by Oxford, Rain
“You do know that I am an adult, don’t you? Capable of taking care of myself and being responsible for myself.”
“You’re half right. You are an adult. However, as Edward’s apprentice, he is entirely responsible for you as well as your care. In the eyes of Duran law, you might as well be his three-year-old child.”
He started up the large staircase and I followed in silence. I really didn’t know what to say. Of course, that never really stopped me from talking before.
“I’m getting really tired of people treating me like a kid,” I said when we reached the top. We were now on a landing that led to many halls, doors, and stairways. Straight across from the stairs was a huge set of doors with three goblin guards standing in front of them.
Nano sighed and gave me his full attention. “Have you seen how any of us treat children?”
“Not really.”
“Then how do you know we’re treating you like one? I know I’m not, and Edward is afraid of children, so he isn’t, and Divina… she isn’t either. I can’t say I know what the others treat you as, but I treat you as a young guy who is very accident prone and will cause his terrifying master great trouble if injured. And I understand why you feel this way, because you’re in this brand new world and we’re all trying to take care of you. But think about why. You are new to this all, and you’re very young. You don’t like feeling like a child, but someday you’ll miss it. I’m not nearly as old as Edward, and sometimes, such as when I’m invited to my great, great, great, great grandson’s wedding, I feel older than dirt.
“Do you know what a wizard is? Someone who has learned enough to know he knows nothing. You never stop learning. You never stop developing and changing. I don’t remember who I used to be, and by the time I know who I am now, I won’t be that anymore. I see the worlds changing and growing all around me. People, ideas, civilizations… they all are born and die and reborn. I will never die. I will get older for all eternity. You’re young. Enjoy it while you can.”
He turned and strolled towards the goblins like he didn’t just spill his emotional guts all over the floor.
I followed behind as the goblins opened the doors, wondering why they needed to open both doors for just us. Inside was a large room with two small doors, a bunch of guards, and a boy sitting on a classic throne. There were probably twenty goblins spread out along the wall. A man, around thirty, dressed in a dark red tunic and tan slacks stood next to the throne. The king himself was a surprise. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen and with his light blond hair, dark blue eyes, and restless expression, he looked nothing like I had pictured.
I had enough time to consider if I were supposed to bow before the boy-king jumped out of his seat and ran to Nano, yelling out a greeting before almost taking Nano down with a hug. None of the guards tensed, but the man standing next to the throne snarled.
Nano and his nephew spoke in whatever language it was they used before they turned to me. “Nila, this is Dylan. He speaks English, and he’s human. He will be the new Guardian of Earth.”
“That is Tiamat world, is it?” the king asked with a thick accent.
“Yes.”
“Nice to meet. Call me please Nila.” He reached out his hand and I shook it.
“Nice to meet you, too.” The unknown man left the throne and stomped over to the young king, and the closer he got, the more threatening vibes I could pick up. He started talking to Nila, who seemed completely oblivious. “Nano,” I said.
“Yes, I know.”
The man sneered at me, put his hand on Nila’s shoulder, and growled something insolent to Nano. I could pretty much smell the evil on him and it smelled like assassination.
Nano regarded me, rather reluctantly. “Adre, this is Dylan.”
“Dylan what?” the man scoffed.
“Just Dylan,” I answered with a glare.
“Dylan this is Nila’s brother, Adre.”
“I would never have guessed you and Nila were related. You must be the pompous sheep of the family,” I said.
Nila giggled and Nano stepped between me and Adre. “Dylan, maybe you should wait outside,” he said. Apparently getting kidnapped and eaten wasn’t as bad as facing Nila’s brother.
“I go,” Nila said happily.
“No, you will stay here,” Adre growled.
“I go,” Nila repeated, obviously knowing his word was final and he would do what he wanted.
Nano sighed. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but, Dylan, watch out for him. Nila is more likely to get into trouble than you are and if he tries to get you to go on one of his adventures, for the love of god, just say no. Over and over and over again with a large blunt object if you have to.”
Nila laughed at Nano’s concern and grabbed my arm, pulling me out of the room. “Come, I show big volcano, secret bridge over.”
“Do not go near that volcano!” Nano yelled.
“Sounds like fun,” I said. As soon as the door closed on me and Nila, we started laughing until the guards looked at us funny.
“I lie about volcano.”
“I know. So what do you want to do?”
“Kitchen. Hungry. No!” he yelled at one of the door guards when he tried to follow. “Stay! Good boy…”
“Can’t you just tell your guards and servants to bring you food?”
“I no want king food. I want yummy food. I sneak. You help.”
“I feel a lecture coming on. Oh, well, lead the way.”
Instead of going downstairs, he led us to another room. This was a smaller room that was set up like a traditional private library with books on shelves, a large wooden desk, a fireplace, and two comfortable looking chairs in front of the fireplace. There were no windows, but I hadn’t seen one anywhere on account of them being underground. Nila went right over to the rug and pulled it up. Naturally, there was a trapdoor.
He opened it, grinned at me, and jumped in. The door slammed shut and the rug slid back into place. I knew if I jumped in there, I would break a bone, get eaten, or otherwise injure myself in a creative fashion. However, the alternative was to go back to Nano and get mauled by Nila’s brother. Plus, Nano did tell me to watch over Nila.
