Of Heroes And Villains (Book 4)

by Julius St. Clair

  The creature began scratching him with its blade like scythe, but each scratch healed as soon as it was made. It began hitting him, but the blows were more like being pushed. He felt the pressure, but there was no pain registering. He didn’t know what to make of it.

  The creature grew tired of him, and threw him back in the cage. The other children looked at him like he had once looked at his father. But he wasn’t his father. He wasn’t invincible. He knew he wasn’t strong. He was just like them. Just a child. Wasn’t he?

  Other kids survived the tortures over the years, but barely. It wasn’t like when he was selected. As time went on, he grew less afraid of the creatures’ experiments. By the fifth time he was grabbed, he didn’t even scream or cry. He accepted it, as if it was a perfectly natural thing. They would perform all sorts of terrible things upon him, but he endured.

  When in the cage, he would examine himself and the others. He would sit and think for hours, meditating internally for answers. He would pray to the Maker for answers. He would ask the Dark One for answers. He would ask the children for answers. He would ask the creatures for answers. But no answers ever came.

  All he knew was what he felt and saw. And he felt and saw much.

  The children were not like him. Even the ones that survived the experiments were forever paralyzed or maimed. The ones that fought back were killed immediately, and the leaders only survived by pushing others forward in their stead.

  With each passing day, he became more powerful, and it was not because of anything he did necessarily. It just was. As if some unseen force was nurturing him for a purpose he had yet to realize. It was an intense boiling within him that sought to be released, and he held it back with all his might, for he feared what would happen if he unleashed his will upon the world. He was a child. He looked like one, spoke like one and acted like one when necessary, but he was not one by any means. He soon saw the error of his cellmates’ ways, and he couldn’t understand why they could not see what he saw.

  “We could all rush the door,” he said one day to the leader. “We could fight the creature and be free.”

  The leader struck down the notion, and therefore everyone did. But why? For what reason? It wasn’t like the creatures were going to suddenly change their ways, and free them out of the kindness of their hearts. What were they waiting for? What was he?

  He didn’t want to be a leader, because he was disgusted by followers. He wanted everyone to be leaders, but not to the point in which they would all bicker. Just enough so that they could all be independent, and then follow only when necessary. A leader didn’t mean he always led, and that a follower always followed. A true leader just meant that they knew when to go back and forth between the two, so that everyone could have the best outcome.

  But they followed the cage leaders so blindly, without question and with foolish hope, believing that the next day would be different than the last thousand.

  He didn’t want to become a leader…no…he knew he couldn’t. He thought about it only one time, when the cage leader of that week had tried to push him to the front. Bastion had stood there, and not moved. The cage leader pushed his chest, tried kicking in the back of his legs and punching him in the face, but all he did was wear himself out.

  When the creature came for a victim, Bastion considered pushing the cage leader to the front, but he quickly dismissed the thought. He wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t give in. All it took was one push, and he would become a creature too.

  A time came when he didn’t even hate the creatures. He certainly didn’t like them, but he understood that there had to be a motive to the madness. A reason they experimented on them so often. He didn’t excuse their behavior, but he understood then that there was more than good and evil, right and wrong. There were intentions behind every action, and once he discovered the intention, and what the creature or person truly meant, then he could act accordingly.

  But finding out one’s true intentions took time, and that he didn’t have.

  The creatures were catching onto him. They were discovering upon every session that he was different, and that he was the answer to whatever they were searching for. He knew he had to escape, before they designed a way to paralyze him for good.

  And one night, he did just that. Without warning, and without a moment’s hesitation, he reached out and crushed the bar with his bare hand, and then another, and so on. He leapt out and opened the other cages, letting the other children choose their fate, for better or worse. All he would do was forge a path.

  Breaking through the wall with his uncanny strength, he plowed through the subsequent walls, roots and dirt, until he reached the surface. He didn’t know that they had been underground, but he didn’t care. All he wanted was to be free.

  When he emerged, in the middle of the Quietus forest, he was spotted by a few of the creatures, but they were of little concern. He was able to crush them with his bare hands easily. He maimed them quickly, and a disconcerting urge came over him.

  He had felt it back in the cages. Many, many times. But this was different. The boiling within him had reached its maximum temperature. He had never hit one of the creatures before, but now that he had…now that he had felt the liberating sensation, he had the urge to continue. To reciprocate. To kill them all. To make them scream and cry out for mercy as he broke their limbs. To put them in cages and take their children from them. He wanted their entire species to be extinct, and he could have done it.

  But then a little boy, only three, had taken his hand and intertwined their fingers, snapping him out of his trance. He returned to the present, and decided to help the children return home. Like a school of fish, they traveled out of Quietus, and to their prospective homes. The Prattlian children would wave good-bye and hug them as they reached their turning point in the journey. Especially him. They hugged him tight, and he wasn’t sure how to feel. They would have pushed him forward to be experimented only hours before, and now they loved him forever? It was all so confusing.

