Legend of the Elementals, Book 1: Reintroduction

by Kyle Timmermeyer

  Chapter 9

  Ryan:

  We came in knowing nothing. And so the months of serious training began. Sometimes we four were with the regular classes, and sometimes the four head talent experts would each take us out on our own. As our old clothes wore out, we adapted to the rough training gear of the Sun Tower—whites, browns and greens, lots of earth colors, leather belts and bronze clasps. The girls came across a few brighter, more feminine colors, especially when the water and fire talent girls gave Kris and Erin blue and red tops, the official colors of their respective elements, as a welcoming present.

  The teachers said they were taking it easy on us at first, making us clean and pack all the implements essential for hypothetical life beyond the bounds of the Sun Tower. Wearing the packs, we took charge of the chamber pots.

  “You can’t be serious,” Jason had said immediately after we were tasked with transporting the waste of the entire tower population to the compost heap in the forest just beyond the lawn. We learned the proper way to bury and hide the foul smelling stuff, to minimize the tracks we might make in the forest. It was degrading, in a way, but after a while, I was glad to do it, to earn my keep, and not be simply indebted to Sensei for the attention he had optimistically bestowed upon us.

  And we ran to and from the compost heap. With the loaded packs we ran, to build up endurance and so that we would learn to feel, to appreciate, whether or not we had prepared our equipment correctly, balanced and tightly secured, to keep track of our footing instinctively so that, at the very least, we wouldn’t get too much pee and poo on ourselves. A day later, we would be doing the same thing, except that we would climb trees after our sprints. Up and down, up and down.

  Then they let us use the knives. Draw, cut kindling, sheathe. Draw, cut, sheathe. Climb down the tree. Run, run, run. “Drop the packs!” “Knives out; be ready to defend your supplies.”

  It wasn’t long before we set the knives aside, and learned how to throw a punch, keep our guard up, duck, dodge and weave. Then they started hitting us. It was a shock at first, but we could understand their reasoning. There were bad men, goblins, ogres and more in the forest. We had to be ready to face the dark things. I remembered Devidis’ black, burning eyes. I never wanted to feel so helpless again.

  The rough training hurt less and less every day. We learned how and where to take hits, with fewer and fewer connecting as the weeks passed. Bruises were our study aides.

  “What about guns?” Jason asked one day.

  “Those are the most dangerous,” said Ganic, the stout, brown ogre—and resident stone talent expert—spreading his thick stony arms to emphasize. “We take out those enemies first, with stealth, and mostly hide those weapons away. The Forbidden Forest is too tight for a prolonged gun battle. If one of our defenders lost a firearm to an enemy… the risk is too great.”

  “The best defense is a good offense,” Jason said. “Is fighting guns with guns any more dangerous than fighting blades with blades?”

  Sensei slapped his outstretched hand with a branch.

  “Ow!” Jason pulled back, fists up, ready to fight.

  “Good instinct, good reaction,” Sensei said, holding the stick out to him. “Hold this. Pretend that it’s a gun.”

  Jason frowned at the stick, not particularly gun-like.

  “Point it at us, try to get a shot off,” Ganic said.

  Jason took a step back, out of range of both men before pointing the stick at Sensei, “OK, Ban—“

  Sensei had moved out of the line of fire and knocked the stick from Jason’s hand.

  “What do you do now?” the old man asked.

  Jason held up his fists.

  Ganic nodded. “Learn your basics first.”

  “But he does have a point. Are we not holding them back? They are making acceptable progress,” said Fain, the long-limbed female goblin, the fire talent expert. She put her hands on her hourglass hips, and leaned in to give Sensei a charming smile. She was pretty—I mean, for a goblin.

  Cor, the water talent expert, shorter than Kris, joined the conversation. “Shall we have them moved to weapons training?”

  Cor was a Sefaloid, a light purple humanoid that was mostly tentacles. Every time I saw him, I was convinced that it was only his water talent that allowed him to support his jelly-like body on dry land.

  (When Kris had commented on his resemblance to Cthulhu, tentacled mouth included, Jason had added the observation to his running list of fantasy and science-fiction tropes. Sensei told us his best educated guess, “There is much to do with adaptation, as Sefaloids, like Atlantians, are native to the sea. But, indeed, the myths of the old world seem to have come true in the new. In the cataclysm, the release of talent allowed first people out of the old world to remake themselves as they saw fit. That is one theory.”)

