Against the Beast Page 6

  “Say, we’ve got plenty of room in our car, fellas,” Gilmer said. “What say you to joining us in our car, Jayton?”

  “That’d be awesome!” I said. “As long as it’s no inconvenience to you guys.”

  Gordon clapped me on the back. “None at all. Let’s go! I’ll have someone come get all your bags.”

  “No need,” I said, shouldering my duffle and tailing behind my friends to the back. The only reason I knew them at all was from school, where they let me hang out with them despite the differences in wealth. Good people.

  “Let’s sit down already,” Joshua said as we found the right car and piled in. Four bunk beds lined the inside walls with a booth for a table against the windows. “We’ve got three days and twelve-hundred miles to travel, so we might as well get comfy. Jayton, you can have that top bunk there.”

  I threw my bag up and joined the others at the booth.

  “Hey, look at that!” Gilmer said, pointing.

  Two Reka, the River Water-Senturian race, stood knee deep in the Paluxy River, their light blue skin reflecting off the water. They were going through some flowing movements, tossing a steady stream of water between them, manipulating it easily, their motions directing the water where to go. In seconds, they were lost out the window as the train sped on, propelled forward by the Earth Senturians, following the winding river through the Tasche Mountains to Bayou Vista on the other side. “Man, I can’t wait for this!” Gilmer said. “What powers do you want, Gordon?”

  “Oh, I’d take anything, but earth or fire would be really cool. As long as it’s more than a level one. Level ones never get picked for anything, and half of them end up on the West Side of the Breaks.”

  I shivered. The West Side. Nothing but bandits, thieves, killers, and outlaws who couldn’t toe the line on our side and were banished, for whatever reason, either breaking a law or insulting the wrong person. Or they got so frustrated with the lack of respect and jobs that came from receiving a low power number that they chose to abdicate to the West Side. And then there were the monsters, sealed there hundreds of years ago. “Joshua, what about you?”

  “Energy or air for me, gents. Healing’s too boring; I don’t know why anyone really wants that power. And what about a Quantum power, eh? Get to train with the Rangers?” Joshua said.

  Gilmer said, “An extra power? How cool would it be to have a non-elemental one! And then training with the Rangers – they’re the best of the best.”

  “Yeah,” Joshua said, “but what happens if your levels are too low and you aren’t chosen? What will you do if no one will train you?”

  I gulped. Joshua just voiced my biggest fear. I’d busted my butt for years getting the money together to pay for this thing. My dream. To have powers and all the luxuries that came with it. But it’s not a guarantee. If you don’t score well enough, or at all, or they don’t like you, you get nothing. No training. No support. Sure, you could go back to your old life and work on your powers by yourself, but what good was that? Not to mention the shunning you’d get from everyone...

  “I’d just go back to fishing,” Gordon said. “I’ll always have a job with the family business.”

  Joshua said, “I guess I’d work at my dad’s lumber yard. It’d be a shame to waste all the good money we’re paying to go to this thing though. Jay, what would you do?”

  “I guess I’d join the Army. They’d at least give you a skill and pay you for it,” I said.

  “Yeah, barely pay you to risk your neck – either police work, patrol, or defending the wall. Low-tier jobs. Even the lowest level Senturians get some rank above the Army blokes,” Gordon said.

  Gilmer said, “Too bad we weren’t just born with them like any of the other races. I mean, come on, the Phoenix, Dwarves, Elves – they all have it easy! Their powers are there from birth; they just have to develop them!”

  Joshua said, “Too right! Have you guys heard about the weapons? I talked to one of the Senturians at the station in Portland, and he said you had to fight a dragon bare-handed before they let you even sniff a sword.”

  “Come off it,” Gilmer said. “They tell that to scare kids. But getting a weapon is amazing – that means you’re really in. That they respect you, that you’ve trained hard enough that they’ll invest more time and energy in you. It’s an honorable day, the day a Senturian gets his weapon.”

  Gilmer always seems to know more about all this than the rest of us. Must come from living in the mayor’s house and hearing about everything going on. I know all the other guys had been to an Awakening before as a spectator, but this would be my first.

