Fire Eyes Awakened: The Senturians of Terraunum Series (Book 1)

by R. J. Batla

  Morgan held her chin up, but she crossed and rubbed her arms, slumping ever so slightly. She actually got redder, though I’m not sure how. Now all of us were looking around, but couldn’t find anyone talking. It’s a good thing – they deserved a whooping, and we were ready to give it to them, which probably wouldn’t have sat well with any of our superiors.

  Arriving at the East Tower, we walked up to our room in silence, badged in through the door and crashed onto the furniture, thankful for the cool air. “What was with those people out there? I’ve never heard anyone talk like that.”

  “That’s because you’re from the Southland,” Euless said, his eyebrows furrowed, one hand stroking his goatee, feet propped up on the coffee table. He rubbed Morgan’s back as she laid down. Gilmer sat across with a goofy look on his face.

  Morgan nodded. “This is true – over the past decades, the people north of the Divide have been growing, eh…restless, yes?”

  “Bitter is the word you’re looking for,” Euless said, hands clasped in front of him now, grim look on his face as he stared into space. “It’s sad, really. People have grown so complacent, so rich, so…comfortable that they’ve forgotten why the Senturians were needed in the first place – their protection. They think the Wall will protect them forever, so they’re jealous of our abilities, either born or Awakened. It’s sad. I fear it will bring us down from the inside.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How did the Ints get into Harlingon? Someone had to let them in. It couldn’t have been a one-person act, from one of my nation’s royal family even. All these secret meetings. People running to and fro, not talking to anyone they don’t know or trust. There’s something more going on here. Mark my words,” Euless said, dropping his hand back to massage Morgan again. She looked much better now, more relaxed.

  “So what?” Gilmer said. “Let the jealous idiots talk. It doesn’t matter. We’re still going to protect them and they’re still going to just go about their lives. To heck with them; they don’t even know what’s going on.”

  “Maybe that’s part of the problem.” That got a couple of looks, so I expanded: “Would they be better off if they knew more of what’s happening? I know I, before I was Awakened, was pretty much ignorant of all of this: I was just trying to make it through that day, only to get up and do it again tomorrow. I don’t know. Maybe we Senturians take too much for granted. Maybe.”

  We wasted away the rest of the day, then hit the sack. None of us felt much like staying up and talking, content with our own thoughts.

  Chapter 26

  As we entered the training grounds the next day, we found an imposing figure waiting on us. Imagine a pirate – a female pirate – dreadlocks tied back with a red-and-white polka-dotted bandana, red vest, green cutoff pants, and black boots. Now imagine her being so dark blue she was almost purple. Hair several shades of blue. Not pretty, but not ugly, with the biggest set of knockers I’d ever seen. Silver knives stuck out all over her vest, waist, back, legs, and anywhere else you could put one. Oh, and six-foot-three. That’s what waited on us. Yeah. I gulped.

  “Celeste Dumas,” she said when we were still a few yards away, not waiting for handshakes. “Which one of ya lucky saps is Jayton Baird?” I raised my hand. “All right, ya follow me. I’ll meet the rest of yas later,” she said, turning on her heel and walking away. I shrugged and followed her. She was older than me, maybe mid-thirties, and her confidence could be seen in the way she moved. Celeste was definitely someone to be reckoned with.

  We walked until we reached the far wall of the training center. Celeste placed her hand on a square carved with a wave symbol directly on the wall, which promptly flashed blue. I had to jump back several times as the ground shook, rumbled, then split. A pond full of water appeared right where I’d been standing.

  Celeste belly laughed, actually holding her belly and arching her back. “Ah, I always love that one. Don’t want to get wet, eh? Well don’t fret, lad, we’ll fix that shortly,” she said, walking up to me and shaking my hand. “Good to meet ya, Jayton. I heard about yar trial. I’m sorry to say my people didn’t vote for ya. It’s just history, ya know? No hard feelings?”

  “Uh, no…no hard feelings.”

