Cloud Lands Saga Box Set Books 1-3

by Katie Pottle

  “Leave him alone, Lep,” Sun said.

  “I’m just trying to get an honest answer from him,” Lep said, laughing.

  “Here’s an answer!” Bart said, jumping on Lep and tackling him to the ground. They were both laughing, but Gur didn’t quite seem to understand as he stood perched in attention on Cadin’s shoulder, making high-pitched calls at the grappling boys.

  “It’s alright, Gur,” Cadin said. “They are just messing around.”

  Cadin and Sun stood watching them wrestle when Vincent, Treven, Xeno and Jade approached.

  “Hey guys,” Treven said. “What are those fools doing?”

  “Lep was pushing Bart’s buttons, so Bart decided to push back.”

  “Oh.”

  “You guys did great in the Qualifier,” Vincent said.

  “Yeah, but we didn’t place. A lot to work on next week in the Challenge Club,” Cadin said.

  “You got that right.”

  “I remember you guys got a good score too, but I don’t know what place you finished in,” Cadin said.

  “Oh, we got seventh place, just behind you.”

  “Nice. Not bad out of twenty teams, but we really have to work hard to qualify. No more messing around,” Cadin said with a laugh as Bart put Lep in an arm-bar. Lep tapped out, and they both stood up, wiping the grass off themselves.

  “Hi guys,” Bart said as he walked over. “What warrior team did you end up going against?”

  “We got the second team with a lot of green and yellow warriors,” Xeno answered. “I had three of 'em coming at me all at once. We should work on multiple opponent defenses.”

  “Yeah, Bart had that problem too. But I think more than individual defense, we need to work on overall team strategy. That will help us in defense, as well in the other skills we still have to qualify in,” Cadin said.

  “Cadin?” He jumped when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He swung around so fast that he nearly stumbled over the newcomer.

  “Oh, uh, Susan…hi.”

  The attractive fourth year healer stepped back to keep upright, while grabbing his arm to stabilize him.

  “Sorry!” She said at the same time. “I didn’t mean to surprise you.”

  “No, that’s okay. Um…how are…you? I haven’t seen you around at all this year.” It wasn’t much of a surprise as she trained in the winged section and on the Academic Path, but Cadin was at a loss as to what to say, gazing into her brown eyes.

  “I’m doing well, thanks. Did you come from the Warrior Path Qualifier?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Drats, that means it finished already. I had hoped to see how Gregor did. Do you know the results?” She glanced around the dispersing crowd.

  Cadin had no idea how the biggest jerk in the school got Susan as his girlfriend.

  “Yes. His team placed first.” Cadin’s words came out clipped.

  “That’s wonderful!” Susan said, completely oblivious to Cadin’s dislike of Gregor. “And how did your team do?”

  “We got sixth place.”

  She smiled at Cadin and included his friends in her comment. “Congratulations. Keep working hard. I’ve got to go try and find Gregor. I’m interning in the Clinic this year, so I may see you around—considering how Warrior Path angels get more injuries than most.” She waved before stepping back into the crowd.

  “Bye,” Cadin said before turning back to his friends. “Uh, what were we talking about?”

  “Team strategies for the next Qualifier,” Sun said. She had a small frown and Cadin remembered the yellow warrior that inexplicably tormented her.

  As they entered the school. Cadin looked up at the clock and panicked. He was going to be late for his apprenticeship.

  “Sorry guys, I’ve got to run!” Cadin said as he grabbed his bag and checked to make sure his gins were safe. He turned to Sun.

  “We will talk tomorrow, okay?” Cadin asked. He was worried about her, but he was already late.

  Sun seemed to pick up on his tone, because she had no smile on her face—rare for her. She met Cadin’s nearly golden eyes and nodded.

  Cadin arrived at school early the following day and sat on the front steps while Gur stalked the morning insects zooming through the ground mist.

  “Sun’s here, Gur. Let’s go.” Cadin tapped his shoulder and Gur crawled up. He glanced up towards Sun and stumbled on a rock in the path. He struggled to keep from falling flat on his face and felt Gur grip his shoulder with his sharp claws and flap his wings madly. Cadin didn’t know if it was his dragon or quick footwork that kept him from falling, but either way he was grateful.

