The Powerless Series: Complete 5-Book Set

by Jason Letts

  “Let’s take a break and get some water. I’m about to pass out!” the woman groaned.

  “OK, Marge,” Arent assented, putting his hands together so he could lift her out of the hole. Once she had gotten to her feet, she had little trouble pulling him up. Her face red and sweaty, she dug through their supplies for a cup and started for the river.

  “Come along now, boy. Don’t dawdle!”

  Lumbering through a path between fields, they came upon a beautiful young woman sitting on a blanket under a tree. Her parents owned the estate, giving her the freedom to lounge with a book on a hot summer’s day. She had brown hair and wore a lacy skirt. Arent couldn’t take his eyes off of her, even though he felt embarrassed she might see him in his filthy overalls. Marge noticed his deep level of distraction and slapped him on the shoulder.

  “Don’t kid yourself, my shadow. She lives in a different world from us. Best do yourself a favor and keep your mind on what you’re supposed to be doing. Last thing we need is for you to frighten the living daylights out of her.”

  Sighing, Arent ambled on toward the river after his stern mentor. When they got to the creek, Marge bent down near the current and summoned water to jump into the cup. A moment later she’d gulped it down. Arent had no cup, and he was wary of flowing water. It made him lose control of his power, the energy escaping through him. Crouching by the creek’s edge and bracing himself against a rock, he scooped his hand into the water. The current kicked up, splashing his hand, but he cupped it well enough to take a sip. After he’d done so, Marge emitted a bitter growl and crushed her cup.

  “Would you look at that?” she lamented.

  “What is it?” Arent asked.

  Upstream, a large group of people were working by the creek. Some of them were felling trees, others arranged boulders, and others prepared for the pouring of concrete.

  “They’re building a dam to plug up the creek. I heard about the plans but prayed they’d never go and do it. Everybody’s so happy about a new irrigation system, but it just about kills me. This puts us out of a job! How am I going to feed myself? Once the reservoir is in place, the last thing anybody will need is a well.”

  “Are you sure?” Arent asked, and Marge flashed him her furrowed brows and scornful eyes.

  “Since when did you become the expert on anything? Yes, I’m sure. We’re scraping bottom as it is, no pun intended. This is a pity job. These people don’t need a well!” she howled.

  “Oh,” Arent settled.

  Marge stared at the construction site for a moment and then turned back to Arent. She looked deeply into his eyes and then started scanning his chest and his hands. A flicker came into her eyes and the edges of her lips curled up, but Arent was too exhausted to notice.

  “What will we do?” he asked.

  “We’re gonna have to pray for a savior,” she said.

  A couple of weeks later, Arent sat alone on his bed in the one room home at daybreak. His mother’s bed remained against the other wall, and he hadn’t touched it since he’d carried her body away to bury it. From where he sat, he watched the small plot of farmland he’d cleared from the brush and the tomatoes he’d been growing. Small green bulbs were just starting to develop. Sudden rustling in the brush jerked his attention to the door.

  When it burst open, Marge swung her head in and struggled to catch her breath. She had a strange expression on her face, one of both excitement and trepidation.

  “I’m sorry, my friend, but it was the only way. You’ll forgive me some day.”

  “What?” Arent asked, bewildered, but Marge had already turned from the doorway. That’s when he heard the rabble of the approaching mob.

  “He’s right in here! I found him! He didn’t try to run!”

  Feeling a raw tingle of fear trickle down his spine, Arent rose to his feet and stepped to the door. Peeking out, he saw a large share of the inhabitants of Wilson Creek tramping toward his home through the brush. They shouted, wielding pitchforks and torches. His mouth dropped open and he looked bewilderingly at Marge, who pointed at him. The crowd swept toward him, and the two largest men grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him away.

  “What is this?” he gasped, the shock making his rough appearance seem livid when it was terror-stricken.

  “We know what you did. Three men died when you blew up the dam!” someone shouted.

