Trials

  Epena glared.

  ’Ana’ana chuckled. “Oh, that’s rich. He challenged me and I cut him down with the slightest flick of my wrist. Just as I shall do with his child.” He flew at her, shifting in mid-air, razor-sharp talons extended.

  Her eyes flew wide. Child.

  Akamu.

  “No!” The rage gathering inside her boiled over. Cold fire raced up her right leg, drawn from deep inside the ’a’a. Sprang from her outstretched palm. Struck the dragon squarely in the chest. Inundating him in brilliant flames.

  ‘Ana’ana flew backwards like a struck baseball. He hit the beach and slid, dark sand bursting up into the air in a glittering fan.

  Epena squinted at the dragon’s motionless form.

  Was he dead?

  The dark mound of dragon-flesh stirred. ’Ana’ana gathered himself and stood, then flew at her, too fast for her to react. He struck, and everything went black.

  Epena came to her senses wracked in pain. She looked around, woozy. She was still on the beach. Her left arm was bloodied and numb.

  ’Ana’ana.

  She could feel him, could sense him nearby. She crawled back to the rock and peered over it. The moon had just crested the horizon, and threw a pearly light across the shoreline, silvering the waves rolling in. The dragon paced back and forth between her and the ocean, muttering to himself.

  Epena struggled to think. Every inch of her body ached. His power was too great. She could very well die on this beach.

  He must already think she was dead. It’s why he hadn’t finished her off.

  The dragon turned, pacing back toward the water, and Epena scrambled up, whimpering. She stumbled forward onto the ’a’a, the designs glowing faintly as the almost-dried blood on the bottom of her feet touched the rock.

  Kanoa’s kakau worked, but only partly. The first time she’d tried to attack the dragon, nothing had happened. What was different the second time? The glow of the kakau hadn’t changed. Her motions had been the same.

  She couldn’t face the dragon again until she knew. But she had to destroy him, for her family, for Akamu.

  Akamu.

  When she’d thought of her little cousin before, fire had burst from her palm, injuring the dragon. It had taken emotion to draw the energy from the stone. Feelings. Like hatred. Fear. Anger.

  She bit her lip and ground her right heel down on the rock. As before, the right side of her body lit with a brilliance that drowned out the moon’s pale light.

  ’Ana’ana spun in surprise. He moved to the edge of the rock, assuming human form and putting his hands on his hips. “Why aren’t you dead yet?”

  Epena flexed her fingers, feeling them tingle with building energy.

  The dragon stared, waiting to see what she would do. Epena thrust out her hand, punching him in the chest with another bolt of energy. It sent him stumbling backwards. From the darkness outside of her projected circle of light, he laughed.

  “This is the best you can do? You have spirit, I’ll give you that. You should stop fighting and join me. You’ll be the first queen these islands have had for centuries. Without my help, you’re nothing. Without my support, you’re just—what did you say you were? Ah, yes—a mud-girl.”

  When Epena didn’t answer, the dragon took a step into the pool of golden light that surrounded her. His eyes flashed red. “Join me, or die.”

  Epena knew she didn’t have the raw power to defeat ’Ana’ana. But she couldn’t accept his offer. These were her last moments on Earth. She felt an overwhelming sadness at the thought of not seeing Akamu again, at the anguish her death would cause Tutu, at never knowing what it might be like to kiss Kanoa, her shy tattoo artist and engineer.

  Engineer.

  His words came flooding back. What if your mother took in too much for her body to hold? What if her body overloaded because there was no way for the extra energy to get out?

  The energy stored in free chunks of lava rock was weak, drained away over millennia, disconnected from the Earth’s core. She needed connected rock, still in contact with the island’s roots and buoyed by the molten lava of the mantle, touching the core’s primal energy.

  Epena leapt off the rock and ran through the sand, toward a large ribbon of hardened lava flow right on the water’s edge. As soon as she hopped up on it, her feet throbbed with a strong energy she’d never experienced before. This was exactly what she needed: untapped, raw power.

