“Leah, I –”
“LEAVE ME ALONE!”
Aidan released her. He stood to his feet and backed away, unsure of what to do. He…he couldn’t leave her. He could never leave her. She was his wife, his best friend, his soul mate. She was his sanity and strength. The rage…the rage was just a childish strength. It was a shallow pool that he could only draw from in spurts, but Leah, she was like a pillar of rock, a beacon of hope, a mountain of solidarity. Maybe they needed to work together more, perfect their technique, train harder…but they weren’t a mismatch. Their union wasn’t a fluke and to think that it could now be broken…it was unbearable. They had told each other long ago that the only way their marriage could be annulled was if one or the other decided it was done. He knew that he could never…but she wanted it now. Who was he to deny her?
But how would he live on? Who could walk alone once they had known true love?
“NO!” Aidan screamed, not to Leah’s request, but to the agony welling up within him. But no one in the vicinity could tell the difference.
“Hey, that’s enough,” Isaac said, grabbing his wrist. “We should leave.”
“Stop touching me,” Aidan spat in disgust, ripping his arm away. “How many times do I have to tell you to keep your hands off me?”
“My mistake,” Isaac said, throwing up his hands in surrender. “But you’re not in a great state of mind here. We should really go.”
“I agree,” Bailey said. “Be strong,Tallawah.”
“What’s all the commotion?” a doctor asked, walking in the door. He looked at each of them and then turned his attention to Leah. “You should really be resting.” Leah leaned back onto her pillows as he addressed her visitors. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave. There’s too much going on in the infirmary right now, and we need to be able to work without distraction.”
“I’m her husband,” Aidan said, but the middle-aged doctor was unimpressed.
“No disrespect, but that doesn’t sound right, considering the young lady’s status and who her father is.”
“I’m telling you the truth,” he retorted. “It’s just been a secret. Don’t ask me to go.”
“I’m sorry but even related family members are being asked to leave their loved ones. This kind of attack is unprecedented in Lowsunn. We’re doing all we can. But for the good of everyone, you must go.”
“I won’t.”
“Sir, there’s no reason to worry. Leah is in great hands, and the worst of it is over.”
“The worst of it?” Aidan seethed, clenching his fists. “You mean when she lost the baby?”
“How did you – listen, sir. I didn’t mean to sound apathetic. What I mean is that…I can’t explain it without coming across wrong so I’ll leave it at that. Just know that everything is going to be okay.”
“Okay?” Aidan spat in his face. The doctor nearly fell over onto the nightstand. “OKAY?! How is it going to be okay? Huh? My wife, doesn’t even want me around anymore, and my child is DEAD! And everything’s just going to go back to normal?”
“Aidan, stop this,” Bailey pleaded, but Aidan refused to listen.
“Are you going to do something about this?” Aidan screamed, grabbing the doctor by the collar. It began to sizzle under the heat of his hands. “Are you going to use one of your Yen to bring my child back to life?” He reached over to the doctor’s right arm and ripped off his sleeve. “You have one seal left! USE IT!” Bailey reached for Aidan but he pushed her away and turned back to the doctor. “USE IT! WISH FOR MY CHILD TO COME BACK TO LIFE! NOW!”
The doctor shook his head violently as Aidan stuck his face further into his.
“USE IT!”
“You do it,” Isaac said to Aidan from behind. Aidan threw the doctor into the corner. He fell into a crumple, trying to catch his breath.
“What did you say?” Aidan said, turning around slowly.
“I said you use it, you bully. You have two left. You do it.”
“You’re really going to talk to me like that?” Aidan snapped.
“Like what? Like you lost your mind? Yeah, I am,” Isaac said, standing tall. “I know you’re hurting, but that doesn’t mean you get to shove people around.”
“What are you going to do about it, Isaac? Huh? What have you ever done about it?”
“Don’t go there,” he warned. “Don’t start saying stuff you don’t mean. You’ve done enough of that already.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that if the lady asked you to leave, then you should go. It’s her child too, you know.”
“You’re really going to stand there and act like you know what we’re feeling? You’re going to accuse me of being insensitive? Of not knowing that it’s her loss too? Are you serious?”