  “Hey, Jayton, I was wondering...how did you raise enough money to pay for the Awakening? No offense meant, but...” Gilmer said.

  I jangled my bag. “Working my tail off, that’s how. Everything I’ve been able to scrap together the last four years was barely enough, but it’s all there.”

  “I’m impressed, Jayton,” Joshua said. “Most people in your... situation... don’t have that dedication. They just join the Army right off the bat.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess I’m not most people.”

  Gilmer chimed in. “Nope, most people wouldn’t do that. But that’s what’s going to make you a good Senturian. All right, enough talk, let’s get something to eat.”

  The day went by pretty fast, as we alternated our time between sleeping, chatting, and eating the meals brought by three times a day and once at night. There were a couple of stops between Portland and Bayou Vista, and a few people exited, but many more got on. The Awakenings were big events – one in the North, one in the South. They paid a small fee to watch, but the Awakenings were open to anybody who wanted to see the spectacle. People came from all over to drink, party, eat, dance, and see the drama. Who gets selected, who doesn’t, how strong the new Senturians are. In general, it was an excuse to get together and socialize with people from all over the south. Hopefully I didn’t look too lost or fall down or something. That would suck.

  After the first day, I decided reading was a better use of my time than looking out the window and watching the mountains creep by. I picked up a history book from one of the shelves in the cabin called Where We are Now. Most of it I already knew – natural disasters two thousand years ago almost destroyed the human race. We emerged from the rubble, but to a different world entirely, with monsters lurking everywhere. If it wasn’t for the discovery of Awakening stones that gave humans supernatural powers, we might have ceased to exist right then. After a battle for our lives, we managed to push all the monsters to the west side of the mountain range we knew as the Breaks, and sealed them off. People with different powers started grouping together until they were their own race, with their own physical and social characteristics.

  Two days later, I was just getting to the part where Hammod Gardon, the most powerful Senturian at the time, about nineteen hundred years ago, erected the Wall between the East and West sides. Tensions had been growing ever since (it was a very big book).

  Then, over the intercom, I finally heard: “Pulling up to Bayou Vista station. All those to be Awakened, please exit the train first; the rest please remain in your seats.”

  We grabbed our bags and headed toward the exit. Stepping out onto the platform, steam swirling around our feet, I got my first look at the city – and it was a lot bigger than Portland. The train station rested on the western edge of town, carved out of a small hill by some Earth Senturians at some point, the city spread out before us with the Paluxy River bisecting from north to south. Cattle or other animals dotted the rolling grasslands on the hills. Literally a crossroads of the southland. This was the farthest I’d ever been from home. No money, a few friends, and a whole lot of opportunity. I sucked in a big breath. Tasted like destiny.

  Maybe two hundred of us got off the train, and most looked somewhere between scared and mortified. Well, at least I wasn’t the only one. There were kids as young as seventeen, and even a couple of people older than me – an equal mi
x of human men and women.

  A Dwarf, his long beard swaying in the breeze, walked by with a Helion of the ice race. They couldn’t have been more different – the Dwarf short and brown skinned, the Helion eight feet tall and with a blue-white skin tone. Eying us as they walked, the Dwarf said, “Why they let women get Awakened is beyond me.”

  The Helion nodded, long white hair trailing behind him. “Agreed. If they aren’t born with their Powers, as our women are, they don’t need them.”

  “And even then,” the Dwarf said, taking two steps to his companion’s one, “once they get their powers, they shouldn’t be trained to fight.”

  “Candidates, follow me!” My attention jerked back in front as a big burly dude, who I swear shook the platform as he walked – bigger and wider than Gordon even – made his way down the boards to us. “The Awakening is in one hour; three p.m. sharp. Leave your bags: they’ll be taken care of. I’ll take you to the staging area, and there you’ll get further instructions.” He reached us just as he finished, gave us a gruff look, turned around, and swung his trash can lid, I mean his hand. “Follow me.”

  Gilmer fell in step beside me as we followed the hulk of a man off the boardwalk and into a tunnel lit by glowstones. “Since I’ve been here before – not as a candidate mind you, as an observer – would it help if I give you the play-by-play, since it’s your first go-round and all?”