  “Thanks, buddy,” he said to Gur as Sun ran towards him.

  “Are you alright?” she asked, half concerned, half giggling.

  “Yep, thanks to Gur I think.”

  “He is a pretty wonderful dragon,” Sun said as she scratched under his chin.

  “So, you want to tell me about that yellow warrior?” Cadin asked as they sat down in the grass. The morning mist swirled around them as they sat outside of the classroom so they could see when things were getting started.

  Sun hung her head and took a deep breath. “She and I went to school together on Lance. Her name is Lacy and she is a couple years older than I am. Well, you know that I am generally a happy person, and very few people actually get to me,” Cadin nodded. “But, Lacy always terrorized me. She was by far the most talented warrior in our school, making records and earning awards. I had heard about her in Middle School and when I got into Lance Commons, I was excited to see her in action. She paid no attention to me until I started breaking all of her first-year records after joining the Archery Club. I think she felt threatened and she started challenging me personally and not always at school events. She would find me after school and push me down; she even broke my favorite short-bow. It was a combination of Lacy and my dad’s enthusiasm for selling his airships in other cloud-lands that caused us to leave Lance. I didn’t know she had gotten into the Academy. It must have happened soon after we left.”

  Cadin frowned as he thought about Sun’s story. A light drizzle of rain misted over them.

  “So, she’s a bully.”

  “Well, yeah, I guess.”

  “I really don’t like bullies,” Cadin said thinking of Gregor and now Lacy. “They are too insecure to help anyone but themselves. How sad. Are you sorry you left Lance, knowing now that Lacy would have been gone?”

  “No,” Sun answered without any hesitation. Tiny droplets had condensed on her eyelashes. “If I hadn’t come here, I would not have met you, or Lep or Bart. And we would not have started the Challenge Club. It has been an adventure being here, and I have loved every minute of it. I know it sounds strange, but I feel like my Aura is free to be even more yellow here than it was on Lance.”

  “That’s not strange. I’m glad you can be yellow here,” Cadin said. “When I think of yellow now I think strong, confident, happy, and sunny because of you.”

  Sun’s eyes lit up as she shook the rain from her hair. “I think we’d better get going. And thanks for talking to me about Lacy, I feel better.”

  “No problem,” Cadin said as he jumped up.

  Cadin was looking forward to Fall Break. Even though it was still a week out, he was burnt out with his class load, Challenge Club sessions, his apprenticeship—where passing the figure-eight challenge only led to more difficult variations and drills, and actively working to suppress his Aura through it all.

  He approached the doors to the class that he had been the most excited to sign up for at the beginning of the year. Unfortunately, he had come to dislike Warrior-based Cloud-shifting. It had sounded so cool; however, only students with a Cloud-Shifting Level 2 badge could register. Much to Cadin and Bart's dismay, Gregor and several of his friends were also in the class.

  “Let's see what they have in store for us today,” Cadin said to himself as he walked into one of few classrooms on the ground floor in the winged section of the s
chool.

  Wings ruffled as he passed though the room and sat next to Bart.

  Bart smiled and nodded as Instructor Mia entered.

  “Good morning, class. Today we will work on bricking.” Instructor Mia slid her tall frame into her slit-back chair, her wings resting gently. “We will have twenty minutes in the classroom, and the last hour we will go outside and practice.”

  “In the rain?” A tall boy asked, his feathers fluffing out.

  “Yes, Henry—in the rain.” She interlaced her long fingers on top of her desk and addressed the whole class. “You are all on the Warrior Path now. Some of you will choose other Paths, some of you will simply not have the fortitude or the abilities to graduate from the Warrior Path.”

  Something hit the back of his neck. He turned to find Gregor pointing at him and shaking his head. Cadin gritted his teeth and turned back to the front.