  “Good then. So I’ll show ya how to master the water.” Reaching out, she pulled her right arm back and water streamed from the pond to form a wriggling ball in her hand. Her left hand extended out, palm up.

  “Water wants to flow, wants to move. It can sit, but it’d rather be movin’.” As she talked, she moved her hand and fingers; the water morphed into a cone shape and then froze. “You freeze it, it’ll hold its shape, but otherwise it will take the shape of its container, in this case your will.

  “In order to perform the higher-level techniques I’ll show ya, ya have to let yar energy flow freely, from one part of yar body to the other, at the same time exerting control over how the water moves. Ya’re not its master, just as no one masters the sea or the river or the glaciers that carve the land up north. Ya can guide a portion, but the rest stays wild, trying to smash you into the rocks. Understand?”

  “I think so. But, um…how do you freeze it?”

  She laughed. “Ya take away the heat, o’ course! Draw it into yarself or release it into the air, either way, draw away enough heat and it’ll freeze.” I started to open my mouth but she held up a finger. “Let me guess – ya want to know if ya can make steam?” I nodded. She waved her left hand over the cone, which burst into a cloud of fog. “Can ya guess?”

  “Add heat?”

  “Bingo! Again, from yarself or the area around ya, add enough heat and it’ll flash boil! Then ya can control where it goes, what it does, etcetera – cause hey, it’s still water! Now ya ready, question boy?”

  I nodded, got into a fighting stance, pulled a ball of water like she had done to my right hand, and smiled.

  She just laughed again. “Ah, ya won’t be smiling long,” she said as a jet of water soaked me from behind. I hadn’t even sensed it.

  She was right. It took a while to get the flowing movements right, so different from fire. Parts of it were closer to energy, but much more fluid – more, I don’t know – graceful. It was like learning to walk, then trading legs with someone and learning to walk again. The movement was almost the same, but the motions were different.

  It was like a dance – the steps were intricate and precise, but if you didn’t make them to the beat, it threw everything off.

  “Move like the water,” Celeste kept saying. “Flow. Be. Let the water do the work for ya – remember it wants to move!”

  We trained for several days. Sometimes it was hard to take her seriously – I kept expecting an eye patch to appear, and her to start saying “Arrg” all the time, maybe even sprout a peg leg before a parrot flew in. Even so, she trained me hard, until she finally said I was OK enough for us to start training with the rest of the group.

  Two days later, at the end of a particularly rough training day, Royn said, “All right, Jay and Gilmer, we’re leaving soon to get your weapons. You have been called to the Smith’s.”

  Morgan, Euless, and Celeste gasped, oohed, and ahhed.

  “Who’s the Smith? Didn’t the others go somewhere else?” I asked.

  Morgan slapped me in the back of the head. “Watch your mouth! ‘Who’s the Smith?’ Honestly. He’s the best weapon maker there is and hardly anyone ever gets to go there anymore! Ugh, you’re so lucky!” She punched me in the arm so hard, I staggered.

  “Oh. Sweet!”

  “It is sweet!” Royn said. “Any questions?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “when do we leave?”

  “Two days.”

  Chapter 27

  Despite having to leave soon, we had to keep up our training. Royn met us at the door to the training area the next morning, then motioned for us to follow him. No one asked questions – he wouldn’t tell us where we were going even if we did.

  We wound our way up and down stairs
and through hallways till I was pretty sure we were going in a circle. When we reached a landing, I found out I was right – we had been working our way up the East Tower, to the very top, where a large plaque on a simple oak door read, “Councilman Ames Talco.”

  Holy crap – we were either in trouble or something good was fixing to happen.

  Royn motioned us in, and we crossed the threshold into a nice yet simply furnished office. Decently sized, there were books everywhere and loose sheets of parchment spilling over the side of the considerable desk and all along the bookcases that went twenty feet up the walls. Several wooden chairs were scattered around in various states of paper pilings, and several machines of some kind made the right wall a conglomeration of tiny movements. Ames himself stood hunched over his desk, his long mane of curly hair covering his face as he examined a book.