“You’re the one yelling.”
Aidan took a swing at him, but Isaac leaned his head back, narrowly dodged the blow, and responded with a swing of his own, catching Aidan square on the right side of his jaw. Isaac hit him so hard that Aidan went flying through the cheap wood of the closet doors. As Aidan scrambled to his feet, Bailey ran into the hallway.
“I need a teleporter right now!” she screamed, and a young girl in braids ran from two rooms down.
“Yes?” she asked, and Bailey pointed to the two boys.
“I need you to take them and me to the Field of Visions right now before they hurt somebody.”
“No problem,” she squeaked, focusing with her palms firmly placed together.
“Thanks, Nicey.” Bailey replied. She blinked, and they were in the middle of the field. For the first time in Lowsunn’s existence, it was completely empty. Bailey turned back to the little girl. “I appreciate that. Now please leave us.”
Nicey vanished into thin air, and Bailey turned her attention back to the boys. Isaac hadn’t moved, but Aidan, his head no longer bound by the closet door, stood to his feet slowly, rubbing the side of his jaw. Bailey sighed and took a few steps back. She wasn’t sure what was going to happen next, but it had to be done, now, before they were able to move forward in any capacity.
The night sky was tranquil and clear, showing off its abundance of dancing stars, and revealing the power of the full moon without restraint, illuminating the waving grass and the two young men who were on the brink of battle. Bailey averted her eyes back to the earth.
“Isaac, you know what to do,” she said. Isaac nodded from where he stood. Aidan caught none of the exchange. Even from a distance, she could tell that Aidan was on the brink of turning.
“Aidan, we should –” Isaac began, but he cut his words short to dodge the wave of fire that was coming his way. He rolled out of its path and turned his dagger into a sword as Aidan unleashed his magma blade. Aidan threw it at the swordsman but Isaac wasn’t going to fall for the same trick twice. He ran to the side and away from the thrown sword. When it exploded, he was clear of every shard, but Aidan wasn’t done. Not even looking at Isaac, he began casting tiny embers all around them in the field, no bigger than a flower, just sitting upon the grass, waiting for their master to demand they bloom. Isaac didn’t want to wait for them to sprout so he took the offensive. He ran at Aidan who was still busy casting the embers, and he was just about to swing his sword down into his friend’s shoulder when Aidan suddenly grabbed the blade in mid-air, and bare-handed.
No, not quite bare. Aidan’s hand was so red and hot it was as if he had let it sit in the fire for an hour. He was using the heat to protect him from the blade’s sharp edge. Before Isaac could recover from the shock, Aidan activated a fire bubble around his body, bouncing Isaac backwards. Isaac eyes lit up in amazement as his sword remained in the hands of his opponent, who was now throwing it to the side as if it were a stick. With Isaac now ripped away from his weapon, Aidan began the torture.
It was not Isaac before him anymore. It was just another face. Another face to match the wound, and the wound was very, very deep. Aidan sneered, his emotions taking over completely now
as he prepared to do to his so-called friend the same thing he would do to an enemy. This was how it had to be. No friends. No family. No love. None of those things existed outside of the dreamland that was Lowsunn. Why should he have them now? All it would do was lessen and cripple his potential. It would make him weak.
Duncan was right.
It was too late to join him now, but maybe once he took care of Isaac, and Bailey…no, not Bailey. Bailey deserved to be spared…wait, why not Bailey? Why did she have to live? Wasn’t it better to just end her life now? Before she too was taken by the monsters outside the village? Then there would be no opposition. He could follow through with Duncan’s plan. Train the village. Overthrow the Elders. Find the Choate. He could –
“DO IT!” Isaac screamed from a few yards away. Aidan responded with a fireball from his right hand. It shot towards Isaac like an arrow and burst right on his abdomen. The swordsman fell to his knees as the wind was knocked out of him. Aidan sucked his teeth. How dare this weakling interrupt his train of thought? Aidan ordered the ember closest to Isaac’s feet to burst. It was a magnificent explosion, reaching six feet high before it died out completely. It had only brushed up against the swordsman, but it was enough to make him cry out and clutch his leg. Aidan waited to see what Isaac would do next. He would probably run towards him, try to retrieve his weapon. Maybe he would ask Bailey for help. Or run. That would be nice.