  “No! It’s not me!” he cried as they started to drag him away.

  “You can’t lie to us. Your boss told us all about it!” another heckled amidst the rabble. Arent turned his head to Marge, who had a look of smug satisfaction on her face. She smiled, revealing a missing front tooth.

  “It’s her! It’s her! I swear!” Arent howled, but Marge drowned out his accusation with shrieking laughter.

  “He’d sell out his own mother now he’s been caught!” she wailed. “My gift is just to draw upon liquid. He’s the one who busted the dam like a house of cards!”

  Arent knew her power was strong enough to beckon water through anything, and she must’ve used it to destroy the dam. Now she was blaming it on him, and there wasn’t a soul who would listen. Glaring over his shoulder at her, he noticed her sun burnt skin even appeared moist.

  The crowd dragged him toward the center of town where the rest of the angry townsfolk were waiting. They swept into the middle of Town Square, wooden homes and shops surrounding them except for the creek on one side, and a few men waited on an elevated platform. Appearing furious, Wilson waited for him there. He had a long white beard and used a cane to support his elderly frame. Beside him, the healer and the teacher condemned him with their glaring eyes. Thrown at the foot of the platform, this sixteen-year-old boy twisted and arched his back to look up at them.

  “You can’t be shamed enough for the unspeakable evil you’ve perpetrated against our community! That dam was going to enrich the lives of everyone here, including yourself, but you had to go and destroy it because it’s in your depraved nature. We can’t suffer to have you in our midst, and so we’ll offer you the best punishment we have. When your power returns to the web, we hope that it stays there. Bring out the executioner!”

  Wilson rendered his judgment without sympathy. There were cheers amongst the crowd, which dispersed and scattered to the edges of the square.

  “It’s not me!” Arent murmured to the figures towering over him.

  “I always knew he was different. You only had to look at him to know he wasn’t right,” the teacher scowled, tweaking his moustache. A great barn door swung open in the corner of the square, revealing a man dressed all in black. His face was covered in a hood, and he had stringy arms and legs. Slowly, Arent rose to his feet, confused and aggrieved.

  “Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” Wilson advised. “You don’t want to cause any more trouble for us, do you?”

  Townspeople looked on from every nook and cranny as the executioner strode out into the square. Though they appeared to be watching passively, he could already feel the effects of their powers. His mouth went dry, his mind became clouded, and each inhalation brought the smell of sewage.

  The executioner, standing a few yards away, raised his hand and clenched his fingers. It seemed he’d taken hold of his heart, and now an excruciating tightness constrained his chest. He staggered onto one knee and brought his hands to his core, trying to fight off the heart attack. Crawling toward his opponent, each heartbeat felt like lifting a mountain. His own power to generate energy was the only thing that gave him the strength to keep it beating. Still, he looked purple and wasted by the time he’d reached the feet of his murderer.

  Suddenly, he lurched up and roared, snatching the executioner by his shirt. A charge of energy raced down his arm and soon the man who had tried to kill him burst into bits of pink flesh. Blood covered him and he turned to the platform, sending a shockwave of horrified screams rippling around the square. The tightness had gone, as had all reason for restraint.

  The elder, teacher, and
healer were his next victims. He’d finished them off before they could make it to the stairs in the rear. Those who’d tried to confront him perished, as did most of those who chose to flee.

  As it happened, Marge created the only moment in which the success of his rampage became doubtful. She’d made the creek breach the bank and flood the square, rushing toward him like a slithering snake. Though the current chased him, it also directed him right to its summoner. Having enough of a head start to reach the house she hid in, he reduced it to splinters and propelled her into the air. The water’s flow died, and he caught his treacherous mentor at her last breaths. He lifted her helpless body so she could look into his vengeful eyes.

  “You used me, and now you will have your due!”

