Chapter 1
This was my life. I ran around in the rain, in storms or in stifling heat—in any weather, day or night, chasing after magical or mythical creatures. Sometimes, in situations like this, our roles were reversed. I was heaving and gasping for air. My lungs were about to burst and a stab of pain kept jabbing at the left side of my waist as I ran like hell away from a humongous beast I called Stampy. I named him that because when he charged at you, he sounded like thousands of legs stomping on the ground, gunning your way. Stampy was getting closer by the minute and I could hear him growling and the rapid thump, thump, thump, thump of the his’s paws hitting the rooftop floor getting louder and louder. With each gulp of air, I thought to myself that I seriously needed to spend more time on my cardio. Finally, the neighboring rooftop, where I was to make my last stand, was within reach. I used what little energy I had and sprinted. At the final moment, I jumped. Then I screamed. My eyes widened in horror. I wasn’t going to make it.
I shot out my arms, clawing at the air, hungrily stretching myself as far as possible to grab on to anything. When I finally felt my fingers hit something solid, I held on to it for dear life. Then, my whole body hit the wall with a big, loud bang, which loosened my grip on the ledge. My left shoulders wrenched at the sudden weight of my whole body and I could feel the fingers on my left hand starting to slip. I quickly swung my right arm over and clamped my hand onto the rooftop ledge. I groaned in pain and laughed at myself for my sheer dumb luck. I made it—just barely. I scrambled, using my arms and legs to climb up when a shadow crossed over me. I quickened my pace. I had just gotten my arms on the ledge when Stampy landed, pivoted and was charging right at me. Cursing, I leaned and placed all of my weight on my left arm and shoulder while lifting my right hand out towards him. With my palms out and fingers spread wide, I closed my eyes and concentrated on using magic to push Stampy away from me. Hearing a cry, I opened my eyes to see him flying in the air. Then I concentrated again and slowly a line appeared and glowed but quickly it faded away.
“Damn!”
I closed my eyes to focus. When I opened them, I saw the glowing line flicker several times. A movement distracted me. Stampy was charging again. I moved my arm, creating a small ball of electricity and shoot. Stampy went down. He made a small whine before he went still. But only for a moment. He twitched several times before the legs started to move. Quickly, I went back to create an opening. Once again the glowing line appeared then winked out.
“Come on. Come on. Work.” I said under my breath.
There was no time. I could see Stampy struggling to get up. Beads of sweat rolled down my face. My temperature rose as the adrenaline and fear rushed through my body. Concentrating even harder, a line appeared again. The glow was weak and translucent before it slowly gain strength and clarity. Then it grew wider until an opening appeared. We were surrounded by the city landscape, on top of a roof, over looking other rooftops. And in the middle of it all, was an opening, with a view of the ground full of dirt, grass, trees, and everything else that made up a forest. Stampy was up and full of rage. It bared its teeth and snarled as it charged towards me With all my might I pushed the creature into the opening and watched as Stampy and the opening disappeared. I heaved a sigh of relief when it was all over.
Usually, this action wouldn’t be so difficult since I had been practicing using magic for a year now and was fairly good at this maneuver. But I was tired—hanging on a ledge and trying to keep myself from falling ten stories down. It took most of my concentration and energy, so I had very little to spare on creating an opening and making sure Stampy went through it before it harmed or killed me. Never again would I put myself through this. There had to be a better way. I groaned at the sound of thunder echoing across the sky. I had been working since late last night and now dawn was breaking through the horizon, accompanied by a storm. Still dangling from the ledge, I released a heavy sigh of resignation and rested my head on my arm. I wonder what else could go wrong. When I became aware that I was no longer alone, I opened my eyes to see Xena’s face an inch from mine. Her real name was Tirena, but she liked to be called Xena here in our world. She was from a race called the Elvain and she was helping me to control and use this magic.
It had all started when I found a necklace that had a crystal attached to it. Inside this crystal held the magic of an evil witch named Keya who was killed long ago. To my utter disbelief, I discovered that I was the reincarnation of Keya and the magic within the crystal was mine. Not only was I shocked to learn that there were such things as real magic and that I had magic of my own, but that the Elvains had been living among us for centuries. Xena’s main job or duty was to provide shelter and help for her people that lived in our world. She had been here for years and knew a lot about our world. She owned the building where I lived and also the bar down stairs where I occasionally worked.