  She turned and grinned at the dragon, then stomped her right foot down hard. Her heel caught a shard of ’a’a just right. It punctured the hard callus of her heel and buried itself deep into her flesh, cutting through the layer of powdered lava embedded under her skin. A momentary flash of pain was washed away by the fresh energy coursing into her.

  Then she lifted her left foot and stomped it down onto a mass of dark, stony thorns jutting up from the lava.

  Her awareness exploded outward. Although she still stood on the beach, facing an attacking dragon, she was, at that same moment, beside her grandmother, feeling her dread and fear. Her mind expanded to swallow the entire island, from the birds that flew above it to the kiawe bushes scattered across its slopes, to the island’s foundations, to pulsations of power throbbing deep within the dark, basaltic heart of the entire island chain.

  She grabbed that pulse and wrapped herself within it, folding it around her like a warm blanket.

  The dragon snarled and she casually hurled a fireball in his direction.

  He caught it with his wings and absorbed it, grinning maniacally. “You dare to attack me, still?”

  She threw another fireball, and then another. Each one impacted the dragon’s body with a bright flash, but was then absorbed.

  He shifted into lizard form and hunched, malevolently, on the beach. Every fireball she threw, he snapped from midair with powerful jaws, swallowing the energy.

  Was he growing bigger?

  Her focus shifted as she relaxed, opening herself up even more to the river of power flowing up through the rock she stood upon.

  She threw another fireball, and then a bigger one. The dragon absorbed them all, growing in size and ferocity.

  “You are merely hastening your own demise,” the dragon boomed, his ragged voice echoing off the rocks around them. “Keep feeding me, though, if you wish. I will end your life quickly once I tire of this exercise.”

  Epena reached deep inside herself, found the last remaining traces of fear and caution, and wiped them away, relaxing to the torrent that raged through her.

  Light, brighter than the sun, burst from her kakau uhi.

  She thrust her hand at the dragon and light boiled forth in a continuous column, directly into his gaping maw. He gulped and swallowed in panic, trying to keep up with the sudden onrush. He swelled like a balloon, and Epena saw fear in the dragon’s eyes.

  Too late, he clamped his mouth shut, swung his muzzle away, and tried to avoid the lashing energies erupting from Epena’s open palm.

  ’Ana’ana took flight in a desperate escape attempt, but Epena tracked his movement with her palm, burning him out of the air, crisping his wings and sending his charred body plummeting, fire consuming his body until it was an unrecognizable, blackened mass.

  Then she turned her attention back to the wonders uncovered by her expanded awareness.

  Shimmering curtains of visible energy undulated around Moloka’i, reaching deep into the planet’s core, and she could not only see them, she could feel them, like a blood-warm pool of electrified water. She immersed herself in them, feeling power like she’d never felt before. The kind of power that would enable her to do things. Great things. She could even—

  The honu design on her leg blew out, shredding her calf muscle in a gout of flame. Epena collapsed back into her physical body, smoke curling from the cauterized gash. She screamed into the sudden darkness and rolled off the ’a’a rock onto the soft sand, passing out mere meters away from the burned, shriveled corpse of ’Ana’ana.

  A
kamu ran ahead, chattering and pointing out the ’apanane birds drinking their nectar. “Epena, come look! Hurry! They’ll fly away!”

  Epena grimaced, then hobbled faster, leaning heavily on her cane. “Akamu, I’m not as fast as I was a month ago.”

  Akamu turned worried eyes in her direction and ran back. He squatted in the dirt and pointed to the ugly scar on her left calf. “That was where you had the turtle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wasn’t he supposed to give you long life?”

  Epena smiled. “Yes, Akamu. You’ll notice that I’m still alive, so it worked.”

  Akamu pushed out his lower lip and frowned. “Well, that nasty honu tried to kill you.” He spun around and ran down the road again, spotted a nēnē and yelled, then chased it in hot pursuit. The gray goose honked angrily and flapped its wings as it ran.

