He realized he was rambling. He looked down at her and was stunned to see Sally smiling.
“I think you come from an amazing place. I didn’t realize it was so interesting,” she said.
Breeze shrugged. “Yeah, well, I guess so.”
“You’re such a nice guy. I’m so happy we can be friends,” she gushed.
Breeze felt his heart sink like a brick. “That’s great of you to say.” He immediately wanted to kick himself as soon as he said it.
Sally began humming a tune and resumed painting samples on the wall.
Breeze glumly climbed higher up the ladder. He stopped and placed the bucket of putty on the step above and looked up at the sky. He wanted to fly as the urge to impress her overwhelmed his senses.
He stared at the clouds and focused his concentration. It wasn’t until he looked down did he realize he was floating above the dormitory. He looked for Sally when he heard the grumble of an engine.
It was Ray driving the scissor lift machine. He was fumbling with the controls and grinding the gears as he careened around a corner. He was out of control, and was heading straight for Sally.
She waved at him excitedly, oblivious to the danger.
Breeze felt a surge of jealousy that made him lose his concentration. He flailed wildly with his arms as he plummeted to the ground and crashed into the pans full of paint, splattering it all over her.
Ray brought the scissor lift to a halt and nonchalantly stepped out.
Breeze lay on the ground, refusing to move even an inch. He could hear Ray laughing hysterically as he felt paint ooze all over him. He looked over at Sally and saw that she was covered head to toe with paint. She held out her hands and looked down at her clothes, then turned to look at her wall of paint samples. They were completely ruined. She looked at Breeze in horror, and then ran away.
Ray chuckled and knelt down on one knee next to Breeze. “Well my boy, let me guess, an attempt to impress the girl ended in disaster. Right?”
Breeze glared at him. He wanted to say something smart, but couldn’t think of anything.
Ray slapped his thighs and stood up. He took a look at the wall Breeze was patching and nodded. “Breeze, you really need to listen. Sally and I come from a different world. Very different. Manual labor is not really our thing. We have other people do stuff like this for us. For you, yes, you’re in your element here. And yeah, this project gave you an opportunity to shine for Sally, but, you never really had a chance with her. And now? Well, probably never.”
Breeze continued to lay still. He knew he should get up and defend himself, but couldn’t find the will. Lying there was all he wanted to do.
Ray jerked a thumb toward the scissor lift. “So anyhow, I brought the lift. I suppose you can clean up from here. You seem to have a handle on things. I’m going to check up on Sally.” He headed toward the dormitory.
Breeze groaned as he got to his feet and began cleaning up the mess he made.
Oslo and Excort stood on an adjacent rooftop overlooking the dorms and watched as Breeze cleaned up the work site.
“Well, did you see what you want? Disappointed?” the dwarf asked.
“There is more to this school than teaching them how to use their gifts. They need to work together as team. They need to understand that they have to come together.”
“For what Oslo? What are you preparing them for? These kids are far away from home and in unfamiliar surroundings. They don’t want to be here and this campus is not even fit to be used. There is so much to repair around here—”
“That’s your responsibility, not mine,” Oslo snapped at him.
“Yes. Yes it is. And I’m doing it all by myself, thank you very much!”
Oslo closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “I’m sorry, old friend. I just assumed your sons were here to help you—”
“My sons and daughters, my family, have long ago left this place. There is nothing here for them. They have made a life for themselves on the surrounding islands. They live in peace. There are no troubles for them. Oslo, you have to let go. The past is the past. Move on. Go to Raza. Take her daughter to her. Live a life with the ones you love. Move on.”
Oslo raised a clenched fist. “I can’t let go. After all that has happened. All that I know. How can I just walk away and pretend to live a normal life?”
“Normal is what they want,” Excort said as he pointed a finger at the sky. “As long as we don’t make any waves, they don’t bother us. Cities are not attacked. People don’t vanish. Yes, on this island we are hidden from their view. But they see everything else. If you stand out, they will knock you back down. As long as you live a simple life, they don’t seem to bother anyone. It’s when you start using machines they take notice, and terrible things happen. And now, you’re adding the recruitment of paranormals to the mix, which is what they despise the most and have gone great lengths to suppress.”
Oslo chuckled.
Excort stared at him. “What’s so funny?”
“You accuse me of not letting go? Do you have any clue what’s happening out there? Or have you been stuck on this rock for so long, you stopped poking your head out to see? It’s different Excort. Cities are flourishing. Machines are being built. And there haven’t been any cases of cities or territories being attacked. Until now.”
“What attacks? Where?”
“Never mind that. Progress is being made again. We’re waking up. I just want the world to remember the heritage of this planet. For people to take pride again in their history!”
