ELEMENTAL RUSH
an ELEMENTAL novella
by Elana Johnson
Copyright © 2014 by Elana Johnson
Published by AEJ Creative Works at Smashwords
All Rights Reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this book can be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without the express written permission of the author. The only exception is by a reviewer who may quote short excerpts in a review. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in, or encourage, the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Cover Design by Erin Summerill Photography
Fonts used: Cinzel, Kontrapunkt, and DISCO - Fontsquirrel.com
Cover photograph © Krivosheev Vitaly - Shutterstock.com
PhotoShop Winter Breeze Brushes © Axeraider70 - Brusheezy.com
PhotoShop Lightning Brushes © - Brusheezy.com
Interior Design by AEJ Creative Works
Chapter headings done in Cinzel.
Winter in Tarpulin, the capital city of the United Territories, was mild. Perched on the edge of the ocean, we enjoyed a somewhat regulated weather pattern. I stepped onto my balcony at the end of January, wearing only a thin undershirt and shorts. I woke early every day in order to complete my hour of mandated exercise before my sentry classes began at seven o’clock.
The balcony stones radiated the morning chill, something the sun wouldn’t warm for a few more hours at least, especially considering that it wasn’t even up yet. That was something I hated most about winter—the late arrival of the sun.
I took a cleansing breath, my insides starting to shiver and my skin pimpling. Using my Element, I warmed the air on my tiny terrace, a small enough space that my wind wouldn’t be noticed by my neighbors. Not that Felix was awake. He preferred to do his workouts late at night.
Sentries lived in tight quarters; our single-room living spaces were stacked on top of each other. But my balcony was my sanctuary. I spent every morning exercising my airmaking Element outside because I couldn’t use it anywhere else. No matter what.
I sighed and turned back to my studio. I never made my bed, which I’d pushed against the wall closest to the balcony. I craved the light, the nearness of the outdoors. I had ever since my Element had Manifested last year.
A single closet stood opposite the end of my bed, and next to that was the bathroom. I had to step over the toilet to get to the shower, which barely accommodated the width of my shoulders. The architect of the sentry barracks clearly didn’t care about our comfort.
I also had a mini-fridge and a hot plate on a short counter. Along with my standard-issue black uniform, they encompassed the entirety of my possessions. I’d never complained about the meagerness of my living conditions, or wished for more. I spent hardly any time in my studio, and I’d never wanted for heat, or food, or security.
The life of sentry wasn’t bad. Almost the highest ranking for Unmanifested boys, the sentry position was actually coveted. I’d enjoyed attending the Elemental ceremonies, eating in the mess hall until I puked, and then falling into my warm bed. I had ultimate freedom to venture anywhere within the city walls, and everyone looked at me with eyes edged with fear.
Yes, I’d definitely appreciated my sentry status.
It wasn’t until my airmaking Element Manifested that I realized what else I could have. I pushed away the thoughts of rooms—plural!—four times as big as this one, with a balcony that wrapped around the entire side of a fortress. I squashed the idea of having a Council, of experiencing the mystical chartering bond I’d heard about.
I served Firemakers, who acted as Councilmen. They relied on me, the same way they relied on their Airmasters and Earthmovers and Watermaidens.
You have a good life, I told myself as I got in the shower. I wasn’t sure if I believed it, but by the time I’d donned my uniform, I only had one thought pressing against my consciousness.
Today was assassin training, and I’d need every wit about me to survive until lunch.
“Adam, focus.” The voice came from everywhere, echoing through the cavernous room, and doing exactly the opposite of what it wanted me to. My concentration slipped, and with it, the laser sight drooped below my target.
On my right, my brother glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. I heard his thoughts in my mind, a gift I’d possessed since birth. Only Felix knew about it; he’d said that if anyone else found out, I’d be taken to the science wing, where I’d never be allowed to leave. The gory stories he told about experimentation were enough to scare me into silence as a child, and I saw no reason to start talking now.
Get it together, Gillman , Felix warned, turning his attention back to his own task. We were in a simulation, but that didn’t matter. Every situation we practiced gave us the experience we needed in the dangerous job of being a Councilman’s sentry.
I wanted to please my brother. Last week, he’d been selected as the Supreme Elemental’s personal sentry. The Supremist was vamping up his security, and Felix got to handpick his crew. I was hoping to be on it.
As an assigned sentry, I wouldn’t have to endure training anymore. I’d move out of the barracks and into the fortress. And to be assigned to the Supremist himself? I’d have everything I’d worked for over the past twelve years.
So I dialed out Felix’s thoughts. I’d learned to quiet them by the age of five, when it became necessary for me to focus on only what someone said, not what they thought. I’d begun sentry training as a six-year-old, and I learned quickly that I didn’t want to know what my trainers thought of me.
With silence in my mind, and my attention drilled into the target, I aimed the laser and fired. Felix completed his assassination a split-second after me, and together we lowered our weapons.
