Chosen One Protective Services

Lasthold was a city-sized fortress in the clouds. It loomed over the surrounding jungles, peering down from the already high mountains like a pillar of worked stone. It was the kind of tower that Rusty had imagined Saruman lived in, and stuck Gandalf on top of. Outside, the clouds swarmed and gathered around like a belt, with three great holes in them to shine down light upon the three elven enclaves below. Bright and shining silvery trees stretched skyward, and lights like gems winked and danced when Rusty was in a position to see them from above the fog. There were many, many great windows, some of them of stained glass, depicting heroes slaying dragons and fighting great, armored giants.

It was a fantastical spire full of secrets and treasures and art, one of those that Conan would have happily looted without a second thought. It matched and exceeded Rusty’s dreams; there was no more fitting place to train to be a hero of legend.

And after three days, Rusty was about ready to murder somebody for a hamburger. Or some noodles, or even a cheese sandwich. But no, they couldn’t have anything like that here.

Rusty sat in the feast hall, staring down at his spoon, and watching clumps of oatmeal slide back into the bowl. It was all that he had to eat. It was all ANY of them had to eat. And it was all they’d ever eat, while they were here. Rusty had just learned that five seconds ago, and he was starting to rethink this whole hero thing.

“You’re sure of this?” Rusty asked

“Sorry, chief,” Ken Li said, looking mournfully at his own bowl of gruel. “They told us on the day before you showed up, that our stomachs couldn’t handle most of the food, here. If you don’t grow up eating the stuff, it puts you down like a poisoned dog.”

“But why?” Rusty tried to keep the whine out of his voice, stealing a glance across the hall and over at the far table, where Gunther was tucking into his own bowl of gruel while Alice chatted merrily away with him. Gunther had been watching him like a hawk whenever they were training together, and he’d gotten a nasty smirk on his face whenever Rusty had failed a task.

But Gunther hadn’t seemed to notice this particular show of weakness, so Rusty looked back to Ken in time to see him shrugging. “Search me, chief,” Ken said. “I think it has to do with germs, or the stuff we’re made of, or both. You are what you eat, you know? So our guts don’t know how to digest the local stuff, and maybe vice-versa.”

“That doesn’t stop the local stuff from trying,” Rusty said, remembering the treestrider young.

Ken shuddered. “Yeah. I’m just lucky the stuff that came after me had waists. That’s all I’m saying.” Then he pursed his lips, turned his head to one side. “The bugs stayed off me pretty well, though. And some of them looked like big honkin’ skeeters. Probably not as big as they get in your neck of the woods, I hear the Texan ones can pick up babies and fly off with ‘em if you let them.”

“They don’t get THAT big,” Rusty said, grinning. Ken had some funny ideas about Texas. He was a pretty all right guy to talk to. And his parents were Chinese, not Japanese, so they weren’t the ones who bombed Pearl Harbor, so that was good in Rusty’s book. His Mom had lost a brother in some place called Iwo Jima, and Rusty didn’t want to have to go back home and tell her he had a Japanese friend now.

With a sigh, Rusty gave in to inevitability and dug into his oatmeal which wasn’t actually oatmeal. It tasted as it always did, bland and neutral, with a slight hint of spinach.

“You know we can fix that, right?” Roz said, popping out of nowhere and sitting on the table.

“Huh? How?” Rusty said, looking over at the little alien-shaped familiar.

“What was that?” Ken asked. “Oh. Familiar stuff? Don’t let Terry catch you talking out loud.”

“Right, sorry,” Rusty nodded. Terathon was teaching them how to focus properly. He blinked, and ate as he thought to Roz instead. What did you have in mind?

“So I just thought of it, but you can do memory stuff, right? Why don’t you have it trigger memories of the best food you ever ate with every bite?”

Rusty’s eyes went wide. You’re a genius! Except… he glanced to his right, where the lady wizard, Jadar, sat alone at the head of the largest table and watched them eat, her hands folded over themselves like a praying mantis. She shifted to meet his gaze, and he looked away, hurriedly. Since Janice was gone, at least for the moment, she seemed to have been assigned to watch them and lead them around Lasthold.

And Rusty was pretty sure she was assensing them at all times. She was the one who was supposed to teach them how to assense, after all.