  “That’d be great – I’d rather not look stupid if I can help it.”

  He nodded curtly, smoothing a hair that had somehow fallen out of place despite his perfect cut and style. “The ceremony is on the north side of town. This tunnel cuts right under the city to the amphitheater. We’re lucky we got here when we did; all the other candidates who arrived on the earlier trains had to wait. They’ll meet us shortly.”

  We entered the tunnel just as he finished, glowstones on the walls illuminating our ten-minute walk before the tunnel opened again right into the staging area. About a million columns jutted from the floor to hold up the ceiling, each with a painting or carving of a Senturian using their power, or maybe a Dwarf or Elf performing theirs.

  “Excuse me for a minute,” I said, ducking into a bathroom. I used the facilities, and stood for a second looking in the mirror, taking deep breaths and huffing them out. Twenty-five years. Seems like twenty-four of those were spent working toward this day. Dreaming of it, more like. I never doubted it could be done, yet every little failure worried me.

  My breath came faster, my thoughts racing, palms sweating: now that it was almost time, it really hit me. I was going to be somebody! No more crappy jobs, no more endless work, and struggle just to survive – now my whole life would change. Sure, there will be a lot of training and it would be hard work, but at least I’d have a skill, an occupation, and power! If they let me in...

  I grinned as I grabbed a quick drink and turned to face my fate.

  Gilmer waited for me, and in the five minutes of my absence, a small army had assembled. I whistled lightly. “Holy cow, that’s a lot of people.”

  “Four thousand, two hundred and fifty candidates. They just announced it,” Gilmer said, grinning. “Come on, we have to get our number.” He led me to a huge bin filled with identical hexagonal stone plates, about the size of my palm. Waiting our turn, we saw people were just reaching in and grabbing one, so we did the same. We turned them over: “All right, four thousand, two hundred forty-eight for me, what about you?” Gilmer said.

  “Four thousand, two hundred forty-nine!” Almost last. Good, maybe no one would notice me then.

  “Ha, this is great! We get to relax and sit till the end, and see where everyone else goes!” he exclaimed, grabbing my arm and turning us around, smacking me on the back. “This way. I’ll get to... Whoa.”

  The column in front of us had a highly detailed painting of a Senturian dressed in white, battling both a dragon and a rogue Senturian in a black robe. It was too small to tell, but there had to be fear etched onto his face. I gave a shiver. “Whoa, I’d hate to be that guy. No way you’ll ever see me doing that.”

  “You never know, Jayton. You might get an assignment on the West Side of the Breaks. Supposedly dragons are still all over that place.”

  “Seriously, Gilmer? You know dragons are so rare that–”

  “Candidates!” boomed an amplified voice from somewhere I couldn’t see. “Please proceed in number order to the west exit. The next number is shown above the door.” A large, red 1 appeared on the western wall. It quickly changed to a two, then three, four...

  I popped my knuckles. Here we go...

  Chapter 3

  Slowly the room emptied, and when our numbers came up, we followed the line out the door, through a short stone tunnel, and out onto the floor of the amphitheater, blinded momentarily by the sun almost directly overhead. The one person left who fell in line behind me was a very cute girl with a gray cloak and hood, about five-foot-seven. I didn’t have time to look much after that – there was too much to see.

  “It should be blazing hot right now, what gives?” I whispered to Gilmer. It was March, but we had a sudden heat spell in the Southland, so the cool amphitheater took me by surprise.

  Gilmer said over his shoulder, “Aeren changing the air temperature. They’re the air masters, remember. You complaining?”

  I shook my head as two Senturian corpsmen, identified by the star power symbol on their clothes, checked our numbered stone plates, then unceremoniously tossed them into a big bin behind them. Another Senturian corpsman pointed us to one of the last seats in the first row of one of two large sets of folding chairs on the floor of the stadium. All four-thousand-plus of us took our places and stood in front of our designated chairs. The crowd noise was immense – I had never seen so many people in one place. At least a hundred thousand eyes started down. Ever feel like a fish in an aquarium? The arena was shaped like a horseshoe. We faced the open end, taken up by a large stone stage with an even larger black stone wall behind it.

