“What are you?” Storshae gasped.
Debo thought about it for a second before replying, “An Energy Director.”
This obviously wasn’t the case, so Storshae redirected his question to his Bewahr. “What is he, Fonos?”
“He is a Pogu,” he replied, still staring at Debo. “And I’m confused as to why he hasn’t done away with us by now.”
“Pogu?” the prince repeated.
“Branian is the lowest tier of the Bozani hierarchy. Pogu is a tier higher.”
A Pogu? Bryson always knew that the man who acted as his father had secrets, but of this magnitude? He hadn’t even heard of a Pogu before.
“My goodness, why are you struggling to defeat me?” Fonos asked.
“Because of how long I’ve spent away from the Light Empire.”
“And she allowed you to come down here?”
“Yes, eleven years ago.”
“Eleven years,” Fonos repeated with a smirk. “And you still can fight me toe-to-toe. That is very frightening.”
The conversation was interrupted by the roar of falling rocks. High above them, the crater rim was collapsing as broken rock and dirt cascaded into the valley. The ground at their feet reverberated with each explosion. It went on for less than a minute before it stopped and dust clouds began to rise in front of the sun.
Fonos’s mouth flattened. “That, too, is very frightening.”
***
The lieutenant and major looked at each other, not sure of what had just happened. One moment, there were three Jestivan in front of them. The next moment, a lone girl, who looked even younger than the others, was the only one in sight.
She had an umbrella in her hand, but the bandana that she typically had wrapped around her head was missing, for Bryson had it in his pants pocket. One eye was visible—one cold, sad, green eye. The other was hidden behind her sweeping bangs.
Rhyparia broke the silence. “Hello.”
“Another Jestivan?” the major asked.
“Their friend,” she corrected.
“Well, you’re going to end up just like your friends.”
Her eyebrow climbed up her forehead. “Oh, you mean perfectly fine?” she asked, nodding her head at the Jestivan in the distance.
The major turned around, and sure enough, there were the three Jestivan he was previously fighting. His teeth grated against each other.
Rhyparia scanned her surroundings with a professorial air. “It seems my friends were not at their best here. From their tracks, it seems Toshik was fighting to stop Jilly from fighting more than he was paying attention to you. And based on the wounds in your dead corporals, I’ll assume Himitsu’s energy had nearly been depleted before this contest began.”
“Or perhaps the lot of you aren’t as strong as you would like to think,” the lieutenant spat. “And you … you are irrelevant. Your presence is almost nonexistent. I feel nothing.”
“Because when my switch is turned off, I am quite possibly one of the least threatening people around,” Rhyparia said. “However, it only takes a trigger, and then all control is lost. I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging. It’s definitely a flaw.”
“A switch?”
His answer was an umbrella thrust through his torso. The lieutenant stared with wide eyes as his blood gushed from the wound. Rhyparia pulled her ancient free, and his body collapsed with a thud.
Then the weight of the atmosphere intensified, and the major grabbed his throat as he gasped for air. He panicked as he realized what her ability was.
The feeling drifted into his bones. At first they ached, then they cracked under the pressure. His ankles snapped first, bringing him to his knees as the joints all over his body were dislocating. His hands and feet were crushed, turning them into nothing but dust-filled bags of skin. His excruciating screams of pain blended with the crunching of his collapsing skeleton. Then they were drowned out by the roar of Kuki Sphaira’s crust cracking and collapsing. Rhyparia was sculpting a new landscape.
It didn’t take long for Rhyparia’s body to overexert itself. She fell to the ground as the gravity instantly shifted back to its normal balance. But for the major, it was too late. His mangled body was contorted in the rubble. Rhyparia’s eyes were barely open as she incoherently stared at nothing.
A man with sleek, jet-black hair crouched beside her. Finally, the girl’s eyes moved. She weakly looked up at the stranger’s face.
“Young lady, that was overwhelming and unprecedented power,” the man said. “My name is Vistas, and I am a friend.”
***
Bewahr Fonos was tiring. He had already sustained several slashes to his forearms. As his mind hazed, he began to teleport more or less at random, desperately hoping to somehow be delivered from Debo’s relentless assault.