  We stood there for several seconds after Royn shut the door. He loudly cleared his throat.

  Ames jerked up, then a bright smile lit his face as he spread his arms wide. “Ah, the team is assembled. Er…mostly, anyway. Katy, Leona, and Anton will be back from getting their weapons in no time. Either way…welcome, welcome. Have a seat – we have some things to discuss.”

  We shuffled around, trying not to disturb the piles, and failing miserably.

  Councilman Talco didn’t seem to mind. “I’d rather have the whole team present, but you can fill the rest in when they arrive.” Ames walked around the desk and sat down in a high-backed chair, rested his elbows on the table, and steepled his fingers together. “What year is it?”

  Odd question to start off – everyone knew what year it was.

  Gilmer braved an answer: “Um…it’s four thousand eight hundred and two, sir.”

  Ames smiled. “You are correct. That is to say, you are correct, if we are correct. I’ve called you here so that you will know the past and how we’ve arrived at this particular point in time, in the hopes that it will help you in the trials that are coming.

  “I say if we are correct because we don’t actually know, for sure, what year it is. At some point, many of the old records were lost, and for a long time, humans weren’t really concerned with the year or the time or record keeping at all, for that matter. We were just concerned with survival.” We must have all had blank looks on our faces. I know I did. “Ah, I see I’d better explain, er…more.

  “The world as we know it has not been this way forever – in fact, it hasn’t been this way for long in a geological sense – a mere two thousand years. Again, a guess, but here…let me show you.” He pushed a button on his desk and a black stone, just like the scoreboard at the Awakening, came down from the ceiling. “Here’s the world we live in now,” Ames said as he touched the screen and a detailed map appeared with labels and symbols marking every town, river, rail line, and mountain. It was very well done, although I didn’t know how he was controlling it.

  “Now, watch – this is what the world used to look like.” He waved his hand and the land mass…shifted. It broke apart into several pieces, some sinking in the ocean. Land rose up, moved all over the map, until finally settling into several areas labeled “North America” and the like. Strange – I’d never seen or heard of anything like that before.

  Ames turned back to us. “This was the world. A world, not without powers, per se, but without Senturians. Humans could not do what we can do now, though we managed pretty well.”

  “What happened?” Morgan asked, eyes darting all over the map, interest marked on her face.

  “Well, many things. At one point, we ran out of oil; we think that’s where it really started.”

  “Oil?” I asked. “Like lamp oil?”

  “Yes. And no. Fossil fuels, is what I’m talking about. Oil was the major fuel source back in the day. Anyway, once we ran out of that, humans were forced to rely only on electricity. But renewable sources couldn’t keep up with the demand. Naturally, we turned to other sources, namely nuclear and geo-thermal to produce enough electricity to keep the population happy. Which ended up being our downfall.”

  “Nuclear?” I asked.

  “Geo-thermal?” Gilmer asked.

  “Forms of energy,” Euless stated, wriggling his fingers and yellow energy jumping between them. “Nuclear is very dangerous because of the radiation and the difficulty in controlling it. I’m unsure how geo-thermal was an issue, but it uses the heat from the earth to produce energy. How was it our downfall, though, Councilman?”

  “Well,” Ames started, “this is all speculation, mind you, but I think we dug too deep, meddled too much. Messed with things that should not be trifled with, upsetting the order the Almighty had so wisely put in place.

  “When we did, the very earth protested. Massive earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tectonic-plate movement in a much shorter time frame than it should have happened. Whole continents disappeared, covered up by the ocean, land masses rearranged, explosions and radiation spewing into the atmosphere, all over a period of a few years, instead of several millennia. Life on the Earth, along with mankind itself was almost destroyed. When the dust settled, all the radiation and chemicals from eruptions and earthquakes and our own means filled the air, the land, and the water. The Earth began to heal itself, resulting in one brand new landmass, new mountain ranges, rivers, forests, and new, mutated animals, along with the surviving species. Again, as far as we know.”

  Wow. So the world really did almost end.

