by Winfred Wong
THE IDENTICAL TWINS
MIND-WIELDER BOOK 1
BY WINFRED WONG
Text copyright © 2017 Wong Chun Wing
All Rights Reserved
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
THE IDENTICAL TWINS
COPYRIGHT
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
A note from the author
CHAPTER ONE
* * *
Swaddled in eddies of chill breeze of the boundless night sky above an eerie, fog-enveloped forest, a black-feathered, crested eagle was soaring, flailing its huge wings regularly, racing the howling wind. The world seemed tranquil up in the free sky, but it wasn’t the same for the people sprinting on an open grass field that slanted up to the skyline beneath the eagle’s belly.
On the ground, a squad of nine well-equipped cavalries was chasing a sprinting man, who held a long, steel-made, burgundy staff that had a heptagonal sapphire attached to the top of it in his hand, at full throttle. The clattering hoof beats shattered the peace of the darkness and displaced it with some neighs of horses. The masters of the horses all had spectacular long silver sabers, which only the most skilled knights could wield, in their hands and hefty but protective shining silver armors emblazoned with a symbol of black inverted diamonds, covering most of their bodies, revealing their true identities as the Knights in Austhun.
On the other side, the escaping man, who had a metallic left ear, wearing a blouse of cloth, with a navy cloak over the top, a leather belt round his waist and a small bag clipped onto the belt, manifested no fear in his hard, blue eyes even though his life was at stake.
“Surrender! Thief! You are doomed,” one of the riders, who wore a griffin-shaped helmet that signified his role as the leader of the squad, snorted, lifting his lethal sword above his head.
In spite of the shortness of breath from exertion, the blue-eyed man showed no sign of slowing down. Perspiration kept sliding down on his beard that wrapped around his mouth. He ran as fast as he could, though the four-legged animals were beyond doubt the better runners. Being slightly anxious about the situation, he looked over his shoulder from time to time and eventually discovered that the galloping horses were only about seventy yards behind.
Recognizing it was impossible to outrun them, he unsheathed a dagger he hid in a glided scabbard concealed under his cloak smoothly and tossed it skyward carelessly. And, as the dagger was rising up, he started visioning a scene, a bloody scene that could effectively deter the animals from coming any closer, when a sudden burst of light distracted him and interrupted his imagination.
With a surprised look, he found himself surrounded by some mysterious light. So, he searched around for the source of the light and realized that the brightness was emanated from the azure gemstone attached to the staff in his hand.
Out of curiosity, he raised the staff up to take a closer look at it and discovered an eye-like object, which was seemingly staring at him, right under the gemstone. He was intrigued to know what it was, however, as the cavalries were hard on his heels, there was no more time for him to think.
He focused back on visioning when he turned his eyes back on the dagger, which was magically floating in the air, repelling gravity, and resumed conjuring up his imagination, which there was a dozen of identical daggers that came out of nowhere above his head.
Soon after the imagination was formed clearly in his mind, imagination was no longer just imagination as it started to materialize. The dozen of daggers that wasn’t supposed to be real became real, all floating in the air, pointing to the merciless riders.
Intimidated by the daggers, coincidentally, the horsemen all released the spurs to slacken their paces, notwithstanding their courage, when the blue-eyed man took his chance to veer right and bolt toward the foggy forest.
“Riders, whip the horses! Don’t let him get away,” the leader thundered. “This little trick can do us no harm!”
Encouraged by him, the others all pressed hard on the spurs again, telling the horses to charge at full gallop, significantly reducing the distance between them and the staff owner. The clattering of the hooves became incessant, but the blue-eyed man remained imperturbable, judging by his steady legs and confidence revealed through his resolute eyes.
Soon as the fastest horseman was about to strike him with a deadly hit at the head, he closed his eyes and visioned. And all of a sudden, like someone had propelled them with force, the daggers all started to fly toward the approaching riders, all piercing the air like a lightning bolt.
The daggers came in so quickly that none of them could dodge it. One of them was stabbed right at his forehead. He fell off his frightened horse that was rearing and plunging and crashed onto the ground. The remaining riders shared the same fate as their unlucky companion, except that the daggers inexplicably passed through their body without leaving a scratch on them and penetrated into the ground before it vanished like it had never existed. The harmlessness of the illusions was, however, dreadful enough to make their horses stop and neigh wildly.
Watching the shadow of the blue-eyed man gradually disappearing into the forest with his amber, glowing eyes, the leader of the riders gently dragged back his horse’s rein, stretched his hand up to tell his man to calm down and regroup. He then took off his helmet, revealing his chiseled, freckled face that unveiled his age and his curly brown hair that imbued with a sense of maturity, dropped it onto the ground and levelled a glowering look at his men as fury surged through his body.
“Nuada! Burn some woods, we need a fire,” he commanded, as he sheathed his sword, dismounted and sat down on the ground.
