The Protectors: Book 1 in the Protectors Saga (18 page)

In the dead center of the clearing was a black stone
altar. It was about waist high with a thick width. The stones
looked old and worn, and there was a delicate green moss crawling
around it. On the top of the altar, attached to it, was a large
rusted metal bowl.

“This place is called Elysianth.” Gumptin told them,
“It was created thousands of years ago by the Ancients. Back before
there was such a thing as good and evil. Before the Ancients split
into different factions, this was one of the places they would meet
to perform powerful magic. This place is alive with magic; you can
feel it.”

Gumptin looked around the clearing with reverence as
he spoke. It was obvious to the girls that this place held a
special meaning in Gumptin’s soul and most likely a lot of other
magic folk’s souls as well.

Gumptin continued, “Over the centuries, many battles
have been fought for this little piece of land. Eventually, it fell
into the possession of the Elementals. This is the place, over
there at that altar, where they created your powers. In a way, this
is where you were created. That is why they gave this place to you.
It is yours to protect and to train in, a place where you can truly
learn to eventually control your powers.”

“So, to be clear,” Jade spoke up once Gumptin had
finished speaking, tossing the sack he had given her to carry on
the ground, “The Elementals created us so we’d have to fight the
most horrible evil scum you could imagine, which would most likely,
as past events have proven, lead to our premature deaths, and all
we got out of the deal is a patch of land.”

At first, Avery had thought the idea of claiming
ownership to a patch of magical land kind of cool, but Jade always
had a way of forcing Avery to see things from a different
perspective. She wasn’t sold on it being cool anymore.

Although Avery thought Jade had a good point, Gumptin
certainly didn’t, “It is a great honor to be given Elysianth, young
lady. You and this land are a part of each other.” He flared his
tiny nostrils, “You have fought to defend this land against
countless enemies who wished to use it for their own purposes.”

This time it was Avery who spoke, “Wait a second, you
mean we’ve had to fight things over this land? We could have been
killed defending a piece of land that no innocent people actually
live on?” Avery could understand risking her life fighting to
protect people’s lives, but the idea of doing it for a patch of
grass was a little more than she bargained for.

Gumptin looked back and forth between Avery and Jade,
a look of displeasure on his face, “You two do understand that you
do not need to make everything an argument, right?”

“Yes.” Avery said hesitantly, nodding her head.

“No.” Jade said without hesitation, shaking her
head.

Gumptin frowned at them, and then asked Bunny, Sasha,
and Skylar, “Do you three have anything to say on the matter?”

Each one of them shook their heads, no.

“Fine,” Gumptin said, “let’s begin training before
any of you have a chance to open your mouths anymore.”

Gumptin led them through what he considered basic
training routines, but what the girls considered torture. After
they finished stretching, they started off with push-ups. Gumptin
made sure they each did three hundred before moving on.

“Come on, keep the pace up!” Gumptin shouted at them
as they pushed their bodies up and down off of the ground, “Keep
going! Your abilities have been dormant for over sixteen years, all
your strength, speed, reflexes, senses, powers; your bodies have to
remember them all over again.”

It was only the very beginning of what Gumptin was
going to have them do, and already Avery knew she was going to be
in trouble. Her arms felt like they were on fire. When she looked
over at the other girls, Avery could see they shared her pain,
especially Bunny who lay face first on the ground, not moving.

Once push-ups were finished, it was time for
sit-ups.

Sasha was on sit-up two hundred and sixty five when
she collapsed on the ground, “I think I’m dying.” She moaned, her
pretty face in the dirt.

“You are not dead yet, Sasha,” Gumptin told her,
pacing back and forth in front of the girls, “and until you are,
keep going!”

Sasha reluctantly picked herself up and kept
going.

After sit-ups it was pull-ups on some low-lying tree
limbs, two hundred of them, and then knee lifts, two hundred of
them as well. They were followed by squats and jumping jacks that
seemed, to the girls, like they were never going to end.

“Alright, enough.” Gumptin told them.

The girls fell to the ground. Avery lay on her back,
breathing heavily, looking up at the baby blue sky dappled with big
white fluffy clouds.

