Cloud Lands Saga Box Set Books 1-3

by Katie Pottle

  “This is a thirty-two team single elimination tournament, which means it takes three wins to achieve the quarter final and five wins to take the whole thing. If you win fourth place, you earn one additional Level 3 black-bordered badge. If you win third place, you earn two Level 3 badges. If you make it to the finals—the prize value increases significantly. If you win second place, not only do you earn three Level 3 black-bordered badges, but additionally a Level 4 badge! And first place wins the scholarship, a place on the Fast Track and an additional Level 4 black-bordered badge!”

  “Needless to say—if you can challenge all of the other Commons teams in the Calvarian System and win—you are setting yourself up well for any life you choose along the Warrior Path.”

  Cadin wondered how many wins it would take for Master Sanjen and the Core to see him more as an asset than a liability.

  Instructor Kade looked at each of them before finishing. “One week after school ends, we will travel together to Condor in the red Contra Quad to compete in the Calvarian Games!”

  The End

  Note from the Author:

  A big thanks to all of you who have chosen to continue the journey through the cloud-lands with me! For those of you who have been kind enough to write a review on Amazon or Goodreads, you have my sincerest gratitude. A good review is the greatest compliment you can give an author. It helps others discover my books, and affords me more time to write. Feel free to contact me at AuthorKatiePottle@gmail.com

  Bill, thank you for being my husband, editor, fan, and making this book a possibility.

  If you are interested in more from Katie Pottle—including a couple of mini adventures around the cloud-lands, please visit www.KatiePottle.com

  Cloud Glossary

  Aura: Angel’s energy as a form of light around them. Common colors: green, blue, red, yellow and white.

  Badges: Flat bars made of different color metal that signify school accomplishments and are melded to school arm-guards.

  Cloud-worm: Hybrid cloud/Earth creature with teeth.

  Cloud-lands: Cloud transformed into a solid ground by cloud-shifting. The more creatures/angels live there, the bigger and more stable it becomes.

  Cloud-Raiders: Vicious group that were once at war with the Core

  Commons: One of 10 main cloud-lands within the Calvarian Cloud System (organized into Quads with an emphasis in Aura color.) Guard Quad (Green): Glade: Cadin, Lep, Gregor, Araina

  Galen: Instructor Kade, Bart

  Lavine Quad (Yellow): Lance: Sun

  Lark:

  Arkta Quad (Blue): Air: Sara, Marvin, Mira

  Ansford: Tal

  Contra Quad (Red): Carta:

  Condor: Red Com Team led by Ryker

  Carpathia: Hyperion dragons

  Central Cloud (all): Located in the center of the System. Has main Core facilities as well as the main Universities and Academies.

  Core: Main governing organization in the Calvarian Cloud System

  Dire Dragon: Large, dangerous dragon. Namesake of Instructor Kade’s class.

  Gins: Special cloud-stones that must be fused by a Gin Master Cadin’s gins General Type (fused 4): Dark blue, purple, green. Light blue, platinum, and white. Yellow with green points. Translucent with rainbow cast.

  Slice Type (2): Black with white lightning veins- Tenacious. White with black lightning veins. - Protective.

  Tang Type (1): Earth tones – Practical.

  Gin-blade: A sword forged with Zeronium and a counterpart to gins. Little is currently known about the forgotten weapons. Can change shape and has a compartment to hold gins in handle. Cadin’s gin-blade is Tsuyo.

  Ginex: A magnetic box that isolates gins

  Grass Dragon: Small green dragon about finger-size.

  Illumin Dragon: Small water dragon.

  Paths: Area of focus for high school. Guardian Path, Warrior Path, Academic Path, Trade Path, General Path

  Rock Dragon: (Gur) Small dragon about forearm size. Gray-blue. Spit fire.

  School Arm-Guard: Worn by all high-schoolers. Has holes to meld badges earned.

  Tlalocs: Hidden group plotting against the Core. Led by Tiberius.

  Tiberius: Leader of the Tlalocs.

  Tsuyo: Cadin’s gin-blade.