“You may have the ability to travel from one spot to another instantly,” Debo said, “but your mind can’t react instantly. I may not be as fast as I once was, but I’m still too fast for you!” He swung his sword, and when Fonos reappeared several feet away, he was missing something—an arm. It had fallen to the ground where he had previously stood.
“Fonos!” Storshae cried.
The Bewahr grimaced as he looked down where his left arm should have been. Blood was spurting from the wound. Then Debo pushed off again, reaching his maximum speed percentage instantaneously.
Fonos remained deathly still with no effort to teleport away. Debo swung his sword as violently as he could, and he felt its blade rip across the enemy’s stomach.
Debo’s sword fell from his grasp and clattered against the hard ground. For the first time in eleven years, tears were forming in his eyes as he watched the intestines spill from the rent he had torn … into Bryson.
The boy fell to the ground on his knees as he clutched his organs in his hands.
“No … No … No, no, no, no, Bryson,” Debo pleaded.
Bryson gazed up at him with a look of disbelief before falling flat on his face. As Debo stood in shock, Fonos grabbed the Pogu’s neck with his remaining arm.
Now Fonos and Debo were no longer in the crater, for Fonos had teleported them to the rim, not far from where Himitsu, Jilly, and Toshik stood.
“Director!” Jilly screamed.
Debo’s lanky frame dangled over the cliff’s edge, suspended by Fonos’s grip. The Pogu wasn’t struggling. He hung limp.
Fonos gave Debo a curious look. “We’ll see just how much damage eleven years away from the Light Empire did to your Tahara.” He let go, and the Jestivan watched hopelessly as their director’s body tumbled through the air.
A scream came from the canyon floor: “DEBO!”
Debo gazed blankly in the direction of the shouting. It was Bryson. He was standing on the crater floor, pinned in a headlock by Prince Storshae. But he had no wounds. His stomach was intact.
Debo realized what had happened. Fonos inflicted a hallucination upon him. A mixture of feelings swept over him: frustration for being so careless and unaware, relief to see Bryson alive, and helplessness. Fonos was correct. If only he were the man he had been eleven years ago …
Bryson, on the other hand, was in a state of shock at the sight of Debo’s flailing body. He didn’t understand how the tides had been reversed so abruptly. All he had seen was Debo randomly breaking down in the middle of a finishing blow.
Fonos teleported back to the crater floor, between where Bryson stood and where Debo was falling. Bryson’s dirt-and-sweat-lathered face reflected sheer horror as he watched it happen … Debo’s body smashing to the ground with a blast like a clap of thunder.
Bryson wailed as he hopelessly tried to tear himself from Storshae’s grasp.
“Your last resort is dead,” the prince sneered. “What are you going to do now, cry? That’s the fight you’re going to put up?”
Bryson let out another agonizing sob and stopped struggling, allowing himself to hang listlessly in Storshae’s arms.
Fonos was on his knees, hol
ding his bleeding shoulder. He looked up at Bryson with a white face. “You must have been something extremely special to him. Whether the Light or Dark Empire, for a rank above a Branian or Bewahr to leave is extremely rare. And for eleven years? That is unheard of. What was he doing here?”
Bryson just stared at the dirt, too disconsolate to answer.
Fonos slumped onto his backside. “Just like the Dark Empire’s Gefal, each tier of the Light Empire’s Bozani hierarchy has a purpose, its own way of protecting the balance. The Pogu … they are executioners. Once in a great while, they are ordered to kill potential threats to said balance.” He coughed. “But that’s it. They are to go straight back to the Light Empire. And here on, Kuki Sphaira, they are not to be seen. They are assassins. So I ask again, what about you made him break that rule?”
Storshae cuffed Bryson on the cheek. “Answer him, boy. He’d like to know before he bleeds to death.”
Realization dawned upon Fonos as his brows furrowed. “Debonicus said that he arrived eleven years ago. That would put us right at the time of Mendac LeAnce’s death.”
“You’re implying he executed him?” Storshae scoffed.