The Elvain were from another part of earth called Edeon. Many centuries ago, humans and Elvains had once lived together in peace until one day there was a disagreement, which led to a war. The war lasted so long and cost so many lives that the king of the Elvain decided that in order to end the suffering and to prevent another war it was best if they lived separately from us humans. Using magic, he hid a portion of the earth from us. The best way that I could describe it was if you think of the earth as being a long string and move its two center points together, what you would have was a long continuous line with a closed loop at the center. The loop’s area was where the Elvains lived and the long continuous line was where we lived—not knowing that there was an extra piece of earth hidden from us. The magic made it so that if anyone walked past the hidden area or the invisible wall between the Elvain’s world and ours, they would automatically be on the other side of our world without knowing that Edeon was between it.
Since it was a very difficult and took a lot of magic and energy to create it, they used an opal, which—for this purpose—served as a battery that stored tons of magic to keep the invisible wall operating. It was hard to maintain the wall and sometimes holes would appear in it. If a person stepped through one of these holes, they would walk into the Elvain’s world and leave ours. The Elvain had people who took care of those “lost ones,” as they liked to call them, and brought them back here with their memories of ever having been in Edeon completely erased. Sometimes creatures from the Elvain’s world would get caught in our world and had to be trapped and sent back before they could cause any harm to the people who lived here.
Since I had decided to stay here instead of Edeon, Xena and some of the other Elvains were training me in how to capture these creatures and take them back to their world. This was usually done alone, but since I was a trainee, I always had one or two people accompanying me. Tonight—or I should say last night, since it was already morning—was my final training. Last night was my test to determine if I was able to go patrolling or, to use their term, “hunting,” without any help. On my own, I had to find a creature, lure it up to the rooftop and then send it back to where it belonged. The more experienced hunters were able to trap them anywhere without a problem. Since I wasn’t even close to being an average hunter, I had to lure a creature to the rooftop before sending it back. The reason for this was that most of these creatures who ended up here had magic of their own. When they were scared or frightened by someone trying to grab them, they became hostile and wreaked havoc on everything around them in order to get away. Luring them to the rooftop was the easiest way to prevent any harm to anyone who was around the area. It also reduced the damages to properties.
Another reason for beginners like me to use the rooftop was because there was less chance of someone seeing us. Very few people gathered or spent time on the roof and hardly anyone looked out their windows. Discretion was the top priority. Hunting at night was also an easy way of going unnoticed. There were fewer people walking about and most windows were closed with the drapes drawn. But I have to say, hunting at night was not easy. Ther
e were too many shadows for creatures to hide in and it was hard to see in the dark. Because of the poor visibility, I almost tripped a couple of times over an object or was nearly killed by a creature that hid in the shadows. It was also hard to measure the distance if one was planning on jumping from one rooftop to the next. Hence, the reason I was dangling on the ledge trying hard not to fall off.
It took me a couple of tries before I finally got my whole body onto the roof. I lay on my back, breathing heavily and drenched in sweat. I felt, and possibly looked, like I had just swum a ten-mile lap. Xena stood there looking down at me with a frown. She then shook her head while making a tsk, tsk sound.
“Pathetic. Just pathetic,” she said.
“Hey, I got that thing back, didn’t I?” I replied.
“Yes, you did. I just don’t understand why it took you so long to do so. There were plenty of times when you could have sent it back, but you didn’t.”
My eyes widened and I started to sputter before I could get my words out.
“But, but, you told me to bring it back here. Right here,” I said while slapping the roof several times for emphasis.
“True, but I also said, ‘If you need to, improvise.’ Look at you, lying here as if you were dead to the world. You spent all of that unnecessary energy and for what? To bring one creature here?”
“Isn’t that the idea?”
“No. The idea was to find the creature and get it back to Edeon using the least amount of energy and magic possible. You totally drained yourself for one puny creature. What would have happened if there were another one or maybe two more waiting for you right here? You would be dead!”
I lifted myself up on my elbows. “You told me to first find the creature at point ‘A’ and bring it here to point ‘B,’ where I was to send it back to your world. Secondly, you told me that this spot, point ‘B,’ is where the training will end. And thirdly that creature was not puny. It was as huge as a rhinoceros.”