He grinned at me, his face nearly identical to mine though he was six years older. He’d protected me after our parents died. Natives of Gregorio, a city a few hundred miles north of Tarpulin, they’d been journeying to the capital for my dad’s new assignment.
Wolves, combined with a terrible storm, caught them on the plains, where they both died with their bodies caged around me and Felix. He kept me warm. He fed me the food he’d taken from our parents’ frozen bodies. He got us to Tarpulin safely.
I was a year old; he was seven. He started in the sentry-training program immediately, and he only asked that I be assigned as soon as I was of age. I’d lived with a widow until I turned six, and then I’d moved into my studio. Felix fed me for the first few years, but by age eight, he started insisting I learn to cook and take care of myself.
“Nice job,” he said, clapping me on the back. I wanted to be a good sentry for him. I craved his approval.
“Nice enough for the Supremist?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.
He scrutinized my long hair, which fell into my eyes. “Maybe if you cut that hair.” But he said it with a smile, and I knew I wouldn’t have to cut my hair to be on his squad. I’d do it if I had to, but he wouldn’t require it.
At least I hoped not. My hair was the one thing about myself that I liked. I could kill a man twice my size with my bare hands. I could pick any lock with a pin I had tucked under the top layer of my skin. I could endure more pain than anyone else, except maybe Felix. I knew, because I received transmissions through my electronic tattoo, which hurt with a hot, white pain every time I sent or r
eceived information.
All sentries were masters at controlling pain, masking emotions, hurting others enough to get the information we needed to protect our Councilman. Felix always said someone had to do the dirty work, and that was what we sentries did.
I’d never served a Councilman, so I wasn’t sure exactly how dirty my hands would get. But I wasn’t stupid, and I’d been taught so many diverse ways to torture that I knew what my role would be when I was assigned.
Some sentries went mad as they progressed through the training. Weak-minded, Felix called them.
Some trainees killed themselves when they realized they’d spend their lives killing others. Fragile, Felix labeled them.
He constantly told me we would’ve died on the plains between here and Gregorio if he’d been weak-minded or fragile. He wasn’t either of those, and I didn’t want to be either, lest I should disappoint him.
“I’m going to talk to the Supremist this afternoon,” he told me as we left the training facility and made our way to the mess hall in the sentry barracks. As we went, the windows became smaller and farther apart, effectively blocking the light and air I craved.
I didn’t say anything to Felix’s remark. He already knew what I wanted; it was the same thing he wanted. I didn’t know half of what he’d done to protect me on the plains, or throughout the years of my life. I just knew he’d done everything he could to make sure I had what I needed, that I was the most comfortable I could be.
I only hoped I could make him proud.
The next morning a knock came on my door before I’d risen. Shocked someone was up before me, I padded across the stone floor barefoot to my bolted door. I listened first, something sentries were taught on the first day of training. A knock is never a knock, I heard in my trainer’s voice. A knock could kill you.
So I hovered out of arm’s reach of the door, waiting, listening with both my ears and my mind. Nothing stirred in the hall, and I cocked my head, accessing my airmaking Element to use the air to amplify sounds. I could eavesdrop on conversations this way, or send messages through the air. My Element did much more than simply make wind.
All was still. I couldn’t even hear anyone’s thoughts.
I opened the door and found an envelope of parchment on the cobbles. I hastily scooped it up and closed the door, re-bolting it as I peered at the ivory paper.
My name was scrawled in crimson ink, and I suddenly knew what the envelope contained.
My assignment.
I retreated to my bed to open it, partly because the floor in my room held the winter’s chill, and partly because I wanted to open it near the window so I could read the assignment better.
I counted myself lucky that I knew how to read and write. Besides Elementals, sentries were only one of two tiers of society that learned how. Teachers obviously had to know how to read and write, but nobody else got the chance.
I slid my finger under the envelope’s flap and ripped it open. A single sheet sat inside, and I pulled it out. I held my breath as I read.
Adam Gillman,
You have been summoned to serve Firemaker, Councilman, and Supreme Elemental Alexander Pederson with your skills and abilities, as a sentry-guard, with loyalty and honesty. If you can accept this assignment, please report to the Supremist’s Council chambers with your squadron leader, Felix Gillman, at nine o’clock a.m. on the fifth day of the second month.
Best,
Alexander Pederson
My heart clogged my throat, and even the air from my Element didn’t make it easier to breathe. I had done it. I’d made it onto the elite squad of sentries that would serve and protect the Supremist.
I fell back against my pillow, a low laugh escalating through my throat.
Six months later
I still woke before the sun, though I didn’t need to, which was saying something, because in the summer, it almost felt like the sun never went down. And if it did, it certainly didn’t stay dark long enough.
But I couldn’t re-train my body to sleep past four a.m. I’d gotten up at the ungodly hour for almost twelve years, and old habits were hard to break.
