by Blooding, SM
I missed him.
Yotaka ended our individual sparring sessions with a clap clap clap of his hands and gestured with his long fingered hands that we should gather around.
“Are we done, Yotaka-san?” Joshua asked.
Our teacher didn’t even acknowledge the question. “What would happen if you fought together?”
We all kind of looked at each other.
“Isn’t that what we’re ruddy well doing?”
Yotaka closed his eyes for a quiet moment and opened them again, his expression resigned. “You fight like Synn, and when you fight, you fight alone. Your Mark goes out by itself and does nothing more than melt things because you are lava. Keeley’s Mark goes out and heals with light, and that is all it does. Yvette produces water, and there is nothing more than just water.”
“We get it,” Joshua grumbled.
Yotaka reached out with his hand and hit the taller man in the back of his head. “Think of what you could do if you were to combine your gifts. Fight together instead of alone.”
We all looked at each other.
He took a step back.
Yvette opened her mouth, shaking her head with a shrug. “I guess Synn and I could make steam, which could—” Her hands rose, palms up. “—cover an approach or a retreat?”
Joshua’s lips turned down as he nodded. “Synn and I can make glass fairly decently, though we need to work on tha’. Imagine the loads of money we could make sellin’ it.”
Yotaka shook his head.
“Haji and I,” Keeley said quietly, her green eyes brightening as she looked on my best friend, “could heal people on a whole other level. We could heal the soul.”
I watched the two of them. In order for Haji to heal anyone else, he’d first have to find a way to heal himself.
Yotaka clasped his hands with a subdued clap. “Joshua and Yvette, pair up.”
Joshua moved to stand by her with a grimace. “What are we going to do? Make things grow to the detriment of others?”
She threw him an oh-grow-up look.
“Keeley and Synn, pair up. Haji, please join me.”
I gave Keeley a tight lipped, unsure nod.
She returned it.
Yotaka turned his back to us and whispered in Haji’s ear.
“What do you think we could do?” Keeley asked quietly.
I shook my head. “I have no idea. We won’t be making glass.”
“Can you do anything other than lightning fire?” she asked.
I stared at her in surprise, but then remembered that she’d been spending a lot of practice sessions with the lethara. “Oh yeah. Yotaka showed me all kinds of things I can do. Uh, I can light candles with a thought. Um, there’s also this.” I flicked my thumb and a static flame shot out of it.
She jumped back with a startled giggle.
I smiled and put it out. “Plus there are other things, too. Apparently, my Mark is a mix of Ino and El’Asim so I have fire and storm. It’ll be interesting to see what I can do outside of here.”
She bit her lip and watched our instructor nervously. She still wasn’t really good in combat sessions. “We can’t do anything with plants, and I won’t do anything with earth.”
I shrugged. “We’ll figure it out. You’re able to manipulate living things on a molecular scale.” I shook my head. “Fire’s living. Kind of.”
She gave me a wide eyed, closed lip look.
“So, um, how’s the patient?” I asked.
She sent me a small smile. “Good. He’s doing better.”
I already knew that. I just didn’t know anything else to talk about.
Yotaka turned back to us.
Haji headed for the door.
I frowned and watched him go. “I don’t know what to do with him.”
“Haji?” Keeley asked in surprise.
I nodded. “We’re both so different now.”
“Do you want his friendship back?”
“Yes.” I turned my attention back to her, her red hair streaming down her back uncharacteristically loose. I liked it that way. “Yes, I do.”
She shrugged. “Then try talking to him like you are a friend.”
We didn’t have any more time to discuss it.
A stream of fire came shooting toward us.
Keeley and I dodged away from one another. He sure loved his bug-humping fire. There wasn’t a sky-fearing thing I could do to block it.
But I could attack. So while dodging the stream of spraying flames, I shot back in static lightning lava flows.
Yotaka shied away but not fast enough. His robe caught on fire.
I wasn’t about to stop and worry. That old coot had survived a lot worse than me. But then he changed his flame to something else that hardened the lava. I had no idea what just happened, so I changed it up.
With my ability to manipulate storms came the ability to create wind and gather water. There really wasn’t a lot of water in the immediate area. I was really going to have to reach. In order to do that, I had to pause in my attack and concentrate on the nearest large body of water, which was in the bathing chambers two levels above.
He took that as the perfect opportunity to attack.
But his flames never reached me. They were stopped at a shimmering wall of sparkling particles.
I didn’t ask. I just reached for the water, heated it to steam, created the wind to collect it all together and brought it down the staircase, through the door and directly over his head.
Then I let it go.
He was drenched.
I decided that might be a good time to pause. He looked like a wet cat. I didn’t let go of my Mark. I just stopped attacking him.
The sparkling particle shield didn’t drop either.
Yotaka nodded and dropped his arms. “Synn, if you would please stop making it rain, I would greatly appreciate it.”
I bowed, my fist in my palm, and called off the cloud.
Yvette flicked her eyes to the floor, pointing to the cloud with her thumb.