  Veretal: Metal coating that develops on the edges of some adult angel’s feathers (mostly with green or red Auras)

  Wrath: Dangerous, large creatures that live within some clouds.

  Wrath’s eye: Center target for bow and arrow practice and competition. Synonymous with Bull’s eye

  CLOUD LANDS SAGA: BOOK THREE

  CALVARIAN

  GAMES

  KATIE POTTLE

  Copyright@2017 by Katie Pottle

  Sapphire Eye Press

  1st Edition

  Calvarian Games

  All rights reserved. This book is a work of fiction and any characters, names, places, and incidents are used fictitiously or of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to places, events, or actual persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Paperback ISBN 978-1-973-77842-4

  www.KatiePottle.com

  More by Katie Pottle

  Cloud Lands Saga:

  Cloud Shifters: Book 1 (2016)

  Warrior Path: Book 2 (2016)

  Calvarian Games: Book 3 (2017)

  Fringelanders: Book 4 (Coming 2018)

  Book 5 (To be announced)

  Cloud Lands Mini-Adventures:

  Lynn’s Dragon Ranch (2014)

  Cloud Chess (2015)

  Emilio’s Story (To be announced)

  Non-Fiction Martial Arts

  (Co-Authored with Bill Pottle):

  Taekwondo: A Practical Guide to the World’s Most Popular Martial Arts (2013)

  The Princess and the Ogre: Martial Arts Based Rhymes and Fairy Tales for Children of All Ages (2013) – (Fiction)

  The Way of the Dojo: Owning and Operating your own Martial Arts School (2013)

  Teaching Martial Arts: A Practical Guide (2013)

  Korean Academy of Taekwondo: Official School Handbook (2010)

  DEDICATION

  To Dad

  For always feeding and supporting my wild and creative sides.

  Part One

  CHAPTER ONE

  Cumulus

  Cadin woke with a start. Something felt different, but everything looked normal. His clothes from the day before lay haphazardly on the floor near the hamper. His school possessions were mostly put away after finals; however, a few still posed tripping hazards. Tsuyo, his prize gin-blade was displayed carefully on the headrest of his bed.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Cadin caught movement from the rock nest on his desk. A small, blue dragon popped his head up and bobbed up and down a few times.

  “What’s up, Gur? You feel it too?” Cadin asked as he continued to search for the disrupting difference. It wasn’t bad or good—just different. Cadin looked again to his pet dragon. Gur lifted his nose higher, opened his mouth slightly and flicked out his forked tongue.

  “Of course!” Cadin exclaimed. Closing his eyes, Cadin took in the air around him. The air smelled sweeter than normal and pressed in around him.

  Running to the window, Cadin caught his breath as he lifted the blinds. The morning light illuminated his bronze skin and refracted the beams around his brown irises, turning them golden. Beyond the valley that made up his backyard floated dozens of mountainous cumulus clouds.

  “Let’s go check it out, Gur.” He felt the familiar pinch of dragon claws on his right shoulder before making his way through the house and out the door.

  “Mom? Dad?” No one answered. He vaguely remembered his mom telling him that she had things to do to prepare for Cadin’s hard-earned trip.

  As he stepped outside, Cadin was overwhelmed by the beauty of the seemingly endless field of large, natural clouds. Crouching his legs and flexing his wings, he prepared to take off into the sky and explore the amazing phenomenon before someone tapped on hi
s shoulder. His heart skipped in panic as he stopped his launch and whipped around. He let out a sigh of relief to see it was just one of his friends.

  “Did you forget about our training today?”

  Cadin looked up into his best friend’s questioning blue eyes. “Sorry, Lep. It was the clouds. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many surrounding Glade before.”

  “They are cool,” Lep said, gazing out at the rolling clouds.

  “That’s okay, Cadin.” Bart, his freckled older friend, stepped up and gave Cadin a friendly shove. Gur was rattled from Cadin’s shoulder and spit a spiraling fireball, singeing Bart’s brown hair. “Ouch. Sorry, Gur.” Bart turned back to Cadin. “I had forgotten about the training too until Sun’s bright Aura popped into my room and woke me up.