“As you command,” Nuada, a brawny soldier with a deep scar on his left forearm and a square forehead, replied, as he went out to cut off a small cord of split firewood hung at the back of the saddle of his horse.
As Nuada proceeded, one of them suddenly darted toward the dying man, who had just been stabbed in the head, lying on the ground. When he came near him, he took off his Norman helmet, which had been hiding his triangle young face underneath, his black hair flopped over his eyes, crouched next to him and placed his four-fingered right hand, without a pinkie, on his pulse, shaking involuntarily.
“Hang in there, Lee!” He wept over the cold body of his friend and grasped his arm tightly, realizing that the throbbing pulse of him had already ceased.
He almost choked on the tears that was welling up in his throat as a sense of powerlessness overwhelmed him because he knew there was nothing he could’ve done to save him. The sound of his sobbing was especially disturbing and strangely eerie in such an open area as it echoed across the peaceful sky
. He cried until a crackling fire was set up. The burning flame provided them the warmth they needed to survive a night in the middle of nowhere, but the blazing heat of rage developed in his heart after crying was even more sweltering than that.
A soft breeze of wind kept rubbing against his face as he stood up and paced around, trying to extinguish the mournful rage within him, while others were resting. However, possessed by resentment, he could no longer suppress his impulse to wreak revenge on the burglar, the man with a metallic ear. Thus, he stomped toward their leader, who was whetting his saber with a stone, in a woeful and offending manner.
“My centurion, I wonder why do we stop here?” he questioned, in a relatively discreet manner, simmering with suppressed frustration. “We should have chased that man into the forest and have the staff returned. We’re just wasting our time sitting here and doing nothing.”
The call of the eagle interrupted the quietness of the darkness like it was the only living thing on earth that heard his question, making the awkward silence particularly conspicuous in such a windy night. Witnessing what happened, the other men around shook their head naturally and went off to unpack their sleeping mats tied to the saddles of their horses when they realized that their leader wasn’t going to say anything about it as he was submerged in thought. But, impatiently, the young man sat down behind his leader and stared at him with his hollow and violet eyes, waiting for his reply, hoping for the answer he wanted.
Realizing his death was a grievous blow to him, “Rogen! Come help me with Lee’s body.” a mid-aged, muscular man with abnormally huge feet and rough skin said to the young man while he was busy digging a hole with a shovel.
“He died with glory,” he added in a pensively sad tone, trying to change his focus.
“Oh, Haddon, I don’t get it,” Rogen replied frustratingly when he strode to his horse and took the shovel hanging on the saddlebag. “That bastard ambushed our convoy, stole the staff and even killed Lee! And we are just going to wait out here while he is running away!?”
“No,” said firmly Haddon, as Rogen began digging with the shovel with his dark black hair dancing in the gentle wind, which could seemingly blow away his agony.
“Levi would never have stopped the pursuit,” Haddon continued, “if it isn’t the Flipside.”
“What Flipside?” Rogen asked, losing his patience.
“That forest,” explained Haddon, pointing to the woods. “No one could find their way out of it, literally no one. Once you step in the forest, there’s no way back, and that bastard you want to kill is probably dead by now.”
“You can’t be serious,” returned Rogen. “It sounds like a dumb fake tale fabricated by local villagers to scare the kids.”
“So, you’re from the south.” Haddon nodded and touched his beard with a silly but confident grin on his face.
“Does pointing out that make you feel better?” Rogen said. “And you are changing the subject.”
“No, my son,” Haddon said, looking at a man behind Rogen. “I do know something you don’t know.”
“And what is that?” Rogen shrugged.
“We will be on our way back to Lome at daybreak, right?” Haddon asked the man behind Rogen.
“How –” Rogen said, but paused when someone interrupted.
“Rogen, Haddon is right, we will be going back to Lome when the sun comes out again. Prepare yourself and spread the words,” Levi said with a pair of puffy, red eyes, biting his nails. “There is nothing we can do here.”
“But why?” Rogen insisted.
“Please, for god sake, have some faith in him, he always makes the right choice,” Haddon said, feeling annoyed because of his stubbornness, as Levi gave him a sympathetic pat on shoulder before he walked away. “He is our centurion and a man of honour.”
“Yeah, you’re right, he is our centurion, and he always makes the right choice,” Rogen said in a despair tone, in the throes of burying a dead friend. “It’s all about making the right choice, yeah.”
Glaring at Levi’s back, Rogen sighed out dolefully as he knew that it was impossible to change his mind. His hands were shivering, and he dropped the shovel onto the soil. Enervated by grief, he knelt beside Lee and began weeping again as the sense of powerlessness emerged in his heart again.
“Keep your chin up!” Haddon shouted.
It was a long night without a sound. No one spoke a word in the rest of the freezing darkness after Rogen dried his eyes as the sophisticated men knew that it took time to comfort a disturbed young soul.