  Instructor Mia took a deep breath and continued. “For those of you that keep the course and become true Warrior Angels, you must be prepared for anything. Many of your battles will not be out in the sun, cloud-land under you, and happy clouds floating to you as needed.” She narrowed her eyes. “Storms, blood, and heavy decisions that must be made in a split second await you.” Instructor Mia glanced out the window for a moment. Cadin wondered what she was remembering. “And that is why we must train in the rain, and any other adverse weather that comes our way. My job is to help you be prepared for when those moments reach you. Now, let us begin.”

  “Bricking is a classic technique in the Guard Quad,” Instructor Mia said as she summoned a natural cloud across Yi Field. “Instead of pulling up a solid wall out of the cloud, build in some bricks.”

  Cadin imagined some medieval castles from his human history course, but was surprised when Instructor Mia hardened a mostly solid wall with only a few cubes of different sizes in random places.

  “Look at both sides.”

  Cadin followed Bart and most of the rest of the class to the other side of the wall. Gregor had stayed on the other side until he got a sharp look from their formidable teacher.

  “Whatever,” Gregor sneered. He unfolded his wings, took off and flew over the top of the wall, landing hard on Cadin and several other students.

  “Unnecessary, Gregor. Next time you get detention,” Instructor Mia said calmly as she rounded the wall.

  “What? It's not like we haven't seen bricking before!” Gregor seethed as he roughly pushed off Cadin to stand up.

  Cadin hadn’t seen the technique before, but wasn't going to say it out loud. The other side of the wall did not disappoint Cadin, looking like the classic brickwork of his imagination. It was beautiful; however, he was having a difficult time figuring out what the point was.

  Instructor Mia walked up to the bare side of the wall. Several of the older students stepped back. Cadin followed, but stumbled over Gregor’s outstretched leg. Before Gregor could retreat into line with the rest of the class, a huge brick propelled forward from the wall, hitting him in the chest while expanding into large hand-like trap that pinned him to the cloud.

  “Bricks can be malleable and good for both defensive and offensive tactics.” Instructor Mia reached into the cloud and released a red-faced Gregor from the trap. She helped him up as she continued addressing the class. “A brick wall takes more energy to cloud-shift initially than a solid wall; however, it can save a lot of energy if your wall gets damaged and you only have to replace a single brick rather than shift an entire new barricade. Use your imagination and your cloud-shifting abilities to use bricking to your advantage.”

  Cadin slumped down on his couch after another long day, cringing as his wing-calluses contacted the back.

  A bump at the door startled him and he turned around to a heap of boxes and bags squeezing through the entryway.

  “Ouch!” The box blob exclaimed.

  “Mom?” Cadin jumped up to help relieve her.

  “Oh, hi, Cadin dear. Can you bring those to the kitchen?” She waved towards the boxes.

  “Sure. What is all this stuff?”

  His mother turned to him and her smile reached her golden eyes. “I have some ideas for a new food product.”

  “Excellent,” Cadin said with a touch of sarcasm. Sara's last food experiment had left him sick for hours. “I can't wait.”

  “Oh, this one will be way better,” Sara said as she unpacked something that was a vile green and smelled of rotting wrath. “You'll see.”

  Cadin's heart skipped a beat. “Actually...I ...ah...I'm not really hungry tonight.”

  Cadin was about to bolt up the stairs to his room, but he stopped at his mom's unbridled laugh.

  “Don't worry, honey. It's not for dinner or anything. And it will be months before it will be ready to test.” She stopped unpacking and turned to look at him, a smile still playing across her face. “I promise not to do that to you again. Okay?”

  Cadin took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay, mom.”

  She starred at him for a moment, and Cadin knew she was doing her mom thing. “Are you doing alright? You seem a little down.”

  No hiding anything from her. “Not really.” He slumped in the nearest kitchen chair.

  “Do you want to tell me about it while I unload or would you rather I make us some sun tea and we can talk face to face?”

  Cadin wasn't sure what was the matter with him in the first place, so he didn't know if it was serious enough for a tea talk or not. As he was about to answer, his dad walked in the door, Aura shining brightly as he held up his latest work.

