Sentinels of Creation: A Power Renewed

by Robert W. Ross

  “You are such a nerd, Kellan. Of all the places you, zapped us to Easter Island?”

  He grinned. “Pretty cool, huh?” he said again.

  “You really are just a boy, aren’t you?”

  “We all are,” he said as he stopped leaning against the giant head and walked to the edge of the cliff.

  “We? We who?”

  “Men,” he said glancing over his shoulder, “Now take a look down at the surf.”

  She walked up beside him, staring over the cliff to the roiling ocean below as it frothed against hundreds of jagged black rocks.

  “Most of Micah’s understanding revolved around elemental forces, like Fire, Water, Wind, Lightning, and such”

  “Those aren’t elements.”

  “Yeah, I know. I told him that.”

  “Great. And now I’m telling you that.”

  “Right. They aren’t elements, but they are elemental forces.”

  “Not really, no. The gravity you keep messing with, that’s an elemental force. You’ve only told me that for years.”

  Kellan frowned at her. “Am I this annoying to you when you are trying to make a point?”

  She nodded and he sighed.

  “I’m going to be better then from now on, because I must really have been insufferable.”

  “Pretty much,” she said.

  “From Micah’s perspective, he was most familiar with elemental forces so that’s what he taught me. I’ll have to be self taught on other things, like time travel and such.”

  Juliet’s eyes widened, “What? You can travel in time? Seriously? Do you have a TARDIS?”

  Kellan stared at her, not completely sure which of her questions were sarcastic, then shrugged, “Not yet I can’t, but I think it will be similar to traveling across distances like getting here, just temporally. Not sure enough of the concepts yet to try though and, sorry, no TARDIS. My point is that I only have a few tools in my toolbox right now, but they are still pretty cool. Watch.”

  She did, and saw Kellan concentrate his eyes brightening as he pointed up toward the sky. Almost instantly she saw clouds condense in the otherwise clear blue, first white, then dark with dangerous looking flattened bottoms. She saw as Kellan gestured, forming a fist and quickly pulling his hand down as if he were swinging an invisible hammer. As he did so, a brilliant white blue blot of lighting streaked out of the just formed cloud striking one of the rocks below. Kellan spread out both hands wide and the lightning leaped from rock to rock each one exploding in turn. He lowered his hands and she saw the dark cloud vanish as quickly as it had appeared.

  “Wow,” she said softly.

  Kellan slapped a closed fist against his chest twice. “I am Thor,” he said, smiling.

  Juliet sighed again, “You just ruined what really was an awe inspiring moment.”

  “Now,” Kellan began. “I couldn’t have done that out of a clear blue sky. Lightning doesn’t work that way; it can’t, so I can’t. But, I could condense clouds adjust the relative charges and then make lightning. I understand this process more fully than Micah so my lightning control is better and stronger than his was.”

  “Why not just use the natural electrical charges inside your body and enhance those?” Juliet asked.

  Kellan paused, staring at her, then she saw his eyes lose focus again and begin to dart back and forth. A few moments later, she saw the focus return as he look directly at her.

  “Mind palace?” she asked.

  He nodded, “I don’t have much to draw on, just some basic stuff I read once about how we are all bioelectric machines, but it might be enough to test something.”

  She watched as Kellan stretched out a hand, fingers up forming a bowl and began wiggling his fingers. Nothing happened and he grunted with frustration.

  “Doesn’t work,” he said.

  “Really, one try and that’s your conclusion? Try again.”

  He frowned but did as Juliet suggested. A moment later she saw him gasp. “Did you see that?”

  “No,” she said, as he continued to rotate his fingers in a slow gripping fashion and then she saw the small sparks begin to leap and play across his fingers. The sparks grew faster and larger and within moments they coalesced into a glowing ball of electricity.

  Kellan laughed, smiling at her as he juggled the sparking ball of power from one hand to the other finally throwing it toward one of the rocks below. They both watched as it streaked toward its target striking the rock with a shower of sparks and stone chips.

