle back in the bag. “I bet this is what Edward feels on Earth and
Sammy felt on Vaigda.”
“You shouldn’t have done that if you are so sick,” I
said.
He shrugged. “I’m not about to let people die because
I feel icky.”
I tapped his arm. “Yes, you do feel very icky.” He
punched me in the shoulder.
“No hitting, Dada!” Sammy insisted.
Emrys arrived and was willing, at the air-user’s
request, to lead us up to the air tribe. This time, with the help of Madus, we
would “flash” there instead of traveling on foot. I questioned it, but it was
the very literal definition. There was a flash of light and we were standing on
the cliff of a mountain.
We were as high up as the clouds, overlooking a deep
valley. All around us were other mountains with caves and homes built into the
sides. Between them were narrow wooden bridges. There were no people milling
about and that made the empty bridges seem ominous.
“Okay. I am going to puke now.”
I let my eyes shift just long enough to check his
energy. While he was flooding with god energy, his nominal energy was extremely
sparse. As Sammy was strapped to me in his papoose, I had my hands free to grab
Dylan. I did this because I didn’t know what his reaction would be when I
forced every bit of nominal energy I could into him. When he only gasped, I let
him go. He raised his arms up and made a happy holler I had never heard him
make.
“God, that’s better than Mountain Dew! Fantastic!
Feels way better. Let’s go save the world.”
Sammy’s mouth was hanging open.
Before Emrys could even remind Dylan that he had to
use the magic before he could heal it, the hyper Guardian created a
mini-tornado. Emrys and the stranger were both at a loss as to what was going
on. Dylan got right into healing the air tribe.
This time, as he sent out healing magic, the air
swirled around him in a bubble, as if protecting him. I watched with my shifted
eyes as his magic healed the numerous and devastating wounds. The green energy
inside him just kept forming.
When he opened his eyes, they glowed just a little
greener than normal, but he looked very rested.
“I think I’m getting the hang of this new energy,” he
said.
I wish I could get the hang of this beast snarling
inside me.
“Where to next?” he asked.
Emrys looked unsure. “The fire tribe, I suppose, but
do you not want to rest first?” he asked, frowning at me as if I could convince
my friend to take it easy.
I wanted to agree with him, but Dylan looked too
keyed up to rest.
“I’m good. Where are the people?” he asked, looking
over the cliff before backing away from the edge.
Davsi stepped forward. “They are sick from the magic.
Thank you for helping us.” When he took another step towards Dylan, I growled
and intercepted. He immediately lowered his eyes. He was learning at least.
“When we’re done here, maybe we can get back to
Duran and see Edward.”
“I doubt it.”
The flash was just as blinding
as before, made worse by the darkness we were engulfed in when it cleared. Only
the cracks provided light. We were in a dark tunnel, littered with fissures,
and each crack glowed red and yellow. The air was dry and hot, and the darkness
combined gave it a very comfortable feeling. This would be a place I could
happily live in. The entity inside me, which had grown quieter, felt pleased.
“Oh, god, it’s hot. Like, I grew up in Houston and
they would call this Hell.”
“It is not uncomfortable,” I said. Sammy rammed his
head into my chest. “Where are we?” I asked Emrys.