  “The actual sun would have woken you up if you didn’t have your window shrouded with heavy curtains.” Sun put on an unconvincing scowl for Bart and then turned to Cadin with her more natural half smile backed by her stunning yellow Aura. Her ice-blue eyes crinkled at the corners. “Well, grab your sword and let’s head over to Mist Lake. Instructor Kade will not be happy if we’re late. We only have three days left until we travel to Condor for the Games!”

  “Oh, right!” He grabbed his gin-blade and the bag full of buka cakes that his mom had prepared the night before and headed off with his friends to his favorite lake retreat.

  As they walked, Cadin looked longingly at the fluffy clouds surrounding the floating cloud-land they tread upon. “Come on, guys,” Cadin pleaded. “Let’s at least fly to Mist instead of walk.” Cadin kicked a pebble into the grass, and Gur pounced on it.

  Lep kicked another pebble for Gur to chase. “We’ll get there in plenty of time. What’s the hurry?”

  “It’s not that. I really just want to explore the clouds—they’re too amazing to pass up!” Cadin smiled and pointed out a dragon-shaped cloud to Lep.

  “But you know we are not allowed to train in natural clouds yet. At least not ones that aren’t in the Cloud Park.”

  “Have you ever seen so many clouds this close to Glade? Look at that huge bubbling one. Imagine the cloud-slide that we could make on it.”

  Lep looked up at the enormous puffs, a gleam in his eye and a smile growing to the size of a Dire Dragon. Cadin knew when he had Lep hooked on an idea. “We can practice some awesome cloud-shifting as a team.”

  “That sounds great!” Sun exclaimed.

  “It does?” Cadin was sure he would have had a tougher time convincing his hyper-focused friend.

  “Of course it does. There are a lot of cloud-shifting skills that we really need to work on before we leave to compete in the Calvarian Games. Let’s hurry to Mist to ask Instructor Kade to switch training drills today.”

  Cadin rushed to catch up to Sun. It was not exactly what he had in mind, but it was better than only getting a brief teaser on a short flight. If Instructor Kade agreed to it, they could train in the clouds all morning.

  His hopes dropped as they reached the lake and found no sign of their sharp-minded instructor. He had not been very punctual lately. Cadin figured he was acting more in the capacity of Captain Kade of the Core than Instructor Kade of the Commons School of Glade—homeroom teacher to twenty pubescent angels.

  “Hey, guys!” Four more students from Cadin’s homeroom landed at their feet.

  “Your flight control has gotten better, Vincent.” Bart smiled and poked Vincent in the ribs. Vincent’s look turned sour. Cadin guessed that he wasn’t fond of being the only student in Glade history to have crash landed through the head-master’s window while testing out his newly sprouted wings.

  Cadin changed the subject to save a bit of Vincent’s pride. “What are you guys doing here?”

  “We came to train with you, of course,” Treven said as he peaked over Vincent’s shoulder. “Instructor Kade invited us. Something about you guys needing opponents and all the practice you can get before entering a competition you aren’t ready for.”

  Cadin didn’t know whether to laugh or panic at Treven’s quick summary. Treven pointed at Cadin’s expression and busted out laughing. The whole group followed, Bart holding onto Vincent for support.

  “Well, when you put it that way, how can we lose?” Cadin said in-between breaths.

  “I guess we better get to training,” Sun said as she wiped her eyes. “I’m just not sure where to begin until Instructor Kade gets here.

  “Who knows when that will be? Last week he was over an hour late.”

  “I think we stick to the new plan.” Cadin winked at Sun as he flexed his wings and took off into the cloud-filled sky.

  “Let’s play!” Cadin folded his wings and dove for the nearest cloud. He landed quietly on the soft surface and bubbled with laughter at the sight of his dragon who had overshot the landing and wiggled his way out of the cloud. Bart went to help Gur while the others landed and worked to actively cloud-walk and not fall through. Cadin was gifted with excess cloud-shifting ability and grateful not to have to worry about the small steps. He had bigger things planned.

