Catching Epics

by Halie Fewkes

Vack’s terrified voice cracked as he whispered, “I don’t know.”

  Ebby didn’t know either, but she preferred that he live on the ceiling as she figured out what she was going to do. Apparently she really was an Epic, and although an Epic had a range of powers to choose from, the ability to jump into the air and reappear in a new location was suddenly her favorite. That was how Prince Avalask was getting in and out of the room, but Ebby knew that jumping could also go horribly wrong. Her best opportunity to figure it out would be while Vack was preoccupied.

  Ebby concentrated all of her efforts on a spot across the room and then leapt into the air. Nothing happened. She tried again, this time getting a running start before jumping. Again she landed only a little ahead of where she had leapt, and not due to any magical means.

  Really? She could get any power to work except the one she needed most?

  Vack figured out how to get off the ceiling and floated to the floor as she tried again. Run and then jump. Run and jump. Run again, and then she glanced off to the side to see Vack hurl the entire table at her as she jumped. Her heart lurched in fear, as did her entire body, reappearing across the room where she had been concentrating. The table smashed against the wall behind her, and she clutched at her core to make sure she hadn’t died of fright. Heat began to flood into her face and she turned to glare at Vack.

  “That’s how you jump,” he told her. “Now you can get out of here and quit ruining my life.”

  “Ruining your — your,” Ebby stammered, the events of the day compressing around her. Margaret dead, Ratuan dying, Escali abduction, no Dragona, no future, Sir Avery’s daughter... “Ruining your life?” she repeated indignantly. Ebby took a furious step forward and Vack skipped back a step in response. She took another as Vack tried to keep his distance and then another until she was marching angrily across the room and had Vack backed into a corner.

  Her march of hatred involved no actual plan of action, and so she stopped right in front of him, dangerously close. Vack hissed at her, like a cornered tama cat as he shrank back against the wall. She just couldn’t comprehend why. He was taller, faster, stronger, almost impossible to kill, and yet so afraid of Ebby that he couldn’t even touch her.

  “I’m not afraid to touch you,” he scowled. Vack jabbed a finger into her shoulder to prove it, then withdrew his hand quickly and uncertainly.

  Ebby pushed him back in retaliation and bit her lip. She didn’t like to touch him either.

  “Why do you keep acting like I’m the monster in the room? You’re the Human here. You’re the killer,” Vack said, still trying to distance himself.

  “I’m the killer?” she asked, astounded. “I’m the killer?”

  “Quit repeating everything I say! Don’t you have any words of your own?”

  “Words of my—”

  “Quit it! What do you want?”

  “I just want to leave,” Ebby replied, wondering if anything had ever been more obvious.

  “Good, I want you to leave too — and to back up!” Ebby took a step back and Vack’s rigid shoulders relaxed a fraction. “You just have to get away from my father, and even a Human should be smart enough to figure out how.”

  Ebby shook her head with no idea how to escape from a fully powerful Epic.

  “Find Sir Avery,” Vack told her. “He’s the only one who can stop my father from bringing you back here.”

  Ebby scrunched her eyebrows and studied him. Her response came out so flat that it could barely be considered a question. “You want to help me leave.”

  “I wish you gone, dead, anywhere but with us. My father wants you and me to train together, but you have no business being here.”

  “Tell me about it!” Ebby exclaimed, although she couldn’t believe Vack would let her escape. Epics were the queens of the chessboard. Once captured, only a fool would give them back. If she couldn’t be converted to their side, then she would probably be their next meal so she couldn’t grow up to oppose him.

  “Will you leave already?” Vack pushed.

  “Explain to me, before I do, why you’re letting me go,” she said. “You’re fine letting me turn into the Human’s next Epic? You want to give up… dinner as well?” she asked, her stomach in an uncomfortable bind. Death by consumption was probably never a comfortable topic between the consumer and the consumed.

  “Dinner?” Vack asked. “You want me to invite you to dinner? You torched all our food!”

  Ebby wrapped her arms tightly around her stomach before asking, “Don’t you… eat Human flesh to survive?”