  The Langorans left, and they also hugged and cheered for him. The Allayan children would smile at him as they continued on. Even when they made it back to Allay, they sung his praises to the villagers and spoke excitedly about what he had did for them. But the villagers didn’t see him the way they did. They saw a child. They saw his age and his frame, and nothing more.

  The adults were as blind as the children, but worse, they fooled themselves into thinking that they had clarity. Bastion didn’t try to persuade them otherwise. He just listened, as they created stories for them, saying that they had been orphan children that had run away and gotten lost. There was no way they had lost their parents in the Siege, or that they had been kidnapped by Quietus and held hostage for nearly ten years. Those were lies, fibs and tall tales.

  The children were all divided accordingly and fostered by adults who wanted children in the village. It was a community decision, that didn’t involve what the children wanted at all. No one believed the trauma they had gone through. No one excused the following nights of weeping, the bouts of depression, the sweating nightmares and the crippling memories. Out of the eighteen Allayan children that had made it back to Allay, seven ended up taking their own lives. Two became mute and lost within themselves. Five more ran away, and three others reinvented themselves, choosing to forget that their ordeal had ever happened. A self-inflicted amnesia of sorts. Even so, they couldn’t get rid of the listlessness that plagued their eyes whenever their thoughts wandered. Bastion saw it, but he never made them acknowledge it.

  As for Bastion himself, he became a combination of them all. He tried to forget, but found it unrealistic and impossible. He tried to take his own life once, but he found out that it would require more effort than living. He thought about running away, but he feared that he would find himself back at the Quietus forest. If he took one step into that sea of darkness, he would lose himself to it. And so, he tried to reinvent himself. But without a guide, or direction, he didn’t kn
ow how.

  He was grateful that he hadn’t destroyed the Quietus, especially after learning about what Thorn did to them, and how the Siege had been out of their control. He didn’t know what he would have become if he had killed them all and then came privy to that information. The fact that he almost had scared him more than anything.

  But still...at least he would have become something. Perhaps the Sage Academy would give him the direction he longed for. He prayed that it did. Because he wasn’t sure he could hold back the urges forever.

  Chapter 12 – First Day

  Catherine and Talia combed the list once more while leaning on the large table for support. They had already spend hours in the deliberation room, and they definitely needed more. But time was pretty much up. Catherine squinted her eyes and yawned as Talia fell back into a chair.

  “What time is it?” Catherine mumbled, rubbing her eyes. Talia closed her eyes and stretched her neck back.

  “Dawn,” she replied. “Do you want me to tell the guards to cancel all of your appointments? They will start pouring in soon.”

  “Might as well,” Catherine sighed, lifting her eyes from the table. “Besides, the Sage Academy opens today. I should probably be there to make sure everything runs smoothly.”

  “I could—“

  “—no, it’s okay. He should be back any minute.”

  “Even if he is, he will not have had any rest in three days now.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He will get the job done. I’m sure of it.”

  “Whatever you wish, my Queen.”

  “You really need to stop that. It’s Catherine.”

  “I know,” Talia gave her a smile. “But it’s better for me to stay in practice. I don’t want to slip up in public.”

  “If you like,” Catherine said, as she scanned the list once more. “Are we forgetting anyone?”

  “It’s hard to say considering we came up with this so quickly. However, with the Academy opening and with us being on a time crunch, this will have to do for now. I’m sure we’re forgetting someone though.”

  “I want you to go through it again,” Catherine frowned. “Include Langorans and Prattlians too. They can release their eidolons if they truly wanted to. Despite their reluctance, we can’t rule out the possibility that someone is trying to frame Allay.”

  “We’ll find out the whole truth if James arrives.”

  “When he arrives, you mean.”

  “Yes, my Queen,” Talia said, standing up and picking up the parchment. “I’ll be studying this until the opening ceremony. Is that okay with you?”

  “Yes, go ahead,” Catherine said, waving her away. “I’ll tell the guards to cancel my meetings. This is far more important. I think that once we are—”

  The sound of footsteps stopped her in mid-speech. Talia secured the list under her manifest armor and craned her neck behind her.

  “James and Arimus have arrived!” Talia said excitedly. She turned to face Catherine, but there was already a smile on the Queen’s face. She had already known.

  “Open the door!” Catherine shouted gleefully and Talia turned the knob just in time. James, Arimus, and a host of Quietus walked through. Catherine activated a portion of her strength and pushed the table out the way effortlessly. Talia began kicking the chairs down with it, making room for the guests. Hakin stepped forward, even past James and Arimus to meet the Queen face to face.

  “I take it you are in charge here?” he asked, giving her a wary eye. She bowed to him respectfully.

  “You could say that,” she said. “Excuse me.” To everyone’s surprise, Catherine ran over to James and leapt into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist. James’ face turned red as Arimus and a few of the Quietus began to chuckle. Catherine gave him a huge kiss on the lips and then grabbed his face.

  “Don’t do that to me again!”

  “I won’t!” he laughed as he let her down. Catherine brushed her hands on her silk white dress, trying to smooth out the wrinkles she had caused.

