Savant & Feral (Digital Boxed Set): Books 1 and 2 of the Epic Luminether Fantasy Series

by Richard Denoncourt

  When he finished explaining what Cyrens were, why they had broken away from the Psi’Acular Monks, and how they used to blind themselves in order to truly understand and master elemental magic, his sister broke the uneasy silence.

  “Milo, are you crazy? You lost one eye. You can’t possibly be saying the other one is going to… Or that you should…”

  “Hold on, sis.” Milo raised a hand to silence her. “I’m not saying I’m going to go blind. At least, I don’t think so. It’s just that…”

  Going blind is the key, said the voice-that-was-not-a-voice, that feeling deep down that had urged him to surrender in the dream.

  “Just that what?” Emma said. “You’re not making sense.”

  “What I’m trying to say is…”

  “Spit it out,” Sevarin said, crossing his arms and giving Milo a stern look. He already knew what he was going to say.

  Milo took a deep breath to steady himself. Maybe he should have given this more thought before calling his friends. Not because he doubted his decision, but because he had no idea how to say this without hurting them.

  And what about his uncle? The man would kill him if he caught wind of this.

  If Uncle Manny was even alive.

  “I know what I have to become,” Milo said, “and it’s not going to happen here. Wherever that place is, whoever I have to track down to find it, I just know my future is meant to be different.”

  “Are you…” Emma choked back tears. “Milo, are you actually saying…”

  “Goodbye,” Milo said. “Not forever, but for now… I’m saying goodbye.”

  FERAL: PART II

  TOOTH & CLAW

  CHAPTER 1

  M ilo still couldn’t believe he was going to say this.

  “Goodbye. Not forever, but for now… I’m saying goodbye.”

  After a moment of silence, Lily broke into a loud sob. “I’m coming over there.”

  “Don’t,” Milo said. “Lily, there’s no point.”

  She swiped her hand through the air, turning off her Araband, and her face disappeared.

  Emma looked to her left, obviously at Lily, who was in the same room. “You can’t access his floor, remember? We’ll meet outside.” She looked straight ahead again, though not at Milo. “Sevarin, grab my idiot brother and meet us by the lake.”

  “Hey…” Milo was stunned by her reaction. He had expected his sister to cry, not resort to her typical snotty attitude. “I’m not kidding around.”

  “Neither am I,” Sevarin said, stepping toward him.

  Milo raised his right hand. A ball of flames came to life with a crackle, his clawed fingers lodged inside its belly.

  “I’d like to see you try,” Sevarin said.

  He slapped Milo’s flaming hand away before he grabbed him by his undershirt, spun him around, and put him in a headlock.

  “Sev… stop…”

  He couldn’t breathe. His pulse hammered in his ears, and he tried to break free, but Sevarin’s arm was hard as rock. It tightened around his throat.

  Sevarin was going to kill him.

  “Don’t hurt him, Sev,” Emma protested.

  It was the last thing Milo heard as his eyes rolled up into his head and the world darkened. His body went limp in Sevarin’s arms.

  HE REGAINED consciousness beneath the most incredible spread of stars he had ever seen grace a nighttime sky. The world smelled of grass and lake water. Milo breathed it in, feeling perfectly at peace until a violent coughing spell made him curl up against the ground.

  Vaguely, he noticed he’d been dressed in Academy sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Sevarin—his own friend and roommate—had literally kidnapped him.

  “You didn’t have to be so rough,” Emma said from somewhere nearby.

  Sevarin sighed. “You saw that fireball. That’s the only reason.”

  “He wouldn’t have actually done it.”

  “You sure? Sometimes, I think you two were raised apart. Your brother has some crazy in him that you obviously don’t know about.”

  Owen agreed. “If I was betting money, it would’ve been on oven-roasted Sargonaut for dinner tonight.”

  Milo sat up, rubbing his throat. “I’m fine, by the way.” He coughed a few more times, though more for show than anything else. He still couldn’t believe Sevarin had choked him out.

  Lily and Emma crouched on either side of him.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Emma asked.