  Kellan frowned a little, “Not nearly as much umph as the cloud lightning,”

  “Yeah, but that was self generated—no clouds required and, I bet with practice you could make it stronger.”

  He nodded brightening, “Hey, I bet I could use my body heat and do the same thing with fire.”

  Kellan repeated the hand motions and very quickly small tongues of fire appeared in his hand then raced together forming a ball. Juliet saw Kellan concentrating, straining, to add more energy to the fire in his hand. The ball grew in size and intensity, first glowing red, then white hot. She stepped back as it began to burn her.

  “Kel? That’s enough. Kellan? You don’t look so good.” Kellan’s skin had become pallid, his lips blue, and his teeth chattered.

  “Uh oh…” he said, then collapsed unconscious.

  Kellan opened his eyes and shivered.

  “Oh thank god,” said Juliet. “You’ve been out cold for almost half and hour, are you ok?”

  Kellan shivered again, “I f-feel really cold. Where did the fire come from?”

  “From you, idiot, now crawl closer to it and warm up.”

  Kellan did so, embracing the warmth from what seemed like a small campfire.

  “When you passed out, you dropped that fireball and it burned through the grass and turned the rock all molten. I just scooped up anything dry enough to burn from around here and threw it in the hole, then tried to keep something burning until you woke up. You realize you gave yourself a serious case of hypothermia, don’t you?”

  Kellan groaned a bit, “Yeah, I think I figured that out just about the time it was too late to do anything about it. You realize, this is your fault.”

  “What!?”

  “I never thought of using my own internal reserves to generate external effects.”

  “I didn’t tell you freeze yourself nearly to death. Good thing you didn’t try to do that with the lightning, you probably would have given yourself a heart attack or fried your brain, and that’s not something I could have helped with since I don’t see any defibrillators around.”

  The color had rapidly returned to Kellan face and he sat up. “That’s a fair point. I think I’ll experiment some more with this concept, but will do so cautiously.”

  “Good thinking.”

  He smiled at her. “Seriously though, Juliet. That was brilliant. I might never have thought of it. Thanks!”

  She beamed at him, “Twern’t nuthin’, boss, but…”

  “What?”

  “I think you need a focus of some kind as a means to unleash this stuff. It just seems to come out of nowhere with no notice.”

  Kellan snickered a little, feeling very much better as the warmth of the fire continued to seep into him. “What do you want me to do, yell, ‘Fuego!’”

  “Ha! That’d be awesome, but, seriously, you are no Harry Dresden. He’d totally kick your ass.”

  Kellan was about to protest when Juliet pulled out her cellphone and looked at it.

  “I don’t think you have service on Easter Island,” Kellan said with a laugh.

  “No kidding, I was just checking the time. We need to get me home. We are about 30 minutes from my folks freaking out and both our phones are going right to voice mail.”

  “What time is it?”

  “7:30”

  “Oh, crap, we are already half an hour late. Hey, I could try to figure out that rip in time variant of the distance traveling and we could get you home whenever yo
u wanted.”

  “No, no, no. We are so not trying that now. You go experiment with that little process on your own and very slowly. In fact, don’t experiment on your own. Wait until tomorrow and do it when I’m around so I can spot you”

  “Spot me, it’s not like doing bench presses.”

  “You know what I mean. Like maybe try to jump forward or backwards 5 minutes or something and see how that goes. Regardless, we are not doing that now and we are getting me home.”

  Kellan smiled as he got up. “Yes, Ma’am!”

  “Good, now make with the sparkle eyes and open us a portal.”

  He did so and, as it opened, she saw the inside of the small shed that her family used to store gardening equipment. “Wow, curbside service, Kel, nice job. By the way, I think I am handling all this craziness with a lot of grace.”

  Kellan laughed. “You certainly are. Now run on through, bending space isn’t as easy as it looks.”

  Chapter 7

  SEMPER Fi

  Kellan watched from the driveway as soft yellow light spilled out from the open front door. Juliet turned to wave as did her mother.