“How, with him?” Excort stabbed a finger down toward Breeze.
“It’s a start. All great things have a beginning somewhere.”
Excort turned and walked away. He had heard enough, especially after having a long day of making endless repairs with no real help. He reached the door that led to the stairwell, then stopped to look back at Oslo.
Oslo was standing with one foot on the railing and spoke while gazing at the sky. “If you look closely, you can see them. The stars that are not so bright, the ones that don’t seem to shimmer. That’s how you know it’s the Elephim. We can stop them, once and for all. I believe we can,” he said.
Excort understood what drove Oslo. He served in the military with him on Perihelion when the troubles began, and life as they had known it began its long march toward decay and chaos. They watched as the world was strangled by the hands of a powerful, yet unseen force. A shadow organization that slowly took over the institutions, industries and customs of Earth and her colonies, then encouraged the people to question and malign them. Soon, decay and chaos swept through like an unforgiving wind. Brothers quarreled and fought. Neighbors attacked and killed one another. Territorial governments were locked in endless wars and conflicts amongst themselves.
But the greatest accomplishment of the shadow organization, who later revealed themselves as the Elephim, was turning the population against the heroes and vanguards of Earth, the Helios, the paranormal army who protected the planet and her colonies.
The Elephim did not have the strength in numbers to confront the Helios directly; they were an ancient race who had long ago let their world fall into ruin. Yet their desire, driven by madness and depravity, to see all worlds become as eviscerated as theirs, compelled them to seek out life and suppress it, as they had suppressed their own people. But Earth possessed an energy unlike any other, and they knew it was instrumental in the creation of the paranormals that made up the Helios. The Elephim wanted to tap into that energy and replenish their strength, and perhaps use it to rebuild their world into their dark vision of it.
But the Helios would be their greatest obstacle in their quest for complete dominion of Earth, so they used subterfuge to undermine them.
A whisper campaign was set into motion against the Helios that soon erupted into a
firestorm of negative public opinion. Malicious lies were spread, painting the Helios as power mad zealots who engaged in acts of perversion, while plotting to enslave the population.
The Helios soon found themselves on the defensive and became embroiled in a war amongst themselves. A war between factions who wanted to give in and surrender to the Elephim, who were beginning to emerge from the shadows and present themselves to the people as a safer alternative for peace and security, and those who chose to resist, for they knew the true nature of the Elephim and the horror they represented.
The turmoil surrounding the Helios made it easier to hunt down and destroy those who resisted the growing influence of the Elephim. It was painful and demoralizing to the resistance that those who were slain were done so by the hands of traitorous Helios who had become agents for the Elephim. Those who managed to survive went into exile to either hide on Earth, or to disappear into the stars.
With their protectors now gone, the people were forced to turn to what was left of the shattered territorial governments for security, but there were helpless to do anything.
The absence of authority paved the way for the Elephim to create a new government. They not only created the chaos and orchestrated it from the shadows, they now offered the solution to it. They held out a helping hand to the burnt out remains of a society that had destroyed itself, and offered order out of chaos. For a society that once valued personal responsibility and individuality, it now sought peace and tranquility at any price.
The Elephim placed platforms in orbit above the Earth. They claimed that it was to monitor and provide security, but instead became a systematic effort to control them like cattle. Any attempts at technological progress were met with swift retributions. Any desire to begin an alternative government was squashed. Earth was to be controlled by one government only, one administered by the Elephim and enforced by traitorous Helios, who now wore jet black uniforms that covered them from head to toe.
What would destroy humanity the most was not the attacks on cities and industries, or driving off the Helios into exile and obscurity, but the abduction of children by the Elephim. The heartbreaking stories of parents waking up to find their children missing had one common denominator: the abducted children were paranormal.
Oslo and his wife, Raza, spanned the globe seeking these families to bring them to Perihelion for refuge. Military personnel serving on Perihelion, who long ago refused the authority of the Elephim, were more than eager to help.
Perihelion was the only military base with an experimental electromagnetic camouflage, the fog as it was called, that was to be adapted and installed on the starships of the Interstellar Navy. It was now used to shield the island from the prying eyes of the Elephim and protect Earth’s last and most precious resource, the children of the paranormal.
Perihelion was a base that also hosted a military academy for cadets. Oslo and Raza planned to use it to train and hone the paranormal powers of their recruits. They shared a vision of them becoming the next generation of Helios who would liberate the planet from the Elephim.
But it was too late as the Elephim were made aware of these plans from well-placed spies. Though they could not find Perihelion because of the fog, they isolated it by raining destruction upon the rest of the world.
