Knowledge: The Fifth Division Saga: Book 1 (22 page)

              I felt his temperature drop rapidly until he no longer scorched like an inferno.

              His breathing slowed and regained normality. I released my hold on him but he drew me back in, wrapping his arm around my waist. To an outsider, the gesture would seem like he was trying to protect me, but both he and I knew I was the one comforting him. I took a deep breath to calm my own rapid heart rate. The colors in my vision faded slightly and my connection with his emotions faded, but not before I caught a glimpse of the angry red dimming to a brilliant orange.

            
 
“Interesting.” Remarked the queen, whose presence I had almost forgotten. This time, she looked directly into my eyes with that omniscient gaze and said, “Careful, darling. The most wicked of beings are the ones who deceive us with their pretty faces. Ask your mother.”

              She nodded to my hands, causing Ash to look down at them. I tried to hide them but wasn’t quick enough. My palms were covered in blisters and furious red marks. Ash gasped in horror. The Moon Queen grinned one last time before sweeping from the archives.

Chapter 13

              Ash retracted his arm sharply, his face turning to stone.  I tried to reach out to him, to tell him I would be alright, but he skittered back as if afraid of touching me. Without speaking, he walked to the door like a zombie. We trudged through the tunnels in complete silence. I wanted to reassure him, but had no clue as to how. His eyes glazed over and his lips pursed. I felt like we were back to the night we met and I did not know if any depth lied beneath the shell he covered himself with. Now I knew there was, but how could I reach it at a time like this? The dim lighting only darkened the mood; the shadows seemed to suck the life right out of me. I felt drained and exhausted after the episode in the archives, whatever I did back there had spent a good deal of my energy.

              What
had
I done?

              I hadn’t the slightest idea. As we wove through the tunnels, I tried to get in touch with Ash’s feelings, or to see his aura again, but nothing happened. The torchlight wavered a little but I doubted that had anything to do with me and more to do with the fact that we were reaching the mouth of the tunnel.

              We stepped out into the open sunny air. Center Hill provided a wonderful view of the early evening skies. Even the Shade Kingdom seemed cheerier than normal. Ash didn’t wait to start stalking down the hill, silent as ever.

              I sighed and went to follow him when I noticed a tingling sensation from my hands. The stinging pain of the blisters quickly dimmed, a pleasant warmth spread to my fingertips. I raised my hands up to my face to see that they dazzled in the sunlight, a bright white glow shone from my skin, just as it had those weeks ago in Ash’s Grove. The light blinded me for half a second and then…nothing. The light dissipated and in its place were my hands, normal as ever.

              Blister free.

*

            
 
“They did
what
?” Erion exclaimed, pacing around the Elemental palace foyer. Caspian wondered if alerting Erion to the fact that Mira and Ash had gone to break into the Archives might have been a terrible idea. Because the dude was seriously freaking out. “Ash is a blasted
imbecile
!”

            
 
“Well, what are we supposed to do?”

              Erion stroked his chin in a very Sherlock sort of way, “Was your source reliable?”

              Caspian thought back to Iris, drowned in tears from having blurted out Mira’s secret, “Yeah.”

            
 
“Then we need to go wring their necks.”

              Caspian sighed, “Sounds good enough to me.”

*

              My hands were perfectly fine, no blemish whatsoever. They had been completely healed.

              I stared down at them for a moment as a wave of images crashed through my head: my skin glowing in the sunlight, the way light always invigorated my senses, the strange power I got from just soaking in the sun’s rays. It all clicked in my brain.

            
 
“ASH!” I screamed running down the hill. He didn’t even turn around. Therefore, I had to reduce to less orthodox methods.

            
 
“What is wrong with you, woman?!” Ash hollered bitterly as he peeled me off his back after I attempted to tackle him. Seeing as he is a highly trained Legion soldier and I am a slight girl of elfish proportions, I did little to deter him. But he paused in his progress anyways to glare at me.

            
 
“Ash, you’ll never believe…”

            
 
“Save it, Miss Mirabelle.”

            
 
“Excuse me? What’s with the ‘miss’? I thought we discussed that.”

              He refused to look me in the eye, “Yes, well I believe that we should start conforming to the proper Guardian protocol.”

              I snorted, “Yeah, you conform
so
well.”

            
 
“I’m not joking!” he set me gently on the ground and crossed his arms while scowling at me, a look of such pain on his features. I suddenly felt overly self conscious, “Do you understand what almost just happened in there? I
hurt
you, physically hurt you. And it was almost a lot worse.”

            
 
“But it wasn’t.”

              His eyes softened slightly, “Because of you. But even so, you still…”

              I raised my hands up so he could see them and their entire scar-less glory.

              He blinked, “Your hands…”

            
 
“Healed. It was the light, I’m sure of it this time. I wondered before, but now I know. I seem to gain energy from direct light. Do you think it could be my Knowledge?”

            
 
“It’s not possible.”

              I laughed, “Like you said, I’m an abnormal freak. Is having a light Knowledge really out of the question? And you know those colors I’ve been seeing and the voices I’ve been hearing?”

            
 
“Oh, so you’ve stopped hearing colors? What a relief.”

            
 
“Shut up for a second. When we were in there I could see and feel your anger and it was like I was able to give you calmer emotions. Do you think I could be psychic?”

              He shook his head, “There’s no such thing. And the only explanation
really
is impossible.”

            
 
“What is it?”

              He shook his head again, “That’s the sort of thing a Seer could do. Sort of.”

            
 
“Sort of?”