  “This is perfect for what I have in mind.” Cadin sat atop a peak and looked down.

  “And what is that?” Xeno asked. Cadin knew that behind his quiet voice, Xeno was quite excited to be on the giant, rolling clouds.

  “You’ll see.” Reaching down, he felt the surface of the cloud and beyond. A tingle ran up his arms and Cadin began cloud-shifting. The surface began to extend out into a smooth, flat slide. It followed the contours of the cloud down towards the base, ending in an upslope.

  “That is the biggest cloud-slide I have ever seen!” Bart exclaimed as he landed next to Cadin with a thump. Bart was not the most graceful of angels. However, his easy-going nature and quick smile made him one of Cadin’s favorite people.

  “Be my guest.” Cadin smiled and waved his arms towards the magnificent slide.

  “Wait!” Sun called from the bottom. “Let us build a safety net first!” She was joined by Jade, Vincent’s giggly girlfriend.

  “Leave it to the girls to think ‘safety first,’ right?” Vincent made it to the top of the slide along with Lep and Treven.

  The peak was getting crowded. “Ready?” Cadin called.

  “Okay!”

  Bart looked at Cadin, who nodded. A huge smile lit his face as Bart hurled himself down the enormous slide. Everyone cheered as the end slope flipped him into the air—limbs and wings sprawling as he plunged into the fluffy mist. It took him a bit to untangle his foot from the safety net before he waived for the next slider.

  “Who’s next?” Cadin asked, feeling the group’s excited energy.

  “You made it. You should be next,” Lep said.

  Cadin folded his wings tight to his back and launched himself down his cloud-slide. He let out an exhilarated yell as the slope increased before the end of the run turned up sharply, launching him into the air. He was shocked by the height he achieved, and did not open his wings to try to right himself. He landed awkwardly on the fluffy surface.

  Cadin looked up to wave Lep on and caught a gleam reflecting off something on a distant cloud. His heart skipped as memories of the Tlaloc battle in the Glade Thunder Channel flashed back to him. He lost the gleam as his eyes tracked Lep flipping through the air and landing butt down in front of him.

  “That was wicked!”

  Cadin’s fears waned as everyone continued to slide without any attackers emerging from the shadows.

  With some creative cloud-shifting from Sun and Bart, the landing zone was transformed into a bubble-scape that bounced them back into the air. They came up with games and challenges worthy of a morning amongst the amazing clouds. Cadin’s favorite was trying to launch into flight at the end of the slide without touching the bubble-scape. It was difficult and it took most of them at least one bounce before being able to take off.

  Vincent, Treven and Xeno decided to cloud-shift their own slide next to Cadin’s so they could race as singles and as tag teams. The tag
team races were a great workout as each team lined up at the top, and one player at a time raced down the cloud-slides, recovered at the bottom and flew back to the top to tag the next player on their team. Cadin had flown anchor on the last team race and had to fly from behind Xeno to steal the win.

  Resting off to the side of the bubble-scape, Cadin rubbed a sore spot on his leg. He nestled into a comfy crevice, grateful that cumulus clouds had such soft, forgiving surfaces. I wonder what would happen if I stopped cloud-walking? As he thought it, he slipped through the surface of the cloud. He panicked for a moment as water slid past him and wind whipped at his face and wings. Catching his breath, he stalled his fall as his cloud-shifting instincts took over. He tried to open his eyes to take in the inside of the cloud, but the elements did not ease up and continued to lick harshly across his face. He kept his eyes tightly closed and turned to his other senses.

  The cloud smelled musty and fresh at the same time. It was massive, strong and untamable. Quite different from the calm, beautiful surface. Cadin heard thunder in the distance and felt an electric charge building around him. He opened his wings to fly out and instantly regretted it as the wind caught him and tumbled him further into the cloud’s core. Righting himself, he folded his wings tightly to his back. Shivers rippled across his muscles under his wet, heavy clothes. Realizing that he would have to cloud-shift his way to the surface, he began actively forming hand and foot holds out of any available elements. As he climbed, an electric charge built around him again. The back of his neck and arms began to tingle.