Warper: Origins

by Riley Tune

  “It doesn't work that way,” Remy said, as Rema sat down at another chair beside the table. Before he could finish, he was silenced by a glare from Ember.

  Ember cleared his throat. “Lox, I’ll let you explain.”

  “Oh, ah.” I froze for a moment as every eye in the room turned to me. “Warpers like us,” I said, as I made a weird hand gesture between Ember and myself, “can Warp ourselves to anyplace in our direct line of sight. Outward Warpers can only warp things outside of them and in their line of sight. So an outward Warper could warp your yolar bag from your hands and into his own as long as it’s in his line of site. But that same outward Warper can’t warp other people. No Warper can do that.”

  “Man,” Jolin said. “Imagine the secrets, the food, anything a person could steal as an outward Warper.”

  “And they do,” I added.

  Jolin stopped rubbing his chin hair and looked at me.

  “He’s right,” Remy said. “Almost half of the items stolen in the five kingdoms are due to outward Warpers; that’s why they aren’t allowed in yolar mines. Inward Warpers are rare—hence the surprise, that you showed up with two tonight. Outward Warpers are almost as common as rats or caprongs.”

  I eyed Vida for a moment, and she, in return turned her face up at me. I was beginning to think that maybe she had too much fire inside her.

  Jolin returned to his seat and looked directly to Vida.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Ms. Vida,” Jolin began, as Vida exhaled loudly. “I’m going to assume that, like us, you are an inward Changeling, and, as such, that there are outward changelings, able to change things, but not people?”

  “No,” Vida said as she shook her head. “I’m an inward Changeling, but outward Changelings can only change other people, not items. Plus, the person changed is permanently changed, and can’t be changed back. I’ve heard stories that, if an outward Changeling dies, those they changed would revert back, but I don’t know how valid that is. It’s very confusing when we talk about it like this,” she said as she shook her head.

  “A person running around the kingdoms changing people hardly seems useful,” Jolin said.

  “It’s not,” Vida said. “Outward Changelings are almost extinct. I have only met one in my nineteen years.”

  “Not that I don’t enjoy getting Mr. Respectful here caught up on the way some of us are deemed special by The Keeper, but I’m here to make yolars,” Vida said, a little forcefully. “You said if I did this job, I’d never have to be a spy for hire again.”

  “The moment of truth has arrived, sister,” Remy said as he clasped his fingers together and looked at Rema. “Go ahead and tell them this job of yours.”

  She stood from the table and rubbed his head, as if he was a child. “Please ignore my brother. He is smart, and loves to read his books of fantasy and science, but he lacks vision and the nerve to do what must be done.” The smile on Remy’s face faded some.

  “This is why I’m the head of the family.

  “The Prime Sovereignty, as you know, consists of the five Kingdoms. All of which are surrounded by Water. In this world, we are but a tiny portion. Do any of you know why we don’t know what is beyond our waters? What’s beyond the Kingdoms?”

  “Nothing,” I answered firmly. I was surprised I was the first to answer. I hated myself for what I was about to say, but I said it anyway. “Supposedly, if you believe in such things, there was a war that ravished the lands. A war between gods and men, and The Keeper, in his mercy, created what we call the Prime Sovereignty, for people to start anew. So there is nothing beyond our waters.”

  Vida clapped her hands.

  “He is right. We all know the stories. We were taught them at an early age. But what if they were lies?” Rema said. “Recently, a man was discovered on the shores of Galcon, who had never been here before. He arrived on a vessel that he called a boat.”

  “A boat?” Jolin said. “What a silly name for a vessel.”

  “He was the only survivor of five people on this boat. After the Emperor found out that he was from some unknown place, he had him killed, and the bodies, along with the boat, were burned and buried. This was months ago. Now people have been disappearing. All around the Prime Sovereignty, and none notice, because Warpers are assumed to be behind it.”

  “Figures,” Ember said.

  “What does this have to do with the job?” Vida asked.

  “In short,” Rema replied, “everything. I believe the Emperor is abducting these people and, for some reason or another, is secretly sending them out into the water to see what’s beyond.”

  She turned to look at Remy and cleared her throat. He looked at her with an unusual expression on his face, and sighed.

  “We have proof,” Remy said.

  “We don’t really care about proof. You need a person taken care of, we will do it,” Ember said. “But I honestly don’t know why we need the help of a Tongue and a Changeling spy.”

  Rema and her brother locked eyes for a moment before she faced us all.

  “Because the person we must kill is one we also must obtain secrets from, and we will likely need the help of a spy to get close to him.”

  She paused for a moment.

  “We are going to kill the ruler of this land and lord of the five kingdoms.”

  My heart suddenly found its way sinking into my stomach as she spoke. I looked at Ember. Surely she didn’t mean what I thought

  . She continued to speak.

  “The Immortal, the man who has risen from the dead, again and again. We will find a way to permanently kill Emperor Anavor Nal.”

  PART II

  12

  Rema had given us two days to consider her job offer, and if we wanted in, we were to meet them in a secondary home they owned in Thera.