  He didn’t flinch when another wave of blood splashed against his face. When he finally left, the town had been destroyed entirely. Not a living thing remained in the area, and none would do so for a long time. Trekking out through the hills, the only things Arent brought with him were a deep-seeded sense of injustice and an inexhaustible drive to cause more destruction upon the civilized society that had forsaken him.

  Mira saw all of this and much, much more. As if just over his shoulder, she witnessed his lonely meanderings throughout the northern mountains and the wastes to the east. He crossed paths with the wanderings of Ogden Fortst, and the two struck up a vicious rivalry. When Fortst first heard about the carafe and the one ultimate power it contained, Arent trailed him the entire way. He stayed just out of sight, going without food or water for days at a time.

  They led him to the palace buried in a mound beside a towering peak. He ambushed them as they were about to lay hands on their prize, but the fighting was easier than he expected because Fortst had turned on his companions. Though he lost the final duel, he kept the object of the journey, half of which became lodged in his chest after the explosion and collapse. It increased his strength so much even the energy of the sun obeyed him, and it gave him insight into the painful memories of others.

  Never conceiving that the power contained within the carafe had been broken in half as well, Arent returned to the south to press his need for revenge against those who were wholly unconnected to the wrongs inflicted upon him. One of the first people he happened upon was a tortured scientist named Flip Widget. What Arent needed was someone he could trust, someone who hadn’t been tainted by the world he sought to demolish. Widget handed him the Ipswiches and their two newborn girls. One could create a mental projection of herself and the other could do nothing at all. Widget had told him a mole on the back of Clara’s neck would tell him which one was born naturally, and he raised that child to become just like himself.

  He met other outsiders and deviants, those who were never explicitly told to stay away from settlements but understood they were not welcome. It wasn’t difficult to make them share his bitter resentment for those who led a more comfortable, stable life. They would become his Sunfighter army and wage a war behind the child-killer they called Pyrenee that lasted for a decade.

  But Clara chafed under the role she performed as Pyrenee, subconsciously reaching out to her estranged sister even as she plotted to do her duty and eliminate all traces of her former family. When Arent’s dreams of reigning supreme over the people of Darmen were becoming history, Clara betrayed him and chose to stand behind her sister. The loss of his would-be daughter resonated with him every day, but it wasn’t long before he lost the carafe shard to her sister and his entire empire of self-gratification collapsed. He had tried to coerce Mira, just like he had her parents, but she found that altruism negated his effect and allowed her and her friends to undermine his grand schemes.

  Desperate to regain his dignity and once again possess what he felt was rightfully his, he followed the group of friends from Corey Outpost, a city he had leveled, vowing to make them share the same fate as all those who had wronged him from Wilson Creek. They didn’t understand what it was like for him to be seen as different, but they would learn when he once again wielded the carafe’s ultimate power.

  Chapter 11: The Trinity of Energy

  “You are like me,” Mira gasped as Arent emerged from behind the throne. Arent had said the very same words to her when he first met her by the Sunfighter’s base camp, but now that she understood it was too late. Clutching the other half of the carafe, he zeroed in on the half in Mira’s hand and began plodding toward her.

  “They treated you different because of how you looked,” she said, raising her arm and staggering back. Arent knew the power of the carafe, and indeed the half he held continuously brought images of Mira’s past to his mind. He saw her fall into the dirt during the Tournament Trial, felt her anguish after losing at the top of Shadow Mountain, and watched her weep at the loss of her friends. Altogether, she deserved to be crushed and put out of her misery.

  “It wasn’t your fault you turned out this way.” She was trying to twist him with his memories, just as he had tried to do to her. But the rage he felt pushed him onward. He couldn’t spare a moment for the pathetic weakling before him, especially when the object he had journeyed for waited within his grasp.

  Colliding shoulder-first into her, he knocked Mira clean off her feet and into the wall beside the tunnel. She slammed into it and collapsed to the floor, groaning. As he grabbed her and pulled her up, Clara appeared beside him, and he felt the familiar sting of her betrayal.

  “Let her go!” Clara screeched.

