Chapter 3

Chapter 3

“What do you mean the spirit is dead? I understand the part about cleansing fire but you said it wouldn’t die easily.”

“I said it could only be killed by a skilled magic user, my guess is a skilled magic user was attacked by it when it escaped.”

“Escaped, what part of seal him away did you not understand. That spirit represented months of planning, only to be killed by some snot nose teenager.”

“It was actually two snot nosed teenagers and Echisen has interest in one of them.”

“What did the kid say to you exactly after he defeated the damn wolf?”

“He said, “The thing made him do things he didn’t want to.””

“Now how would he know that? No matter the experiment was a failure at best. We must move on to more pressing matters. You said you sense Inner Vision in the boy and he used Soul energy.

“Yes sir he used Soul energy to kill the beast and I believe he was using Inner Vision the entire time.”

            Both the speakers were strange they had a weird way of speaking almost like the word coming from their mouths were forced, I recognized one voice as the man from earlier the old man who asked about the dire wolf. The other was a stranger to me. Before I could hear more I’m woken up.

“Little bro, wake up. Wake-up or I’ll burn your blankets,” said my sister in a melodic tone.

“I’m up, I’m up. What time is it?”

“Almost nine, you better get ready we’re leaving in thirty minutes,” says Khione as she walks out the room. I close the door and see Caesar still sleep. I throw on some clothes and look at the wolf and his ear twitches and stays upright. Caesar, wake-up,” he bolts awake like he was faking the entire time. “Follow,” I say and he stands behind me. A guy could get used to this.

            Once I’m downstairs I drop the duffel by the door and head to the kitchen. My sister is already in the kitchen. I pull a chicken breast from the freezer and wave it in front of her face.

“Help someone out here,” I ask holding it in place.

“What do you want me to do,” she asks looking genuinely confused.

“You said I had to feed him meat not frozen. Can you cook this for him,” I ask surprised I need to explain it.

“Fine. Give it here,” I hand her the chicken breast and she does the honors. She produces a flame and surrounds the chicken for about thirty seconds, and then she tosses it to him. He devours the thing in seconds and I laugh.

“Why do I have to feed him meat? Why not dog food?”

“He’s a wolf not a dog. Wolves can barely digest dog food and he’s a dire wolf no way he can eat processed food it doesn’t agree with their stomachs.”

“Good to know.”

            After I eat breakfast I throw him a food pill and then I’m waiting and waiting and waiting and gah I can’t take it anymore. If I had to wait any longer I’d explode from waiting. Then my parents came down the steps. I breathed a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

“I don’t think I need to ask if you’re ready to leave. Do I?

“No you don’t.”

I grab the duffel and throw it in the back of the car. Ten minutes later we’re at the train station. Sunday morning really isn’t that busy. I’m walking up the steps to the train with Khione and my parents behind me. Caesar is right next to me, following silently. I hand them my ticket and the clerk tells me I have first class all booked up. So only people Slade invited to Nixus will be in that car. I’m standing in front of the train car and I look at my family. My mom is smiling, my sister is looking off into the distance pretending to be bored and my father is just staring at me.

“Well this is me; I’ll call you guys. I promise,” I say as I walk on the train. First class is three cars long. I walk on the furthest one. I left my luggage with the clerk up front she said she’d make sure it gets on the train. Caesar is just walking around the car sniffing everything. I sit down and wait. The train is scheduled to leave in about ten minutes. What to do, what to do? Just as I’m about to nod off from boredom I hear the door from the other car open.

“Is this the first class…come on this can't be happening right now,” I turn to see Haven de Maio one of the hottest girls in my graduating class. Granted not the most popular but that had something to do with her pissing off the wrong set of girls at school when she came to my school late last year and she immediately got into a fight with the first person that laughed at her, Jocelyn Fairth. Talk about epic brawls, do you know what happens when two equally powerful water and fire users fight each other. I’ll tell you chaos. I was walking from the lunch line at the time of the fight and got right in the middle of it, lucky me. Ever since that day I guess she saw me as the rest of the school did, an annoying wimp. I had personally had a crush on her since I first saw her walk into my class. When I had walked into the circle surrounding the fight some nameless kid had rudely pushed me into the circle. I took the brunt of two attacks. One side of my body got singed and the other was soaked, to say my clothes were done for was an understatement.

“Now I know this is a joke. There is no way Slade Echisen personally invited you to Nixus. I may not know much about Pressurization but I know you need some type of magical ability to even go through Pressurization let alone survive it,” she says looking annoyed. Haven is from the desert oasis town Whiptash that is in the country of Drakik. She’s not completely black because her dad is from Slytha, from what I hear, but she’s still darker than me. More of a light ebony complexion. Her chocolate brown hair goes in waves down her back and her black eyes have hate behind them but it’s the kind of hate that you know isn’t directed at you but you still think it better to stay away.

“I assure you I don’t suck at magic as much as you think I do?”

“What did a little spirit come down and grant you a wish?”

“Nope, a fairy named Slade told me I had Beast Tamer blood in me.”

“Beast Tamer? Oh please could you at least try to lie convincingly,” she said extremely annoyed.

“Must be that time of the month, I guess.”

“Why you,” she said while throwing a fireball at me. I’m happy to say the same thing happened as with Khione. The Beast Takeover activated, and the armor sprang to life as well.