  Vack’s response was a horribly long perplexed stare before his slow and disgusted, “No.”

  Relief swept through Ebby, but her inner self clenched with embarrassment. This was no time to be embarrassed! She took a few short breaths but couldn’t shake it.

  “Is there something preventing you from leaving?” Vack demanded.

  “Let’s hope not,” she muttered, turning around. She wasn’t sure if she had the ability to jump outside the room, and didn’t know where to go to find Sir Avery, but she leapt forward and disappeared, ready to land anywhere in the world that didn’t have Escalis.

  Chapter Three

  Ebby

  Ebby crashed headfirst into a thick green bush without any hint of grace and wriggled her way out of the leafy snarl. She got to her feet to see a vast, ancient wilderness all around her. Evergreens as thick as buildings obstructed her view at every angle and mosses dangled from the tallest branches to the ground, looking like they hadn’t been disturbed in years.

  She hugged her arms around her tummy, trying not to panic in the unfamiliarity. If she was going to find Sir Avery, she needed to find other people, and getting up on a ridge would be her best bet. She wasn’t naive enough to expect the sight of friendly chimney smoke rising nearby, but a mountain range or body of water could at least orient her.

  Ebby began to climb the needle-ridden, dusty slope as fond old memories danced through her mind, bringing more tears to her eyes. She had loved playing catch with Ratuan, loved curling up with Sembla’s ugly grey dog as Reso told her stories, loved braiding her friends’ hair when she lived in Dincara…

  Not ten steps into her journey, she heard from behind her, “This isn’t a problem you can run from.” She lost all the breath in her lungs and closed her eyes.

  Instinct told Ebby to drop to her knees and beg Prince Avalask to let her go. She was already crying. It would only be a step further.

  “Don’t… do that,” Prince Avalask said, sounding uncomfortable. “It won’t help you.”

  “Why?” She put a hand on a nearby stump to steady herself as she turned to face him. “You don’t need me. What do I have to do to get out of this?”

  “I want you to grow up and not be an enemy, Ebby. That’s all I want. You could be the Epic generation that actually benefits the world.”

  “I,” Ebby said, pausing for courageous effect, “will always be your enemy. And that is how I will benefit the world.” She then turned around and restarted her journey toward the ridge top, skittishly aware that Prince Avalask was following along behind her, but trying to act brave.

  “What good can you do if we remain enemies?” Prince Avalask asked as they walked.

  “Well, I can stop Vack from carrying out his evil schemes. That’s my job as the Human Epic, isn’t it?”

  “What if Vack doesn’t have any evil schemes?”

  “Then something’s wrong with him. That’s his job as the Escali Epic.”

  Prince Avalask chuckled behind her. “Just humor me for a second and think about it. What if, by some impossible miracle, Vack was born with decent intentions?”

  “That couldn’t happen.” Even if by some miracle Vack wasn’t evil, he was still an Escali. She wouldn’t ever aid an Escali.

  “Your thinking is flawed,” Prince Avalask said. Ebby wished she knew how to keep him out of her thoughts. “If Vack had exactly the same personality, but was in a Human body, you would
have no trouble with him. Escali blood isn’t saturated in evil. How different are we really? Isn’t it our good and bad intentions that matter in the end?”

  Without an adequate response, Ebby stopped and turned around to face him, exactly at eye level due to the hill’s steep incline. “I don’t want to go back.”

  “I know you don’t, but Ebby, you’re one of the four Epics in the world. If you and Vack are raised like the rest of us, you’ll spend your entire lives fighting each other.” Ebby’s knees shook and she turned her eyes to the ground before they could fill with more tears. “I promise, you won’t like it that way. You’ll take lives when you could be saving them, and someday, you’ll be forced to have kids to carry on the legacy too. They’ll also fight, suffer, and die... When does it end?”

  Ebby hugged herself and repeated softly. “I don’t want to go back.”

  “And I’m sorry you have to,” Prince Avalask said, a green glow creeping into his hands. “The future depends on you.”

  The next time Ebby blinked, she opened her eyes to find herself back in the cave without doors. As soon as Vack saw her with Prince Avalask, he scrunched his face and growled, “Can’t you accomplish anything?”