I nodded minutely and took the cloud out into the hall, allowing it to rain gently out there.
Keeley straightened and dropped her shield.
Yotaka shivered. Steam rose from him as he dried off. His long silver hair was still damp, but he was otherwise dry again.
“That was awesome,” I murmured to Keeley. “Thanks for covering my butt.”
“No problem,” she whispered back, but she was shaking. “I had no idea what I was doing.”
Yotaka didn’t give Yvette and Joshua much time to think, either. He rolled his hands and flung.
Theirs was a bit more comical. Yvette took the water and tried to drench him. However, she had to bring it in as water, not as a cloud, so he was able to prepare. He turned the water into steam, giving Joshua the opportunity to attack with vines, encircling Yotaka’s body with them and gently squeezing.
It didn’t take long for the vines to die, become brittle and fall away.
Then Yotaka let the two of them really have it. The only thing that saved them was a cascading wall of water. It acted as a shield that instantly evaporated and became steam.
Yotaka gathered another ball of fire, ready to launch it at them.
All the water had evaporated, and Joshua was all out of vines. There was also no dirt for him to manipulate (poor planning on our part), so they were out of tricks.
I gathered the steam into a cloud and released it behind Yvette, enabling her to take the water at the same time that Keeley set up her shield in front of them.
Joshua let the vines fly, touching Yvette’s hand, water leaping to join them.
Yotaka’s fire bounced off the shield and he found himself bound by the vines again. He was also drenched, which limited his ability to kill the vines before they squeezed out his breath.
He gasped something.
“Should I let up a bi’?” Joshua asked.
“Possibly?” I said. “He could be saying he needs to breathe and good job.”
The vines let up.
“Good job, Joshua-kun,” Yotaka rasped. “Can you let me go now?”
“Oh, sure.” The vines slowly retreated, and the water soon became steam again.
Yotaka stared at Keeley and me for a long moment. “Why did you interfere?”
“We didn’t interfere, Yotaka-san,” I said, bowing my head. “We assisted. They needed a minute to regroup and find another attack or defense that would work. We merely bought them the handful of seconds they needed to do so.”
“And if this had been a real life battle?”
“Us against you?” I asked. “There wouldn’t be three of us on the sidelines. We’d all be in there together.”
“All.” Yotaka straightened. “And how would you use the Mark of spirit in battle?”
Keeley cleared her throat. “We could use it to make the enemy lose heart, lose the need or will to fight back.”
That was good. “Or use it to bolster our own emotions when we feel the need to quit.”
Yotaka nodded, a slight smile on his face. “That is what I was thinking as well, and that is why I had Haji doing just that.”
We all turned as he headed back into the room, a ghost of a smile on his face.
Keeley’s expression brightened. “That’s how I was able to call up the shield. I would never have thought to do that on my own. I would have much preferred to hide. I am a healer, not a fighter.”
“I was wondering,” Joshua said. “That was bloody brilliant, by the way.”
“I didn’t have to do much with Synn,” Haji said with a churlish stare, “but there was some bolstering of Keeley and Joshua.”
Yotaka walked up to Keeley. “You say you are a healer and not a fighter. Have you talked to many healers?”
She shook her head.
“Then I think it is time for you to do so. Now that our lethara is once again healthy, you need to understand how a healer fights. This will be a good lesson for you.”
Keeley nodded and took a step back.
He turned to Joshua, confusion marring his forehead. “Why did you need bolstering?”
Joshua rolled his eyes and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Yotaka-san, there is a reason I spend most of m’ time with my inventions. In a battle, my Mark is practically useless. Vines and other greenery? Really? As a weapon? No. As a protection? Maybe. Maybe if we’re trying to hide, but in real life? Probably not so much.” He shook his head and shrugged. “I have nothin’ to bring to the table. At least Yvie has water.”
“This was good only because Synn was able to bring water.” He turned to Yvette. “You were confident.”
“I’m water. You’re fire. I cancel you out.”
“Yet you had no water to bring to the table.”
She narrowed her violet eyes and put her weight on one hip. “That leads me to a question, Yotaka-san. How is it that you and Synn are able to create fire out of nothing?”
He held up a long finger. “That is a most excellent question and one I am glad you asked.” He walked to the one and only table in the room and picked up a rather small book. “Chemistry.”
Joshua frowned as he walked closer to Yotaka. “But that doesn’t help much when we’re doin’ magick.”
Yotaka smiled and opened the book. “I want you to learn these elements and to be a bit more mindful of your environment. Next time, there will be others here to assist in assaulting you.”
Oh goody.
“And there will be a lot less time to prepare,” he continued, handing the book to Keeley on his way out. “So I would strategize now.”
We all watched him leave and then turned back to one another and shared a sigh. Fabulous.
CHAPTER 26
DON’T BE STUPID
We spent the rest of the afternoon studying the chemistry charts, taking notes, and working with our Marks. We experimented with several different things we could do.
