Chaos (Tessa Avery Book 1)

by Lucy Roy

  Say what now?

  I understood about ten percent of what she’d just rattled off. When John and Analise started teaching me about the various categories Ischyra could fall into, I’d always had trouble focusing. Once they reached titles like “Psychometric” and “Splitter,” my brain would start to fuzz over.

  Hopefully, the people who actually were those things had paid closer attention in their lessons than I had.

  “I’ll be your lead mentor, but two additional trainers will be joining us tomorrow. Tonight, we’ll just do intros and get a feel for what the next year will bring. For now, let’s head back to your dorms. We’ll get some food and chat for a bit.” She grinned. “Then we’ll see what you can do.”

  We made our way up the hill to the dormitory, then Charlise led us directly to the largest common room. Glancing around, I noticed Sina, the statuesque redhead who’d sat with us at dinner, hovering near the door. Beside her was a tall, muscular guy with curly brown hair, dark eyes, and full lips. His eyes were scanning the room shrewdly.

  “Come on, I see Sina,” I said, grabbing Anette’s hand.

  “Oh, wonderful! She was so nice at dinner, don’t you think?”

  When Sina saw us heading over, she did a little hop and clapped her hands happily. “I’m so happy there are people I know in our group, aren’t you?”

  “Yep, totally.” I looked up at the guy glowering beside Sina and reached out a hand.

  “Hi, I’m Tessa.”

  He looked at my hand for a moment before taking it and giving it a firm shake. “Damien.”

  Ignoring his surly attitude, I grinned.

  “So what affinities were called for you two?”

  “I’m a Mindlinker,” Sina said. “Which apparently means I can link my mind to someone else’s and take over their body.”

  Before Damien could respond, Sina tilted her head to the side and her expression became perplexed. “Um, can someone please tell me what our Mentor is doing right now?”

  I cast a glance over my shoulder, and sure enough, Charlise was standing in the middle of the room with her eyes closed. Silence fell over the room as everyone turned to watch her.

  A minute or two later, her eyes popped open and she smiled.

  “Pizza’s on its way!”

  Her smile faltered a bit as she took in our incredulous expressions, then she rolled her eyes and huffed out a sigh.

  “Oh, come on! Three of you are Telepaths; did you really think you’d only use your powers to fight evil?”

  Sina gave a quick shake of her head. “You just ordered pizza?”

  Charlise gave her a patronizing smile.

  “Yes, Sina, I just ordered pizza. The Ischyra who runs the pizza shop on Main Street and I are good friends, and he doesn’t mind if I pop into his head to place an order. Besides, we need to get to work and don’t have time to be making pizza runs.”

  There was another beat of silence, and I blinked a few times as I tried to actually absorb what had just happened.

  “Wow.” Sina laughed, looking impressed.

  “Now.” Charlise clapped her hands. “Enough talk of food. Let’s get started.”

  With a quick flick of her wrist, she sent every piece of furniture back against the walls, leaving a wide-open space in the center of the room.

  “Everyone form a circle and sit.”

  As everyone moved toward the center of the room, I wedged myself between Anette and a girl named Josephina. Charlise took a seat directly across from us between two of the girls I hadn’t really gotten to know yet, Lara and Cho.

  “I understand that you’re excited to get going,” Charlise began, “but you need to be patient. Your powers have just awoken. They need time to adjust to you, just as you need time to adjust to them, so it may take a few days to really get a feel for each other. I’m assuming you got the same talk from Athena that I did about learning to put one foot in front of the other?”

  I heard a few answering grumbles, and when I looked around, I saw that I wasn’t the only one whose shoulders were slumped in disappointment. Faces that had been alight with anticipation a few minutes ago were looking decidedly dejected.

  “Well, she’s right, especially when it comes to Mentalist abilities. For now, we’re going to do introductions and some mental exercises.” She held up a finger. “And do not even think about rolling your eyes at the term ‘mental exercises.’ You are Mentalists now. If you think for one second you’ll get through the rest of eternity without exercising your mind to keep it sharp, you’re sorely mistaken.