“Well I stand corrected. But now that I know you can defend yourself I’m going to kick it up a notch.”

“Put the fireball down and step away from the snack cart,” said Rafael with a serious look on his face and a small snowball in his right hand. “We don’t need this train car looking like the school cafeteria when you beat the s**t out of Jocelyn now do we,” asks Rafael with a tentative grin spreading on his face.

“God, does no one forget about that? I mean it’s been what three years people can we move on with our lives?”

“Moving on, so we all got invited to join Nixus. How weird is that?”

“Not very we’re all awesome, me the amazing fire user, Rafael the ice maker and Sasquatch over here.”

“Come on Haven that’s not funny,” brief pause from the peanut gallery. “It’s hilarious,” Rafael, laughs letting his snowball go and it falls to the floor where it melts almost instantly.

“Haha very funny, are we done laughing at my expense?”

“Well if we have to be on this train for three hours I guess so,” said Haven with a small smile. But I could tell it wasn’t reaching her eyes.

“I think we should share what happened to have Slade invite us to join Nixus. Let’s start with you Haven,” said Rafael who was inspecting the snack cart.

“Well that’s a long story.”

“Like you said we have three hours.”

“Three days ago I mailed my application to Tempest University. I was going to become a doctor. Not sure what kind at the time just knew I wanted to go into the field of medicine. I still kept up with my daily exercise routine which included ninety minutes of target practice and basic fire magic usage. I was trying to perfect the Shining Fist form, for some reason I could never get the yellow flames to last. I was in the middle of the Hadarak Forest at the time and for some reason a damn forest spirit decided to attack me. The damn thing was annoying as hell. It made me regret not taking on the Pulse style instead of the Shining Fist, at least then I could have hit the thing. It turned out to be an Imp of all things. It was faster than average but I finally found the pattern it was using to attack. That’s the point in time when the yellow flames should’ve sputtered out but they stayed and I killed it. That was the first time I not only went four minutes but ten with the shining fist form still up. After that Slade appeared in a cyclone of leaves and told me to show up on Sunday via train. He said I was to be seeing some familiar faces I didn’t think they would be either of you. No offense to you Rafael but you’re not the best ice user in the school and you Zephyr are hardly my first two choices from Dustrus but I guess that’s why I’m not a guild master.”

“Listen that match against what-his-face was rigged I tell you. Rigged,” yelled Rafael.

“Moving on from your ego. We all have similarities to our stories; although we fought different things we all pushed our limits against a monster we had no experience fighting. Rafael with the Kitsune, Haven with the Imp and me with a possessed chain scythe it all just seemed to be too convenient. What exactly was his vision and what did it have to do with the future and us? Once we defeated the monster Slade invited us to the guild.”

“No there isn’t but I wouldn’t look too much into it. I’m not. I’m just happy to be going to Nixus. By dinnertime, hopefully, we’ll be Pressurized and have more power than ever,” said Rafael with a handful of treats from the snack bar.

“I’m just happy to be able to get out of Dustrus entirely. I don’t plan on going back there anytime soon,” said Haven walking to the snack cart that had already been attacked by Rafael. She grabbed a chocolate dipped strawberry and proceeded in stare at it.

“Zephyr, what up with the dog,” asked Rafael now devoid of sweets a pile of wrappers on the table next to him. When did he even inhale all of that, let alone unwrap it?

“Khione gave him to me as a going away present, his name is Caesar, and he’s a Dire Wolf not a dog. He’ll be as tall as you in a couple months,” I say looking at the wolf that is now at my left between Rafael and I, his tongue lolling out as he stares out the window.

“Well that’s nice of your sister. She never was very charitable,” says Rafael. That’s when Haven’s strawberry catches fire for no apparent reason. Rafael and I look at her and she’s looking out the window to her right almost as if she’s day dreaming really.

“Ah, Earth to Haven, your fruits on fire,” says Rafael waving his hand in front of her face.

“Huh, what happened,” the flame winks out just when she rejoins us. “I’m sorry I was just thinking about something…from a long time ago,” she says this with a look that almost sad but as soon as I see it it’s gone, replaced by awareness.

            After the flaming strawberry incident Rafael and I shared our respective stories about Slade and they all agreed that mines was the weirdest, I mean Kitsune’s and Imp’s are not everyday occurrences but a possessed chain scythe from the Black Hand and the whole Sanctuary thing took the cake. Later on Haven and Rafael got in a fight over what element was best, Ice or Fire. It all started with Rafael pinning his apple core to the wall of the car and saying “Ice is the best” Haven responded with a “Really” and melted his ice darts with a strategic spurt of fire and then back handed the apple core into the trash can. Train car staff came in during the middle of the argument with food and they were too busy stuffing their faces to argue anymore. The train was delayed for thirty minutes in Tornos, a hundred miles outside Tempest, because of a bomb threat. They triple checked the train and had spells to quadruple check the train nothing was found. An hour later we were in the great Capital of Tempest.

The city was three times the size of Dustrus and only about thirty city blocks worth of Public Park. Nixus was probably the closest building to the train station anyone would want to see, being a mere five blocks away.

Although the travel brochure tells you Slade Echisen purchased thirty square blocks of land and placed his guild in the middle of it you don’t really comprehend the size of thirty blocks when it’s told to you or in this case when you read it. Let’s just say it’s huge. At the front gate theirs a car to take you up to the main building. How he afforded this place I will never know.