“Oh, Edward, Nano told me to do it,” I mumbled. I lifted the rug, pulled the trap door handle, and jumped into the dark.
Instead of falling to my death, something very cushiony broke my fall. As the door slammed shut, I was in complete darkness. I felt around me, as it seemed I was on an old mattress. Nila grabbed my searching hand and pulled me to my feet on solid ground.
“You no hurt?”
“No, you?”
“I no hurt. I fall all day.”
“That’s not a healthy habit. Is there a light?”
“I forget fire, no light. You light, yes?” He let go of me and handed me a cold torch.
I felt it quickly and reached out to make sure he wasn’t close. “Stand back, I’m not very good at this, and neither of us wants me to set you on fire accidentally.”
“You make funny joke.”
“Yeah, sure.” I focused my mind on what I felt like the top of the torch should look like and tried to recreate what I did on the ship. It only took a few minutes before I could feel heat coming off the torch. Or maybe I’m setting something else on fire? Just a few more minutes and the torch started to glow red. When it burst into flames, I dropped it.
Fortunately, Nila caught it before it could hit the ground. “No funny. You drop light, you set floor on fire. No funny. Bad Dylan.”
I saw that we were standing on soft matting, like tatami mats. The rest of the room looked like an old, decomposing living room of a wooden house. “If you’re so against lighting the floor on fire, why didn’t you light it yourself? Aren’t you a wizard?”
“I no wizard. I void.” He walked away.
I could see the family resemblance to Nano. “Huh? What’s a void?” I asked, following him into another smaller, but similar room.
�
��I can do no magic, no magic can do me.”
“Are you saying that no one can use any magic on you?”
“Yes. Blood kill magic.”
“How can I do that? Is it a spell?”
“Born with blood by father murder. Gift by God. Mother, no like. Adre, no like. Nano like. Nano love me. He name me, took me from mean mother.”
“That was nice. He gave you your name. That’s pretty special.”
“Nano in mean mood when name me.”
“Oh.”
“Friends no like. I punish Nano. I put itchy bugs in Nano bed. He punish back. He make king food yucky. I punish back. I steal you. I no give you back until he sorry.”
“Um… I don’t belong to Nano. I sort of belong to Kiro Yatunus.”
“Kiro? He nice. He no mind I punish Nano. No afraid. I feed you and give you drink.” He then turned and walked through another door.
Great, now I’m a puppy.
I followed him to the door to find a narrow set of stairs. Since he had the torch and I didn’t know the way, I couldn’t exactly turn back. This time it looked like we were in a very old kitchen with a large, round, metal fire oven in the middle of the room. Against the wall was a large wooden tub and a wooden table.
After handing me the torch, Nila started climbing the cold oven and when he was at the top, he pushed up a section of the wooden ceiling, which let in light. Another trap door. He pulled himself through.
“Stay!” he whispered sharply.
After about five minutes I heard a loud crash, a shriek, and running. Nila fell through the trapdoor, and it slammed shut behind him. I had just enough time to get under him to break his fall… which resulted in him crashing into me very, very hard. This surprised me, because I had tried to use my powers to control the wind to keep me up.
Nothing happened. When I should have been worried about my crushed body, I was too busy trying to do any spell I knew. My energy swirled in me restlessly and agitated, but it wouldn’t obey me. Now I was panicking.
“My powers aren’t working!”
“I void,” he said, climbing off me.
The instant he stopped touching me, the torch exploded in fire, the oven trembled, and the wind picked up. Unfortunately, the wind picked up the fire on its way into an indoor tornado. Burning wind circled us, getting more and more chaotic.
“Stop!”
“I’m not doing anything!” I yelled back. It was getting really, really hot and I was having trouble breathing. The fire was closing in.
“Stop!” Nila yelled again. He grabbed my arm and everything immediately went out. The fire and the wind just stopped.
“I guess I was doing it. Sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
“You too strong. No emotion control. No panic in magic. You panic, magic panic. Energy is like pet. It protect you, it attack fear.”
He grabbed the torch, which had somehow remained lit when the fire tornado went out. Then he grabbed the large sack he had gotten from whatever room was outside the trap door. He pulled out a big purple fruit and threw it at me.
“Eat,” he said.
“The skin, too?”
“Yes. Eat all. Seed food, too,” he said.
Taking him for his word, I bit in to the fruit. It tasted like a nectarine, with a texture more like an apple. He pulled out a small jar of what looked like beef jerky and started eating. He gave me a piece to try, and while it had a slight beef jerky flavor, it was too mild to really like. Next he pulled out none other than a thin bar of chocolate. He broke it in half and gave me the smaller half.
We sat there for probably half an hour enjoying all kinds of interesting food. I wasn’t allergic to any, thankfully. Then I another room filled with books and with a giant map on the wall. He proceeded to tell me in his broken English all about the history of his people when they lived above ground. Honestly it sounded like Earth’s history, except instead of building AI technology, cars, and skyscrapers, they fought until their world died and they had to move underground.