“Oh, right. Can’t let them know we got that rune,” Roz said, leaning in closer and whispering the last few words.

No we can’t,Rusty replied, and got busy finishing his nearly-flavorless gruel.

Just in time, too, as Ken whispered “She’s standing up!”

They all knew what that meant, and they knew what was expected of them. Rusty put his bowl down and stood with the others, looking to Jadar across the feasting hall.

“You will follow me closely, and not stray from my trail,” she told them, and walked away without a backwards glance.

Rusty exchanged looks with the other three, and hurried to follow.

And Jadar took them down many, many flights of stairs. Past empty rooms, past closed doors, and past large, empty spaces that gave no clue as to their purpose. The more that Rusty saw of this tower, the more of it looked unfinished. It was as if it had been built for a city’s worth of people, and only a village showed up.

Mummers passed them occasionally as they went, small and servile things swathed in brightly-colored cloth and wearing beaked golden masks. They bore boxes and sacks of things, and the occasional rolled up scroll. Rusty had only ever seen them from afar. This was the first time he was passing within arm’s length of them, and if he wasn’t trying to hurry to follow Jadar, he would have stopped and stared. As it was, he knew he’d be replaying every encounter with them with his total recall later, examining every detail of the bizarre creatures.

But as it was, keeping up with Jadar took everything he had. He still hadn’t recovered from the drain on his body that he’d woken up with after that first morning, and then the sickness on top of that. And Jadar wasn’t making any allowances for his weakness.

That said, she finally DID slow down after opening a double door to the outside, and Rusty let out a gasp of pure wonder as he saw the vista that was revealed to them.

They had descended the farthest they’d ever been allowed to descend the tower, and they had come to a balcony that was under the clouds. This was the first time Rusty had ever looked down from the tower, and seen below the clouds.

A gentle rain pattered down here, but they were out of the worst of it. It glistened in the sunlight reflected from the beams that broke through the clouds, shining golden and bright. The two mountaintops that flanked the tower to the northeast and northwest were illuminated in their glory, showing great trees that almost looked like Christmas trees, with ball-like buildings on the branches instead of ornaments, and walkways of rope and wood between them instead of tinsel.

Down at the base of the tower, criss-crossing bridges of stone fed from the structure to the neighboring mountain peaks, stretching for what Rusty knew must have been miles. There were things moving along them, but whether they were people or creatures, he could not tell. Many of the mountain tops looked charred. He remembered the lightning that had been dancing around the peaks back when he first saw them from the treestrider cocoon, and thought that was probably the likeliest explanation.

Beyond them, to the north, the green light that made up the world outside the tower’s radius returned, showing the boundary of the swamp as it rose wild, the branches of the canopy trees waving constantly, as if alive. Whatever was moving them was taking quite a lot of force, Rusty thought. He’d been under them during his trip, and they had seemed solid and stable.

“We saw a third light beam,” Roz said. “Back when we were about to be turned into spider chow. That’s gotta be behind the tower, right?”

Rusty looked back at the door they’d come out of, and to the rounded stone walls that blocked any view of anything even remotely southerly. “I guess.”

“Attend!” Jadar snapped, and for a second Rusty had a flash of fear that she was snapping at him, specifically, for talking to his familiar out loud. But no, she seemed to be addressing all of her students. “I have taught you the basic ways to assense. Now you shall practice it at a greater range. Look below us now with your sight unveiled.”

Rusty nodded, and focused his mind. He was getting good at this part. Most of the others needed to close their eyes still, to form the words properly, but his memory buffs let him remember Terathon’s lessons on focusing and visualization instantly and perfectly. Mind you, it still took effort to imagine the words perfectly in front of his eyes, but it got easier each time. He thought of the alien symbol that meant “assensing,” and put “activate” in front of it, and that did the trick.

And just like the thirty or forty times they’d practiced it before, everyone started glowing in Rusty’s eyes.

It was a little harder to see in the daylight, than in the dark. In darkness, everyone was lined with silver to Rusty, just like the hydra had been. But in the daylight, you couldn’t see the lines as clearly, just the general glow of the chakra.

