Chapter 2

Chapter 2

            I almost forgot about Rafael. He’s sure going to be surprised when I tell him what happened. Last I heard he was packing to go to the Northern Wolves an ice guild in the far north in Canas. The Wolves' guild master hasn’t been seen by anyone in fifteen years ever since he took the mantle of guild master. Everyone knows him as "The Blizzard" and is one of the last purebred Hyperborean Giants left in existence. Apparently he’s the guy responsible for the blizzard surrounding the guild, big surprise considering his nickname and all.

I finished packing an hour ago and then I ate a sandwich. Destroying nearly priceless assassin artifacts develops an appetite. Rafael lives less than a quarter mile away from my house and he’s my closest neighbor. Tell me the justice in that. Most of Dustrus is a sprawled out mess and only recently did the town start to modernize. When I finally get there Rafael’s wolf greets me in the usual way by growling for ten seconds and then tackling me. A larger part of Dustrus is farmland and public land but recently they started to cluster non-farmer housing in the center of town and about a decade ago the local school grounds was upgraded to allow for all eight grades. Another thing that has been added to Dustrus, the reason my parents even live here, is the M-Fission Reactor, which my parents are on the team to run.

“Okay, okay I give man. Get off,” I say while the wolf licks my face.

“Hey Zephyr what are you doing here,” asks Rafael.

“Just came to tell you something you’re not going to believe,” I say with what could only be a giant smile on my face.

“Okay tell me cuz that smile is starting to scare me,” he says with the universal look of creeped out on his face. “By the look on your face it seems you’ve tapped into your inner psychopath.”

“I’m going to be joining the guild…”

“Nixus,” Rafael finishes in a question. “That must of what he meant by familiar people on the train.”

“What are you talking about,” I ask extremely confused.

“You know I wake up around 5am before the sun rises to start my farm chores, right? Well when I was out there about to shovel horse crap I see a fox approaching the chicken coop, naturally I try to scare it off but to no effect. So then I conjure a couple ice darts and launch at him, that’s when mister fox decides to show he’s a magical creature and melts my ice magic. I’m pissed to the least. How is an ice user supposed to take out a Kitsune? The damn things fur is a hundred and twenty degrees. Well I pull off conjuring an ice sword while hoping subzero temperatures are enough to take this thing out. When I get closer I notice how big it really is. It’s almost up to my head. The growl is weird and unnatural. I order Buster not to attack it or he’d get hurt pretty badly. Push came to shove four ice swords later I finally kill the damn thing, talk about a workout. Then Slade nearly gives me a heart attack by appearing in a flutter of leaves. If he wasn’t the elemental master himself I might have hurt him with that ice dart. Anyway he congratulated me on my quick thinking and fighting spirit, whatever that means, and told me “so that’s what a Hyperborean Descendant looks like.” Anyway he gave me this train ticket and told me I’ll be seeing some familiar faces on the train to Tempest and disappeared in a flurry of leaves,” said Rafael completely calm like this type of thing happened every day. I looked at him, he was from a dark skinned country Tempisa from one of their islands A’kana if I remember correctly. He stood around the same height as me 5”7’. His hair was cut short well short for him and curled, his eyes were hazel and he’d been cursed with a baby face, it annoys him to no end how people think he’s three years younger than he really is. Of course he fits the stereotype of a farm boy, flannel shirt opened to a worked in white t-shirt and a pair of jeans and shoes that both look likes he’s been wearing since his last growth spurt which I knew was actually the truth.  

“What in the heck is a Hyperborean Descendant,” I ask realizing he stopped talking.

“That’s what I asked too. Apparently someone in my bloodline way back did the nasty with a hyperborean giant and the hereditary gift of ice magic reappeared in me. It explains why I have a natural capacity for ice magic and why I have such a large reserves of magical energy for my age. But forget about me. Last time I checked you were bitching you had to go to college, now we’re going to the same guild what happened?”