  A couple dozen of the same metal folding chairs sat onstage, situated in a semicircle around a large wooden crate front and center.

  As soon as we all sat, a wispy looking old man stood and stepped to a podium on the far right end of the stage, long white robe and beard swaying in the slight breeze. Picking up a small, thin cylinder of what looked like rock on the podium, his strong voice was suddenly all around us. “Greetings, Southland!” he exclaimed, and the crowd erupted into cheers again.

  “I’ve never seen an amplistone that big,” I said.

  Gilmer said, “Yeah, the Dwarves must have been working on that for weeks. Hooking up the master block to all the speaker stones around here must have taken a lot of effort. Masters of the earth element, indeed.” He pointed to a much larger black stone with holes all over it, several of which were scattered around our area and could be spotted throughout the whole theater.

  I grinned, despite myself. Soon I’d know what I’d be working with – fire, water, earth, air, energy, or healing. No way would I be lucky enough to get two or three elements, but I didn’t care – last time I checked, one was more than zero.

  The emcee continued and the crowd hushed as he did. “Welcome one and all to the Southland Awakening for the year four thousand, eight hundred and two! This is the six hundred and fiftieth Awakening in the Southland, and this is the largest number of candidates we’ve ever had!

  “Now, rules. You should know them, but they bear repeating. When your number is called, walk up, put both hands on the Awakening Stone, and wait for your score to appear. The stone will ‘awaken’ the dormant parts of your brain and body, the parts that can control one of the Six Powers: fire, water, earth, air, energy, or healing.

  “Once it does, the level of that power will be shown on the scoreboard behind me for all to see. And don’t worry, that level is your raw ability, not your actual skill level. Even then, through training, hard work, and discipline, you can increase your maximum power level.

  “Depend
ing you what level you receive in each element, you’ll either be chosen or not. If you Awaken one element only and the level is higher than three – or five for the Helions – one of the Races might choose you. You will train for three years with them, mastering your element, then re-assimilating into the Senturian Corps and assigned accordingly.

  “If your levels are below a three with only one element, or any multiple elements, the Senturian Corps will decide if they want to train you. If not, you have the option of joining the Army, though you’ll be forbidden from using your Powers. Any violation would be punishable by banishment to the West Side of the Breaks.

  “A candidate who receives a Quantum Power – one not of the six elements – you’ll join the Rangers, should they choose you.”

  That’s pretty much a guarantee. The Rangers always pick up those with extra powers. They’re too useful.

  “If no power is Awakened,” the emcee continued over my thoughts, “you’re free to join the Army or go back home.”

  So that was it. That’s what was at stake: even after all this effort to get here, I still might get sent home. I took a deep breath. Judging by the sound of hundreds of exhales, I wasn’t the only one.

  The emcee continued, “Candidates, here are your judges. First, the Dwarves, masters of the Earth!”

  Two Dwarves rose from the metal chairs in the front row and walked up the few stairs to the stage, waving and smiling to polite applause, the mountain symbol of the Dwarves emblazed on their cloaks. They were short, but not abnormally so, around five-and-a-half-feet tall – but all dwarves were five-and-a-half-feet tall. Each had a very dark tan, black hair, wore full-length leather armor, and had a battle ax swinging from their belts. Dwarves, as the earth and metal gurus, were excellent smiths. All the best weapons and most ornate jewelry was Dwarf made.

  “The Elves, our Healers!” Two Elves, tall and slender, with high cheekbones, thin faces, long purple hair, and pointed ears, glided onto the stage. They looked so elegant and regal, I almost gagged. Light purple skin was accented by dark purple robes tied at the shoulder with a caduceus broach that glimmered slightly in the bright sun, matching the metal caduceus pinned on their chests. Elves were masters of healing, but were also excellent woodsmen – partially hereditary, partially from the training they received throughout their lives since their lands were entirely taken up by the Eav Forest. Both Elves paraded to their seats next to the Dwarves and sat down as a king would on his throne.