  “Don’t talk to your guests like that, Vack,” Prince Avalask said.

  “Guests?” Ebby repeated indignantly.

  Prince Avalask mixed a small chuckle with a sigh. “Consider yourself a prisoner if it makes you feel better.”

  “We’re both prisoners,” Vack sulked from across the room.

  “I suppose you sort of are, since you’re both absolutely forbidden from jumping from now on. This is going to be my only warning on the matter. And even though prisoners aren’t usually allowed beds, I’ve decided to make an exception for you two.”

  A strange Escali version of a bed appeared in each of the room’s opposing corners.

  “We’re just going to fight each other as soon as you’re gone,” Vack said. Ebby clenched her fists in dread.

  “I’m sure you will. Just remember what I told you about biting. It’s not an acceptable gesture in her culture. Other than that, feel free to settle your differences. There’s bread, water, and cooked greyfish on the table, and I’ll make sure you get more tomorrow.”

  Prince Avalask disappeared once again, and the two young Epics remained a room-length apart, observing each other in anticipation. Ebby finally decided to break the silence and say what needed to be said. “I don’t want to settle any of our differences.”

  “Good. Me neither.”

  Vack approached the table, keeping his eyes fixed dangerously on her. He grabbed his share of everything and retreated to the shallow wooden box he called a bed, elevated two cubits off the ground by four supports with a stiff woven mat lining the bottom. Vack stuffed his half of the bread loaf into his mouth, and Ebby moved hesitantly toward the food and water.

  She gulped her water down in a matter of seconds, clinking the clay bowl onto the table and treasuring every drop in her parched throat.

  “Thank you,” she said to the bowl itself, knowing Vack could have easily poured it out.

  Vack barely choked his bread down before retorting, “Don’t say thank you. If you say thank you, and I say you’re welcome, then we just took the first step toward cooperating. There will be no cooperating.”

  “Ok,” Ebby replied defensively, “Sorry.”

  “Don’t say you’re sorry either! Enemies are not sorry.”

  “Alright, I’m sorry — I mean… No, I’m not. Leave me alone?”

  Vack took a deep breath and stared incredulously at the ceiling. When he looked back down at the fish in his hands he muttered, “Useless.”

  Ebby chewed the inside of her lip bitterly. She was not useless.

  “Yes, you are,” Vack replied.

  She stared at her feet now, angry tears in the corners of her eyes. How had her life turned into this miserable mess, stuck with Vack the monster? Maybe he didn’t eat Human beings as she’d originally thought — but he was downright mean.

  Ebby squeezed the clay bowl furiously between her hands, wanting it to explode or shatter or something. Instead, a lightning bolt shot from her hands with a deafening crack, ripping the air apart and striking the wall right above Vack’s head. Between Ebby and Vack, she would never know whose eyes were wider, and she bolted back to her side of the room to dive beneath her bed, bread and fish in hand.

  As soon as she opened her mouth to apologize, Vack shouted, “No! You’re not sorry.” He pointed to the wall where the lightning had hit. “This is what enemies do!”

  Ebby closed her mouth again and simply stared at Vack. He was insane. Mean and insane.

  She waited for him to retaliate, but a counterattack never came. He had to know she hadn’t shot at him on purpose. She couldn’t set off a lightning bolt again if she tried.

  Nor did she want to try. That lightning could have just as easily hit her when it went rogue. What would Margaret say if she could see Ebby playing with such danger now?

  Vack still wasn’t coming after her, so she dedicated another messy round of tears to Margaret and Ratuan before biting into her mini bread loaf. Ebby felt no pleasure at all, chewing and swallowing the food, but she needed to keep her strength up to escape. She also needed to start acting like an Epic.

  Ebby couldn’t help but hear whispers of Vack’s thoughts as she made an escape plan. He was still horribly afraid of her, and ashamed of showing such a weakness in her presence. Among his general resentment of her Humanity, Ebby also caught a hint of what tasted like jealousy. He was jealous that she was stealing his father’s attention, and angry that she was the reason Vack couldn’t be with him.