  Epena laughed, and followed her cousin down the road, limping slowly in the warm sunlight.

  LOU J BERGER lives in Denver, Colorado with his high-school crush, three kids, two Sheltie dogs and a kink-tailed cat with a hidden agenda. He began writing short stories just shy of his fortieth birthday and has been published in a variety of venues. A member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, he is now working on his first novel.

  His author website is www.LouJBerger.com.

  Follow him on the following social media platforms:

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  The Price of Power

  36 PA / 2048 AD

  Ken Schrader

  “College Station, Texas,” the ancient sign read, “Population: 106,000.”

  Not anymore, I thought.

  Gary Stockton, the leader of our deadmining expedition, stood beside me in much the same way as a mountain would. At six foot seven, he towered over me by nearly two feet.

  “What do you think, Elise?” His voice was deep and sounded like he was grinding rocks to sand with his throat. With a neck like his, he probably could have.

  Great chunks of pavement jutted from the earth in all directions like a mouthful of broken teeth. There was no way the wagons would get through the wreckage.

  I shrugged, already tired and irritable. Moon mages don’t get along well with the sun and it hits me harder than most. With the rising sun, my eyesight was already going downhill and I was feeling the tingling chill of my power evaporating. By noon, both would be all but gone, as would my ability to draw power from the power sink at the Enclave. I’d be on my own with only the power I’d stored in my amulets.

  Behind us, two set of boots clomped. “Maybe there’s another road we can take,” Derek said.

  Javier spat. “Not without backtracking.”

  Derek and Javier Rocha were Gary’s partners. They claimed to be twins, but Derek was taller and Javi was thicker. Both had skin the color of old leather. Javi’s hair was dark. Derek’s was currently an aggressive shade of blue that he kept hidden under a battered hat; he’d lost a bet to Javi before we set out. The three of us made up our night-time security.

  Gary took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He looked over his shoulder. “Sandra? The map please?”

  Sandra Warfield, our quartermaster, climbed down from her bench. She wore tan coveralls that shushed as she walked to the rear of her wagon. She reached inside and produced the map, spreading it out across the tailgate.

  Gary pointed to a thick line marked with the number 6. “If we wanted to try another road into the city, we’d have to go back to here—half a day lost.”

  “What about the smaller roads?” I bent low, squinting, and traced my finger on the map. Our destination was Easterwood Airport. “They’re probably still there.”

  Gary rubbed his chin. “Okay.” He straightened and stretched, scowling at the broken road. “Let’s move, people. We’re spending daylight.”

  The way was rougher than I thought it would be, but I was right about the smaller roads. They were clear, for the most part, though overgrown, cracked, and narrow.

  Around noon, Mack’s voice drifted back to me over the creaks and rattles of his wagon.

  “We’re here, Elise.”

  Mack was our medic and he’d taken a shine to me not long after we’d met. He never spoke about his last name or the burn scar he kept hidden under a dirty, blue bandanna, and I never asked, so we got along fine.

  We forded a shallow creek, and followed a service road that had regressed to little more than a wagon-wide gap in the trees. We soon rode out onto a wide expanse of flat land and I felt concrete under Celeste’s hooves—a runway. The land around was eerily silent—no birds, no insects. I hadn’t heard an animal other than the horses for more than a day.

  Great chunks of the Easterwood terminal had collapsed, and as we rode past, I saw the scars of fire damage. We settled in a small hangar that had held up better than the rest of the airport. The rusty sheet metal had holes in it, and the hangar doors had fallen down, but it would give us walls and a roof we could shelter under.

  Derek and Javi couldn’t wait to explore the nearby college campus and took off shortly after we’d set up camp. Gary and Mack at least waited until after lunch before leaving.

  Mack borrowed Celeste, promising that he’d take good care of her, and I settled into a chair by the campfire, stuffed on cold sausage and cheese. I didn’t mind staying behind. I’d pulled the third watch, so I’d been up since well before dawn. Full and tired, I fell asleep in the shade.