  Ames continued. “But, like always, nature and humans prevailed, with help from Above. Though we were set back several generations in development, we persevered, with the big breakthrough coming with the discovery of the Awakening Stones.”

  “Stones, sir, as in plural?” Gilmer asked.

  “Yes, young Gilmer, plural. In fact, there are twelve rotating between Awakenings and safekeeping. You know what they do. Once you touch the stone, you get powers – powers over the forces of nature – and if you’re lucky, a couple others. Thousands came, anyone who could, until certain powers became more common, and those people started taking on certain characteristics of their power. Those with these powers naturally grouped together, and formed the six nations we see today: Phoenixes, Dwarves, Aeren, Elves, Manus, and Aquareus. At that time, there was only one water tribe; they split into three later on.

  “Naturally, fighting ensued, so to keep peace, a council was formed, and it’s by its governance and rules that the world lives. There were no East or West sides. There was simply Terraunum: Earth One.”

  “Earth One? Shouldn’t it have been Earth Two?” Morgan asked.

  Ames said, “Technically, it could go either way. Depends on if you started numbering at zero or one.”

  “That’s nice and all, but what does that have to do with Jayton’s problem?” Celeste asked.

  Ames smiled. “I’ll get to it…don’t worry. Let an old history buff have a chance to really get in it – not many are privy to this information. Or care to know, actually.

  “Anyway, yes, humans were now able to do things they never thought possible, but not all of the changes were good. We were not alone: creatures also emerged from the mist and dust, some of them animal turned more human, others human turned more animal, others mutated beyond anything ever seen before. Neither could we escape our own human nature when some whose powers were Awakened were tempted to use their powers for dark purposes. A full-fledged war broke out for power and domination of this new world.

  “And a long and bloody war it was, too. The Dark Senturians and their allies held the advantage for a long time, threatening both humanity and life on Terraunum. They were eventually defeated by Hammod Gardon and his forces in the lone pass between the mountains now known as the Breaks.

  “After their defeat, the evil creatures and Senturians were scattered across the West Side. The most powerful Senturians of the time saw a predicament: how to keep the war from happening again? Just as there would always be good in the world, so would there always be evil. The solution they came up w
ith was to actually change the world again – they would manipulate the land itself. They brought up cliffs all the way around the West Side of the Breaks…huge cliffs too perilous to try to navigate down, too sheer to even get a foothold, effectively sealing the evil on the West Side, allowing the East Side to be safe and prosper as we see it today.”

  “How?” Euless asked. “How could they do that? Even the best Dwarves and Earth Senturians working together can’t move mountains!”

  “That part is a mystery, my Manu friend,” Ames continued. “It’s been debated ever since, with no real conclusion. My best guess would be that there were some especially powerful Senturians in the group, or divine intervention. Why, Hammod Gardon – all by himself – erected a wall and the Watchtower to further protect the East Side, for he believed that there would come a day when the evil would rise up again and try to take over.”

  “And he was right,” Gilmer said.

  “Yes, Mr. Borger. Evil has found a way to undermine the good we are trying to do, and once again we, those on the side of the Light, as good humans, as good people, are called upon to stop it. Evil prospers when those who would oppose it sit idle. It takes constant alertness and work to keep evil at bay.”

  “That’s all well and good, but that still doesn’t explain why we’re here,” I said, adding a “sir,” on the end.

  Ames smiled. “I appear to have used up all your patience. The answer, Champion, is twofold. One: during the last great war, the greatest weapon the West Side had was a Morsenube user. He single-handedly swung the tide of war. Almost won it for the Dark. And now there’s another leading them, Malstrak, who left us after murdering hundreds of people.”

  “Left? I though he was banished?” Euless asked.

  “Ha!” exclaimed Royn. “That’s what the council told the world, to put their minds at ease. The truth is, no one wanted to face him. Hell, we couldn’t even find him if he didn’t want us to. Had he not announced that he was leaving – laughing, killing, and scarring the Wall upon his departure – we might still be looking.”