Chapter 2
Aiden sat on the beach of Jiada’s Turning, though his eyes were not on the beautifully setting sunset as it sizzled into the turquoise waters of the cove. Instead, he was studying the strange ripples his new walking stick was making in the sand around him. Each time he thumped the gnarled head into the sand, it created a strange vibration under him and caused a pattern of ripples to form out to about two meters. He simply didn’t know what it meant.
After the battle of Riften, he’d finally sat down to make a weapon for himself. He had to wait until recovering from making the Aidengate to Terek before he had the time to do it, but he’d been in too many melees without a real weapon. Instead of a sword, he’d decided to make something that wouldn’t create so much gore and mess. It took him a while to think of what he’d wanted, but he remembered seeing an old man back in Terek who had always had a well-polished, gnarled walking stick Aiden always fancied. For its ability he decided to alter what his armored shirts did. Instead of just stopping a cut, it would amplify the force of whatever was striking it and send it back.
The result was resting in his hand, smooth and cool to the touch. To test it out, he’d come out on the beach and picked up a few rocks, throwing them in the air and swinging at them with his stick. He was impressed with how far out over the water it sent the rocks, but he didn’t think it was doing much else and doubted its ability to defend him in a battle. What good was pushing someone out of the way?
Still, the strange waves it was making in the sand were fascinating. They were so even and symmetrical. It only took a few whacks in a different spot to create the same pattern in a different place, erasing the previous waves.
He heard footsteps crunching in the sand behind him and turned, smiling when he saw the towering form of Oya Dihya walking up behind him. The Naiaden’s face was stoic as usual, but one of her eyebrows was up in curiosity.
“Greetings Aiden,” she said in her soft, smoky voice. “I could not help but wonder what you were doing sitting out here by yourself. Now that I have come closer, I am even more intrigued. I can feel the vibrations from several meters away.”
Aiden smiled and waved the stick in the air. “I tried to make a weapon, but I’m not sure I made one. It seems to hit rocks into the bay well, but not much else.”
“What is it supposed to do that you are not sure if you have succeeded?”
“Well,” Aiden said, turning the stick over in his hand and then offering it to toward the warrior woman, “I didn’t want something that cut, so I made a walking stick. I made it similar to my armored shirts, but instead of just stopping a blow, I decided to take whatever force it was hit with and send it back stronger. I don’t know if it will do very well.”
Oya Dihya was silent for several moments, looking down at the sand spirals with a frown before turning and heading for the treeline at the edge of the still-new town. “Come with me, Aiden. I believe you may be surprised. Sand is probably not your most effective testing subject.”
Aiden stood and followed the towering Naiaden. She was walking slowly, and it was not difficult for him to keep up as they headed toward several trees and some large rocks. “Force is something that, in the most basic principles that people deal with on a day-to-day basis, is limited. The difficulty with your gift, Aiden, is that your power can send you into areas far removed from these basic principles. While it has created many advantages, it can generate unintended consequences that, if you are not careful, can cause dangers you are not expecting.”
“I think I know what you mean,” Aiden said hesitantly, trying to grasp what Oya Dihya was saying.
Oya Dihya stopped and looked down at Aiden sternly. “You cannot yet know what I mean, Aiden. The forces you have already constructed are profoundly outside of the scope of your understanding or experience. The Aidengates that you have built create stable wormholes between two points. In the ancient days of the commonwealth, these types of things required machines of such complexity they took years to build. They would also require a small fraction of the output of a star to power them. Do you understand that?”
“I… I don’t,” Aiden finally admitted. He knew what a star was, but he was still trying to come to grips with what power was. He didn’t know what a wormhole was at all.
Oya Dihya nodded, stopping about twenty meters away from the forest line and pointing to a large rock outcropping. “Go over there behind those tall stones. I am going to show you what I mean because that is my point, Aiden. You are bypassing a lot with your creations, and you must be careful.”
Aiden walked over behind several large stones sticking up out of the dense undergrowth and peeked out. He watched as Oya Dihya thrust the stick halfway into the ground and then picked up a large stone, easily twice the size of his head before walking back to where Aiden was.
“Do not expose your head from behind this stone. I am going to throw this rock at your walking stick, and you shall see what you have wrought. It might be loud, and it will most assuredly be dangerous.”
With that, the tall Naiaden took a half step out and then threw the stone at the stick as hard as she could. Quickly, she pulled herself back, moving her large bulk behind cover next to Aiden. It wasn’t a moment later that Aiden heard a loud explosion and then what sounded like many small things flying off into the jungle at high speed or ricocheting off of their stone shield. It was loud and frightening, causing Aiden to stare wide-eyed into Oya Dihya’s eyes for several long moments.
“What… what was that?” Aiden said.
“That was the stone I just threw, Aiden.” Oya Dihya stood and gestured for Aiden to follow. As they stepped out from behind the rock, it was a scene of devastation with plants and even trees brutalized from whatever had happened. Even as they approached, one of the medium-sized palms started to tip, and then fell to the ground.