“I think we should get back now. Nano’s probably done talking to your brother.”
“Yes, Adre will be hunting me.”
“You know Adre… isn’t a nice person, right?”
He looked at me, startled. “Of course. Adre try kill me six times. I no stupid. You and Nano here to warn me?”
“Yes. A girl heard the guards talk about an assassination on you. Well, they didn’t say you in particular, but Nano thinks it’s you. We came to warn you that the guards are working against you. Not the goblins, the other guards.”
“Is no shock. Adre think I no know he kill me father… my father.”
“That sucks. What are you going to do about it?”
“Nano help me, take Adre power away. Nano wait for proof. I help find proof. I stop assassin, if Adre hire assassin, I proof. Nano make god drain Adre. Adre live in prison. People happy always.”
“You have a very good vocabulary for someone who barely speaks English.”
“I have bad grammar. Never have good grammar new language. Word learn easy. We go now,” he said. He stood and led me back to the first room.
“How do we get out?”
He picked up a rope. “You fly, hold rope, I climb. No touch me. Put fire out.”
“Umm… How?” I asked. He frowned like I said something that made no sense. “I never learned how to put a fire out.” I knew how to stop putting energy into a fire, but the torch was self-sustaining.
“Is you fire. You make big, you make small, you make cold. No learn.”
So I thought about it. After focusing my mind and gathering my energy, I let my energy flow into the flames. Nila grabbed my arm and immediately cut off my energy. “Energy in fire. Need no more. More energy make big.” He let my arm go.
This time I reached out with my mind. It took a few minutes before I could feel the heat. Soon I could feel that it was actually very hot, very fast energy. I imagined it contained in a bubble. The smaller the bubble, the faster the energy, the hotter the burn. So I made the bubble larger. I made it cold and more like a jelly bubble than a soap bubble. As the energy particles would burst through the bubble, the bubble would reseal, but the energy would be greatly slowed. Soon there was very little energy left in the bubble and I let it collapse. I opened my eyes to find myself in complete darkness.
“Now you fly.”
I felt him hand me the rope and take the dead torch. Not knowing how to actually fly, I did what I had with the rock in the forest; I levitated the rope and held on. The fortunate side about there being no light was that I couldn’t tell how far up I was, so I wasn’t afraid of falling. I felt my hands hit the ceiling and let off on the energy just enough to keep the rope level. I pushed and pulled myself along the ceiling until I felt a spot that gave a little. Then I pushed more energy into the rope and opened the trap door, landing safely on my feet.
I dropped one end of the rope down until I felt him tug. I tied the end around the desk leg and held on just in case. It took him less than a minute to climb up. I started to untie the rope before I felt him stare a hole through my back.
“You put fire out. What are you?”
“What do you mean? You said any wizard could put out their own fire.”
“I lie. Is no you fire. You very powerful. More powerful than Guardian. You break physics. Wizard put cold energy in fire, make oxygen gone, make wind blow out fire. No wizard control fire.”
“But fire is just really hot energy.”
“No. Fire is physical energy, no nominal energy. Wizard and Guardian control nominal energy, you control physical energy. You more powerful than Guardian.”
“Dylan? Where are you?” Hearing Nano’s voice in my head shouldn’t have been a shock, but at this point I was already shaken up. I stumbled backwards and fell through the trap door.
After I climbed back up the rope, Nila and I returned to Nano and Adre, who were having a very physical argument. Nila grabbed my arm, pulled me back out, shut the d
oor, and then loudly slammed both doors back open. This time Nano and Adre heard us enter and stopped fighting.
“Right on time. Dylan and I should be leaving now,” Nano said brightly.
“What? But I thought we were going to…”
“Well, you have helped more than you know, but now it’s time to return you to your master. The faster I get you back in Divina’s arms, the faster I can take care of family matters.”
“Divina’s arms? Great, let’s go then.”
“You visit again,” Nila said. It wasn’t a request so much as a demand.
“Are you kidding? I’m going to ask Edward if I can visit every weekend.”
“Focus your mind on Duran’s symbol,” Nano said.
I suppose it should have been difficult to remember what it looked like, but when he mentioned the symbol, it sprang easily to mind. After all the practice, clearing my mind was easy. I closed my eyes and focused only on the symbol.
Like the first time I went to Duran, it started with a weightless, windless, suffocating, falling feeling.
Kiro
Earth was such a dainty place. The air was thin, the gravity light, and my powers fell short. Instead, there was pollution and clutter. Ronez had told me that many places on Earth were beautiful and untouched, or fascinating with cultural and religion influence. Apparently this land that Ronez and Dylan lived on was one stripped of cultural influence as well as many natural resources. Even Ronez would complain to me how this land was filled with bigots and people driven by hate and greed, and I wondered why he would live here if it was so bad.
More confusing, however, was that I found myself in what looked to be an old wooden house. There were stairs in front of me and an empty room behind me. The house was obviously abandoned and was fairly dark and cold.
“Well, now. I did not think this would actually work. I am rather disappointed.”
Standing atop the stairs was a little girl, emitting a power far beyond her age. Her power was great enough to drive any child out of their mind, but this child was less than human, and I suspected, less than sane.