  The next two days went by rather fast after that. I thought it was insane, but the rest of the so-called team didn’t seem to think so. Ember, Jolin, and even Vida all seemed to embrace the challenge. Ember just wanted the payday; he already had the fame. Jolin and Vida, however, were hard to figure out.

  Vida, I guessed, wanted the payday like Ember. There was no need for fame or infamy if you were to continue to be a spy. I felt that Jolin wanted something more. I wasn’t sure what, but I had the feeling that he had a secondary agenda that none of us knew about. Something about him was still a mystery. I could almost sense it.

  The time was approaching to meet the others, and I was currently standing on a high building as the snow fell, watching my home. I had warped in when my mom and the twins were gone to drop my remaining yolars off to them. Four bronze, a few silvers, and a handful of gold. The four bronze yolars alone could get them by for a few months.

  My mom and I had talked about this. If ever a time came when I was gone more than usual, the money was for her to spend wisely for herself and the twins, just in case it was a last payment. When she saw the amount, she would know I was up against something I may not make it back from.

  I waited a few more minutes before I actually was able to get a glimpse of them. My mom was slowly walking with a bag from the market in one hand, and she had the twins on her opposite side. Luka was skipping and holding Kula’s hand, while Kula held on to our mother's hand. They all formed a chain of sorts, but it kept them together. They were all happy, they were all smiling, and it made me feel good to see them, just in case it was the last time.

  I wanted to go speak to them, but Ember had insisted I didn’t. That this would prepare me, keep me strong. He believed that, one day, I wouldn’t have him, and that the enemies I would create as my own legend grew could find those close to me and use them against me. It was the reason he, and many of our kind, never married or had families. His insistence on this also went to prove that he truly thought this job was within our grasp.

  I prepared myself to warp away, and then, suddenly, my mom stopped walking. I didn’t know if she could feel me watching, or if it was just a mother's intuition, b
ut she paused, and, of all the buildings around, she turned to her left and looked in my direction. From where she stood, I was three stories up, so I could be seen, but I was more a large dot than a figure she could make out. Yet still she looked, placed her bag on the ground gently, and gave a little wave in my direction, and then placed her free hand over her heart.

  It was how she'd once told Nowrt that she loved him when they worked together and she couldn’t shout out loud around people. After a moment, she stooped down to grab her bag and continued into our little house.

  “I love you too, Mom,” I said as I put my hood up, turned, and then warped away.

  Normally I would warp to Ember's place and wait for him before we went to the meeting location provided by the Thornes, but in this case I couldn’t because he had to get Sprits, and then find a normal means of travel, because he couldn’t warp with Sprits. Rema had insisted that, until the job was over, we all would live together in the home they could provide, but I wasn't sure why.

  Her brother, oddly, was against this. In our Pradeep meeting, he had literally stood up and almost begged her not to do this, but she had refused. Saying that it must happen.

  Rema was clearly the brawn of the duo. Remy was the brains. He consumed the books he read like a child eating sweets. In the meeting alone he had read almost two full books. One on the history of the five kingdoms, and another on why some animals acted the way they did. Two totally different books, both of which were thicker than a caprong's leg.

  I finally warped to our designated meeting place. This additional home that the twins owned. It must have been nice, to have such wealth that you had multiple homes for no reason. Ember had homes in other kingdoms, but they were more like shells. A building with walls and the bare essentials on the inside. This house I stood before, however, was nothing short of intimidating.

  When I was told where it was in Thera, it was a dead giveaway to the amount of wealth the Thornes truly possessed. The closer I walked to the house, the more bicycles I saw. Moments ago up the street I had seen a group of kids on them. Kids, no older than Kula and Luka, with their own bicycles. The most expensive mode of transportation your yolars could purchase, and these people were using them as a child's plaything. Half of a city could eat off of the wealth these children played on.

  Another thing that was odd about the location of the house was that it was literally a few warps away from the Emperor’s palace.

  I walked up to the front of the house and stood near the door. I was instructed not to draw attention to myself, so I tried my best to keep my weapons covered, and I even wore my hood down, since the snow that was falling wasn’t heavy. Most of all, I couldn’t warp inside or close to the house. I was instructed to simply knock on the door, which I did.

  As I waited, I took a few steps back to take the entire place in. It looked massive, and yet this wasn’t the main house. The Thornes' main home was easily three times the size of this, and was the second-largest building in Thera.

  This house was three stories high, and seemed just as wide. There were stone statues on both sides of the door that had golden faces. The statues had the bodies of men, yet had faces that were simply stone.

  Each window was outlined in a bright blue frame, which was a vivid contrast to the actual brown color of the building. I couldn’t warp inside, even if I wanted to. I couldn’t see inside. Each window had a thick curtain of some sort hanging in front of it, leaving little to see. At least we would be getting privacy.

  My hand knocked on the door once more, but a little harder this time. In seconds the knob turned and swung open.

  Standing before me was a rather short man, with a solid stocky frame. His arms seemed too short for his body, and his head seemed too big. He had a thick red mustache on his lip and a head full of curly red hair to match. His glasses were unusually thick and sat loosely on his nose.

  Outside of his odd appearance, this man was dressed from head to toe in black. His trousers were black, his elegant shirt was black, and so were the square shaped shoes he wore.