  “Oh good, you are both here! What do you think of these?” His dad set what Cadin assumed were chest-plates on table. They appeared to have several layers, and Cadin reached to grab one.

  His mom gently put her hand on top of his. “Tal, Cadin was about to tell me about what has him so down lately. Can we talk about your armor after?”

  “Down?” His dad turned and looked Cadin up and down, as if his teenage problems would be tattooed on his body. “Tea talk down?”

  Cadin laughed a bit and woke Gur from his nap. He scurried down the table and began to investigate what was in the grocery bags. He had yet to get sick from Sara's cooking.

  “It's nothing big,” Cadin started, not quite sure how to speak of an intangible force. “It's just that I had hoped my training at school with cloud-shifting and even with Master Emilio and my gins would be easier once my Aura emerged. Then, when it finally did, everyone kept whispering...not even talking to me about how this mixed Aura of mine is a big deal, but I'm not feeling it!”

  “What do you mean by 'not feeling it', son?” Tal asked him.

  Cadin started to pet Gur when he returned to the table with a salted and dried piece of cloud-crow in his mouth. “I don’t know if it is the color submission or what—I mean I have more energy, but it doesn't always feel like cooperative energy. I'm not as good as other students at cloud-shifting bricks, or most guarding techniques.” He shook his head and exhaled. “It's like I learned basic cloud-shifting so effortlessly—I never had to think about what I needed to do, and then once my Aura came, it's like everything is almost the opposite of what it should be.” Gregor and his friends had ruthlessly teased Cadin every time he messed up a bricking technique. He finally looked up into his parents’ eyes. “I'm sorry, it all sounds a bit ridiculous now.”

  His parents glanced at each other before Tal turned back to him. “I actually think I know what's going on with your training because the same thing happened to me when I was about your age.”

  “Really? What happened?”

  “My second year of Commons High School I began to lag behind in many of my classes.” Tal started to fiddle with the new chest-plates. “It was getting to the point where if something didn't change I was going to fail the entire year. That is when my parents sent me off to work with a magnificent metal-smith on Air.” He looked up and winked at Sara.

  “Grandpa Marvin.”

  “Yes, your grandfather
gave me a trial run over Winter Break, and later took me on as a full apprentice. However, it was that short first week I spent with him that brought about several revelations which turned around that bad year for me.”

  “What were they?” Cadin was splitting with curiosity.

  “They are so obvious you are going to kick yourself—as I wanted to when Marvin pointed them out to me.”

  “Okay...” Cadin's mind was not producing the obvious answer.

  “Well, I had a bright green Aura, and I was training in Ansford—a blue cloud-land. It wasn't that my Aura was failing me, it was that all the techniques that were being taught there were decidedly blue. It didn't fit with my innate abilities and I was subconsciously resisting.”

  “Oh,” Cadin said, instantly reflecting on his training.

  “Yeah, Marvin mentioned it to me my second day there. Said my workflow mentality was too blue.”

  “How'd he know? I mean doesn't Grandpa have a blue Aura?” Cadin couldn't remember.

  “He does,” Sara jumped in. “But he works with people from all around the System, and if he hadn't learned to be a good mentor to all colors of Auras, they would have stopped seeking him out a long time ago. Cadin, it is important to remember that just because you are suppressing the outward appearance of your Aura, it doesn’t change its true color, or your true strengths.”

  Cadin reflected for a moment. “I have tried to mix up my Aura color training with the Challenge Club.”

  “And do you do well?” His dad leaned forward in his chair, and glanced back and forth between Sara and Cadin.

  “Yeah, I guess. It is hard work, but always fun. It is the class work that has become more frustrating. What? Why do you guys keep looking at each other like that?”

  “Well, Cadin, we think you would benefit from ...shall we say a fresh prospective.” His dad smiled and perked up, but waved to Sara to continue.

  “How would you like to go to Air for Fall Break?”

  “Air, really?” Cadin had always wanted to travel. Opportunities were limited for wingless adolescents. His dad had taken him to Galen once for an armor trade show. His mom brought him to Air a couple of times as a baby, but he had no memories of those visits.