  “Sorry to keep her out so long, Rach,” Kellan yelled as he waved his hand in greeting. “Inventory—won’t happen again.”

  Rachel Herrick smiled as Juliet squeezed past her, disappearing into the house, “Yes it will, Kellan. Just, please make sure you guys have your cell phones on; we were getting worried.”

  “Yeah, yeah—sure thing. We were in the basement, no signal and all that, but I’ll be more careful. Maybe run a land line down there or something.

  She nodded, waved again, and closed the door leaving Kellan standing alone in the pool of orange made by the mercury streetlights.

  His stomach contracted a bit and he felt the butterflies.

  “What’s up with that,” he mumbled to himself as he turned and walked down the driveway to the street. Then it hit him. This was the first time he had been alone since all the craziness started. From this world’s frame of reference, that was just this morning, but for him, it had been the better part of a year. A year of constant activity, but also with constant companionship of one kind or another.

  He stopped suddenly in the street, looking back and forth, “Oh well, now this sucks. My car is at the store.” Kellan again realized he had actually said the words out loud and made a mental note not to spend so much time talking to himself, at least where people could see, smiling at his own internal caveat. He started walking down the street trying to clear his head and think what to do next. He really didn’t want to go home and bounce around the walls of his house, but also had no desire to really socialize with a bunch of people either.

  He stopped and snapped his fingers, “Meghan. Of course, I’ll go see Meghan. Oh man will she be happy to see me.” Kellan cringed and looked about. “I just did it again, didn’t I,” he whispered. “Yes, you did—now stop it.” Fortunately, Kellan remembered that he’d been having these external conversations with himself for as long as he could remember, so didn’t attribute it to all the recent changes and traumas he’d endured. Still, as a somewhat innocuous bookstore owner, he could afford to stand out a bit as an eccentric. In his current situation, drawing attention was probably much less desirable.

  For a moment, he considered trying to make a portal directly to Meghan’s house, but immediately thought better of it. Micah had warned him not to become too reliant on his extra-normal abilities for normal activities. Apparently, this Maurius character who had it out for him, was the master of that kind of thing, using his abilities for almost everything from the mundane to the spectacular.

  Kellan pulled out his iPhone, tapped the Uber icon, and input his bookstore as the destination. He’d just drive to see Meghan, like a normal person. A few minutes later, a white Subaru pulled up beside him as he walked along the street driven by a kid that looked like a cross between an emaciated member of Duck Dynasty and Where’s Waldo.

  “You Kellan?”

  “Yep, that’s me. Cool ‘stache dude.”

  “Thank, bro. I’m Brian, hop in.”

  The two chatted about nothing for the few miles between Juliet’s neighborhood and Kellan’s shop. When they arrived, Kellan tapped his app giving Brian five stars for being strong in the Hipster Force and got out with a final wave.

  As Kellan walked down the alley towards the back of the shop where he’d parked his car, his eyes were drawn to the scratched, circle in the pavement, now faded somewhat over the past months. He suddenly began to think coming back here by himself wasn’t one of his brightest moves and picked up his pace, almost jogging down the alley to where it appeared to dead-end. There was a low railing to the left which Kellan grabbed onto and leaped over with practiced ease, landing softly some four feet below in the parking lot behind his and the adjacent shops.

  He quickly walked up to the black, 1967 Impala, and gave it a quick pat as he slipped his key in the door lock. “Hiya, baby, miss me?”

  Kellan settled into the well worn seat, turned the ignition key and smiled at the deep rumble. “Yeah, I missed you too. We’re going to see Meghan!”

  Meghan lived in Cabbagetown, a quasi gentrified section of downtown Atlanta where a number of old factories and mills had been converted into lofts. When Kellan arrived at the security gate, he decided he wanted to surprise her, so punched in the gate’s UPS code instead of Meghan’s. The large steel and chain barrier rumbled to life and slowly slid out of the way on squeaking wheels. He gunned the engine, excited to see his friend, zoomed past the now open barrier and sliding into a visitor’s spot, tires protesting with a squeal at the abrupt stop.