  “Yeah, Milo. Seriously.” Lily patted his back. “You gave out pretty quick.”

  Milo rolled his eyes. “Who would have thought a Sargonaut would have a tight grip?”

  Lily covered her mouth but snorted through her nostrils, the laughter spilling out of her despite her best efforts. Emma joined in. Soon, all the orphans were laughing except Milo.

  “You guys don’t actually think this is funny,” he said.

  Sevarin fell into a crouch behind him, playfully locking his arm around his throat. Milo reached back to smack him.

  “Sorry, bud,” Sevarin said, dodging Milo’s pitiful swipes, “but you play with fire and you’re gonna get burnt.”

  When Sevarin let Milo go, he got up and walked toward the still water. The surface was so alive with stars it looked as if a piece of sky had fallen and lodged itself into the earth. Milo felt like walking across that cosmic plane. He wanted it to stretch infinitely away from his feet so he never had to stop, so he could lose himself in a place where he didn’t have to feel so ashamed.

  He heard footsteps behind him.

  “You’re not leaving,” Emma said, stopping at his side. She stared out at the lake. “Besides, where would you go? Did you even have a plan for this?”

  “I guess not,” Milo said, shaking his head in embarrassment. “That was stupid.”

  “We’re all scared of what might happen—this war and everything else—but we have to stick together.” She looked up at him, tears glistening in her eyes. “Promise we’ll stick together?”

  Milo met her gaze. His voice held not a trace of doubt.

  “I promise, Emma.”

  There were more footsteps behind him, and then Barrel appeared.

  “Did you really think we’d let you go?” he asked, then made a tsk-tsk sound. “You’ve got a lot to learn about your friends, Milo.”

  Milo was about to agree when he heard more rustling footsteps behind him. He turned to see the rest of his friends approaching him, the starlight dim against their faces, and bowed his head in discomfort at the attention.

  “I’m sorry,” Milo said.

  Gunner crossed his arms over his chest. “The day you go off on some adventure, you can bet a bag of Berserker butts we’ll be right there with you.”

  “Uh huh.” Owen jabbed a thumb in Gunner’s direction. “What he said, minus the Berserker butt business, because we’re not six years old.”

  Gunner shoved him. Owen faked a punch in his direction, making Gunner duck.

  “Thanks, guys,” Milo said. “Don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “Same here, Banks,” Sevarin said.

  “Same here,” said Emma.

  She threw her arms around him in a tight hug. Sevarin followed, hugging them both, his scalp itchy against Milo’s ear.

  “Sorry about the chokehold, Banks.”

  “It’s okay. Sorry about the fireball.”

  The hugs didn’t end there.

  Gunner, muttering “What the hell,” wrapped his arms around the first three. Four became five as Lily added her own gleeful embrace. Five became six when Barrel found a spot against Emma’s wing, and six became seven as Owen leaned his entire body against the group, arms outstretched, like he planned on falling asleep there.

  “Oscar deserves to be here,” Sevarin said.

  “And Calista,” said Barrel.

  “And Uncle Manny,” said Emma.

  “And Andres,” said Gunner. “And Ascher, and Coral…”

  They spoke names into the night, press
ed tightly together, seven having become one, though still not whole. They wouldn’t be whole for a while, not until the rest of their friends finally made it back home.

  Milo added two more names in the privacy of his own mind during the long walk back to their dorms.

  And Mom and Dad. You deserve to be here, too.

  He didn’t sleep that night. Instead, he meditated. The trance was so deep that when Milo finally came out of it, he found himself in a strange, yet not unpleasant, situation.

  Sevarin brought it up often in the weeks to come. The other orphans could barely believe it.

  “No joke,” he recounted. “I woke up to the bell, and what’s the first thing I see in the center of the room? A block of ice. A friggin’ block of ice the size of an armchair, cut perfectly like someone had chiseled it into a box. And if that wasn’t crazy enough, I see Milo sitting inside it—meditating.”

  That was never the end of the story.