When it was over, the children and their families stayed on the island until the fires across the planet had burned themselves out, then left Perihelion and returned to what little was left of their homes and live out the remainder of their lives rebuilding what they had lost. Despite their efforts, their homelands would devolve into chaos.
The Helios who survived the purge knew better than to reveal themselves. They were never heard from again.
Excort did remember an alternative plan that was hatched by Oslo, Raza, and a friend of theirs, a projector whose power seemed to grow exponentially by the day. His name was Bram. He was recruited to train at Perihelion right before the purge began along with Oslo and Raza.
Their plan was to augment Bram’s projection capabilities with machinery that Oslo and a robot assistant of his designed and built, to seek out the home world of the Elephim and discover any weakness they may have and use it to destroy them.
They found it after many attempts by relying on clues they found in ancient texts of the island’s vast library. But the mission came to an abrupt end when Bram’s astral form disappeared after one of many excursions to and from Helena, the Elephim’ home world, leaving his body behind in a comatose state that was kept alive by the machines that augmented his power.
“The three of you did what you could,” Excort said, “but in the end, the odds were stacked against you. You never had a chance. Bram was your best hope and you sent him to confront the Elephim and to find their home world, but something happened to him. Whatever it was, he could be the reason why they became dormant for so long. Perhaps he found a way to fight them and prevent Earth from being harmed any more that it has. Maybe he reached an agreement with them to leave Earth alone as long as we don’t try to become ambitious again and recover what we have lost. What I believe,” the dwarf pointed at him, “is if you stop trying to recreate the past, they might just leave us alone.”
Oslo held up a hand. “I told you, Bram sent me a message. He is returning. He wants Perihelion reopened.”
“Did you really hear from him? Or is it the guilt that you feel for sending him out into the unknown and never returning?”
Oslo didn’t respond.
Excort lost his patience. He turned and descended the steps.
EIGHT
OVER A WEEK HAD passed since their failed attempt at sprucing up the dormitory and Sally was becoming exasperated.
Oslo continued their training as he strived to get them to wield their powers in new and interesting ways, but it was becoming quite clear to her and the others that he wasn’t much of an instructor while also doubling as headmaster.
Sally hounded him about the arrival of the other students he had promised. He would repeatedly assure her that more were on the way.
Breeze was acting strange around her. He would pass her in the halls, or on the boulevards of the campus, but avoided her gaze. A few times he mumbled an apology to her about the painting accident. She just didn’t know what to make of him. A part of her was falling for him, the other was screaming at her to just ignore him.
A heavy rainfall the following night woke her and she couldn’t fall back asleep. She went to the balcony to look out across the bay and watched as the rain come down in sheets. The pitch black night was lit by streaks of lighting that briefly gave her glimpses of the shoreline while thunder rocked the dormitory causing it to shake and rumble.
The storm abated as the heavy rain petered out into a light drizzle. The dark and thick storm clouds gave way to wisps of fast moving rain bands that allowed the starry sky above to shine through. She looked up and sighed. The stars here seemed so much brighter than at home. Her city was a fast growing one and the electric light from the street lamps created a glow over it that obscured the starlight.
As the rain bands thinned out, she leaned over the railing and began searching for constellations. She marveled at how the stars seemed to hang in the sky like glittering jewels and she wanted to reach out to grab one as they felt so close.
She noticed one star in particular that appeared dull compared to its companions, and then brightened as if a surge of energy rippled through it. She had the feeling it knew she was watching when the star wobbled and drifted away.
She tracked it until a movement from the corner of her eye caught her attention. She looked down at the beach and saw a figure staring at her. She recoiled in fear and quickly stepped back from the railing. The figure turned and walk along the shoreline with a flowing white dress streaming in the wind.
The figure turned to look at her again. Sally put a hand to her thro
at and realized she was looking at the same woman from the cove and the demonstration session in the dome. The woman raised her hand slightly as if to greet her, then turned and continued walking along the beach.
She watched her fade into the dark and felt compelled to project out to her, then thought better of it after remembering her experience in the courtyard. She needed to confront this woman on a physical plane, not the astral one.
She ran out of her room and down the steps, then through the courtyard that lead to the beach as her adrenaline overwhelmed whatever fear she may have felt.
She looked down the shoreline and caught a faint wisp of a white dress in the distance. She bolted across the sand, never realizing that she was the only one leaving footprints behind.
As she drew closer to the woman she slowed to a walk, and then stopped. The woman turned to face her and the moonlight made her white dress glow even brighter, allowing Sally to see how beautiful she was, with her long flowing hair blown about by the wind. The woman raised a hand and beckoned her to come closer.
Breeze Corinth (Book 1): Sky Shatter Page 17