            I told him the same thing I told my mom and he didn’t believe it. I was going through things in my head; something that was concrete and he couldn’t say prove it. I didn’t blame him; if I were in his place I’d think I was crazy too. A kid who’s never been good at magic is suddenly joining not just a guild but one of top 5 guilds in the world. But I guess if I took Slade’s words to heart I should be able to use my Soul energy right now.

“Rafael let me show you something,” I said raising my hands.

“Hey if you’re going to spend ten minutes meditating on a sphere of Soul energy again I’m going to smack you,” he said as I pooled the energy in my hands. It came quicker then usual and when I opened my eyes a descent sized sphere was floating there.  

“So do you believe me now,” I asked him point with my free hand. I launch a sphere at a tree a hundred feet away. It hits the tree and it actually falls down. I pull more spheres from the air and just play around with them. They are floating around moving when and where I want them to move. I actually have full control over my magic for once in my life. I form a sword with the orbs and stand there with it in the ground.

“You could say that. How are you even doing that? Last time I check it took you ten minutes just to make an orb and when you launched it, it sputtered out before going three feet.”

“Well I don’t really know what happened. It’s like when I used Soul energy to destroy that chain scythe earlier something unlocked inside of me. Now I can just pull them out of thin air like you do with you ice darts. It just comes to me so easily now. I think I might have more than just Beast Tamer magic on my side here.”

“Well that’s awesome. We’ll be in the same guild now. Go on adventures for the rest of our life man. Lets see what else you’re capable of.”

            I stayed at Rafael’s until 3pm. I walked home in silence, relative silence anyway. I was so excited. My whole life sucking at every magic there is and now I’m suddenly able to do these extraordinary things. I was only half way home when my Inner Vision activates itself and a Soul sphere appears in my hand. What the hell is going on? That’s when I see something huge and orange standing in front of me. I see a flash of yellow and jump back, landing hands first. Now my legs are glowing too, what the f**k is going on? Am I already this good, I look back down and my legs now have metal armor and so does my chest and arms. They match the gloves but that can’t be a coincidence. I don’t have time to ponder why I have armor I’m just glad for the damn things because now this Dire Wolf is just attacking me head on. He’s sending magic blasts and swiping at me with his claws, as if I’m trying to walk into his den. I manage to dodge most of it but the tip of his claws scrape my chest plate, jagged marks are left there, good thing it wasn’t my actual chest I’d be dead. I launch some Soul energy blasts but no avail. Then I try some darts but they seem to do just as much, nothing, so I build up a sword. The thing is unstable. That’s when I have an idea. I go for my practice dagger. I read about this in one of the books on Soul energy. I push the energy into the dagger and the sword reforms. Now it’s stable and solid. I can actually use this. Just in time. The Dire Wolf is on level with my face and opens his jaws to bite me. Now this thing is huge. It’s at least twenty feet tall. I send it back by chopping one of its fangs in half. I go on the offensive. I go for its leg and slash at it. My sword cuts right through it. It snarls at me and lowers itself to the ground. It’s in a serious amount of pain. I go in for the kill when something strange happens. The wolf’s eyes change. When it first attacked it eyes were red with black on the edges now they were normal. As in a normal wolf’s eyes, well normal Dire Wolf anyway. It shrinks in size and weird black smoke snakes its way out of his mouth. I can almost tell its evil. The wolf looks at me with the saddest eyes you can imagine. His leg is bad off from when I slashed at it earlier but it’s healing abnormally quickly. Of course it’s a Dire Wolf, so it may have some type of advanced healing. I go towards him to inspect his wound better. That’s when I hear it.

“Just kill me and get it over with,” I look around. Who the f**k is that? “Come on do it before that spirit possesses me again. I didn’t mean to hurt you. The darkness made me do it,” I look at the wolf.

“Is that you?”

“Who the f**k else would it be,” the wolf surprisingly yells back. He’s speaking to me in my mind.

“But how?”