  “Hit me!” Arent roared into Mira’s face. That’s all it would take to lump her in with everyone else who had ever wronged him. They all deserved the same fate, and never had he felt any remorse over it.

  Looking into Mira’s eyes as he set her on her feet, she still showed no signs of resistance. She didn’t cry, just gazing at him strangely as though she were watching every painful moment in his life fly by. Cocking his fist, he snapped it forward and drilled her right cheek. Falling back, Mira hit the ground and spat blood against the stone floor. Clara shrieked and wailed, her fingers passing through his arm when she tried to restrain him.

  “Please stop!” Clara begged.

  “Fight me!” Arent demanded. She held the carafe shard to her side even though she could hardly lurch onto her elbows.

  “You can’t win.” She forced the words out, sputtering through a cough. Arent lunged forward to deliver another blow. Her head smacked against the hard floor and she moaned feebly. The impact had cut her face, which bled down the side to her ear and into her hair.

  “No!” Clara shouted.

  Arent could see the dilemma before her and the choice the twin Specials had presented her. She had made her decision, choosing to refuse to fight even though it meant her death. Thinking of all the pain this little defect caused him, he would be happy to comply. In fact, she would be the first victim of the ultimate power’s revival on the face of the Earth.

  When Arent reached for the broken diamond cylinder in her hand, he felt no resistance from her fingers as he pulled it away. When he had both halves in his possession, some noise rattled from the rock face. He had no idea what it was, but he knew he had little time to lose.

  “It all comes down to this,” he growled, slowly bringing the two halves together.

  Mira watched him from the floor with the innocence and astonishment of a baby. Her mouth dropped open as she beheld a subtle light glowing around the broken edges of the carafe. Each of the two pieces became brighter the closer they got to each other. Arent laughed, wondering what incredible terror he would be able to unleash on his troublesome foe.

  The light grew to be almost unbearable when he pushed the two halves together. The diamond fused together in a fiery red glow, just in front of Arent’s smiling face. It was all happening. This time, he would become unstoppable. The sparkly carafe, in the shape of a simple cup, became whole once again.

  Arent gasped with a quick breath, freezing in place. Something struck him in that moment, spreading through his mind like a lightning hitting the
water. The shards allowed him to see the darkest moments of Mira’s life, when despair and agony gripped her, but the full power of the carafe showed him something similar but quite different.

  Instead of seeing her weakness and how to exploit it, he could see that the suffering she endured was identical to his own. After spending a lifetime only thinking of himself and what had been taken from him, Arent finally perceived the bond they shared through their most painful sorrows.

  “I’m like you,” he whispered, his wide eyes conjuring a mesmerized glaze. They’d both been kept from society, betrayed by their mentors, torn from their families, and scorned for being different from everyone else. Suddenly Arent unclenched his fist. He couldn’t hit someone who had endured what he had endured. Realizing she had been tormented just as he had, all he could do was pity her for the hardship he knew all too well. Mira smiled weakly, staring into his eyes and lifting her head a little.

  “What is it? What’s goin’ on?” Clara asked, still breathing heavily.

  A deep roar echoed from the top of the hill above. Jerking his head back, he saw a hulking figure leap from the edge. Plummeting into the throne room, Ogden Fortst slammed into the floor and began sprinting at Arent.

  “I’m comin’ for you, Mira! It’s not too late!” he hollered.

  Arent turned plainly to his old nemesis, but he didn’t have a speck of fight left in him. He let Fortst knock him against the wall. Crushing the stone upon impact, he slid down to the floor.

  “No!” Mira yelled, and Fortst halted mid punch to turn to her, his other hand wrapped around Arent’s shirt.

  “I don’t get it, Mira. What’s happened?” Clara wondered.

  “The power…‌it’s the power of compassion,” Mira explained. She rolled onto her side, breaking into sudden laughter. “That’s how the fighting stops, when everyone realizes they share the same pain as their enemies.”