  “Sorry for that. That wasn’t proper.” She walked back to the front of the room so that she could face Hakin again. “I’m very happy that you’re here. We’ve been looking for Quietus survivors for years now.”

  “If we had known about all of this, we wouldn’t have hid for so long,” Hakin whistled, looking around him. “I was surprised to hear that Thorn had been killed. It must have taken everyone to do it if the Quietus weren’t able to.”

  “It’s true,” she said solemnly. “Without the help of everyone, we would have all been destroyed. That union has continued to keep us from fighting against one another for years now.”

  “But that’s not entirely true, is it? I hear that the Allayans that approached us were not your own.”

  “No, they weren’t,” Catherine said. “And that’s why we need your help in identifying the individuals. However, that can hold off for a couple of hours while we feed and clothe you. You can take baths and relax before we get down to business. As it so happens, this is the day in which our Sage Academy reopens, so we won’t be able to give you our full attention right away. I hope you understand.”

  “Do your people know we’re here?”

  “Not all, but we’ve gathered together several trustworthy individuals that will escort you around the private sections of the castle. They will meet your every need. I only ask that if any altercation occurs, for any reason, please do not react. Just address the concern with me, and I’ll take care of it.”

  “Afraid we might lose control of ourselves?” Hakin chuckled.

  “All people remember about the Quietus are the scary stories. They forget the truth—how we are all the same. My husband reminds me of this every day.”

  All of the Quietus turned to James, and he lifted his hand. It was that of a Quietus. Everyone in the room stared at him in awe.

  “Half-Quietus, half-Allayan?” Hakin asked in shock. “How did that happen?”

  “There is much to discuss,” Catherine smiled. “But we’ll get to that. Talia, could you please take our guests to the servants. Afterwards, you can take your leave and their escorts will take over from there. I know that you and James have plenty of work to do.”

  “Certainly,” she said, waving a hand for them to follow her. A line of Quietus went after her, thirty in number, of all ages and sizes. From seeing the group in its entirety, Catherine realized just how fragile their composition was. No wonder they were apprehensive.

  “The last of the Quietus,” Arimus said with a heavy sigh. “Except this is far worse than when the Sages were low in number. These Quietus don’t have much hope in restoring their people to its former glory.”

  “They can survive though,” James replied. “It will require acceptance from the other Kingdoms as we bring them into the fold, and they will lose the bulk of their culture—being that there is so few of them.”

  A knock at the door interrupted them, and Ashalynn stuck her head in. She waved to Catherine and James and then fixed her eyes upon Arimus. She beckoned to him with her index finger. Arimus was all smiles.

  “I have been summoned,” he said, to which James shook his head.

  “You sure you don’t want to help with the Academy?”

  “My lady awaits me,” he bowed, “so that would be a no.”

  “I hate you,” James laughed, as Arimus gave him a wink. Ashalynn tucked her arm under her husband’s and the two left the room giggling and whispering sweet nothings into each other’s ears. James shook his head and walked over to embrace Catherine. She nuzzled her head into his chest. After a moment, he suddenly snapped his head down to look at her.

  “Did you just smell me?” he laughed. She nodded her head, her cheek still pressed up against him.

  “Is that so wrong?” she sighed.

  “Yes. It’s wrong. Very, very wrong.”

  “Then take it up with the Queen. I’m sure she’ll listen.” She nuzzled her cheek into him further. James just laughed and hugged her ti
ghter.

  “At least I made it back in time.”

  “Not really. You didn’t leave time for us. That means you’re late.”

  “I’ll make it a short day at the Academy.”

  “You can’t do that. The kids need you, especially in the beginning. They won’t have a clue of what to do.”

  “I don’t even know what I’m doing.” Catherine lifted her head to face him. Looking into her innocent green eyes, his heart began to ache.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that I still don’t know what to say. What do I know about being a Sage besides releasing an eidolon?”

  “Did you talk to Arimus about it at all? While you were out?”

  “A little. But I didn’t get any profound wisdom. At least nothing I can use when talking to the kids.”

  “That’s strange.”

  “Well, he has been distracted lately. I’ll figure it out.”

  “While we’re on the subject, I have to talk to you about a student you will have.”

  “Oh?”

  “His name is Bastion. He was one of the lost children. You know, the ones that said they had been under Quietus rule for ten years?”

  “Did anyone ever confirm if that was true or not?”

  “Who could? Considering the Kingdom’s condition? It doesn’t matter. The fact is, I believe him. But that’s not the important part. What matters is that he needs your guidance. I want you to pay special attention to him.”

  “Why? What is it?”

  “James…he’s not like the other kids. I’ve sensed it. You will too once you’re at the Academy. I’m sure you’ll know who he is right away. Trust me, you’ll feel it.”

  “He’s that strong?”

  “Probably even stronger. Stronger than all of us if I had to guess.”

  “And he just popped up out of nowhere?”

  “He’s never displayed his power until recently. He got into an altercation with a boy. His foster parents disowned him, and I’ve taken him under our wing in the castle. He needs this, James. I…I wonder…do you think these Allayans…do you think he’s what they are after?”