Of Heroes And Villains (Book 4)

by Julius St. Clair

  He cleared his throat once more, and a blanket of silence descended upon the audience.

  “Ten years ago,” he began. “The Advent came.”

  As his sentence ended, both the room and Mr. Young were suddenly cast into utter darkness. The bare wall behind the history teacher came alive, and an animated display of the universe came into view. It spread across the room like an oceanic wave, lapping against the shore, except it never retracted once it splashed against the other side. It trapped the audience in its holographic projection and held them there. Stars twinkled like diamonds, moons orbited around foreign planets and colorful nebulas shot out at the students in 3-D fashion. The audience gasped and awed at the spectacle as space danced around them gracefully, performing a waltz that even the best of them could not imitate. Mr. Young continued.

  “We call it Advent because the definition says it all: it was the beginning of something already anticipated…it was the end of the world. We all knew the day would come. We just weren’t sure how. Ten years ago, we received our answer.” The audience gasped in horror.

  Mr. Young grinned and scanned the room once more before he proceeded, watching them all witness his power, each one falling under his spell…well, there was one who was uninterested, but there was good reason for that, he supposed.

  “Aidan, pay attention,” Mr. Young called out to the young man in the far left corner. Only his short spiked black hair, and half of his bored eyes were visible amongst the sea of silhouetted faces and little lighting.

  “Sure,” he replied easily, refocusing his attention to the holographic stars. Satisfied, Mr. Young resumed his presentation. The animation of the universe changed in an instant, and zoomed in on a planet that was familiar to everyone. Amassed by a collection of six large continents and very few bodies of water, they stared at their brown, green and red planet as if it was an old acquaintance. At the other end of the universal map was a comet, half their world’s size, streaking across the black expanse with a red-hot tail, its trajectory directly in line with their home world.

  “We don’t know where it came from,” Mr. Young said, stooping down behind their planet. “Or its exact composition. Whether it was a hunk of rock, a ship, or a massive, sentient being. All we know for sure…is how it changed our way of life forever.”

  The display flickered and suddenly the comet smashed mercilessly into the side of the planet, creating an explosion that splashed the room in a light so intense, everyone, including Mr. Young, had to avert their eyes for fear of going blind. He kept speaking as the light began to subside.

  “The comet impacted the eastern hemisphere with a force that could be heard and felt all over the world, changing the terrain and taking half of our population with it. Millions…died instantly…” He paused to wipe a hand across his sweating forehead. “We all thought it was the end – the apocalypse, and in a sense, one could say that it was. That era had been eradicated in an instant…but it appeared that the survivors were destined for a greater purpose. The World of Obsidian had been altered, not just physically, but also spiritually. The population that had not been annihilated were transformed.”

  The universe display vanished and the room was cast in its natural dim light for a moment. It then dimmed into a purple hue. White hot tattoos were revealed from underneath the villagers’ long sleeve shirts. Branded deep into their right forearms, each tattoo depicted a picture of six organ pipes with a long sword in the middle. Most of the village had only one tattoo of the image on their right arm, some had two of the same picture, and even fewer had three.

  Aidan pushed his sleeve down further though it made no difference. Even through the fabric, the tattoo burned bright as if it had just been seared into his flesh, as if he had been branded with the signature of the sun.

  “Everyone was marked with these seals,” Mr. Young said, one of his own shining beneath the silk of his shirt. “Most were only given one, but others were blessed with two or even three. Each seal…granted the bearer a wish. A wish with no strings attached whatsoever, as long as the Judge approved it. It’s the only reason we were able to rebuild society so quickly…no one regrets being given these gifts, but we must still never forget the lives that were lost. These wishes came at a price, and that makes each of them a beautiful, wonderful curse.”

  He paused as the room fell in silence. The purple hue was lifted and the lighting returned to normal. The seals on their right arms no longer visible from under the fabric of their clothes. Aidan sighed wearily as Mr. Young bowed his head.

  “I perform this presentation once a year to not only remind you of what happened, but more importantly, to stress how much we need you here in Lowsunn. I know there’s a temptation to use your wishes for your own pleasure, but we ask you to suppress those selfish inclinations. In order to continue restoring our world to its former glory, we hope that all of you will stay patient until it is your time.”

  Most nodded at his words. A hand shot up from the left hand corner. Mr. Young took a deep breath and pointed his young pupil.

  “Yes, Isaac? You have a question?”

  “How long do you think it will be until the world is restored completely?”

  “It’s hard to say,” Mr. Young admitted. “Significant damage was done to our way of life. Many wishes were used in the beginning of the 2nd Era to restore the atmosphere, the wildlife and what not.”

  “Yet no one has wished for the half of the world that was destroyed to go back to its previous state, or to bring back the countless lives that –“

  “We’ve had this discussion before in class,” the middle-aged teacher sighed. “As I’ve explained, we don’t know what happened on that day.”

  “So it’s best to leave a hole in our planet?”

  “A contained, harmless hole. It’s been handled.”

  “There’s no way you could know that.”

  “That is the point of our scouting missions, or have you forgotten?”