  “So, introductions. I’m Charlise Abrams, originally from El Paso, Texas. I’ve been an Ischyra for twenty years. I’ve got affinities in four areas—telekinesis, telepathy, mind linking, and illusions.” She looked around at us eyebrows raised. “Who can tell me what those mean?”

  Hesitantly, a pretty brunette raised her hand. “Telekinetics can move things with their minds, Mindlinkers can inhabit the mind and take control of any living creature, Telepaths can converse with others mentally, and Illusionists can create illusions and manipulate those made by others.”

  “Good, Sylvi.” Charlise stretched her legs out in front of her and leaned back on her hands. “We’ll start intros with you.”

  Sylvi sat up a bit straighter as all attention turned toward her.

  “I am Sylvia Korhosen, but everyone calls me Sylvi. I grew up in Rovaniemi, which is in the Northern part of Finland. I am a Psychometric.”

  “Wonderful!” Charlise clapped her hands. “Can you tell us what a psychometric does?”

  Sylvi shook her head shyly. “No, I cannot remember. It was one of the few that did not stick,” she said.

  “No problem, Sylvi. We’re here to learn. Can anyone here tell Sylvi a bit more about her affinity?” Charlise gestured with a hand toward Damien who sat near the door. “Damien, what can you tell us about yourself and Psychometrics?”

  Damien cleared his throat and gave us all a cocky smile. “I am Damien Maheras, and I am from Athens. I have dual affinities. Like Charlise, I am a Mindlinker.” He gave her a simpering smile. “I am also an Astral, which means I can project my consciousness anywhere within the four realms.”

  He turned toward Sylvi and gave her a slightly patronizing look. “Ischyra with Psychometric ability are able to obtain memories or knowledge from persons or objects through touch. They can be quite valuable should information need to be extracted from an individual who can no longer communicate. Psychometrics are also very good at weapons training because they can pick up a weapon and tell how it is supposed to be used based only on touch.”

  He gave Charlise a conspiratorial smile before sitting back down.

  I’d barely been around the guy five minutes and it was already painfully clear he was going to be that guy in our group.

  “Exactly! Thank you.” Charlise turned back to Sylvi. “Do you have any questions?”

  Sylvi pressed her lips together and shook her head, her face flushing as though embarrassed she hadn’t known the answer. I wasn’t sure why, but based on the looks of confusion I’d seen when Charlise rattled off our affinities, it seemed like quite a few of our group hadn’t taken that aspect of their lessons as seriously as others.

  “No, not yet, thank you,” she murmured.

  “Okay, who’s up next?” Charlise inclined her head to see around Sylvi. “Kieran! Tell us about yourself.”

  And so it went for the next hour. About halfway through introductions, five pizzas were delivered, and slices were passed around.

  For the most part, the affinities were all pretty intuitive. Trackers could mentally track people. Remotes were Ischyra who were able to view anything from anywhere in all the realms. They were very similar to Astrals who could project their consciousness anywhere they wanted to go. The main difference between the two was that, in order to astral project, the person would have to enter a trance-like state, whereas Remotes just had to “look” at what they wanted to see.

  The
affinities I’d had the least amount of knowledge on—as in none, really—were Splitters and Replicators, which sounded more like electrical parts than supernatural affinities.

  Both affinities were similar to Mindlinkers in that they could connect to another person’s mind, but that was where the similarities ended. Replicators could transfer their own knowledge to others. Splitters could divide their consciousness between multiple people, causing a type of “hive mind” communication capability. I imagined it would be kind of like getting stuck in a massive group text, only a million times worse because it was happening in your brain.

  Once everyone had eaten their fill and we’d gotten all the introductions out of the way, Charlise had us deposit our plates in the incinerator so she could show us how to do our mental exercises.