“Don’t you know anything? You're a Beast Tamer right? Communicating with animals should be simple for you. Now hurry up, that damn spirit is coming back, once it sees I'm healing it’ll possess me again.”

“But I can't. You're defenseless,” the wolf stands up and starts growling at me. Even with him shrunken he's still taller than me. He begins attacking me. Biting and snarling, but I can tell it’s not real. He’s only this to goad me into ending his life.

“Please. I can't deal with the pain of the darkness again,” he basically yells at me in my mind. Just when he says that the black cloud comes back. I blast it. But the blast goes right through it. There’s nothing I can do the spirit goes into the wolf again. He immediately grows again. “I told you this would happen,” the voice of the wolf changes to multiple high-pitched voices melded together and he says; “Now you die.”

            I took this as a sign that I was going to need to kill the poor animal. Some spirit possesses him and it wasn’t going to leave anytime soon. I run at him and cut from his entire underside in the process. But it heals before I can finish the cut. The spirit must be enhancing the wolf’s natural abilities now. It runs at me. I send a blast at his face and run for a nearby tree. I climb it quickly and I'm just out of his reach. I jump onto his back and stab him in the back of his neck. I make a chain from Soul energy and toss it around his neck. It comes back and I secure it around one wrist. I hold on tight to the dagger and swing myself. As I swing down I cut his neck open. Blood pours from it but I swing back up and avoid most of it. He lowers himself to the ground and stops moving. But his eyes tell the real story. They’re back to normal.

“Don’t worry kid. You did the right thing. My body died with the darkness in it. It won't be able to leave. It’ll die with me.”

            I jump off and drop to my knees next to the wolf. He sacrificed himself so the darkness couldn’t keep causing trouble for everyone else. He lay dead at my feet and I couldn’t do anything. I stood up and I watched as the darkness left his body. The damn thing was still alive. So I blasted it, and kept blasting at it. It wasn’t doing anything but I hoped it at least stung the damn thing. My Inner Vision pulled back up. The body of the wolf lay at my feet and it was black, which usually meant dead. But a wolf shaped energy signature was standing in front of me. It was yellow with orange highlights running through it. I touched it and it disappeared. I felt it move through me. Then I realize what must've happened. I just absorbed the spirit of the Dire Wolf. I was officially a Beast Tamer now.

“Hey kid did you kill that thing,” asks some guy walking towards me from the direction I was traveling.

“Yeah I did. Why do you ask,” I ask with the feeling in my gut growing worst by the second.

“That was a Giant Dire Wolf. I didn’t even know those things existed.”

“There not supposed to. A spirit possessed him and it was causing him to do things. He didn’t want to attack me. But that thing made him and now its still out there possessing other animals making them do things.”

“Well kid you should be happy. You kill that monstrous thing. The world better off without it,” I snap at the man.

“Happy. Yes I'm supposed to be happy for killing an innocent animal. You could say that. I’m sorry I can’t chat right now, got to get home,” I said as I sprinted home and was there three minutes later. I walk in and I’m surprised. My sister, Khione, is standing in the living room talking to my parents. She turns when she hears the door close.

“Hello little bro I guess you’re not as useless as I thought you were. So stop stalling show me some proof that you’re a Beast Tamer,” she says looking either skeptical or bored or both. My sister being seventeen is taller than me but not by much, thankfully. She has long black hair going down to the small of her back, a red streak on each side. Her skin is the same tone as mine a little tan but still noticeably from a light skinned country like Stratus. She’s wearing skintight jeans and black t-shirt with laced-up boots that go to her shin. The telltale signs of some form of ink pokes out of the neckline of her shirt. Mom must’ve not noticed yet.

“Well if you must see it. You’re going to have to wait until I eat something,” my sister doesn’t play well with being denied. She sends a small fireball at me. My hand goes up automatically to block the fire. But there not human, there covered in the silver fur of the dire wolf from earlier. Plus instead of just regular claws there the color of soul energy. My mouth even feels different. I look in the mirror hanging in the living room and I have full fangs. But it’s still only a Partial Takeover, plus the armor is shining in all its glory, the gash from earlier has been fixed.