Tears were shed. Grave was back-filled, and the sun began to peep out, dissipating the distress in the air serenely with cozy sunlight. The trained men had already had their things packed, ready to ride, and, invigorated by the amber glow of sunrise, they mounted, bowed to Lee’s grave to say goodbye and rode toward Lome under the command of Levi while the eagle was still hovering over, like it was the guardian of the grave.
∫∫
Swathed in an eerie aura of mystery that can turn the most valiant man on earth into a coward under silent moonlight, there was a man in the foggiest forest of the world, the Forest of Sitek which was commonly known as the Flipside by the folk. The never-dispersing mists filled up every inches between the woods and acted like a reflective shield that kept any forms of light out, creating a completely never-been-seen forest. Some random sobbing and mourning sounds of some unknown creatures from somewhere in the dusky woods added an abstract feeling of weirdness to the forest, not to mention the widespread rumors of the existence of violent centaurs in the woods and the unbearably pungent smell of the decaying deadwood logs. No one was fond of this place, except tale-tellers, who earned a living by telling the wonderful tales of the story of the Visionary Sitek.
The morning sunlight at daybreak was always bracing, bracing enough to re-energize the low-spirited soldier, but it was never enough to brighten up the benighted forest. As always, the sunlight was scattered entirely before it can reach the dead leaves on the top of the crowns. Darkness was the only thing that can be seen from outside of the woods, and radiance was just nothing more than a word in the dictionary to the living things in the forest, not excluding the escaped man who ran into it.
The total darkness of it turned him into a blind man at the first second he staggered into the trees, but, due to a false sense of lack of security, he didn’t stop blundering deeper into the heart of the forest until he realized that he had completely lost all sense of direction. He tried several times to go straight back along the way he had come, but at the end of every attempts, he found himself always coming back to the same place.
And he came to a realization that the chance of finding a way out by stumbling around was bleak. So, he rubbed his dagger against a rock he picked up randomly with all his strength relentlessly for hours in the hope of producing a spark that would allow him to see for, at least seconds, though it did not work. He exerted himself so immensely that he was too exhausted to move a finger in spite of his unyielding will. He released his debilitated fingers and dropped the dagger when he finally felt downhearted.
“After all we have done…” He let out a sigh like it was the end of the world.
He then lay down on the ground, using the dead leaves as a couch, hid his bluish eyeballs under his eyelids and visioned a scene, where he was embraced by light, the same way he wielded his mind to scare off the riders, but nothing happened.
“Not my strong suit,” he reminded himself, scratching his flat nose with his tired hand, feeling drowsy.
With hope of getting out oozing away and wish of taking a nap sneaking up, he rolled back and forth fecklessly to stay conscious and forced his mind to think.
And suddenly, on the third roll, he felt that something was under his back. So, he reached out and got a hand on that something. “The staff!”
He held it close to his chest, trying to recall things that happened during the escape, and burst out laughing at the moment he realized that his visioning
can somehow trigger a light emission of the sapphire. Immediately, he started to vision a floating dagger just like what he had done during the escape, and, unsurprisingly, it worked. Through the blue crystal, the sapphire shimmered abruptly and slightly lighted up the surroundings like a dying candle flame.
After experiencing blindness for hours, he knew even the least bright glow can dazzle him regardless of how prepared he was. So, he turned his head away from the gemstone to avoid exposing to it. But as he did it, his waterskin, which was clipped onto his belt, accidentally fell to the ground, and the water inside just flew over the edge of it. He wanted to gather it up before it all slipped away, but, as he had been without light for too long, he was deprived of sight even though he had turned his head away. He kept his mind focused on visioning and stayed still until his eyes gradually adjusted to the light.
“Not bad.” He took a quick look around, cracked out a triumphant smile and picked up the empty waterskin when his eyes adapted to the light.
He raised the burgundy staff up high and tramped to and fro, looking for a way to get out of this forest, and, as he was exploring around, he noticed that the pewter bushes in the surroundings were slowly becoming transparent, partly or wholly, as if they had gone to another dimension. The closer the bushes were to the source of the light, the stronger the vanishing effect was. The closest plants, woods and leaves that were within about one meter from the gemstone all vanished like they had never been there from the very beginning, and, simultaneously, those beyond one meter but within the bright area were partially disappeared.
He furrowed his brows, feeling confused, and goggled at the eye-like object that was again gawking at him for a while before he realized that, thanks to the mythical effect, he was able to search the ground without being obstructed by the bushes. With the aid of the light, he instantly found the footprints he made when he came in and followed them to make his way out. It didn’t take long before he returned to where he came, but right before he stepped out of the forest and walked into the open field, he used a tall tree as a cover, craned his neck to have a better view on outside, saw a thin layer of dusts flung up by the tails of running horses from the south and kept looking around.