  “Okay, so right now, here’s what I want ya’ll to do.” She cracked her neck loudly, then sat down and placed her hands on her knees. “You start by doing a bit of deep breathing, like this.”

  She demonstrated taking deep runner’s breaths: in through the nose, out through the mouth.

  “Do that for sixty seconds, it’ll help center your energy. Then we’ll move on to some stretches.”

  This exercise was actually familiar to me, as John had forced me to do it any time my emotions got the better of me during training.

  After we did our breathing, she had us do a bunch of sitting stretches—touch our toes, reach for the sky, knee to shoulder, and a whole bunch of others that I thought I’d left behind in my basement workout room.

  We repeated the breathing exercise a few more times, each time extending it over longer intervals before she told us we were ready.

  “Now that we’re all relaxed and our minds are open—” Charlise looked around with a wicked grin “—let’s see what you’ve got. Come on, get up.”

  Yes, I thought.

  She jumped to her feet and pulled her short hair back with a clip. “So, the first thing you want to do is remember that your affinity is now just another one of your senses. When you access all of your other senses, there’s an action-reaction that happens. For example, when you hear the sizzle of a frying pan, you sniff the air to see what’s cooking. When you’re reading small print on a page, you might squint your eyes to see better. You flex the body part that’s attached to that sense and get a response. Your affinity is no different.”

  She pursed her lips and looked around the room.

  “Okay, let’s go with an easy one. Tessa!”

  I jumped at the mention of my name.

  “Yes?” I asked tentatively. Please don’t make me go first, I begged silently.

  “My fellow Telekinetic!” She put her hands on her hips and gave me a nod of encouragement. “Move something for us.”

  “Um—okay."

  Everyone was looking at me expectantly, like I was supposed to know what I was doing or something.

  I took a deep breath and looked around for something to focus on. My eyes landed on a small end table that Charlise had shoved against a wall next to the door that didn’t look too heavy. Facing it, I narrowed my eyes and tried to “flex” my brain. I mentally poked at the power that I could feel swirling around at my head and tried to get it to react.

  It’s just another sense, Tessa, that’s all. Just pretend your mind sees something on that table over there, so it’s going to go take a closer—

  WHAM!

  The table flew across the room and slammed into the opposite wall, leaving a large dent in the plaster.

  A stunned silence took over the room.

  “Holy shit,” I breathed.

  “Seconded,” Sina whispered.

  “Awesome job, Tessa!” Charlise exclaimed, waving her hand to put the plaster back in place. “Only a few hours in and you’re already putting holes in the wall!”

  I laughed weakly. “You’d think the walls around here would be stronger than the ones on Earth.”

  “Oh, they are.” Charlise gave me a wide grin. “You threw that bad boy really hard.”

  She threw her hands in the air. “Everyone, give Tessa a hand!”

  The others gave me a round of applause, and as I looked around the circle, I saw that a lot of them wore eager expressions.

  “Who’s up next?”

  Hands flew into the air.

  “Sina! Come on, girl, link up!”

  Hesitantly, Sina rose and wiped her hands on her pants. She cast questioning eyes at Charlise. “With who?”

  Charlise tapped her finger on her chin as she looked around the room.

  “Kieran. He looks like he wants to volunteer.” She gave a wide smile to the red-haired Irish boy sitting directly across from her. “Don’t ya?”

  He smiled sheepishly. “Sure.”

  “That’s the spirit!” Charlise clapped her hands. “Sina, I’d recommend holding hands for this first round. It’s a bit easier with physical contact.”

  She waited until both were in place before continuing.

  “Now, Kieran, I want you to open your mind to Sina, almost like you’re imagining her psyche becoming one with yours.”

  “And what do I do?” Sina asked with a frown.

  “Eh, it’s tough to say.” Charlise scrunched her face. “I think the best way to describe it would be taking him into a mental headlock. Once you get latched on, you can take over.”

  “A headlock. Got it.” Sina gave a sharp nod, then narrowed her eyes in concentration as she tried to subdue Kieran’s mind.