Gumptin looked down at the girls trying to catch
their breath, “That was quite pathetic.” He said.

“Are you nuts?!” Avery retorted, lifting her head up
to look at Gumptin, “I’ve never worked so hard in my life!”

Gumptin snorted, “Maybe not in this life, but in your
pre-Earth life, that was about half of what you usually do.”

There was a collective groan from the girls at the
thought of doing any more.

Gumptin ignored their displeasure, “Alright, time to
run, get up.”

The girls didn’t move, except for Jade, who lifted
her arm up and flipped Gumptin off.

“Get up!” Gumptin continued, “Get off of the ground!
Move it, move it!” He kicked at each one of the girls until they
were all on their feet and jogging in laps around the perimeter of
the clearing.

Avery tried to clear her mind as she ran, focusing on
the cool air and soft grass, the forest around her teeming with
life, anything to keep her mind off of the stitch forming in her
side and the feeling of her lungs about to explode. She had no idea
how long Gumptin had had them running for, but the sun had now
become fully visible in the sky. Jade and Avery had been running
side by side and ahead of the others, when suddenly Jade stopped.
Avery followed suit and looked back at her.

Jade had her hands on her knees, and she was shaking
her head, “Nope, no more, I’m done.”

“Oh, thank God!” Skylar exclaimed stopping as well,
along with Bunny and Sasha, “I don’t know how long you planned to
have us running, but that’s it.”

Gumptin shrugged his shoulders, “I did not have
anything planned. I was just waiting for you to go as long as you
could before you had to stop.”

Before any of the girls had a chance to yell at
Gumptin for neglecting to mention that before they had started
running, and especially before they had reached the point where
they felt like vomiting, Gumptin walked over to the oversized
leather sack he had Jade carry. The girls watched as he untied the
sack and took out its contents. The first thing Gumptin unpacked
was a handful of cotton cloth strips.

“Tie these around your hands.” He told them, “It is
time for your real training to begin.”

The girls did as they were told, just relieved that
they were done with the exercise routines. They tied the strips of
cloth around their hands, forming make-shift gloves.

Gumptin led them to the very far edge of the
clearing, where nailed to five separate trees, were leather sacks a
foot taller than Avery. Avery pushed against one of the sacks and
it gave way a little. It felt, to her, as if it was filled with
sand, making it a semblant punching bag.

“These are your sparring partners.” Gumptin said,
pointing towards the sacks.

Gumptin directed each one of them to a different bag
and then made sure they were all in the appropriate fighting
stance. Feet shoulder width apart and firmly under you, knees
slightly bent, weight evenly distributed between the balls of your
feet, hips at a ninety degree angle to your opponent, shoulders
square over the hips, and the back straight, head turned to face
your opponents with your right fist up just below eye level, left
arm brought up in front of the body with the fist just underneath
the chin, elbows kept close to the body at all times. It sounded
complicated as Gumptin was explaining it to them, but after a short
demonstration the only one of the girls who required extra
attention to get her stance correct was Bunny.

Once they were all in their starting stances, Gumptin
led them through a rigorous training routine. He had them doing
multiple kinds of jabs, standard jabs, twisting jabs, and
collapsing jabs, until sweat was dripping down their faces. He had
them doing cross punches, hook punches, and uppercut punches. After
they finished their punches, Gumptin had them move on to kicks. He
had them doing side kicks, back kicks, sweeping, thrust, and rising
kicks, snap kicks, and roundhouse kicks. Gumptin then had them do
multiple maneuvers in mixed order.

Gumptin called out, “Hook, twisting jab, side kick,
back kick, uppercut!”

He barely left a breath between his words and the
girls were expected to follow him without mistake. In fact, they
weren’t allowed to stop with the exercise until they had performed
five consecutive routines to perfection. To Avery’s surprise the
skills and routines came relatively easy to her. Her muscles were
killing her, and she was sure she’d never breathe right again, but
she found that all the punches, jabs, and kicks, and doing them in
different patterns came habitual to her. They were as easy as
riding a bike back on Earth. She didn’t even have to really think
about what she was doing; it was as if the nerve endings in her
body remembered these activities.