“I said that you have to get a creature back home from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ which means you have that much of a distance to get the creature back. Not find it at point ‘A’ and bring it to point ‘B’ to send it back. I then said that point ‘B’ is the end of the training. Which means, if you have not gotten the creature back by then, you failed. The end. Thirdly, I wasn’t talking about the size. I was talking about its magic level, which by the way is zero. Puny.”
“Magic level” was how the Elvains measured their magical powers. One was the lowest range of magic while five was the highest. Both level one and five were the rarest. If you think of it in terms of playing the piano, five was someone like Mozart and one was an average common person who could play well. Having a level zero meant a person was tone deaf, someone with no musical talent. In this case, that person had no magic at all. Xena had told me that she was a level two. And I, well, no one really knew. That was because Keya had stolen so much magic from others to increase her own magic level to an unnatural state. No one knew how many she had taken except that her magic level was higher than a five. Since I inherited her magic—unwillingly—I have more power than any of the Elvains. But since I had acquired this new ability in such a short period of time and was still a novice, it seemed I had a magic level of a one instead of a level greater than five.
I fell back down, too tired to argue any further. I just waved my hand back and forth between the two of us while telling her that we needed to work on our communications skills. After shaking her head once more, she left. Massive clouds started to form above me and darken the sky. Then flashes of lightning started to appear along with roars of thunder so loud and resounding that they shook the asphalt floor of the rooftop where I lay. I groaned again, knowing I wasn’t going to make it back in time before it started pouring.
I was one rooftop away from home when I saw a figure on my fire escape, peering into my window. He was holding something in his hand and almost dropped it when I called out to him. He started to run up the stairs. I chased after him, wanting to know what he was doing at my window. Despite his short stumpy legs, he was very fast and agile. I had a very hard time catching up to him. When I was about a foot away, I tripped over something that was left on the rooftop and landed flat on my face. Groaning, I rolled to my back and once again faced the dark sky that reflected my mood so well. I was upset and exhausted without the strength or tenacity to go after him. So, I just lay on my back trying to catch my breath.
Suddenly, a head popped right in front of my line of vision. It was that person, or actually that creature, that I had chased from my fire escape. This creature was different from the others that I had seen before. Most of them had animalistic features. For instance, they ran or walked on all fours with paws for feet. He had more humanistic features like big, round, dark frontal eyes. There were small patches of short, black, spiky hair on top of his head. His ears were like ours, though slightly larger and they stuck out from his head. His arms were long and gangly and he was dressed in a white button-down shirt, two sizes too big, and suspenders that held up his pants. In his hands, he held a bowl with a goldfish swimming inside. I was so shocked to see him right in front of me that all I could do was lay there with my mouth agape. He started to garble something incomprehensible to me before placing the bowl on top of my stomach. My hands instinctively held on to it. Then he was gone. He didn’t disappear but moved so fast that when I turned my head to the side, he was already on the other side of this roof ready to jump onto the next one. And at that moment, rain began to pour down sending a bunch of tiny jabs to my body. I was lying on the roof with my face up to the sky trying to ignore the rain, the thunder, and the lightning while thinking that a year of this was enough. It was time to move on.
I entered my apartment through the fire escape window. My apartment building had no street entrance. If I wanted to enter through my front door, I had to go through the bar, the kitchen and then to the side stairs. Usually when I wanted a drink or some company that was what I would do. But today I just wanted to be alone. I glanced at the sofa before going into the kitchen and placed the fish bowl on the counter. I took out two beers from the fridge and sat down on a chair next to the sofa. I then placed one unopened beer down on the coffee table and gulped down the other.
“You will catch your death in those wet clothes.”
I looked over at the man sitting on the sofa next to me. Pale blue eyes, blond and tall, he looked like, as he always did, a reserved authoritative Greek god. When I first met him, he was the leader of the AulTar clan. A year later, he took over his father’s position as the Lord of the Elvain.
“Hello, Shuron nice to see you too,” I said.
“My apologies, Cassiea. How are you?” he asked.
“Wet, but good.”