  “Yes?” the man said as he looked up at me.

  “My name’s Lox.”

  “Oh, yes, the Warper,” the man said casually, and louder than I’d have wanted him to. “Yes. Yes. Right this way.” He stood to the side and gestured for me to walk in.

  I heard the door shut behind me as I took a few steps in. For as massive as it was, this place was practically empty. The first few rooms I walked through as I followed this man were completely empty.

  Even the kitchen was empty. No tables, no chairs, no ice box, nothing at all.

  “Ignore this kitchen. Meals are prepared in another one,” the man said as he continued to lead me through the home. I could feel my brow rise as I let the words sink in. The house had two kitchens. Wow.

  I followed this man up some steps, and to a large set of double doors. He knocked twice, and then opened one of them for me to enter. “In we go.”

  “Thanks,” I said as I walked by him. I felt a little better when I saw the familiar faces inside.

  Actually, it seemed as if I was last to arrive. Even Ember was here already, and he had had to walk, not warp. This room had furniture, and nice furniture at that. There were various tables around that all seemed larger than life. A few couches, one of which Jolin relaxed on, near a burning fire place, and then there was a massive table in the middle, directly in front of what looked like a chalk board.

  At the center table was Ember, sitting down, with Sprits resting at his feet; Remy Thorne was to his left with yet another book; Vida was across from them, with her elbow on the table, allowing her head to rest in her hand; and Rema herself was standing near the board with chalk in her hand.

  “I see you met Quarts, the caretaker of this home,” Rema said as she smiled. Remy glared at her for some reason for this, and then returned to his book. As I walked to the table, Jolin casually waved his hand at me and then sat up from the couch and leaned so he could see the chalkboard.

  “So we are all here,” Rema said, as she began writing each of our names on the board, except for her brother's. “Ember, you’re the legendary killer among us. Please tell the rest of us—when you have a job, what’s the first thing you do?”

  Ember inhaled deeply and nudged me in the side. “Go ahead and answer her, boy. You know this stuff just as much as me.”

  The eyes in the room shifted from Ember to me all at once. Vida looked at me. She seem irritated at first; then she gave me a slight smile, and I could feel my face getting hot. I felt that I lingered on her eyes too long after that, so I shifted my gaze to Rema’s.

  “You find out about your target first,” I replied. “But in this case, we already know about him, and we know that he will be a hard person to kill.”

  “Go on,” Rema said, as if she was teaching a child how to spell.

  “Then you do recon. See where they go, who they know, what makes them tick, and try to find a way in. You submerge yourself in their life for as long as it takes until you know everything about them.”

  Ember slapped me hard on the back. “Well put,” he said as he leaned over to play with Sprits some.

  “Lox is right,” said Rema “We know about the Emperor, but we need more. We need to know about his home, his life, even his wife, the Empress.”

  I had forgotten about her. Empress Selen Nal was more of an afterthought. Her husband overshadowed her enough by simply being the Emperor.

  She was more of a figurehead with a title. In fact, her only responsibility was to give the Emperor an heir, which she hadn’t yet. She was much younger than her husband, becoming his wife at the age of sixteen, while he was in his forties. She was often said to be the reason he had become less brutal.

  During the last war, during which Galcon, Pradeep, and Walden had tried to conquer Thera and split it among themselves, the Emperor had been ruthless. Killing men, women, and even the children who got in his way. As Thera began to lose the war, he had died for the f
irst time. Six arrows to the chest from some Pradeep soldiers. When he resurrected later and was seen for the first time, he seemed almost like a different man. It was whispered that coming back from the dead had made him so weak that for the first few days he had isolated himself to gain his strength back. When he finally returned, he was his normal self, but not as murderous. He used other means to win the war. Some even said he had created monsters to serve him in secret, and Empress Selen was by his side the entire time, even at her young age. This was over twenty years, ago and now she still ruled by his side.

  “Ms. Rema, I assume you have a plan?” Jolin said from the couch.

  She eyed him slightly and then smiled. “I do. We go to a ball.”

  Jolin stood up quickly and clapped his hands together. “I love going to balls. I haven’t been to one since I was a kid,” Jolin said as Vida removed her hand from her head and looked at him.

  “You went to balls as a child?” Vida asked. Jolin froze for a few seconds as the room looked at him. His eyes darted as he tried to figure out what to say. “Yeah,” he said, lowly, as he sat back down.

  “Why a ball?” I asked Rema..

  “The Emperor loves having them, for whatever reason, and he always has them at his palace. Usually, only royals and nobility attend, but this time, you all will.” Rema turned to write under the names on the board. “Jolin, you will be playing the role of my servant.”

  Jolin exhaled, but otherwise didn’t respond. Rema wrote the word servant under his name. “Lox, you and Vida will play the role of my wealthy friends. So you two will be acting as dates for each other. You will mingle, and when you are able, you will separate and search the palace for any information you can find.”

  She wrote under our names as well. I glanced at Vida, who seemed emotionless towards this entire plot. I tried to remain as casual as possible, but inside I was happier than expected.

  “Finally, Ember, you will play the role of my date.”