  “Someone from Lowsunn has been there? At the edge of the planet?”

  “That will be enough questions from you,” Mr. Young snapped, his eyes darting amongst the other faces for their reactions. Though they appeared squeamish, they kept their focus on him. Isaac raised his hand again.

  “I said no questions.”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Then what is it?”

  He smiled through his oasis eyes and ice-breaking smile. “Aidan has one.”

  “Can’t Aidan speak for himself?”

  “He said you wouldn’t call on him if he raised his hand.”

  The audience chuckled and a few of the Elders in the far back began shushing. From the crippling glares they unleashed on Mr. Young afterwards, it was obvious that they were going to intervene if he didn’t take control soon. Why he called on the child in the first place was beyond their comprehension.

  “Okay,” Mr. Young said with a scowl, pointing to the young man with the spiky black hair. “Fire away.” It was a risky move – allowing Aidan to speak, but if he was able to maintain order during their exchange, he would have gained respect in the eyes of the Elders. A privilege that few possessed.

  “Well, I was thinking,” Aidan began with a sly smile. Many in the audience turned around to watch him complete his sentence. “If we’re supposed to hold off on our Yen –“

  “– here in Lowsunn we call them wishes, Mr. Serafino.”

  “I don’t understand why. The rest of the world calls them Yen, but that’s not what my question is about. What I want to know is why we don’t get to use these ‘beautiful curses’ the way we want, while the Elders and even you - gets to go wild.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Take this schoolhouse for example. You used a Yen three years ago to turn it into this major interactive experience, and yet you’re the only one who knows how to control it. It’s impressive, but isn’t it a waste? All it does is help you.”

  “It enhances the learning experience and improves the
quality of my lessons.”

  “Which are still boring, and why your attendance is low. The only time anyone comes to your sessions is to hear about Advent, otherwise, no one bothers. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

  “I don’t need to justify myself to you,” Mr. Young huffed, feeling the angry, raised eyebrows of his superiors. “Who are you here with anyways? Does your mentor know where you’re at?”

  “Does it matter?” Aidan said. “What you fail to remember is that we are free to choose which courses to attend. This isn’t a school. It’s a simple, scared little town that keeps people in line by dangling small comforts over their head. It does little to prepare us for the outside world. A world that each of us will be forced to encounter whether we like it or not. If it wasn’t for the strike system, no one would even bother getting out of bed.”

  “Once you choose a class to attend, however, you are stuck there,” Mr. Young’s face started to redden. “If you’re skipping an evening class to attend this presentation, then you know that I must hand you over for disciplinary action. Given that you already have two strikes against you, you know what that would mean, don’t you?”

  “I don’t need to think about it,” Aidan said, his lips in a flat line. “Especially since I’ll be leaving.” He began to worm his way to the door when a shout nearly stopped him cold.

  “You stay right there!” Mr. Young barked as the few Elders standing in the doorway made sure to form a trembling humin barrier. They looked down at him in disgust but Aidan challenged them silently, one at a time, with no expression on his face. Then he shifted his gaze back to the forefront and gave the science/history teacher a declaration.

  “Let me out right now or I’ll burn the entire schoolhouse to the ground.”

  He said it with such conviction that Mr. Young nearly fell over in shock. The Elders in the doorway stepped out of his path urgently as the villagers pressed up against each other, sacrificing their comfortable positions to let him step out of the room freely. They dared not even touch his hooded robe. Aidan stopped in the doorway just for a moment, to address the room one last time.

  “Keep the Discipline Squad out of my hair for this, and I’ll ensure you all keep yours.”

  He didn’t wait for a reply, leaving as fast as he could, and the room burst into scared whispers and murmurs of concern. Isaac sucked his teeth and chased after him, nearly tripping three times before he hit the door and the dense warm air outside. He caught up to Aidan quickly and joined his stride under the canopy of low hanging tree branches and a thick silver haze. The village of Lowsunn was tranquil and actually pleasant now that most of its inhabitants were being held hostage at the presentation. He didn’t care to see the rest – about how chaotic the world had become, how it had been relatively organized before Advent, blah, blah, blah.

  “Geez, Aidan, what was that all about?” Isaac chuckled nervously. “You weren’t really going to set that place ablaze if they kept you there, were you?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Yeah, okay. Stupid question.”

  “This whole place is laughable,” Aidan sighed as he picked up the pace, not yet sure of his intended destination. “It’s a prison, not a quaint little village in the middle of the forest. It’s the only explanation for why the general populace lives in cabins the size of birdhouses while the Elders are in miniature mansions. It’s all one big joke.”

  “There’s room for improvement, but it’s still our home. A place that we will be at for a very long time I might add, if we’re lucky. Might as well get used to it.”

  “Hard to when you already have two strikes. It’s plain history. No one with a strike gets an exemption. Not a single one.”

  “Well, I don’t have any, so it kind of sucks to be you,” Isaac laughed, throwing his hands behind his head. “Did you hear me? It kind of – oh never mind.”