The other kids looked comparable to what he saw when he looked in a mirror with assensing active. Jadar glowed like a bonfire. Brighter than Reevian had, when he’d snuck a look at that wizard later, but less than Terathon and Balangor, who were both about equal. But the ancient wizard, whose name he’d eventually found out was Zarkimorr, he glowed like a sun and made it hard to see much else while he was nearby.

But the others weren’t the subject of today’s lesson, so Rusty blinked, then moved over to the balcony and looked down.

And immediately, the glowing halo of gold around the trees shifted, and grew. Grew to the point where it was butting up against the tower, across the expanse of wide open space only meagerly filled by stone bridges. And at the heart of both trees, down toward the bottom of it, there was a rounded aura that looked like a rainbow of colors, shifting and smearing like an oil slick. There was something like a lattice around it, hexagonal shapes like the photos Rusty had seen of honeycombs, black lines against the golden light that seemed to cage and contain the rainbow essence.

“What… is… that?” Alice whispered. “That’s… those two are the most beautiful things I ever did see!”

“How are we seeing them from here?” Gunther asked. “They are nowhere near our chakral radiuses.”

“They are doors between worlds,” Jadar answered, simply. “The elves placed them to call others to their aid, when the war went against them. And you can see them, because they are of such power that they are visible at a great distance. As to the rest of the elven… chakra, yes, we shall call it that, though they use different words— as to the golden glow of their chakra, you see it because you are viewing the source of their power. And it is mighty enough to be seen, at least partially, by the naked eye. Look hard, and tell me what you think it may be.”

Rusty bit his lip, and studied the glow, trying to figure out where it started. At first he thought it had to do with the cage, and the door between the worlds, but that didn’t make much sense. The elves would have needed a lot of power to make world doors, wouldn’t they? So they’d need the power in place first. He squinted again, until he had to blink, with spots dancing in front of his eyes. Assensing didn’t junk up his sight any, but the thing was giving off golden light in his normal sight, and parts of it were making leaf-shaped spots dance in front of his eyes.

And instantly, he had a feeling he knew the answer. He turned away and visualized the symbols that meant “stop asssensing,” and stared back down. “It’s the leaves,” he said. “That’s where the glow is coming from. Something in the leaves is powering all of this.”

“Trees use leaves to eat. It’s photo something,” Ken Li said. “Holy shoot, is that it? The elves get their power from the sun?”

“Photosynthesis, that’s the word!” Of course Rusty remembered it instantly. He had his enchantments to help with that, after all.

They looked to Jadar, and Rusty was surprised to find her scowling. But the scowl quickly shifted away, and her usual emotionless mask returned. But he imagined he could hear just the faintest hint of annoyance in her voice. “I do not know this word. But yes, this is so. The elves are partially vegetable in nature. Their chakra is rejuvenated by the sun. And plants that feed from the sun extend their sorcery. Look to the green, and there you will find a place that is pleasing to elves. And when the light is concentrated, as we have done for them here, they can perform mighty workings.”

“We’ve upset you somehow,” Alice said. “We’re sorry.”

Jadar blinked at her, then shrugged. “I had planned some time to explain that leaves fed trees light. But you know this already. This is surprising. I will have to find something else for you to do, because the other thing I have arranged to show you will not happen for at least nine more minutes.”

“Honestly if we stay out here a while longer, I don’t mind,” Ken said, looking around. “This is a real swell view.”

“You are not here to see swell views. You are here to save this world!” Jadar snapped, and Rusty felt his face flush, as the others took a step back. It was because they still had their assensing on, he knew. When someone got angry, their chakra flared up, and when one of the wizards did that then the pressure was pretty uncomfy.

“We are sorry, teacher,” Gunther bowed his head. Rusty followed suit, and after a moment Jadar grunted.

“Good. You are learning. Fill the time by studying the area and seeing what you can see, and do not ask questions until I give you leave to do so.”

“She hates being caught off guard,” Roz said. “Doesn’t like talking any more than she needs to, either. That’s what I’m thinking.”

Yeah, Rusty thought back. He added it to the ongoing list of quirks that he’d been putting together on each of the five wizards. It was very much needed; these five governed his life, now. He’d put his trust in their goals, and he was totally in their hands. Before he could get started on the quest, he had to make the wizards happy, or at least enough of them that they’d decide he was the chosen one.