“Little bro you look hardcore. I especially like the wolf’s tail there.”

“A tail you can’t be serious,” I ask while trying to look at my butt. My sister than starts cracking up, and I feel stupid having fell for the joke. I must’ve looked like a newborn puppy chasing his own tail.

“Will you both stop using magic indoors? Our insurance doesn’t cover fire and animal damage you know.”

“Actually mom you still haven’t taken the pyromaniac package off the house remember when Khione nearly burned the entire bathroom down.”

“Zephyr we said never to bring that up again,” said Khione remembering the incident when she sneezed while holding a fireball, talk about a funny way to lose control of your magic.

“Fine mom we’ll go outside, come on Zeph let’s see if you’re any good with that Beast Takeover.”

“No I will not have the first hour your back home being a brawl between you and Zephyr.”

“Mom I was only joking. I’m not that immature to take on someone who’s barely been using magic for twelve hours.”

“I’ve been using magic for five years.”

“Yeah but you weren’t any good at it until now.”

“Why are you even here Rosa de Sangre is like two thousand miles away?”

“That little brother is quite simple I asked to be given an assignment near Dustrus so I could see you before you made the big jump into adult life. I did have to change your gift when I found out you weren’t going to college. It took me forever to find the right gift for you in the first place. But it was easy when I found out you were going to Nixus. I present to you this,” she says handing me a box with holes in the top. That’s when I hear a light bark coming from inside. I open the box and sure enough a little puppy is inside, pitch black with no color elsewhere, except for his yellow eyes.

“I remember you asking for a pet. So here it is a Dire Wolf pup. He’s already eight months old and he’s house broken. He’ll be getting to his full size within the next six months and only feed him meat. He should be a great partner for a Beast Tamer,” I didn’t know what to say I had always wanted a Dire Wolf for a pet, but my parents wouldn’t let me have one saying it was too troublesome. But here it was in the box. Unlike regular wolves or even dogs Dire Wolves grew weirdly. For the first year they gain anywhere from one inch to two feet. But after that they tend to stay the same height.

“Thanks sis. I already know what I’m going to name him.”

“Yeah and what is that.”

“Caesar.”

“Hmm, I like it sounds powerful,” she says as I lift him out of the box and look at him. His eyes have a fire and intelligence.

“Here give him this, it’s a food pill. It has all the vitamins he needs at his age and if you give him one everyday he’s guaranteed to get bigger. Here’s an empathy link spell, you have to be in the same room free of distraction. With this spell he’ll have to listen to what you say. Added benefit is that he’ll never get lost, he’ll always know where you are. You may be able to manage mimicry with him but I don’t know.”

“What?”

“Oh you’re hopeless. I knew you wouldn’t know anything beyond Partial and Full Takeover so I got you this. It’s a book on Beast Tamer techniques everything from Beast Mimicry to Submission; you’ll find it in there. Use it well. I’m sorry I have to leave now and finish this mission apparently there have been some giant monster sightings close to the city. Some even say it was a Giant Dire Wolf,” at that I spit out the soda I was just drinking.

“Giant Dire Wolf you say. Any specifics on that dire wolf you're talking about? I may know what you're talking about.”

“Yeah right, it’s probably not a Dire Wolf they never get that big, biggest one is ten feet tall. Reports say this thing is almost thirty feet tall.”

“I’m telling I fought something like that on my way here. It didn’t seem natural.”

“Show me.”

“Fine, follow me,” I walk out the door with her behind me and she starts walking towards the road I took to get here.

“You can’t seriously think I’m walking? Come on let’s see what that Partial Takeover does for your scrawny legs.” I never back down from a challenge. This time I have more control over the change only the legs come on. I start sprinting and the next thing I know I see a huge fireball blast past me, which could only be my sister. I want to go faster and I kick it into high gear. Twenty seconds later I’m waiting for her at the giant wolf corpse.

