In an instant the robed man’s face contorted to fury, and he threw his arms into forms and figures. Kethar, claymore and Lenthean in hand, wrapped up and rolled off the edge of the mountain. Explosions of light were going off behind them at the top of the mountain where they once had been. But now, Lenthean was falling—contained in the massive arms of Kethar. They landed on their sides and bounced down the steep mountainside. Every landing was painful; scrapes and bruises were the least of what would result from the fall. Kethar’s deep, booming voice grunted with every firm landing in his armor. Lenthean’s sense of direction was gone, the world spinning in a frantic flurry, as his face and body met sharp gravel.
Lenthean could hear the whistling of the air as they fell to each new set of ground, until eventually they made one final fall. The impact was so great, Kethar let loose his sword and Lenthean on impact. Lenthean rolled across the ground, beaten and battered, and could barely move, groaning from the pain. He lifted his head to see the armored Kethar rolling around in agony as well, trying to regain his momentum.
Lenthean looked up the mountain to see the troops scrambling down the many switchbacks, with the older man in brown robes literally gliding down thin air as though he was levitating. The man’s feet met the ground on which Lenthean and Kethar lay.
The robed man hoisted up his white walking stick to smack the back of Kethar’s head. It was a very hard hit. He then made a full reverse swing to smash Kethar’s face with the butt of the staff. Kethar screamed, with blood pouring from his nose. The man turned to Lenthean and said, “Come with me, Lenthean. Your father commanded me to save you.”
Lenthean, stunned and confused, continued to eye the man.
“Lenthean, It is now or never. I will leave you here if you do not come with me now.”
Realizing this man would have no way of knowing his name unless he was telling the truth, Lenthean agreed. He got up and ran with the man away from the bloodied Kethar and the troops rushing down to his aid.
6: The Old Inheritance
“Quickly!” the man in brown robes hustled. Lenthean, running but limping, followed shortly behind him. The man was running toward the open field then took a sharp left turn behind some boulders at the base of the mountain cliff. Lenthean scrambled to turn as sharply as the man did, but managed to do the same. To Lenthean’s surprise, a white horse was waiting for the man.
“Lucy,” the man murmured to the horse. “Let’s ride.”
He climbed onto the horse’s saddle and extended a hand to Lenthean. “Hop on.”
Lenthean, looking up to him on horseback, grabbed his forearm and hoisted himself up onto the back of the horse.
“HEEYA!” the man shouted, clicking into the horse’s sides with his heels. With a neigh, the horse took off into the open field, away from Denduthal and Fredrickstown.
The horse was remarkably fast. Lenthean’s body bounced on the back of the horse from the speed. Lenthean could feel the thickness of the brown fabric of the man’s robes; he clung to them so he wouldn’t fall off.
“Keep your head down!” the man shouted back to him. Lenthean quickly ducked. “Arrows are bound to come our way!”
“Arrows?!” Lenthean exclaimed. Lenthean shriveled his body up as small as he could to become a smaller target. When Lenthean turned his head around to see what was behind them, he saw roughly ten horsemen on their pursuit.
Lenthean shouted as an arrow whistled by his shoulder and planted itself firmly in the ground.
The man grabbed the reigns and yanked them to the left, attempting to dodge oncoming projectiles. The horse was squealing as it fled from the pursuers. Arrow after arrow pummeled the earth, barely missing the targets. The man was swerving the horse to the left and right, making zig-zags. Lenthean clung on for dear life as best he could.
One of the horsemen was close now. Sword drawn, he swiped at the horse’s legs. The man with Lenthean was caught off guard. Overcompensating, he steered hard left to avoid his attacker, only to fall into the swinging range of another assailant horseman of Kethar’s squad. The new soldier was swiping at the horse’s legs too, but in his focus, he failed to see that Lenthean’s savior hoisted his staff up in the air. The staff struck the soldier across the face, knocking the pursuer from his mount.
Now taking the offensive, they swerved back to the right and took on the first horseman as the others were rapidly closing in. The man fought the soldier valiantly, blocking the sword attacks with his white staff. With multiple exchanges, the old man won, knocking the soldier from his horse.
Realizing they were outnumbered and being surrounded, the man lifted his staff into the air while shouting words in what sounded like an ancient and powerful language. The top of his staff began to glow bright as the sun. Lenthean stared up at the staff as it gained luminosity. Lenthean’s jaw dropped at the sight; he had never seen something like it before. A ray of sunshine connected from the staff to the origin of the sun, millions and millions of miles out of the atmosphere.
“HA!” The man shouted, waving his staff in a vicious circle overhead. The light dispersed from the staff in explosive fashion, hitting all of their pursuers. The grunts the soldiers made from getting hit with this light energy were audible. Lenthean was free.
Lenthean looked back at all the fallen soldiers, threw a fist of victory up in the air, and taunted “Ha ha!”
The horse maintained speed as the three of them broke for the open plains.