            
 
“Well Seers can see emotions and listen in on the goings on of the mind, but they cannot transfer energy. That’s Wielder territory.”

              I thought on this for a moment, “That doesn’t make sense. I’m half Elemental and half Wielder. You look a little pale, should you sit down?” I reached for his hand but he pulled his hand away from my reach.

            
 
“I was serious about what I said before, I’m dangerous. I should never have led you to think otherwise.” He closed his eyes, as if in terrible pain, “She was right. I am a monster.”

            
 
“No, you’re not.”

            
 
“You don’t know!”

            
 
“Maybe because you don’t tell me anything!”

              He sighed, steeling his expression, “You want to know the truth? Fine.” He slumped to the ground at the base of Center Hill and I followed in his example, facing him. “You already know there is only one Moon Elemental and one Sun Elemental per every generation.”

            
 
“Yeah, they’re the king and queen, right?”

            
 
“Yes, no matter what. Moon is always a woman and Sun, always man. It is an arranged marriage. There is an ancient legend about it actually.” He breathed deeply. “It speaks of the destructive nature of a marriage without love. Since the royal marriage is always arranged, it almost never results in true love.”

            
 
“Okay? That makes sense.”

            
 
“That’s not all. The legend specifically says that thousands of years ago, the royals tried to continue their line, thinking it would make sense to continue the line of such powerful beings. The Sun and Moon Elementals are the most significant forces in our Kingdom, so their children were bound to be strong as well, right? The story goes that the very first royal couple wanted to pass down their powers, so they had a child. But instead of producing a Sun or Moon, the Elements together, combined with the lack of love, created a monster. The child grew more powerful with each passing year, and its heart was void of love since it was not born of a loving relationship. The reasoning for its whole existence was greed and want of increasing strength for the royals, mix the bad intentions with the immense magic of the parents and you have a creature of mass devastation. The child eventually became so unstable and volatile that it tried to destroy the Kingdom, killing anyone in sight to do so. It took the entire Nostosian Legion to kill it.

            
 
“After that, people knew the royals could never again try to reproduce. Not only for the sake of the Kingdom, but for all of Nostos. There had not been another attempt by the royals to have a child for over one thousand years. But decades ago, the newest duo of Sun and Moon were born, Cyro and Selene. They grew up together, knowing their whole lives that they were going to be wed. For most Sun and Moon’s, this causes them to despise one another and the pact that binds them. But the relationship between Cyro and Selene was different, very special. They had been best friends from the start and as they grew up, they discovered that their friendship later translated into love. They were happily wed, the first royal couple in centuries to actually fall in love. They knew the legend of the monster child, but they knew the cause for the beast was due to the hatred and greed involved in the marriage that brought him into the world. Cyro and Selene believed so firmly in the strength of their love and they wanted so badly to have a family together, that they decided to risk having a baby.

            
 
“They were confident throughout the pregnancy that all was well. That their child would inherit one of their abilities or at least take on one of the three true elemental Knowledges (earth, sky, or water). It was not until the child’s birth that they realized the grave mistake they had made.

            
 
“The baby was born silent and with closed eyes. They believed the thing to be dead. Really the little bugger was just tricking them, even from day one. After hearing its pulse, they knew it was really alive. They placed the baby in Selene’s arms and she felt the abnormal body heat through the blanket.  When it opened its eyes, they were black as ash but when the baby met its mother’s gaze, his irises flashed orange and red, like fire.

            
 
“The royals realized they had produced a demon. Even with love, the power of their Knowledges was too strong to produce a stable child. They locked the baby up in the dungeons of the castle, terrified of their own son, worried that even as a small infant he would murder civilians and pillage the Kingdom. They knew from the legend that the child would be evil by nature but they could not bring themselves to kill him, not when he had yet to commit any savage deed. When he turned five and he had still made no attempt to escape the rusty chains of his prison, they decided to send him to live at the Elemental Legion Headquarters, knowing that he would grow up with discipline and if he ever tried to hurt anyone, he would be surrounded by trained Legion members who could stop him immediately.”

              Ash’s eyes flashed brightly as he continued, “The boy grew up in fear of himself, knowing that a dark and devious creature lurked within his soul, waiting for the time he was least expecting to pounce and force him to succumb to its temperamental ways. Terror was his constant companion, keeping him company deep into his sleepless nights. He knew why he had to be chained up and why he needed to be trained so young the way that he had, but he couldn’t help but hate his parents. Why would they bring him into this world only to torture and despise him? He didn’t understand. It was repeated to him time and time again that he was a ticking time bomb; that he would explode at any second. So he kept his distance from everyone except for those who were too stubborn to stay away. To remind the boy of his evil nature, the royals named him after the color of his eyes which his father once told him as he visited the dungeon, ‘According to legend, they are dark as your soul, laddie.’

            
 
“And you already know what consumes the monsters soul. What else could be so destructive and unstable, so malicious and unforgiving?”

              I gulped back a sob as I whispered, “Fire.”

              He nodded solemnly, “Exactly. So now you know. Now you can fully understand how dangerous I am. The only reason I am still alive is because I’ve been careful, but as soon as I slip up, they’ll kill me where I stand. And I almost screwed up today. If you were more seriously injured…”

            
 
“But I wasn’t.”

            
 
“By luck! Neither of us knew that you can heal by light. If that hadn’t been the case, you would have been bandaged for weeks. And it would have been by my doing!” he bit his lip, “I’ve been so cautious all my life and then
you
…you just stampede into my life, knocking everything down and barreling past every wall. I don’t get it!”