“Who else could have? Mendac was the Fifth of Five. And Ataway Debonicus Kawi was the Third of Five.”
Ataway Debonicus Kawi. Bryson rolled the name through his battered brain. Debo.
“But why would the Light Empire have one of their own realm executed?” Fonos asked himself, his voice weakening. “It couldn’t have been simply because of his talent. Debonicus had unmatched talent when he was human too, but nobody was sent down to kill him. He sacrificed himself.”
“A pathetic way of trying to glorify a suicide,” Storshae spat. He swept Bryson to the ground, pressed his knee into the back of the boy’s head, and drew his sword. “Is there a point to your rambling?”
Fonos looked at the prince with his dying eyes. “The messy blond hair … blue eyes … electrical abilities. That boy. He’s Mendac’s son. I’m sure of it.”
“Is that so?” Storshae flipped Bryson over and laughed. “This will be even more enjoyable than I had imagined.”
He grabbed Bryson’s chin and stared into his face. “How would you like to relive your deepest, darkest memories? Let’s see if they’re as twisted as your little lady friend’s.”
Storshae sunk his fingertips into Bryson’s scalp. Bryson’s eyes rolled to the back of his head, exposing the whites. His temple began to pulse and his breathing became heavy. An array of subconscious memories began to seep into the forefront of his mind:
He was inside the hallway of his house, standing next to the light-shielded closet door. An eleven-year-old boy whose curiosities had finally gotten the best of him. He stared at the light as if it was the strongest opponent he would ever fight in his life.
He thrust his finger into the light. He screamed as his skin shriveled and burned. The popping sounds scared him even more. He collapsed to the floor, writhing in pain—
He was grasping at a wooden floorboard, trying to pull himself forward. The air felt like a boulder crushing the life from him.
He looked to his right and saw a young boy pinned to the floor. A chunk of ceiling fell and split the boy in two—
A stadium, bathed in blood, echoed clashing metal and dying screams. Innocents who had only wanted to enjoy a holiday weekend were being hacked down left and right—
He fumbled across rows of seats as he scrambled to find his best friend. The sun had sunk below the horizon, making it harder to decipher facial features as he turned over countless corpses—
The next vision was the worst. It was a nightmare he hadn’t experienced since he was maybe ten years old.
He was looking at the back of his eyelids, but he couldn’t open them. Not because he physically couldn’t, but for fear of what he might see.
He braced himself for the pain, but screamed when the blade carved deep into his chest. Slowly, cruelly, the blade cut horizontally, then vertically. He could feel the warm blood seep out of the wounds and drip down his cold body—he was always cold. All the while, Bryson continued to scream. He was young—very young. His screams were childlike.
The carving switched to his left pectoral, and this was even worse, as there was a curve to its path. The boy kicked feebly. His tiny hands clutched at the wooden table he lied upon, splintering beneath his fingernails …
Storshae was forced to strengthen his grip as Bryson’s body violently convulsed. It looked as if he was going into a seizure as bubbles of saliva foamed between his lips. The scars on his chest began to bleed, running up and over his abdominals.
Eventually the foaming stopped, and Bryson lay still. Sweat matted his hair to his face. His body was about to shut down, but his next memory took him to a different place—a peaceful one:
He was sitting in a spot he had sat so many times before in countless dreams. He looked up, knowing exactly what to expect. Sure enough, there was the canopy of cherry blossoms that cast him in a cooling shade. Phesaw’s bustling campus expanded at the foot of his green hill. He inhaled fresh air from a calming breeze.
He knew what came next, readying himself for disappointment. This was when the dream always stopped.
His head turned. His view panned to the left … and kept going. He pressed his hand into the lush grass and pivoted to look behind him.
A man stood with his hands clasped behind his back as if he was lost deep in thought. His hair was blond and messy.
Then Bryson spoke, but the voice that escaped his mouth was a woman’s: “How many times are you going to bring me up here to watch the grass grow? You’re the most boring date I could ever ask for.”
“I’m not watching grass grow, love. I’m planning,” the man said.
“Oh yes, and what was that completely fantastic and awesome name you plan to name it?”
“Don’t patronize me,” he said through a chuckle.