The sun was beginning to set, but the trio continued on, forward into the abyss—a place the boy’s eyes had only seen from his home of Fredrickstown. He was finally here, in a place he never thought he would be. Far, far away. The sun fell, the full moon rose. The barren, grassy landscape transformed into a blue-lit environment. The cool air felt refreshing, and Lenthean witnessed the starlit sky. He knew that his life was never going to be the same again.
Lucy slowed to a trot, then to a walk before the old man dismounted his horse. Lenthean, still on horseback, watched the man reward his horse with a treat from his sleeve and pet her mane. “Good girl, Lucy,” he murmured. Lenthean felt awkward. He was still sitting horseback as the man left him to begin setting things up. He dismounted Lucy and cautiously approached the man as he was setting up camp.
“Excuse me…” Lenthean tried. The man was gathering some loose sticks and debris from nearby trees. They both had to lift their feet as they walked through the patchy yellow grass, now illuminated blue by the moonlight. “Hello?” Lenthean continued.
The man walked right past him. Lenthean, growing frustrated, loudly said, “Hey!”
The man stopped but didn’t turn to look at him.
“Thanks.” Lenthean remarked.
He could see the man nod under his hood, but he continued to gather lumber for what was most likely to be a fire.
“Shield your eyes,” the man told him. Lenthean followed instructions but peeked to see what the man was doing. He had placed the twigs and branches into a small teepee on the ground, no bigger than the size of his two knuckles. He placed both hands, open-palm, over the twigs then began to whisper words of the ancient language. That’s when Lenthean saw something he had never seen before in his entire life. His eyes had to be lying to him. They just had to.
The man’s markings began to glow bright like the sun, hands trembling as his palms echoed with light. The light was so intense that the twigs hexed red-orange and a flame sparked from the epicenter. The light ceased, but the fire remained.
“Wow,” Lenthean sighed. The man sat with his legs crossed by the fire and began tending to it with a long, crooked stick.
The man motioned for Lenthean to sit. Lenthean did sit, but he was extremely confused by the last few hours.
“Who are you?” Lenthean asked. The man looked at him, almost condescendingly. “I—I don’t mean any offense,” Lenthean said apologetically.
“My name is Valdorath, young Shadow Elementalist. And I am The Old Inheritance.”
Lenthean ha
d a blank, confused expression on his face.
“Do you not know what that is?” Valdorath questioned.
“No, unfortunately,” Lenthean replied.
Valdorath looked back to the fire. “I wondered if Ayla would ever educate you. She left it all up to me, of course,” Valdorath complained to the boy.
The fire crackled and popped; Lenthean continued to sit and wondered what to say. That’s when Valdorath cleared the silence: “Look at your left eye.” He pointed.
Lenthean countered, “I can’t look at my left eye…”
Valdorath returned, “Don’t get smart with me. You know what’s on your left eye. That straight black line. That tells everyone that you inherited your elementalist abilities from your parent. See mine?” Valdorath leaned forward near the fire, exposing his left eye and cheekbone from the hood. The man’s wrinkled elderly face was exposed too.
“What—what does that mean?” Lenthean questioned, confused.
Valdorath continued with a semi-annoyed sigh, “There are only two inherited allowed on earth at once. The gods of each element have complex rules and politics. They’ve decided the lands of Zanvia can maintain only two elementalists that inherit their abilities from their parents. Don’t ask me why; I couldn’t tell you.” He tended to the fire some more, then explained, “The most recently born of the two inherited is referred to as the New Inheritance. That’s you. Whereas I, the older of the two, is known as the Old Inheritance.” Valdorath poked the fire with a stick.
“So you’re saying I got my abilities from my dad? Because he had these—these ‘powers’?”
Valdorath raised an eyebrow at him. “What did I just tell you, boy? Yes, that’s why you have your markings. Your father was a Shadow Elementalist. Hand-selected by the Shadow God himself.”
Lenthean wanted to know more. He was eager to learn, so intrigued by all of this new information he was obtaining from this old man in brown robes named Valdorath. Who was this man? Why did he save me? To what purpose? Lenthean asked, “So, can anyone be an Elementalist? How did my dad or—or your parent become one in the first place?”
“First off,” Valdorath growled, “I’m not going to answer questions all night.” The man packed tobacco into his pipe. “So I will give you a few more answers and we’ll call it a night. Deal?”
“All right. Geez.” Lenthean reeled back.
“To answer your question, no. Becoming an Elementalist and manipulating shadows, light, fire, water, lightning, whatever god it is that put those powers on the earth—no. You can’t just pick those up. You must find an Orb of Power and consume it through your chest. The gods have only one orb of control at a time. More of those politics, I suppose. Those are usually hidden in preposterous locations across Zanvia. And by ‘fate,’ as so many people put it, the gods select their Elementalist and it in a location only a person of the god’s preference could find it.”
Valdorath paused to take a big puff from his tobacco pipe. Valdorath then teased, “You mean to tell me that little old school in Fredrickstown didn’t teach you about Elementalists?”
Lenthean said, “They did. But the information was very limited. They never told us about the markings… What and who they were. Honestly it seemed more like religious rhetoric.” Lenthean looked aside.
“HAH!” scoffed Valdorath. “Rhetoric?!” Valdorath sprung to his feet. “Shadowling, you have no idea who you are, do you?” Lenthean stared blankly.