  By the time Celeste clopped back into camp, the Moon had already begun Her trip across the sky. My eyesight was back to normal and the tension I’d been carrying before sunset, the fear that my eyes wouldn’t return to normal when the sun went down, was gone.

  Mack led Celeste into the hangar, took off her saddle, and cleaned her hooves. I walked over and she whickered in greeting.

  “Find anything interesting?” I said as I gave Celeste some feed and brushed her coat.

  He glanced at his pack. “Bandages and a few odds and ends.” He straightened. “Gary’s got some locations he wants to go back to. Good salvage.”

  I took my time with the brush, whispering silly stuff to Celeste, as I settled her down for the night. The skin of my hands glowed against Celeste’s darker hair and I activated my Glamour amulet. Tonight—a night shy of the full Moon—I’d be glowing nearly bright enough to read by if I didn’t damp it down. The full Moon was a powerful time for me and my skin shivered to be out underneath Her light.

  By the time I was finished with Celeste, the smell of beans and bacon filled the air.

  The cookfire crackled just outside the hangar. I poured myself a cup of hot water and dropped a mesh tea ball filled with loose leaves in to steep. I slid my chair into a patch of moonlight and sighed.

  Gary reached into a pocket and pulled out a walkie-talkie. “Javi,” he said into the transmitter, “you and Derek are about to miss another exhilarating round of beans-n-bacon.”

  Sandra scowled at Gary, and I snorted.

  “Don’t listen to him, Sandra,” Mack said. “You’ve elevated beans-n-bacon into an art form.”

  “Thank you, Mack.” Sandra turned to Gary, pointing a spoon at him. “You hear that? An art form. I should be charging you . . .” She trailed off.

  I followed her gaze to Gary, who was staring at the silent device in his hand.

  He glanced at us. “Javier, Derek, respond.”

  The fire popped, sending sparks into the sky.

  “Derek, Javi, come in.”

  Silence.

  “Why don’t they . . .” Sandra stopped.

  Gary glanced at me. There were any number of things that might keep either of them from replying. Dead batteries. Damaged gear. Accidents happened. The only things I could think of that would prevent both of them from responding involved the words “collapse” or “trapped” or were armed with claws and teeth and burned to death in sunlight.

  “Can you track them?”

 
I thought about it. “If I had something of theirs, like hair or fingernails, I might be able to. Otherwise, no.”

  “Blood and blades!” Gary stood. “We should go look for them.”

  “We only know the direction they took when they left,” Mack said. “They could have gone anywhere after that.”

  Gary scowled, and dropped back into his chair.

  “We can’t leave them out there,” Sandra said.

  “We won’t,” Gary said. “But we can’t track them in the dark either.” He raised the walkie-talkie again. “Javi? Derek? Please respond.”

  Nothing.

  He let out an explosive breath. “We keep the fire up all night. We watch in shifts in case they come back.” He raked a hand through his hair. “And we go after them at first light.”

  By midnight, I was the only one awake. I tossed another log on the fire, grabbed my telescope bag, and walked into the night. At a clear, dark spot away from camp, I sat on the concrete with my legs crossed and unrolled a square of thin, brown leather in front of me. The wind whispered past, carrying the scent of wildflowers and wood smoke. I arranged my amulets on the leather, aimed the telescope at the Moon, and looked through the eyepiece.

  For an instant, I saw Her in crystal clarity and my breath caught. She was beautiful. My skin prickled and I reached for Her. She entered me in a rush and I gasped.

  The blue-white of Her light seared through my eyes and every hair stood on end. Power flowed through me like a river, cool and inexorable, threatening to carry me away with it. Part of me wanted to go, to lose myself in Her and drift away.

  I shuddered, fighting for control. Her presence filled me and I exhaled, long and slow, a pleasant warmth building deep inside me. One by one, I filled my amulets, starting with my prime. The moonstone warmed against my chest as she charged and I spent extra time caring for her, checking for surface scratches and cracks in the stone. I ran my thumb across her rounded edges a final time then tucked her back inside my shirt.