He snuck a glance at Gunther as the bigger kid leaned over the balcony, and studied the trees with fascination. Rusty looked away before he could be caught staring. Gunther was the main reason Rusty wanted to be the chosen one, now. Because he had a distinct feeling that if he wasn’t picked, then Gunther would end up with that job. And Rusty didn’t like Gunther much. The guy was really unfriendly, was always scowling at him. And he was German! Those guys had killed a whole bunch of Jews. Yeah, that was supposed to have ended shortly after Rusty was born, but they were probably still doing it secretly. After all, Germany was a long way away. Who’s to say they weren’t still bad guys?

“C’mon daddy-o, stop mean mugging the blondie and let’s get our peepers on,” Roz was jumping up and down, and Rusty fought to hide a smile. Jadar wouldn’t have liked it. Most of the wizards were serious and grave… and they kind of had a point. They hadn’t brought the four of them here to have a vacation. Someone was going to be dead by the time they were done. Five of us, Rusty amended, as he remembered Janice.

Nobody had seen Janice since the wizards had taken her away.This was worrying.

Rusty shoved it from his mind and moved up to the railing, peered over the edge, and concentrated on the symbol that turned his assensing back on. And he watched, enjoying the way the rainbow colors of the world doors roiled and combined.

Leaning over the balcony put him out from the shelter of the overhanging floors, and as the slow rain started to soak into his hair, Rusty pulled the hood of his robe over his head. They all had them now, cream-colored hooded robes, with patches to indicate which wizard they “belonged,” to. His and Ken’s patches were brown and triangular and plain. Gunther’s was a golden circle, with a series of sewn crystals that rattled when he moved too fast. Alice’s was a midnight blue eye, with a weird set of filigree around the pupil.

The minutes seemed to crawl, and Rusty caught himself glancing to his classmates. Ken glanced back and shook his head, and Rusty stared down again, as Jadar shifted at the edge of his vision. He didn’t want her to think he was slacking.

And his paranoia was rewarded, as he was looking straight at one of the doors when it flared up, the colors boiling to twice their size, obscuring the hexagonal black grid around it. Gasps from Alice and Ken and muttered words from Gunther told him the others were seeing it too.

“What’s that?” Alice asked.

Jadar deigned to glide closer to the edge and direct her gaze downward. “Someone is coming through the door,” she said. “It takes much chakra to pierce through the barriers. What you are seeing now would be the death of us all, were it not contained and focused. The towers are not so lightly defied.”

“Towers? There’s only one around here,” Ken said, confused.

Jadar shook her head. “That will be a lesson for much later, and for the Chosen One alone.”

Rusty merely kept watching, blinking and shifting his eyes. After a time, the glow faded, and from down at the base of the tree, he saw the tiny, blocky form of wagons being drawn out, harnessed to something that could have been cattle.

“Who are they?” he asked Jadar.

The woman didn’t respond.

Rusty risked a look over, saw worry cross her face for just a second, and turned his eyes back downward again.

Then there was a sensation, a feeling of pressure to his left. He turned, they all did, to see Ken growing a bit, his upper body lengthening as he bent forward to peer over the balcony more easily.

“Child!” Jadar snapped.

Ken froze. “Um. Sorry?”

“They have not yet opened their banners,” Jadar said. “They may be foes. And if they have potent magicians assensing in our range, you have announced our presence and location.”

“Oh. Uh. Yeah, I didn’t… I screwed up.” Ken bowed his head. “I understand, teacher.”

Thunder rumbled across the sky, as he spoke, and Jadar shook her head. “They are not likely foes. But you must always use caution when within sight of others who have traveled between worlds. Were they servants of the Dark Lord, you would be lost. Learn this lesson and do not err again.” she glanced up, as the rain pattered down with more force. “And now it is time for the last lesson today. Look to the lightning. Feel it.”

Rusty stared out at the storm, waiting for the flashes. He’d seen them from above, but this was the first time below it all. And a little worrisome, because he hadn’t seen any lightning rods out on this balcony. But he was next to a wizard, and this was all planned, so he pushed his worries down and waited.