  Half an hour later, Sina’s flame red hair was plastered to her neck, and she seemed no closer to linking with Kieran’s mind than she had when she started.

  “Just give it a little nudge,” Charlise encouraged. “You’ve almost got it.”

  “If you say so,” Sina muttered. Her mouth was pressed into a thin line as she focused all her mental strength on Kieran. Finally, she succeeded in taking over long enough to scratch his nose.

  “Great job, Sina!” Charlise said, patting her on the back. “Go take a seat.”

  With a breathless laugh, Sina gave Kieran a high five and sank to the floor in an exhausted heap. She looked up at Charlise. “When will it stop being so difficult?”

  “It’s different for everyone, really. Now that you’ve got the first one down, the second time should be easier,” Charlise explained. “But don’t worry, I’m not going to push you any further today.”

  “Oh, thank the gods.” Sina exhaled loudly as she leaned back and rested her head against the wall. Her light, freckled skin was red and blotchy from exertion, so when Charlise handed her a bottle of cold honeysuckle water, she chugged it down like she hadn’t had a drop in months.

  “Okay, Kieran, take a break for a few, you’ll have your turn in a bit.” She scanned the circle, her eyes landing on Damien. “Damien, you’re up!”

  A self-assured smile spread across his face as he stood. “Thank you, Charlise. What would you like me to do?”

  “This one’ll be simple.” She made a sliding motion with her hand and the drink machine that had been pressed against the back wall slid forward a few feet, then gave him an easy smile. “I want you to project yourself behind that machine and read what’s written on the back. Picture yourself where you want to go and will it to happen.”

  He clasped his hands behind his back and closed his eyes. “Uh huh,” he murmured, not bothering to thank her for her attempt to guide him. Charlise pursed her lips but otherwise didn’t react to the brush off.

  After about thirty seconds, Damien’s body crumpled to the floor, causing more than a few snickers.

  “Oh, shoot.” Charlise deadpanned. “I forgot to tell him to sit down first.”

  Walking over to him, she rolled him onto his back.

  When Damien returned to his body, his eyes flew open and he was gasping for breath.

  “Hey, there, buddy! How ya feeling?” Charlise’s head was tilted in concern. “Sorry, I forgot to remind you to lie down before projecting. Once your consciousness leaves your
body, there’s nothing left in there to tell it to stand up, ya know?”

  He struggled to sit up, but the quiver in his arms told me he’d probably been physically drained during his projection.

  “Thanks,” he whispered hoarsely, all the bravado he’d just boasted gone. “I will remember that for next time.”

  “So, what did it say?” Charlise asked after handing him a bottle of water.

  He scowled. “Made you look.”

  Charlise beamed at him. “Darn right.” She patted him on the back and helped him back to his spot in the circle. “You did great.”

  For the next several hours, we all took turns practicing our powers. Some got the hang of their affinities pretty quickly, while others struggled just like Sina. Finally, long after the sun had sunk below the horizon, Charlise called it a day.

  “You all did great today. If you feel like you didn’t get the hang of it, don’t let it get to you. Your performance here doesn’t necessarily indicate how you’ll do tomorrow. Even if your success today felt minor, it was still a success. Hold on to that knowledge and carry it with you. Now off to bed, it’s gonna be an early day. Chiron’ll be out first thing.”

  She waved her hand and replaced all the furniture, then opened the door and let us out.

  “Finally,” Anette moaned. “I had no idea we would be there for so long!”

  I bumped her with my shoulder. “Come on, let’s go get some sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

  She tilted her head and rested it on my shoulder as we walked.

  “I will pray to the gods that you are correct.”

  18

  Nathaniel

  Sleep eluded me that night.

  I felt as though I’d lost control when I’d awakened Tessa’s powers, and that was not a feeling I was accustomed to. The visions that flowed from her mind into mine that I’d forced into the deepest parts of her were perplexing, to say the least, and I struggled with the decision to confront her with them.