I figured out how to create colorless fire. It melted the tile floor. I had no idea how upset Mother would be when she found out I’d melted the floor, but I decided it would be a good idea to keep it away from the lethara walls. We tried a couple of other things that we all thought were relatively non-meltable. Yes. I melted them all.
But that wasn’t the only thing.
Yvette figured out how to pull water out of thin air using some of the notes throughout the book dealing with protons and atoms. There were other things she saw that I wasn’t quite grasping. I knew with enough time, I probably could. But she understood how to blend different elements together to create water out of air and how to take air out of the air. Yeah, I had no idea what that even meant.
We also discovered how to draw water out of the body, using heat and her call for water.
Haji practiced his spirit Mark on us. That was rather unpleasant having someone inside of us tweaking with emotions that we didn’t want tweaked.
He and I faced off. I had other “targets” I was supposed to be facing off with, and he was trying to distract me enough to lose it. It was amazing how little control I had. He made me feel so depressed, I literally wanted to just stop then and there. I had no defense against that.
But then I recalled the times I’d spent with Nix and all the things she’d put me through. She’d tried to get me to bend, to relent, to submit, and I’d pulled on something deep inside that kept me going. So I tapped into that and kept going.
He discovered something. I saw it in his eyes, but he didn’t say anything. We finished and then it was Yvette’s turn.
Yvette was doing much better now that her mother had returned and stayed. She discovered that her mother hadn’t actually known they could change into fish people. It wasn’t until they were drowning that the thought passed through her mind. Then the transformation happened and she was able to do the same for the rest of the Family.
But they were unable to save the children.
That explanation seemed to help, and Yvette gained her light back a bit.
Keeley didn’t have the chance to spend time with the healers. At least not yet. We were set to spar off with whomever it was that Yotaka could drag together, and we needed that time to plan and figure out what we could do.
Surprisingly, there was a great deal we could do.
Haji and Keeley sat down together, staring at the chemistry tables and notes, and strategized a way to create a shield that would protect against something other than fire. Who knew what Yotaka would throw at us. We knew there were people with water Marks, Yvette’s Family. We had no idea who was joining us in the city. Maybe they’d use guns. Out in the real world, we were fairly certain there would be guns. So the two of them came up with a shield that we would all invest a little in, using one of Joshua’s “toys.”
Additionally, there were contingencies in place if one of us were wounded. This was actually the fun part – or the not so fun part – because we had to volunteer to be hurt so that Keeley could practice healing us. She’d actually had quite a bit of practice manipulating particles for the lethara, so stitching us up was relatively simple.
Haji turned out to be our best weapon. He was able to manipulate more than one person at a time and could even do so with an entire group. However, we needed to figure out a way to shield ourselves from that kind of invasion. I did not appreciate having him inside my head.
Joshua was our weakest link, though he was trying. Chemistry did not work with his Mark, at least not that we’d found. He needed dirt to be prepared. The only thing that he could bring was the vines. As he said, “If there were an enemy out there afraid of the green stuff, I could break his soul.” But for anything else, he was basically the distraction guy.
So we set up the room with a few elements already in place. We had sand and a little water, though if we really needed it, I could bring water in from just about anywhere.
We were ready.
As we headed out after practice one evening, Haji pulled me aside. We waited for everyone to clear out before he
spoke. “I found something.”
I leaned against the wall and crossed my arms over my chest. “When you were poking around inside my head?”
He nodded. “Are you interested in what I found?”
A part of me was afraid to find out. I shrugged. “You’re going to tell me anyway. What is it?”
He narrowed his eyes. The black circles had almost receded completely. “I found a bond.”
I pushed off the wall. “You can see it? What?”
He nodded. “Is this Nix?”
“I think so.” This could be very helpful even though I really didn’t understand it. “What can you tell me about it? What does it look like? Can you cut it? Can we remove it?”
He held up his hands and took a step back. “I do not know. This is new to me. I’ve seen this only once before.”
“When?”
He looked down at the floor and leaned up against the wall. “My mother and father. They were bonded like this.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “Nix and I can’t be bonded like that. I don’t like her.”
He shrugged. “It looks the same. It does feel different, mind you, but it looks the same.”
I tipped my head and shook it, falling back against the wall. “What do I do? Your mother and father were mated.”
Haji nodded, staring out into the room. “They were.” His mouth opened and closed.
I had nothing I could really add.
“You don’t think that you and her are—” He didn’t finish that sentence.
I shook my head violently. “No. There is no way in the seven pits of dirt that I’m mated to that woman. No.”
“But do you feel that way about anyone else?”
“The loathing? The hate? The complete sense of—” I didn’t even have a word for it. “No, Haj, I despise that woman unlike any other.”
He clucked his tongue. “Then I do not know. Do you want to try to do something with it?”
With my luck, we’d try to do something with it and make it worse. “I don’t know. Yes. I want to get rid of it, but I’m afraid of what might happen if we do. She’s like a blood tick. I just can’t get rid of her.”
“I wish there were someone we could ask.”