KRAK! The bolt struck somewhere among the charred peaks, and it seemed large, so large in his vision. Time seemed to stretch, and he gasped as it almost seemed like something in his body flared up at the same time. It wasn’t painful, in fact it was quite the opposite. It was… the closest comparison he had was when Rick Beel had smuggled a whole bag of sugar out of the cafeteria pantry at school, and they’d shared it between them. He was buzzing with energy, all at once, and it felt good. Like a hunger he hadn’t known he’d had was sated.

Then the feeling faded. The other kids were sighing, and he heard Ken go “wow…” and there was a goofy grin on his face as he looked over to them, saw them smiling back.

Jadar wasn’t smiling. “Attend,” she said, sharply. “This is our power. This is our truth. As the elves are with light, so we are with the lightning. The electricity is what shaped us, what made of us wizards.”

“You were struck by lightning?” Gunther said.

“Yes, but that is beside the point.” Jadar said, then frowned. “Attend! Pearls. Do you know pearls? Do they have them in your realm?”

“Oh yes, we have pearls,” Alice said. “My momma used to work for a lady who had—”

“Attend!” Jadar barked. “Pearls are formed by chakra, coalescing as the oyster is exposed to its catalyst. For us, electricity IS the catalyst, and it forms something like a pearl, but of energy. About here,” she said, bringing her hand down to the middle of the body.

“Solar plexus,” Gunther recited. “Hit a man there, you can put him on the ground easy.”

“Oh, that,” Rusty said, feeling the area where his ribs met his tummy.

“Near there. Not precisely there,” Jadar said. “For each it is different. As you grew, the lightning around you grew the pearl that is your soul. It pulled it in its direction, most likely, caused it to bloom like a flower, extending in a direction through your body. And over time, it gained in size and power. Hence why you have more chakra than most. Your realm is full of lightning, though you have tamed it, rather than survived the hardships we have in our own realms.”

“So electricity’s good?” Ken said. “Man, I wish I’d known that years ago. I would’ve gone and played in the transformer yard instead of—”

“Attend!” Jadar shouted again, and the kids flinched. Again. “The lightning is not good or bad. It simply is. There are those of our species who grow up with only small exposure to it, and they lead full and healthy lives. But their souls are small, and their potential for magic is little. And too much lightning too quickly can cause illnesses, as the soul grows beyond the vessel, and the flesh loses its balance as one’s soul tries to shift and adapt faster than the flesh can follow. The heart can fail, one can lose their desires, or ability to stand upright. It is a fine balancing act. This is why potent wizards are rare. It is not enough to find runes and possess the will to drive them into oneself. Without a developed enough soul, the runes overwhelm and destroy the wielder.”

The lightning flickered again as she spoke, and Rusty felt his worries melt away in the rush.

“Kinda weird, really,” Roz piped up. “Most things that taste good are bad for you. But this is healthy and whoa doggies, we feel great!”

But no overdoing it, Rusty thought back.

“Ma’am, I have a question?” Alice said. Her voice was about the most hesitant he’d ever heard it.

“Ask.” Jadar commanded.

“You called them souls. Are they… are they really souls? Are they the parts of us that go to heaven when we die?”

Jadar stared at her.

Rusty found himself a lot more interested in the answer than he thought he’d be. Was this why the good book preached against magic? Were they actually running the risk of messing up their souls with the runes?

“Child,” Jadar said, “the translation spell is failing. I do not understand where you think souls might go. But I will say that they dissipate from us upon death, losing their anchor, with their various chakral energies flowing to the nearest intact host. And the remnants of the shattered chakra is pulled to the strongest lightning-fueled soul in the vicinity, joining it and bolstering its owner’s chakra. Does that answer your question?”

Oh. Oh shit, it did. Rusty’s felt himself staring in horror.

The hydra thing he’d killed when he pushed it down the pit, and the Lashtak that the Treestrider had eaten. Both had boosted his chakra when they’d died in his vicinity.

He’d swallowed their souls. Part of them, at least.

No wonder the Bible warned against it!

“We can’t die here,” Gunther whispered, into the silence. “Or… no. No. We cannot die here.”

The lightning flared again, showing pure puzzlement on Jadar’s face, as the kids looked at each other with open and undisguised existential dread.