She guffawed. “Let me have my fun. ‘Telejunction’ is okay … I guess.” She paused. “You know I love you, Mendac.”
The man turned his head—as if in slow motion, so anxious was Bryson to see his father’s face.
Mendac’s face was chiseled. His bangs flirted with his eyelashes just like Bryson’s, and there was scruff bordering his jaw. His eyes were more aggressive than his son’s, and his nose was narrower.
A couple tears dripped from Bryson’s white eyes—tears of happiness. The experience was euphoric, and he didn’t want it to stop.
Mendac beamed. “I love you too, Thusia.”
Then his dad’s face vanished as Bryson’s vision was erased by a blinding white. An unnatural breeze ran across his neck—a breeze he had felt twice before. And a woman’s voice carried through. It was so calming, yet rejuvenating.
“I shall descend from the Light.”
Bryson’s hair whipped against his face as the gentle breeze intensified. His eyes were still rolled in the back of his head.
Dev Prince Storshae could no longer keep his grip on the boy’s scalp. He let go, his heels sliding in the dirt as he struggled to brace himself in the tornado-like winds. Bewahr Fonos fell on his side and slid bonelessly across the ground.
“What is happening?!” Storshae screamed over the noise.
The windstorm formed a clear, upside-down tornado. The widest part sat at ground level. As it reached higher in the air, the funnel became smaller and more concentrated. A blinding light shined at the top, which was parallel to the crater’s rim. Himitsu, Toshik, and Jilly held their arms in front of them to shield their eyes from the light.
“Don’t look directly at it!” Himitsu yelled.
Rhyparia could see it from where she lay in the dirt. Her eyes were barely open, but even if they were closed, its intensity would have turned her eyelids a bloody red. Vistas, who was crouched next to her, stared at it in astonishment.
Each of them experienced a sensation they had never felt in their life. It was a sensation that Bryson had felt when he first met P
rincess Shelly’s Branian. Their hearts lifted. They felt no worry, no pain, no fear. They breathed deep and easy, inhaling the purest, cleanest air that could ever exist. They felt feathery—as if they could sprout wings.
Storshae had a different reaction. “What is this?!” he yelled with a mixture of disbelief and rage. “How is this happening?! He’s a plebeian!”
As the torrential winds continued, the light began floating down to the crater floor, softening as it descended. Bryson’s eyes finally rolled to the front of his head.
As the glowing orb reached ground, it began to take shape. A pair of feet formed first. Each toenail was painted sky blue. Two slender calves stretched upward until her legs disappeared behind a blue dress that rippled in the winds. A single white bracelet hugged a tiny wrist, and she wore a white collar around her neck with a diamond set in the front. Her blond hair whipped violently in the storm.
Then the winds abruptly stopped, casting the crater in stunned silence. Her hair fell down to her mid-back. It was perfectly straight—much like Jilly’s.
She fixed her sight on various things. She looked at Bryson. Then Debo’s body lying near the cliff’s wall. Finally she looked at Fonos, who was somehow still alive.
She casually waved her hand in his direction, and an intense blast of wind sent him flying into the crater wall head-first.
The woman turned to look at the prince, not bothering to hide her disgust.
His voice trembled. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to understand,” she replied coldly. “I’m here to protect Bryson LeAnce. My name is Thusia, a Bozani of the Light Empire, and I am bound to him as his Branian.”
***
Jilly was leaning so far over the edge that she was in danger of falling off. Little did she know that the woman was her childhood idol and hero—much like many other girls’—Thusia.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“Our ticket out of here,” Toshik said.
“What’s happening?” Rhyparia whispered to Vistas.
“I’m not sure how, but it appears as if Bryson just summoned a Branian,” he replied.
“A Branian …”
For the first time since his brother’s death, Vistas smiled. “Victory. Your captain rose to the challenge.”
Perhaps Vistas had been blinded by the hope he felt in his chest, but when he looked at Rhyparia’s debilitated face, he could have sworn, that for a brief moment, the right side of her mouth curled upward a tiny bit.
The Jestivan (Erafeen, #1) Page 28