I excused myself and went to the bathroom to change. When I came out, he was facing the window watching the storm. I noticed that he was holding the beer in his hand. Something must have been troubling him since he never drank anything I offered before. Lightning flashed several times through the sky and brightened the room, making me realize that I never bothered to turn the lights on when I got in. He did not seem to be aware or bothered by the dark. With a wave of my hand, I used magic to turn the lights on while I walked over to where he stood. He turned to me and I could see, as I had guessed, he was troubled, as if he were pondering something and unsure of what to do. Instead of telling me what was on his mind, he turned and looked around the room.
I turned to look too. We were standing with the window behind us and the sofa facing us. To our left was a round table and next to it, was an open kitchen with a counter where the fish bowl sat and three bar stools. Then the front door, which was straight in front of us. Then the bathroom. And last, on our right was my bed. My place had once been a one-bedroom apartment. Now, it was one big studio. One of my first tests using magic, after numerous practicing and teaching sessions from Xena, was to change the layout of my apartment to suit my tastes. Suffice it to sa
y, it hadn’t gone well. I had ended up exploding the wall between the bedroom and the rest of the living area. When the smoke had cleared and the fire had been put out, I had decided I liked the spaciousness and told her I was finished. She had not been pleased and made me clean up the mess using only magic.
“Xena and I had a discussion about you in regards to your magic. She informed me that you did not succeed in passing your test.”
I bit my tongue to keep myself from saying anything. I was not going to apologize or make excuses for our mis-understanding of the rules.
He turned to me and looked at the crystal tied around my neck that held the magic. “Your magic should have absorbed into you by now.”
I looked down and held the crystal between my fingers. As it had done many times before, when I moved it around, the crystal became murky and several round, bright lights of different sizes and colors appeared and swirled around until it slowly faded away. When I first learned about the Elvains and this magic, they had said that it would eventually be absorbed into me. A year ago it did happen and the magic had turned me evil. Fortunately, Shuron had been able to place it back into the crystal, but not before I had killed someone. Since then, I wasn’t too eager to have all this magic inside me. They had assured me that what had happened would not happen again. But I wasn’t going to take any chances and kept the magic contained within the crystal. When I needed to use it, I would absorb just enough to use and when I was done, I would place it back into the crystal.
“Is that why you are here?” I asked.
“No, Cassiea. I am just concerned. As long as your magic is still in this crystal, you will be in danger. Many magical beings have been and will be tempted to kill you for it.”
“I know. Xena has reminded me on numerous occasions and I have been attacked a couple of times, but I was able to come out of it alive.”
He was surprised by my last remark. “Why was I not aware of these attacks?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t want to worry anyone,” I said. “Xena has showed me some basic defense and I have been working with her to prepare myself.”
“She told me about your training but we have people looking after you when you are outside. They have not informed me about these attacks.”
“Yeah. About that,” I said with a little guilt in my voice. “I’ve been sneaking away from them for quite some time now.”
He was surprised, then upset, and said, “You should not have done so. They are there for your protection. Does Xena know about this?”
“I didn’t think it was in my best interest to tell her. Besides, I had her put back Mirtiek’s spell,” I reminded him.
Mirtiek was one of his people who placed a spell on the crystal to prevent anyone from taking Keya’s magic. The crystal would disappear if anyone should succeed in steal it or killing me for it. It would only re-appear again when the next owner of this magic comes around. Xena was more than happy to recast that spell when I suggested it. A little too happy, if you asked me.
He didn’t look pleased with my answer. “That is true, although I prefer to prevent that from happening. It was hard enough to find you.”
“All of you can’t protect me forever. I needed to learn how to protect myself and I can’t do that with all of you guarding me.”
There was a long pause as he looked at me then to the window before facing me again, “You may be right, Cassiea. I will relieve the scouts that are still here and let Xena know.”
“Thank you, Shuron.”
I turned to walk him to the door when I realized that he wasn’t behind me. I turned back, surprised, to see he was sitting on the couch. I walked over and sat back on the chair to next him and asked, “Is there something else on your mind?”
“I hesitate to ask. This matter...I prefer that you were not involved in it, but it seems we have no choice. We need your help, Cassiea.”
Curious as I was, I did not like the sound of what was to come. “What is it?”
“It is best that you come back home with me and meet with the elders.”
*****
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