“You are the literal manifestation of shadows. You control them, manipulate them; you are a living prophet, as some would say. Seers and revelators prophesied of your return; they spend their entire lives studying what you are. You haven’t even discovered you have these abilities?”
Almost embarrassed, Lenthean admitted, “No.”
“Shadowling—you possess the ability to manipulate and move shadows. You can shapeshift into them, you are the portal between the underworld and its demons. You must understand the weight of the position you are in.” Valdorath sat back down. “I’m sure you’re at least aware that there are gods that rule over all of us and gods over each and every thing that exists in this world, right?”
“Yes,” Lenthean followed.
“There are gods for everything. The God of Life, the God of Wealth, the Goddess of Light, the God of Shadows, you name it. Some of these gods feel the need for pawns, to spread their agendas here on our great continent of Zanvia. They place an Orb of Power in an area that someone can find, and the user absorbs the powers it holds. Your father found a shadow orb. And for whatever reason, the God of Shadows felt the need to keep the lineage alive with his granted powers. Call it fate, call it destiny, call it a prophecy, whatever you want. These gods are extremely political and are trying to place their footprint on the underlings below them. Or in your case, above them.”
“How do you know about this?” Lenthean asked.
“Oh, I have met them,” Valdorath continued. The old man sat back down. “The Goddess of Light really is righteous. I still don’t understand why it is she picked me to represent the righteous and the enlightened.”
Lenthean was shocked to hear these things. It was almost unbelievable, but it did justify his markings. “Why me?” Lenthean pressed. “I don’t want to do this.”
“Ha!” Valdorath scoffed again. “I’ve been asking myself this since I was born. For one reason or another, the God of the Shadows felt you were the right one to possess his powers.” Valdorath took a pouch of water from his robe and drank from it. “We’ll find out why they picked us to represent them, won’t we?” Valdorath suggested.
He leaned over, offering Lenthean some water. Lenthean took it and drank.
“Oh, and don’t forget. That man back there was Kethar. He is a shadow fanatic, as you’d say. He has been hunting the Shadow Elementalist for as long as I can remember. He wishes to turn the Shadow Elementalist in for ‘riches untold’ promised by the Der’ Tanel. Psh.” Valdorath mocked. “Der’ Tanel and their absurd claims.”
Lenthean handed the water back to Valdorath.
“Der’ Tanel wants to find you if the God of Shadows decided to give you the mark of the inherited—which he clearly has. Otherwise, he would have been hunting for the Shadow Orb himself, so he could become the next great Elementalist. Turning you in, though, gives him something he craves just as much or more: immense wealth.”
“What does Der’ Tanel want to do with me? Or the Shadow Elementalist?”
Valdorath spit his water all over the fire, making it sizzle and steam. “You are joking, are you not?” Realizing Lenthean was not kidding, Valdorath continued: “Der’ Tanel’s belief system is—well, pretty much opposite of the rest of the world. They worship the God of the Shadows, the God of Lightning, the God of the Soul, the God of Flames… the empire is comprised of extremist followers under a tyrannical rule, and they love every bit it. They worship the rulers like they are gods, since two of the three rulers have obtained Orbs of Power on their own. Honestly, they are a bunch of pointed-eared lunatics.”
Lenthean continued to listen, soaking in all of this stunning information.
“They want to recruit you before you can make up a mind of your own. And if you don’t comply with their agenda, they will kill you. Plain and simple. That way, the God of the Shadows resets the Orb of Power on earth. But now Kethar knows of your existence. Resting now is key, because in three days’ time, the whole world will be after you.”
Lenthean felt fear and anxiety overtake him. He fell back and exhaled heavily, feeling the cold dirt and lumpy grass on his back. It felt like the stars above him were spinning.
“Oh, don’t worry, Shadowling. You’re just going to live the rest of your life on the run. Look at how I turned out! I’m sixty-one, never married, dressed in dirty brown robes, and traveling with a horse named Lucy. It won’t be so bad.” Valdorath began eating a piece of stale bread.
Lenthean groaned at what might be his fate. “Well, gee, thanks,” Valdorath spat.
&nb
sp; “Your father told me to make sure nothing happened to you. That was sixteen years ago. I have been waiting on those hillsides ever since. I suppose you could say I’m a man of my word.” Valdorath tossed an apple onto Lenthean’s chest. Lenthean sat up and grabbed it from the ground.
“So how many people have… these Orbs of Power, then?” Lenthean asked.
“Four. Four the world knows of, anyway. Me, you, and two of the three rulers of Der’ Tanel. Rumor has it, there are more Orbs of Power than these and that the users have taken to hiding. There is believed to be a Water Elementalist living in the sea, a Nature Elementalist living in the woods… But those aren’t validated claims.”
Lenthean asked, “What orbs are known, then?” He was trying to find out what ‘Elementalist’ Valdorath was.
“You are the Shadow Elementalist. The two rulers owning Orbs of Power have Soul and Lightning. I am a Light Elementalist.”
Elementalist: The New Inheritance Page 4