But he did none of those things.
He climbed to his feet, even with his leg singed, and raised his head until his eyes were level with Aidan’s. And then he waited.
Was he using one of his Yen? Aidan glanced over at Isaac’s right arm, still exposed from the fight with Duncan, and saw that his three seals hadn’t changed. Two active, one dark – the dark seal was the wish he had used to become a master swordsman, even though he had previously had no skill whatsoever in Sword Arts.
Why was he just standing there?
Aidan allowed another ember, one that was a little further away, to burst. The ember seemed to glide across the grass this time, until it was right under Isaac’s gaze. It exploded, and hit him square in the chin, knocking him onto his back. He groaned and clutched his face, whimpering at the burning sensation, but then he cleared his throat, climbed to one knee, and then back to his feet, resuming the stare.
If he wants to die, then fine, Aidan decided, ordering the embers to hit Isaac all at once. They sprinted towards him and converged, forming a bigger and more deadly flame. And yet, throughout it all, the swordsman refused to move. Aidan shook his head, and ordered the execution.
The explosion nearly lit up the night sky, and even Bailey had to shield her vision from the light it created. When the smoke and flames subsided, there was no evidence of Isaac’s existence, but that was to be expected. What Aidan did not expect was a hand smacking the middle of his back, precisely where his spine was located. He turned around in surprise, and Isaac was there, smoking, singed, but very much alive. Isaac put the tip of his dagger under Aidan’s chin as he grabbed the pyromaniac by the throat with his other hand.
“Even if you set me on fire now, you will die,” Isaac said, and Aidan believed him. Even after he nodded, Isaac still didn’t let up. “Do you understand what just happened, Aidan? Do you realize just how badly you’ve lost?”
Aidan didn’t know what to say. Suddenly he didn’t feel so angry. He was just confused and tired. Isaac glared at him with his cold blue eyes.
“All this time, I’ve held back too,” he said, making sure the words sunk in. “I may not be as skilled as you. I may not have the destructive power. But I can take damage better than the rest of them. My stamina is far greater than yours, and I could equal myself to you with a simple utterance to the Judge. Your attack back there. The one that was supposed to kill me, right? Guess what? It didn’t work.”
“I…I don’t know what to say.”
“Bailey asked me to not go all out because we needed that rage dwelling deep inside of you. You were a weapon just begging to be used. But with the village in turmoil, that’s the last thing we need. You have to be rational and work with us until we figure out exactly how many enemies are out there and what their abilities are. Once again, we need you to keep your emotions in check.”
Isaac took the dagger away and sheathed it, but his grip stayed on Aidan’s throat.
“We’re bound to one another,” Isaac continued. “Whether you like it or not. We’re both brothers of the wild. Yes, that’s right – I’m from the outside too. And as a loving sibling, I allowed you to hurt me, to take out the rage that would have consumed us all. Because I love you. And I know you needed it. Now that it’s over, you feel better, don’t you?”
“I do,” Aidan said in shame. He wanted to run and hide in the mud.
“There is nothing wrong with anger. It’s a part of all of us. But how you use it, is entirely up to you. You can already scald someone with boiling water. You don’t have to let it continue festering until all of the water’s spilled out over the side.”
“I’m sorry, Isaac,” Aidan said, wearily looking at his friend. Isaac released his grip.
“The healers will tend to my wounds,” Isaac replied, “but I had to show you how much we need each other to survive what’s coming. I hit you on the back with my hand to let you know that it could have easily been my blade.”
“I understand.”
“Hey, listen. Don’t start going distant on me now. We’re still friends.”
“But I just tried to kill you.”
“Yeah. So?”
“Didn’t you hear me? I just tried to kill you.”
“Yeah, what are friends for?” Isaac laughed. “One minute they hate each other’s guts. The next they’re back on the playground. Don’t worry about me. Our tantrums may be a little more destructive and painful than the natural kind but I’m still alive, aren’t I?”