  “We can leave whenever we like,” Aidan said, ignoring him. With barely a thought, he stopped to pick up a stray twig from off the dirt road and threw it into the nearby brush. Isaac thought over the comment as he let out a big yawn. The annual presentation of Advent was one of the few times the village would be up well past curfew, talking excitedly about how they could each contribute to a world that still needed so much bandaging. How their involvement in Lowsunn would eventually give them a purpose they had yet to figure out themselves. The excitement would all end tomorrow though. Aidan had already seen it happen four times. The inevitable news of a scouting mission gone wrong, a new threat discovered lurking at their borders, another wish rumored to be used for the further decimation of Obsidian...it was only a matter of days before their ambitions were crushed like the berries they hovered laboriously over to make their morning coffee.

  “Yeah, we could leave this place,” Isaac said finally. “But if we do it now, we won’t have much to look forward to. What are you going to do out there? Use a wish to secure yourself a shelter? Fight over a body of fresh water? You’re better off here. No worries. All the water you can drink. The food you can eat. Shelter. Protection. Warmth.”

  “So you would rather live comfortably in a cell than see the world and be free?”

  “It feels like an easy choice to me. Let’s see…stay here until my wishes are used for the greater good, in which case I’m then kicked out and I’ll be seeing the world anyways…or, leave now and die. Hmmm.”

  “I survived out there once. We can do it.”

  “Ha,” Isaac retorted. “From what I’ve heard about you, your definition of ‘survived’ is very different than mine.”

  “Well, there’s definitely no way we’ll make it if we don’t have our Yen as backup. It doesn’t make sense to travel once the Elders have already used you and you have no way to defend yourself.”

  “From what I hear, they equip you quite well before they kick you out the door. And there’s rumors of sister villages being created nearby. Why does it always have to be mud with you? Can’t be rich soil sometimes?”

  “Why do I even bother talking to you?” Aidan groaned, casting his eyes up to the moon. “Nothing is ever solved. I might as well be talking to myself in the mirror.”

  “Oh, no. This is much better,” Isaac chuckled, patting him on the shoulder. “After all, your reflection doesn’t talk back. Right? I mean, it doesn’t, right?”

  “Get off of me,” Aidan growled, throwing his shoulder back violently. “Your hands are so soft, I find them offensive.”

  “As I find your hair,” Isaac muttered, throwing his hands into his pockets. “But you don’t hear me trying to shank your feelings.” He sucked his teeth and thrust them back out into the air. The village clothes were notorious for their roomy, dark blue pants that were strangely designed with pockets barely able to contain a pebble. All were expected to wear a bright yellow, long sleeve shirt and then the worst of all – the child-sized backpacks. Little fanny packs that you kept on your back, held together by a belt across the chest. It was hilariously cruel, but that was the local weaver for you. Until someone else decided to either learn the craft or wish to become a master textile worker, they were all at the mercy of Luca Lorde.

  Of course, Aidan never wore the standard issued clothing, opting to don the thick, hooded, robe and cloak his father had given to him on the day he graduated secondary school. It was drenched in black and littered with sharp strokes of hot red across its surface, as if they were cuts into his skin. No other symbols or patterns were emblazoned upon it otherwise, and Aidan saw no reason to decorate it further. He already had enough markings.

  “So where are we going now?” Isaac asked, rubbing his hands through his messy blond hair. From the steadily rising tide of voices far behind them, the presentation was now over, and soon they would both be overtaken with an assortment of disgusted, shocked and respectful glares.

  “Bed,” he declared. Isaac rolled his eyes. Aidan’s hibernation schedule was interwoven with the amount of people awake. The more there were, the less he tended to be around. If
it hadn’t been for Isaac’s insistence, he wouldn’t even had gone to the schoolhouse. In hindsight, Isaac thought to himself that perhaps that would have been the better move. Still, he knew where Aidan truly went in the deep of night…

  They continued walking casually, past the miniature cabins that were all designed exactly the same. Whomever had wished them into existence had little imagination. The vegetation surrounding the cabins made up for their lack of décor however. Reaching across the sides and over the humble rooftops, thick white tree branches stretched over with a decadent array of flowers in full bloom. An explosion of blues and pinks and yellows pushed against the tree leaves and kissed up against the wooden posts of their homes. There were even a few Yen born arbors that produced flowers within flowers. In full bloom, their eerie luminescence even rivaled that of the moonlight in radiance.

  The local birds, each known by name, traversed back and forth between plants, carrying the seeds to dull brown spots behind the houses and creating new jaw-dropping scenery whenever one fell and became part of the rich soil. Though there was little sunlight that could break through the sentinel forest canopy up above, the surroundings and ambience of Lowsunn was undeniably rich and cozy.

  Though he would never admit it, even Aidan was apprehensive over how easily the scenery would take his breath away and force new creations and possibilities to be born in the recesses of his imagination. An outsider looking in would think it was paradise.

  But it wasn’t.

  It couldn’t be.

  It was just a pretense. A ruse to make him comfortable. And the moment he fell into comfort’s arms, he knew he would be taken unawares, his Yen stolen from him either through torture or some other unspeakable measure. It didn’t matter if Lowsunn was the most relaxing environment he had ever laid eyes upon in his whole life.