  “You know what the strangest thing is?” Sevarin liked to add at that point. “Everything—this world, my life, all I’ve been through—is just so weird that when I saw my roommate had become a human popsicle, the first thing that went through my head was, Hey, he could have gone with fire, and then we all would have been screwed…”

  Milo laughed every time the story was told—more from relief than anything else. He never considered leaving the academy in the months that followed, but that was mostly because a new obsession had taken him over—mentalism.

  The Awakened Eye.

  That’s the key.

  CHAPTER 2

  Barrel fidgeted in his chair.

  He was so bored. Emma and Lily had decided to stay in the library despite his incessant pleas to take a stroll outside. He had no need to study for his upcoming exam. Chemicals and Craft was probably the easiest course he had ever taken in his life.

  “But it’s a level three,” Emma whispered to him across one of the study tables. “You didn’t even take the first two.”

  “I tested out of them,” Barrel whispered back. “That means I know my stuff. As a matter of fact, I could teach that course.”

  Lily rolled her eyes. It was her favorite response to pretty much anything Barrel said these days.

  “Now,” Barrel persisted, “are we getting a nectarberry smoothie or not?”

  “I don’t know about you two,” Lily said, “but this Tenets of the Tenefraterni course is killing me. I have to write a ten-page paper by next Risenday.”

  “Oh, boo-hoo,” Barrel said, rising from chair and stretching. “There are worse things in life, like my plunging blood-sugar levels.”

  “Beware,” Lily said, “he might get cranky. How would that be for a change?”

  “Okay, smarty pants,” Emma told Barrel. “Go bug someone else.”

  “I’ll do that, thank you very much.”

  As he slung his book bag over his shoulder, Emma blew him a kiss. Barrel plucked it from the air and drank it down like a shot of liquor. Then, he winked at her.

  Emma grinned. “Love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Lily stuck her tongue out at him, and Barrel did the same right back.

  This was life. This was happiness. Barrel could not have asked for cooler friends.

  He emerged onto the library’s grand patio and breathed in the cool night air. The sky was purple and riddled with stars. He checked his surroundings. The outdoor tables were mostly empty. Glad to be alone for a few moments, Barrel took the opportunity to drop his bag, lift his arms, and spin around beneath the stars.

  “Baraltimus?”

  The voice broke him out of his reverie and sent him tripping over his bag. He landed against the stone floor, banging his elbow.

  “Here, I got you,” the voice said.

  He had been leaning by the doors of the main entrance, draped in shadow, which is why Barrel hadn’t noticed him. Now he was at Barrel’s side, lifting him with a strong but gentle grip. Barrel recognized the broad shoulders and the handsome cut of the young man’s jaw.

  “Kellan?”

  The cadet smiled. “Don’t look so shocked. Even the Archon’s son has to study.”

  His uniform was in disarray, the button by his throat undone, his shirt untucked. His hair looked as messy as if he had just dismounted a levathon after a long ride. The smell of alcohol was strong on his breath, which explained the red puffiness around his eyes.

  “Are you drunk?” Barrel asked in disbelief. “At the library?”

  Kellan looked away in shame. “Truth is, I wanted to go in, but I went to a tavern instead. Then I came back, thinking, well…” He shrugged.

  “Kellan, is this about Milo—”

  Kellan cut him off with a dismissive wave. “That was a month ago, and it was just tomato sauce. I’m over it. This is about me.”

  Relaxing a little, Barrel picked up his book bag. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Walk with me.”

  Barrel followed him down the library’s stone steps. He feared the drunken cadet would trip and fall as he struggled to dig something out of his pocket. It was a crumpled piece of paper. Kellan flattened it as much as possible, sighing at whatever tragedy haunted him, and passed it to Barrel.

  “This is…” Barrel began, inspecting the sheet.

  “My marks in Advanced Elements. Thirty-five percent. I’m going to fail the course… again.”

  “But you’re already in the Battlemage program. Why would you—”

  Kellan leaned against one of the levathon statues at the foot of the stairs, scratching absently at a spot on his chest, right over his heart. “I got into the program because of my father. But that doesn’t mean I can’t fail out. Even the Archon can’t change the academy’s laws about academic probation.”