There, sitting at the bottom of a small crater dug out of the soil and sand was his walking stick, still pristine and untouched. Glimmer steel, at least the kind that he made, could look like anything but was nearly indestructible. Aiden slipped down into the small depression and retrieved it, looking at the stick for a moment before glancing up at Oya Dihya. “I don’t understand, how could my walking stick have caused this? How could the push of an object cause this much damage? I didn’t make it to do this, did I?”
The tall warrior shook her head. “No, Aiden. You did make a weapon that would cause exactly this. You did not intend it, but you did not understand what you were making. It returns the force it receives; I assume in greater quantity?” Oya Dihya raised her eyebrow and at Aiden’s nod, she continued. “Yes, as I suspected. The problem is your human muscles have a limit to how hard they can push. Your walking stick does not have a limit. Whatever force it receives, it will return in greater measure no matter how great the force. My ability to throw that rock is much greater than your own, and the force it returned made the stone explode with terrible force.”
Aiden pondered what she’d said and looked over at the devastation that the rock had caused. It was sobering. “You said it could return power without limit? So if I was standing amongst my friends and someone like you threw a rock at it, it would explode and kill us all, most likely?”
“Yes,” she said simply. “There are other things that could happen as well, or if someone with certain knowledge acquired it, even worse. I have some ideas that might make your walking stick both more versatile and less dangerous if you are willing to listen.”
Aiden nodded and handed the walking stick to the tall woman. She tucked it into her belt and led Aiden to a quiet place for their conversation.
***
Later that evening, he was sitting around a table with Ashrak, Chari, and Gavin under one of the intricately carved open-air gazebos scattered around the new town, admiring his improved walking stick.
“So what makes this better, Aiden?” Ashrak asked, curling his arms around Chari’s waist as she sat next to him. They had all been equally impressed with
the story Aiden had just told them about the rock and agreed that it didn’t sound like a very good weapon.
Aiden lifted the stick, pushing a small button with his thumb. They all watched a faint oval shimmer appear around the stick. “Go ahead and throw something at me,” Aiden said, grinning.
Ashrak started to reach for his dagger, but Chari slapped his hand, giving him a warning glance. The tall, white-haired Nobel laughed, grinning his boyish grin as he took his hand away and picked up a pebble from the ground instead. “Kidding! I’m kidding! I wouldn’t throw a dagger.”
Gavin and Aiden smirked, but they’d both seen him do things in the past that made them not so sure. In this case, it wouldn’t have mattered. The rock that Ashrak lobbed toward Aiden bounced off of the air in front of the stick and lost its momentum, dropping to the tiled floor. A dagger wouldn’t have stood any more of a chance than the stone.
“What is it hitting?” Chari asked as she leaned forward. Her finger poked into the air and seemed to push up against an invisible force. Gavin and Ashrak watched as she moved it around, finally finding an edge, which resolved itself into a robust oval.
“It’s a shield,” Aiden said, equally fascinated by watching Chari’s finger squish itself against an invisible barrier. “Oya Dihya just said to imagine something in this shape that did the same thing the armor shirts do. There was no talk of power or anything else, which helped.” Aiden shrugged, “I just don’t get the idea of power yet, I suppose.”
“It’s okay, Aiden,” Chari said, patting his arm. “I think that you don’t need it. Everything you make works.”
Aiden shook his head. “I know, but I need to figure it out, or at least things like it. I need to understand how power works, or I risk putting the people around me in danger. Oya Dihya taught me that. Speaking of, I’ll show you the crater tomorrow. It’s impressive.”
“Did she explain how it did that much damage?” Gavin asked, curious.
“Kind of. She said it was like hitting a rock with a hammer. Rocks are tough, but after a certain point, you can knock pieces off of it. If you hit it hard enough, then the entire thing can turn into flying bits. Which,” Aiden said, grimacing, “scares me if she threw a rock hard enough to do that. I thought I was just making something to push people and things back if I hit them. She helped me make this one, though, and it’s much better.”
“What happened to the other stick?” Ashrak asked, peeking around Chari’s shoulder. “You didn’t just leave it around, did you?”
Aiden shook his head. “No. I dissolved it. I didn’t want anyone to use it by accident. Oya Dihya said if the wrong people got it, it could cause problems. This one does the same thing but has a limit and also creates a shield. I can control the amount of push instead of it being dependent on what hits it with these buttons.” He held up the top of the stick, showing his friends the little knobs spaced finger-width apart. They were midway down the shaft of the walking stick with four on one side and one on the other for his thumb.
“So you control the push? What are the levels?” Gavin, the Duke’s son, asked. “Can I try it out?”
Aiden handed the walking stick to his friend and nodded. “Yes. The thumb is the shield and the buttons on the right control the power of the push. The top-most one is the lowest power. I figure it will be the most used. It just feels like a solid push if you hit someone with it. I tested it out on Oya Dihya, and she said it should push a grown man about a foot if they aren’t resisting. The next one will leave a big bruise and knock someone in armor over. I broke a wooden plank with the third and the fourth shattered a thick beam.”