“Told you I knew what you were talking about. This is where I got the wolf spirit for my takeover.

“God this thing is huge. No wonder they say it was as big as a redwood,” she says as she touches it. I realize now that the wolf never went back to its actually size after I killed it. The spirit must’ve needed a living host to change its appearance. “Seems pretty dead to me. And you say you killed this thing?”

“Yes I did. When I cut his leg this black smoke thing came out of him and he returned to his normal size. He talked to me through telepathy. He healed quickly and the darkness came back. It was hurting him, forcing him to grow to that size and to do things he didn’t want to. When I killed him he said he was happy to go down as long as it meant he could take the darkness with him. But it didn’t work that way the darkness still left his body and the wolf still died. But it wasn’t for nothing; he gave me permission to use his spirit for takeover,” the spirit from earlier, the darkness, was back now. I'm guessing I was just lucky enough to be on its radar. Khione immediately turns on her flames. “Normal attacks don’t work on it. I tried with Soul energy it just went right through.”

“Who said anything about using regular fire,” she asked turning on blue flames. Now the thing about the Azulong form is that it has blue flames when in the users hands and burns green on the body of whoever or whatever gets hits by it and nothing survives it. The stuff burns everything and destroys it completely. She quickly burns the black cloud to nothing.

“Zeph, don’t tell anyone you saw that.”

“What the heck was that,” I ask seeing if she knows anything.

“That little brother is what happens when someone summons a demon spirit and gets killed in the process. The price of the summoning was death and the wolf must’ve been the closest living thing so it got possessed. The spirit pulled on the energy from the wolf changing it into that. The Azulong form can burn almost everything even a demonic bond. I only used the Azulong to show off, but it looks like I did the right thing. Well enough morbid talk lets go home and eat,” say my sister walking back. But before she leaves she sets a fire to burn the dire wolf. After that we walked home. While she was doing that though I pulled the vision on and notice the ground go from dark gray to white and then light gray once she moved from the area.

We walk in at four and my mom and dad are in the back next to the grill. We have some fun, eat ribs, burgers, some hot dogs; my sister shows us how to properly cook hot dog, with your hands and then proceeds to show us her new fire user form. Of course it involves her flying with flames coming off her boots and a phoenix appearing and connecting to her back. I had to admit she looked intimidating with the whole flying thing. By the time we stopped laughing and joking around it was already ten. I was tired. You know that tired you get after working for a couple hours then stuffing you face. That kind of tired.

            I walk up the steps slowly and my sister is already in her room. She’s snoring loudly as usual. I walk in my room and there is Caesar sitting on my bed looking at me with his head to the side and lets out a high pitch bark-yip sound. I laugh and pull out the spell Khione gave me earlier. I read it over; great it’s in Latin my least favorite dead language.

“Ego petere hoc bestia ut mea. Ad me ipsum mihi bonded semper. ET rursus re ad spem tracta spondeo fidem ET devotionem. Natura huius voti obstrictum quamdiu vixero,” I read off the paper. The words glow gold after I read them and fly off the page when I’m done. They fly around Caesar and then me. The pup tries to bite one and fails. Once they go around the dog it simply explodes into harmless sparks and the dog barks.

”Okay now off the bed,” he jumps off and lands on the floor gracefully. I take off my clothes and hop in the shower. When I open the door he’s standing outside it waiting. “Release,” I say telling him he doesn’t have to follow me around everywhere. At this he goes to the other end of the room circles one spot and plumps himself down. Toss my clothes in the hamper; zip up my duffel with everything I need in it, including the food pills. I take one out and hold it in my hand. It’s a black ball a little bigger than a marble. “Caesar,” he pops his head up. “Eat,” I say after tossing the food pill to him. He catches it mid-air and chews. Once he eats it I move the duffel on the floor and go to bed. My sleep is filled with dreams that night I’m sure but only one I can remember.