Aidan smirked and made his second vow for the day: to never hurt his friends again.
“I want to say sorry to you too, Bailey,” he said, turning to her. She approached the boys with a smirk on her face, reached out, and gave Aidan a hug.
“It’s okay,” she laughed, patting him on the back. “Just don’t do that to us again. Next time we’ll really defend ourselves.”
“I have a lot of soul searching to do,” Aidan admitted. “To be completely honest, I don’t know who I am anymore. I kept thinking that I was still the boy who grew up outside of this village. But I don’t even know if that was living at all. I try to imagine myself as a villager of Lowsunn, but I realize that I’m not entirely that either. I belong nowhere.”
“No, you belong right here,” Bailey said, drawing a circle between the three of them with her finger. “As Isaac said, we are bound together by fate, survivors of the wild. When you don’t know who you are, come to us and ask, and we can tell you.”
“Well, then who am I?” Aidan asked abruptly. Bailey chuckled and folded her arms.
“You are a child of both the wild and Lowsunn. Of the earth like we all are, but also of fire. The only time you lose yourself is when you lose sight of those facts. You can’t sway too far one way or the other, between the earth and the fire. Move with the ebb and flow of life, take each situation as it arises, and you will never falter. Don’t let yourself become so much earth that you get trampled underneath others’ feet. Don’t blaze so bright that your fire goes out.”
“I feel like I’m in the middle of a fairytale here,” Isaac laughed, rubbing the soot out of his hair. Aidan nodded at Bailey and gave a heavy sigh. She was right. There had to be a balance. The villagers of Lowsunn were too afraid to act. They needed the Aidans of the world to fight on their behalf – someone who could withstand the opposition and protect them. But he couldn’t become so enraged that he embodied a spirit like that of Duncan’s either, treating the very people he shielded as his underlings. No man was made to control another.
“Isaac, let me take you to the infirmary,” Aidan replied, pla
cing a hand on his shoulder. Isaac winced and shook his head.
“Nah. It’s all superficial burns anyways,” he winked at him. Aidan attempted a smile and did something unexpected. He gave Isaac a hug.
“I’m sorry, brother,” he said into his friend’s shoulder. “Forgive me.”
“Already did,” Isaac groaned. And Aidan let him go.
“I still can’t believe you were part of the wild though. I thought you grew up here in Lowsunn.”
“Mostly I did, but remember that every one of us has a story, and an old life before Advent. In my case, I happened to spend the first two years after Advent on the outside. In the shining city of Siren. Heard of it?”
“No.”
“It’s very far away, along the coast of this continent, surrounded by tall mountains and vast valleys so one would have to travel very far in order to stumble across it. It’s where the Peacekeepers live.”
“I have heard that term used before. On the outside it’s a derogatory term for someone who died trying to talk down a threat.”
“Yes, my people coined the term and everyone else defiled it. No matter what you may think, they’re not a bunch of touchy-feely types. They’re a group of free individuals with a common goal – that everyone in the city of Siren should be able to use their wishes as they see fit, as long as it’s to add to the world and not take away from it. It’s not like here in Lowsunn, though it sounds similar. In Siren, there is no council, no ruling body. Just a community of creative, free-thinkers that are helping each other rebuild.”
“Sounds magical, but why aren’t you there now?”
“Like anything good in this world, you eventually have to fight for it. We were invaded at the two year anniversary of Advent. A band of treasure hunters known as the Slayers heard rumors that the Choate artifact was hidden in our city. I don’t know who started the rumor, but given that the artifact has yet to be found, it was more than enough information for the hunters to investigate. We were peaceful with them and willing to let them scour the city to look for it. When they found nothing, they demanded compensation for their time. They wanted bodies to help with their menial tasks while on the road, particularly those who had already used their Yen so they weren’t threatened. Cooking, cleaning, fact checking. That sort of thing. We drew lots and I and three other boys lost. Before I left I made sure to take a hot poker, in the shape of our seals, and sear my flesh with it, to make it look like I had already used my three seals. I made up some story about –”
The Works of Julius St. Clair - 2017 Edition (Includes 3 full novels and more) Page 39