Now that I was an active and assigned sentry, I had more privileges, one of which was that I didn’t have to work out for an hour every morning. In fact, I didn’t have to report to the Supremist until eight o’clock. Felix made sure he and I got the coveted morning shift so we could spend the afternoons filing paperwork and sparring. That was the preferred method of staying fit—fighting other sentries. We all worked five-hour shifts, with the rest of our time devoted to meetings, councils, paperwork, and sparring.
I slipped out of bed, noting that I had slept a little later than I normally did. The first rays of light were starting to make the blackness gray. I dropped to the stone floor and put in fifty pushups before the dawn spread through my bedroom.
Another old habit I couldn’t break. Not that I wanted to. A sentry needed to be in peak physical condition at all times, and sparring didn’t always provide the needed workout.
I’d gotten used to the monotony of my life. Most of the time I stood outside the Supremist’s chambers. I’d been sent to Gregorio once when Supremist Pederson heard of a rebellion there among the Unmanifested.
It turned out to be nothing. Certainly not anything the Councilman in Gregorio—a man by the name of Michael Davison—couldn’t handle himself. By the time I’d arrived with three additional sentries, he had everything under control. There’d been no evidence that a rebellion had even happened.
I’d accompanied a newly apprenticed Council to the city of Hesterton, a city on the western edge of the United Territories. The Firemaker had talked, and talked, and talked. As a sentry, I’d been trained to nod and grunt, except when reporting to my boss.
That didn’t work with this guy. He was worried about his apprenticeship in Hesterton, and it tortured me to listen to him fret about how much he had to learn in the next decade. I’d wanted to smother him with my air just to get him to stop speaking. Even when he did, his voice was so ingrained in my head that I couldn’t block his thoughts as easily as I could others.
By the time we dropped them off at the fortress, I was glad he was finally the Councilman’s problem.
I liked staying in Tarpulin the best. When on a mission, I had to sleep with the company, and that meant I couldn’t exercise my airmaking Element. I couldn’t get up early, put in my pushups and stand on my balcony as the sun rose. I didn’t have a single second to myself. And I’d grown used to the long hours alone in my sentry studio.
I lived in the fortress now, with a room dedicated entirely to sleeping. My bathroom was easily as big as my former studio, and I had a living area complete with a supply of board games and cards. I’d never used them, couldn’t figure out why I’d want to entertain myself with games.
Sentries did not have time for such things.
At least that’s what Felix thought—and I knew, because I’d heard him think it.
I dismissed what my brother thought. I needed to start thinking for myself. It was a new concept I hadn’t yet embraced. Felix had taken care of me for so long, I had a hard time separating my opinions from his.
I stepped onto the balcony. It didn’t quite fill an entire wall of the fortress—I wasn’t the Supremist’s Airmaster, though I would like to be. He had a whole wing. But I had a balcony I could pace back and forth on, and it faced east so I could watch the sun rise.
The wind blew hard off the ocean, and I sucked the air into myself, feeling it expand until it filled my whole being. I adored the rush, the way I felt like I could fly. I didn’t need to breathe, not when I’d taken in enough air to fill me from head to toe. I exhaled, keeping all the air contained except what was in my lungs.
As the first rays of golden light crested the city walls, I finally released the air. It blew my hair off my forehead and whizzed away with a buzz of sound.
“Adam?”
I spun, my hands automatically seizing the knife I kept on
my person at all times and coming up to throwing position. I adjusted the blade minutely as I located who’d spoken. Felix stood with his head cocked to the side, appraising me with his arms folded. He was dressed already—a shock at only six a.m.—and a distinct scent of aftershave wafted toward me.
I immediately listened for his thoughts to determine if he’d seen me use my Element.
…he still standing there like that? Why does he look afraid?
I dropped my hands and turned back to the sunrise. “What are you doing here so early?” I asked, employing my many months of sentry training to keep my voice even, emotionless.
“I came to see if you’d gotten your new assignment.” He joined me on the balcony, his mind still wondering why I’d reacted so strongly. “Your performance reflects on me, you know.”
I hadn’t woken in the middle of the night, writhing in pain from the movement of the electronic pieces of my tattoo. “I haven’t received a new assignment,” I said. “And you know, you could knock before entering. Then I won’t embed a knife into your heart.”
Felix frowned. “I’ve never had to knock before.”
“I’ve never been active before,” I replied.
He squinted at me, but I kept my gaze on the horizon past the city wall. The water glinted like gold, and I suddenly wanted to use my Element to leap off this balcony and over the walls, soaring through the wide-open sky to the beach.
Instead, I stuffed only my lungs full of air and hoped Felix would make a hasty exit.
“Well, it should be coming soon, and it won’t be pretty. Alex sent me to warn everyone who’s going.”
“Going where?” I asked. Maybe if I could get him to tell me, the rotating agony would be lessened. Not to mention the near-deafening message that came through a wire connected a fraction from my eardrum.
“Don’t report for duty until you get it,” he said. “It’ll hurt, and you’ll be useless.” He strode toward the door, leaving me with a cold pit of dread in my stomach.