  “Sorry, baby,” Kellan said sliding his hand along the steering wheel for a moment as he slipped out the door.

  Moments later he was at her loft tapping on the door. He gave the door his standard “shave and a haircut—two bits,” knock and waited.

  Nothing.

  “I know she’s here. She’s always here.” Kellan mumbled, as he looked at his watch. “9:30, she can’t possibly be asleep yet.” With that thought in mind he just proceeded to play the equivalent of bongo drums on her door. He was about to begin a second round, when the door flew open and Kellan found himself staring down the barrel of a very large handgun.

  What is it with the women in his life and handguns thought Kellan? Meghan stood in a practiced, sideways stance designed to minimize her vital areas to attack. She had both hands gripping a military issued service weapon as she grimly sighted down its length, eyes burrowing into Kellan’s while he stood there, aghast, both hands up as he prepared to bongo the door again.

  “Easy, Woody, it’s just me. It’s Kellan.”

  Meghan’s eyes looked a bit wild and, for a few heartbeats Kellan really thought he might get shot in the face, then he saw her let out a breath as she lowered the weapon.

  “What the heck, Kel? How did you get in here?”

  “I wanted to surprise you. I just used the UPS code.”

  She stared at him, puzzled, waving him inside, “The UPS code? What do you mean?”

  “Oh I saw the UPS guy tap in a code when he was delivering a package.”

  “UPS doesn’t deliver packages inside anymore; they deliver them to the front office.”

  “Really, that seems like a pain.” He paused, “Was that your idea?”

  Meghan grunted something that sounded fairly affirmative and closed the door.

  “You should really have that code reset then.”

  “It’s not really a problem except when mental mutants stop by who can remember six digit random codes for over a year. You are the mental mutant in this story, if you were wondering.”

  “Yeah, I figured,” said Kellan as his eyes washed over the small industrial loft. He could never figure why people loved these places so much with all the exposed pipes and brick. Meghan’s place fell neatly into the category of being intentionally shabby, sporting a small kitchen with breakfast bar that spilled out into an even
smaller living room that consisted of a couch, coffee table, and entertainment center. In between the kitchen and living room was a short hall that led to the only bedroom. Kellan, being much more an old leather and reclaimed wood kind of guy, never liked this place, but was happy to see that Meghan had finally taken his suggestion of having hardwoods put down over the previously acid etched concrete floors.

  “So how are ya, Woody, it’s been like a month. You don’t call. You don’t write. Your mother and I are worried about you.”

  Meghan frowned as she sat down on a stool by her breakfast bar.

  “Well, maybe it’s because I enjoy my solitude and communicating with you usually ends up with a visit, which I might not have wanted.”

  “Hmm…well that’s one point of view. Got any beer? I’m really parched and have had one hell of a day.”

  “Sure. You know where they are. Don’t expect me to play hostess for you.”

  Kellan walked over to the fridge and rummaged around for a second or two, “Oooo, Innis & Gunn! My favorite. It’s like you knew I was coming.”

  “No, Kellan, If I’d known you were coming, then I wouldn’t have been here.”

  Kellan ignored the jibe and walked over to the bottle opener Meghan had attached to the wall near the pantry. He gave the bottle a quick downward pull and watched the cap fly off only to be caught by a magnet hidden beneath the wood of the bottle opener. He smiled, “That just never gets old; I really need to get myself one of those.”

  He sat down on the stool next to Meghan and silently drank his beer while she continued to stare straight ahead into the living room area.

  Finally, having almost finished his beer, Kellan cleared his throat garnering a sideways glance from Meghan.

  “So, Woody, I need a favor.”

  “Please stop calling me that.”

  “Why? You earned it.”

  She snorted.

  “Seriously, when a Marine Captain gets chewed out for having you flying into an FOB and goes toe-to-toe with his CO saying, now, wait, let me make sure I remember the quote properly…”