Gavin grinned and motioned for Ashrak to stand. “Okay, Ashrak! Stand up; I’ve always wanted to beat you with a stick.”
Chari gave Gavin a mock-severe glare. “Don’t you dare hurt him! You remember what happened to the last person that tried to kill my future husband.”
Gavin laughed, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “I won’t! I did see what you did. Scared me half to death.”
Aiden grinned, remembering that time not so long ago. One of Ashrak’s brothers had thrown a knife at his back, and Aiden had jumped to intercept it. No one was hurt, because Aiden had been wearing one of his miraculous armored shirts at the time, and the blade had simply bounced off him, but Chari had taken it rather badly. She’d stalked over and stabbed the man in the chest. Aiden could still remember the Brun Soldiers terrified faces as they’d watched her do it.
As Ashrak stood, he looked deeply into Chari’s eyes for a moment, lifting his hand to her cheek and cupping it softly. “My defender, I have nothing to worry about with you by my side.”
Chari closed her eyes, nuzzling into his hand for a moment before looking back. “Always by your side,” she whispered softly before kissing his hand. “Now, go get beaten and bruised. Rabble rouser.”
Ashrak grinned his boyish grin, and then turned back to Gavin, opening his arms wide. “Okay! Beat me until I’m blue, Gavin!”
Gavin laughed, then exaggerated pushing the top button. “Do I have to swing with any force, Aiden?”
“No, it will do the same thing whether you tap him or swing hard at him. In fact, hitting him with the stick won’t even add anything.”
Gavin nodded, then chose to tap Ashrak’s chest. Ashrak had set himself to resist the push, and he moved only a few centimeters, but his eyes opened wide. “Oh! Wow, that was odd. It felt like a big pillow pushed me.”
“Can I do it to myself, Aiden?” Gavin asked, looking curiously at the walking stick.
“I think so. It won’t do anything to me no matter what, but it should work on you.” Aiden shrugged. “Try it.”
Gavin tapped his chest, moving back a step and then looked up wide-eyed. “Oh, yeah! It feels like a big pillow hitting you.” He turned, handing the walking stick back to Aiden. “Congratulations, you made the prettiest pillow fighting weapon.”
The friends all laughed as Aiden took his weapon back. “Well, yes, unless I use one of the higher settings but I don’t want to splatter anyone if I can help it.” Aiden sighed. “I think the highest setting can do that. I almost didn’t do it, but Oya Dihya said that it might be necessary and it was time for me to toughen up.”
Ashrak and Gavin looked at each other, but Chari nodded. “It’s true, Aiden. I agree with her. I think things are going to get far more dangerous. Just look at what happened at Riften. What would have happened if Ashrak hesitated to do what he did at the Welcome Ceremony?”
Aiden paused, looking down and speaking in a small voice. “I don’t want to become a monster, though. These powers. I…I think I could do horrible things if I lose control.”
“It could be, Aiden, if you were someone else who was a giant twit,” Gavin said, stepping up to his friend. “But you are already concerned about that and watching it. We are as well. Trust me; I will take your stick away from you and hit you on the head if you start getting all villainy. There will be hard things to do. When Ashrak killed his father, he did not hesitate. It was something he had to do. I’m afraid with your power; you are going to have to make decisions like that.”
Aiden looked down but nodded. He knew he wasn’t just a lost orphan at the old school anymore. He’d been dealing with Dukes and all manner of lords. It was terrifying, but that was his reality now.
“You’re right. I know that, but everything has been so sudden. I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and I do need to handle it better and start making decisions for myself.”
“Aiden, you have been starting to make decisions,” Chari said. “You are still hesitant, but just like the rest of us, you have been growing. I don’t think we could have gotten to Riften in time if you hadn’t. Don’t be too hard on yourself.”
“Okay,” Aiden said, smiling at the beautiful, silver-eyed girl. “I think you’re right. But for now, I’m exhausted. Duchess Ahnarad wanted us to help her talk Carol Reid into something tomorrow morning. We’d better go to bed so we can get up in time.”
/> The others nodded as they all rose, heading to their respective beds.
Chapter 3
Aiden and his friends were just coming back from the crater and were on their way to the meeting place when Glowby floated into view. Aiden hadn’t been overly worried. His friend disappeared for a day or two sometimes but had always come back. This time was no different as the happily glowing ball of light flitted up and spun around his head a few times in greetings. Aiden didn’t dare look at Glowby since no one could see him but Aiden, and he’d already gotten a few uncomfortable questions.
Instead, he just smiled a bit wider, sending thoughts of warm greetings. Glowby responded by resting on his shoulder companionably. As they approached the one-story, sprawling building, they all slowed. They could clearly hear raised voices coming from within since several walls had been removed from strategic places to allow the ocean breeze to cool off the interior.
“No! We just opened ourselves to the rest of the world after thousands of years, and now you’re asking this of us?” Carol Reid said, obvious anger dripping from her voice. Aiden and his friends shared concerned glances before hurrying inside to see Carol and Duchess Ahnarad sitting at a table together.
The Glimmer Steel Saga, Boxed Set, Books 1 - 4 Page 64