  Kellan lowered himself to sit on the bottom step. Barrel had never seen someone sulk so intensely. He sat next to Kellan, anxiously aware that the taller, older, more accomplished cadet might not want to be seen sitting this close to a greenie.

  “If only genius was hereditary,” Kellan said. He shrugged and gave Barrel a submissive look. “I certainly didn’t get my dad’s brains. But you have enough brains for three Savants.” Barrel’s face warmed at the compliment. “That’s why I need your help, Baraltimus.”

  “Please, call me Barrel. All my friends do.”

  “Of course.”

  Kellan pushed himself up and turned to face Barrel, who remained seated.

  “Thanks again, Barrel. I’m going to call it a night, go sleep this off.”

  “I highly recommend that,” Barrel said.

  “Why is that?”

  Barrel gave him a steely look. This was a military academy, after all. “Because we start tomorrow morning at six thirty sharp. No excuses.”

  Kellan gave him a smile of respect, and just like that, a friendship was born. Barrel had been wrong earlier. He could have asked for cooler friends, and tonight he just might have found the coolest one of all.

  CHAPTER 3

  A protest had ignited in the heart of Theus.

  Milo and Sevarin watched the angry crowd from the safety of their dorm, using Ara to project the televised broadcast against the wall. Sevarin had whined about going to the real thing at a park in Theus, but Milo convinced him it was dangerous to meddle—and if there was one thing Milo and his friends were good at, it was meddling with affairs much larger than themselves.

  “Armed wardens have been called in to restrain the Acolyte protestors,” came the broadcaster’s voice over a live video feed. The recording showed winged men and women outside a large park, holding signs protesting the Archon and his Fountains of Joy. Wardens wearing padded armor and carrying beamcasters formed a tight fence around them.

  The park itself had been cleared of everyone except three debaters standing at podiums. The platform on which they stood was heavily guarded by more wardens and a shield spell that formed a shimmering, plastic-looking dome around the entire structure. Behind the platform sat a stream
ing Fountain of Joy that washed its blue glow over the debaters.

  “What are they so pissy about?” Sevarin said from a reclined position on his messy bed. “There are only, like, five fountains in this entire city. Acolytes, man. They’re so sensitive.”

  The recording zoomed in on an Acolyte man shouting at the top of his lungs.

  “You’ve destroyed our livelihoods!”

  He held up a sign that read, CAN YOUR FOUNTAIN GET MY JOB BACK?

  The man who had shouted was now trying to break free of the crowd, his wings flapping wildly. The boys watched as two wardens aimed silvery beamcasters at the protestor. The event was being recorded and sent by floating cameras that swiveled around the action, capturing it from various angles. It was like watching a scene from an action movie.

  The wardens fired at the half-running, half-gliding man and caught him with two fizzling stun blasts. He slid forward on the pavement, face-first. The sign tumbled away from his limp hands.

  “Gods,” Milo said. He was sitting at the edge of his bed, completely transfixed.

  “He kinda deserved it,” Sevarin said. “What did he think was gonna happen?”

  Ignoring a fresh surge of boos from the protestors, the wardens lifted the Acolyte man and dragged him toward the fountain to wake him up.

  “That’s ironic,” Milo’s said.

  “What’s that?”

  “They’re going to heal him with the same thing that ruined his livelihood.”

  “Nah,” Sevarin said, waving absently. “What’s ‘ironic’ mean?”

  “Shh… hold on. The Archon’s talking.”

  They watched as Raston Rogarth raised a hand above his head and spoke in a commanding voice.

  “Easy, there. I never approved treating one of our own citizens in such a barbaric fashion. You can rest assured that I’ll have those two wardens undergo sensitivity training before the week is over.”

  The wardens in question looked unfazed as they helped the foggy-eyed protestor back to his people.

  “They’ll edit that out,” Milo said.

  “You mean, for the public?”