Bunny, however, was having slight problems and was
responsible for that particular training session lasting an extra
twenty minutes. When she finally managed to get it down without
fault, Gumptin gave them ten minutes of rest.

Avery hugged the tree she had just released a
considerable beating on, letting it support all of her weight. She
cringed as her sweat drenched face stuck to the leather punching
bag, but it beat collapsing onto the dirty ground along with Skylar
and Sasha.

After what seemed to Avery like thirty seconds,
Gumptin announced, “Your ten minutes are expired. Let’s move on to
ground work.”

Avery stayed glued to the tree, hoping that someone,
especially Jade, would protest, but after a few moments of silence,
she turned her head around and saw Jade literally crawling on her
hands and knees over to the near center of the clearing where
Gumptin was directing them to go. It was then that Avery pushed
herself up off of the tree, thinking that whatever Gumptin was
about to do to them, it couldn’t get much worse.

It wasn’t long before Avery realized how wrong she
was. Gumptin first had them work on basic ground roll techniques.
They were made to do forward, side, backward, and diving rolls.
They weren’t difficult compared to everything else they had been
doing, and they didn’t require much energy, which meant the girls
took as long as they possibly could drawing out their different
rolls. Gumptin, however, was not fooled and had them quickly moving
on to cartwheels. First, just free form and then cartwheeling while
picking up an object up off of the ground. He used a long stick as
their prop.

Next, Gumptin moved on to handsprings and flips, and
this is when the girls became hesitant. As Gumptin explained the
technique that went into the acrobatic maneuvers he wanted them to
do, the girls looked back and forth at each other, more than sure
that one of them was going to break something; they just hoped it
wasn’t their neck. Avery could have bet money that Bunny was
definitely going to fracture something.

When he finished explaining, Gumptin pointed to
Avery, “I want you to do a handspring into a front flip, run five
paces, do a cartwheel into a back handspring, followed by a double
front flip.”

Avery’s mouth genuinely fell open. She was pretty
sure she wouldn’t even be able to verbally repeat what Gumptin had
said, let alone do it.

Next to her, Avery could hear Sasha snickering under
her breath, “Yeah, Avery,” Sasha squeaked out through her giggles,
“show us what you got, big bad leader.”

“Stow it, Sasha!” Jade barked, glaring at Sasha from
the other side of Avery. She turned to Gumptin, “This is going
beyond sadistic drill instructor, alright. She could seriously hurt
herself.”

Gumptin shook his head, “No, no, no, she will be
fine. Your bodies remember everything. It is just like a cat
landing on their feet, completely instinctual.”

As Avery moaned at the unsatisfying analogy of being
compared to a cat, Jade scoffed at Gumptin, “It’s also instinctual
for me to want to duct tape your mouth shut, but you don’t see that
working out too well, do you?”

Avery knew Gumptin and Jade were just going to keep
talking in circles without agreeing. So, she decided she would
rather injure herself doing something productive, than get a
migraine listening to them bicker.

“I’ll do it!” Avery shouted, above Gumptin and Jade’s
heated voices.

Before Avery walked out to prepare for her aerial
gymnastics, Jade grabbed on to her elbow, “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Jade
told her.

“Relax,” Avery said, tugging her elbow free, “I’m
cat-like, remember.” She said it as much to assure herself as she
did to assure Jade.

Avery walked up to Gumptin, telling herself to keep
calm despite her sweaty palms and racing heart.

“Just remember,” Gumptin told her, “get a running
start, breathe, and let your mind go free. Your body will do all
the rest. Just do not over think it.”

It wasn’t the most calming thing Gumptin could have
said to her, but Avery took his advice. She took a couple deep long
breaths to calm herself and tried to clear her mind. It was
difficult at first with the thought of pummeling to the ground in
mid jump darting through her head. A petite white flower sprouting
up from the ground a few feet in front of Avery caught her
attention, and she focused all of her attention on it. Soon,
Avery’s mind was free of any thoughts except that tiny flower and
the jumps she was about to do. Taking a final deep breath, Avery
took off into a run.