  Ebby tried to block out Vack’s bitter feelings with sheer focus, bringing a small flame to her hands. This was how she would defend herself. She brightened the fire and got her fingers to spit brilliant sparks, illuminating her face and the underside of the bed in flickering orange warmth. She even tried snapping her fingers to produce a flame, simply because she thought it would look impressive, but she hadn’t yet figured out how to snap. Ratuan had always joked that it was her greatest weakness.

  Ebby’s blinks became longer as exhaustion finally caught up with her, and every time her head began to droop, she would jerk it back up to make sure Vack was exactly where he was supposed to be. She practiced turning invisible to avoid falling asleep, but drifted off while she was concentrating and quickly startled herself back awake. She tried to levitate what was left of the bread in her hands, but fell into a short doze instead. Her nap ended when a flaming piece of bread dropped into her lap, scorching both Ebby and her tunic as she brushed it hastily away.

  Ebby leaned her head back against the wall and promised herself she’d only allow herself five minutes to relieve her itching eyes.

  But they glued themselves together the second she closed them, and her last moments with Ratuan plagued her in the form of dreams. She relived the sickening thud of him hitting the ground, and she knelt frantically to shake him as blood began to pool beneath his hair. Ebby cried and wanted to scream, knowing how this would go, knowing the Escalis were about to pick her up and tear her away from him.

  “Ratuan, wake up,” she pleaded, but as she grabbed his shoulders, his eyes shot open with wicked red irises that would haunt her conscious moments to come.

  Panic woke her to the smell of something burning, and Ebby’s arm and stomach screamed with searing pain where her fiery hands rested pressed against her. She squirmed desperately to her feet, flinging her burning hands away from her body, and a flash of destructive red light jumped from her palms.

  A sound like grinding, colliding boulders shook their entire cave, and Vack woke with a frightened snarl as part of the wall over his bed was severed and fell in a crushing cloud of dust. Several of the larger hunks of rock hit him before he could scramble away from his bed, and Ebby clenched two fists against her mouth, horror struck.

  Vack turned to bare his white teeth and his
s at her, blood pouring from his nose, and she immediately forgot about the searing burns on her arm and stomach. Ebby darted back beneath her bed to curl into a ball. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to,” she pleaded, hoping he wouldn’t spring at her with vengeance.

  Stinging heat built behind Ebby’s eyes, but the tears didn’t surge forth until Prince Avalask appeared between her and Vack, and she knew she was truly in trouble. She had damaged his only son, the most important kid in the Escali world. Prince Avalask handed Vack a grey towel, which Vack promptly shoved against his nose to stifle the gruesome bleeding, and then the prince lowered his head to see Ebby beneath her bed.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to,” she cried, trying to shrink away from his scary, attentive eyes. “I didn’t mean to,” she repeated weakly as he set a hand on the wooden bedframe and crouched down with something concealed beneath his fingers.

  Ebby threw her arms over her face and heard Vack run up behind his father to grab him. In the quietest breath possible, Vack whispered, “She didn’t mean to,” and Ebby felt a reluctant rush of gratitude.

  Prince Avalask sighed and said, “Thank you, Vack. And Ebby, you’re not in trouble. I brought you something.”

  She peeked beneath her arms as he set a pair of thick leather gloves at her feet. Ebby’s eyes roamed over heavy straps, woven around palms and fingertips, like a jail for her hands. “I don’t want to wear them,” she cried as she attempted to flatten herself into the corner.

  “Look, I’m not shackling them to your wrists,” Prince Avalask said. “But we’ve all had to go through this. I got my first pair when I was four, and your father wore them back when he was training too. You can take them off whenever you want, but you’re a danger to yourself if you don’t wear them.”

  Ebby eyed the ugly Escali leather with disgust. She hadn’t needed gloves a week ago.

  “I think…” Prince Avalask started, but stopped to ponder his words. “I don’t think any of us went through the trauma you did yesterday, at least not at such a young age. That’s why all your powers are hitting you at once. It’s tough to be an Epic in training, but it’s alright to burn through a few pairs of gloves. I don’t want either of you hurting yourselves.”