  Whether it concerned theory or practice, as always, the conversation was geared toward our training. “Fine,” Sensei said. “They’ll train with weapons together. No guns.” He held up a finger toward Jason. “So you’d best forget about them, at least for a while. Knives, staves, batons, then maybe swords and maces…”

  “If you expect me to teach Kris how to use those special blades quickly, even knife fighting won’t be that useful for her,” Cor said, tentacles crossed.

  “She will train; they all will need to be able to understand how their enemies might come at them,” Fain said, with a flash of her fiery temper.

  “So we’re going to teach them how to fight with wolf teeth, too, before we teach them what we expect them to be using?” Cor drew himself up to his full height and stepped up to the much taller lady goblin.

  “They move to weapons training,” Sensei repeated his decision. At a wave from him, the two teachers stepped apart. “You may pull them from classes as you see fit, but it is your responsibility if they lag behind. Keep me updated on their progress. When their offensive techniques begin to develop, we will test them again as a group.”

  My heart sank. I knew it was the beginning of days of further separation. The other kids seemed to resent the special treatment the four of us received, and the enthusiasm with which the teachers cut us off from the rest seemed only to enforce our isolation. Eventually, we gave in and only talked among ourselves, and to the teachers. When some of the lower-ranking instructors gently questioned the approach, Sensei only encouraged it more explicitly. “You are a team,” he said. “You have to learn to depend on each other before anyone else. You may find yourselves truly isolated one day, sooner than you think.”

  It seemed especially harsh at first, but from what I saw and heard from the other kids, it was no better and no worse, on the whole. Maybe we didn’t exactly like each other, us four and the other kids, but we all respected each other, and there were still times when we all could share a laugh, like when someone disarmed our overbearing weapons teacher and made his goblin fan ears blush with shame. We trainees had much in common, after all, sharing beds and food, clothing and weapons. I soon began to think of us as a tight community. I began to relax, to lose myself in the routine, more than I would have dared to imagine before. Even when I didn’t see Erin or Kris, or even Jason, except for just before we boys collapsed into our beds, there was happiness to be found at the Sun Tower, in a new skill learned, in a floor I had cleaned swiftly and well… Simple joy.

  I only became well and truly frustrated when I thought of home. We all did. Kris said something, though, that put my mind more at ease. “We might want to fight it… or run away from Sensei and the tower… but how would that help? It wouldn’t be easier for our families or a supposed rescue team to find us if we’re wandering around aimlessly. There’s no use worrying over it, not without some more guidance, more information. And we promised each other: we four are a team. We will not forget where we came from, and we will be searching for a way back… but in the meantime we should take what they give us, and do what they ask of us with some gratitude. Hanging on to bitter feelings will only make things har
der.”

  That kind of practical logic was everywhere, especially in weapons training. “Take your shots when they’re open, only then and always then. Too much enthusiasm will lose you a limb. Too much hesitation will lose you a life,” Fain said.

  True to his word, Cor pulled Kris out from weapons training before we had finished knives. Staves were my favorite part of training. We were free to swing more widely, since we weren’t dealing with anything sharp. The wooden poles were thin and flexible, and I was surprised to find that they typically weren’t longer than I was tall. Still, at full arms’ length, even the shorter staves could be far too long, especially when I was on the receiving end.

  The general weapons teacher, though, said I was a natural. After a slow beginning, I eventually won the majority of my fights. I found the courage to cut a length off my staff—so that it was no longer than the distance from the heel of my foot to my shoulder, just as long as Sensei’s double-scythe from many days ago. The teacher didn’t hesitate to express displeasure—since I had essentially ruined a piece of equipment—but he toned down the volume once I got the staff spinning, really spinning, in a fight. The shorter length made it easier to rotate from the middle of the staff. All of my sparring sessions ended even more quickly, and the other kids started considering a sparring session with me as a punishment.

  “This is really a problem for the more advanced classes, but you should be holding back on your wind talent, if only for the sake of your sparring partners,” the teacher warned me.

  I was surprised. I hadn’t realized the advantage I had been using until he pointed it out. But I didn’t really have much of a chance to process the realization before we had moved on to clubs and batons. Jason and Erin were both relieved. After the dynamic nature of the staff, though, I had a hard time sparring with a weapon where the proper hold seemed so… static and predictable. My classmates took a little revenge before Sensei pulled me out of class.

  “I see you, uh, modified your staff,” he said, holding my personal weapon horizontal between his outstretched palms. “That is a very good length for you, isn’t it.”

  “Yes, Sensei,” I said.

  “We’ve heard what your teacher said, but I’m going to have you practice integrating your wind talent more explicitly into your fighting style,” the old man decided. “You may not have been aware, at first, of how you were manipulating the air, but we are going to develop techniques that will leave no doubt.”

  Holding out his hand, a gust propelled another practice staff into his grasp. Stepping into his fighting stance, he commanded, “Disarm me.”

  Certain that the harsh master of the Sun Tower wouldn’t take it easy on me in what I immediately recognized as our first sparring session, I lashed out, full force. I whipped and hammered my staff, pivoting left and right, swiping down and up, but every blow either met thin air or bounced off his stick.

  In seconds, I was sweating, and the butt of Sensei’s staff knocked me smack in the center of my chest. Backpedaling, I nearly fell, but recovered myself and managed to mostly hold my ground. I took a breath and embraced the chance to decide where to strike from next.

  “Stop wasting time and losing ground,” Sensei said. “You may be asking yourself how I do it, but I want you to forget about the ‘how.’ As you demonstrated in your lower-level class, for a talent like you, the wind is an extension of your body. No thought, but action!”

  His staff came flying at me, thrown like a spear. I sidestepped it and took the opening, swinging my weapon like a baseball bat. There was a tingling on the back of my neck, though, and I instinctively bobbed away from Sensei. I ducked, ready to roll, but never made contact with the ground. I had flipped through the air! I was forced to check my swing as Sensei’s thrown staff hurtled back into his hand—it had narrowly missed the back of my head. He made wide swiping motions, and the gusts connected to them pushed me away. I jumped over his staff as he swung it at my ankles.

  “Good,” he muttered.

  With a hop, he was airborne. He seemed to slide, hovering left and right, before sailing over me, too fast. The staff cracked across my back, and I fell sprawling in the dirt. My own staff smacked the ground and went rolling away.

  “If this were a true battle,” he said, “I would have hit you harder.”

  I rolled onto my back.

  “I don’t think you would have been able to get up,” the old man said.

  I pulled the wind in low, and pushed myself to my feet. When I was just about to get my balance, another gust came in and knocked me down.

  “I said, I don’t think you would have stood up, not quickly, anyway.” Sensei’s staff was raised for a decisive, “killing” blow.

  I rolled to my stomach, and felt another twinge in the air. The wind under Sensei’s control was turning back again. I pushed up, grabbed his gust, and channeled it toward where I wanted to go. I slid backward, then flew away, out of range of Sensei’s attack. When I looked back toward the ground, Sensei was standing there, his staff almost relaxed at his side, his gaze stern upon me.

  “So the match is done for the moment,” he said. “Come back down.”

  I settled in for a landing, and Sensei said, “You do have some real talent. That was a decent start. However, the only excuse you have for that final display, fleeing from a fight, is that you did not start the battle. Running from a fight is not good practice. I do not want to see you wasting time with too much distance like that again.”

  I rolled my shoulders. My back was throbbing. “Yes, Sensei,” I said.

  He moved in close, with a commanding finger right in front of my nose. “When you have identified your opponent,” he said, “choose between fighting and running. Only enter a fight if you are ready to finish the fight, by disabling or killing your opponent. Only run if you are ready to be chased. Only allow yourself to be chased if you are able to finish the chase with another fight. Do not waste time or energy.”

  A question popped into my mind. “What if I can just avoid the opponent completely?”

  “Avoidance is another word for running,” Sensei said, moving back a bit. “Whereas a person or opportunity that does not force you to fight or run… that is an ally, and is sometimes better than a friend.”

  “Better than a friend?” I asked.

  “Yes. A friend is a person or opportunity that will fight and run with you. People and opportunities are always risks, but especially when they become friends. Risks are worth taking in the same way that friends are worth having.” He paused.

  “Of course, there is a danger that ‘friends’ may only appear to be supporting you. Or perhaps, while the intention may be genuine, their actions may actually handicap, weigh you down, like too much equipment, or the presence of an innocent on the field of battle.”

  He gestured with the staff, drawing circles—a Venn diagram—indicating the different groups. “Allies, on the other hand, are friends who have proven themselves useful and reliable in the crucible of battle. Everything is an opportunity. A great warrior, then, is he who knows...” Sensei concluded with a flourish of the staff, spinning the weapon and then slamming one end into the ground, in the middle of the tiny “allies” circle.

  “Everything is friendly to me.”

  From then on, I had to divide my mind. There was the civilian past, and there was the warrior to become. Focused on my training, and on the future, it was easier to let go of my fears and my sadness, tied to the old world. I understood the warrior’s philosophy, accepted it, and, as a force, it grew within me. By forcing myself to consider that everything was friendly to me, I began to see allies everywhere. I was making my peace with my new life.