Andres threw back his head and screamed. He had lost. Rhen had become Thestran. He had refused to return home, when Andres had called. Andres tossed the letter down onto the tiled floor and marched from the room. He would take care of this.
Two weeks later, the Thestrans noticed that Rhen was acting odd. He had stopped talking, except during his fight classes, and was even moodier than usual. He had also begun to sleep through some of his classes, which angered his teachers to no end, since they couldn’t do anything about it.
Rhen wasn’t the only problem. It appeared the Black Angel had disappeared as well. No one had seen him or been saved by him for an entire week. Everyone was worried that he might have been hurt or even killed. The Universe’s oracles had also begun to ramp up their words of doom regarding Rhen and the Universe. The Thestran Royals were overwhelmed with calls from worried individuals across the Universe. Their staff was working full time to ease people’s fears while the ruling family remained vigilant around Rhen.
One morning, Lilly noticed Erfce was keeping his face averted from Rhen. When Erfce flinched, after Rhen dropped his hand on the table, she knew he had had his first vision of Rhen turning into the Surpen God of War. Lilly pulled Erfce into a private room to confront him before class. “You’re not the only one,” she told him, after hearing about his vision. “Every oracle in the Universe is having the same exact vision that you had last night. We’ve been spending time with Rhen to get him to accept his Thestran heritage so he won’t attack us.”
“Oh, Themrock,” Erfce swore, his light brown eyes twice as large as normal. “Why didn’t you tell us about this before? We could’ve worked with you.”
“Your friendships with him have made more of a difference than anything we’ve done.”
“Why do you think we’re all having the same vision?” Erfce wondered.
“Honestly,” Lilly confessed. “I think it’s because we’re about to reach the moment of truth regarding Rhen.”
“Do you think Rhen will really turn into that… that beast?”
“No,” Lilly told him. “I think you and your friends will stop him.”
“Us?” Erfce asked. “I hope you’re right,” he said before walking towards his class. He prayed that he and his friends weren’t the Universe’s only hope for salvation. He hoped the Black Angel would return soon.
Lilly watched Erfce walk off. Turning, she went to the University’s portal. She needed to inform James that Erfce was now aware of their situation. As she mounted the steps to her family’s private section of the Thestran castle, she stopped a staff member to ask him her brother’s whereabouts. The man told her that James had left for Delna to meet with the rulers there, but Reed, Henry and Kate were sitting on the balcony off the third conference room. Lilly nodded and proceeded to the balcony, where she found her parents and older brother chatting about one of her niece’s latest antics.
When Reed was finished with his story, Lilly told them about Erfce. “Good,” Reed said. “We’ll need his help. Things are really heating up now.”
“It’ll be fine,” Kate said, pulling on the tassels of her dark brown shawl. “Rhen is here, and we removed the Zorthan robot from his brain. Andres has lost.”
“He’s here physically Mom, but not mentally,” Lilly corrected her. “Andres hasn’t lost yet.”
“If he’s here, he’s here,” Kate corrected Lilly. “Andres has lost.”
“There’s a difference between being somewhere physically and emotionally,” Lilly repeated.
“Obviously,” Kate said. “But Rhen is coming around. We’ve won this battle.”
Lilly stared at her mother with disbelief. “Mom, Rhen is not coming around. He’s actually falling behind, if you ask me.”
“He hasn’t been the same lately,” Reed agreed. “Something is wrong with him.”
“Precisely,” Lilly said. “And not only should we be asking ourselves if we can do more to help Rhen, but we should be demanding that he see a doctor, so we can find out what’s caused this change in his behavior. It’s dangerous for us to do nothing.”
In a dismissive tone of voice, Kate said, “He’ll be fine.”
“Like he was for the last ten years on Surpen,” Lilly snapped. “Themrock, Mom. He’s not fine and this time you can’t just abandon him or we’ll all die.” Lilly saw her mother’s lips had become thin lines of disapproval, but she couldn’t help herself from speaking her mind. “You screwed up,” she told her parents. “You abandoned our brother. You handed him over to a horrible, evil man, and when you had the chance to rescue him, when you could have assisted Ceceta’s family in removing him from Surpen, you did nothing. Nothing.” Reed had dropped his head down and was refusing to look at anyone. Lilly felt tears forming at the corners of her eyes. “I keep thinking, what if it had been me? What if I had been the one abandoned on that despicable planet at the age of eight?”
A servant walked out onto the balcony, but Henry waved him away. “Darling,” Kate said. She rose to hug Lilly.
Lilly stepped back and swatted her mother’s hands away. “How could you?” she asked. Tears flowed down her cheeks. “He was our brother. He was a part of our family and you cut him off like some sort of diseased limb.” She wiped at her tears with her sleeve. “You know what? I don’t blame him for hating us. I’m embarrassed to be a part of this family.”
“You don’t mean that,” Henry told her.
“Yes,” Lilly yelled. “Yes, I do. Look at us. We’re horrible. We’re worse than Andres.”
“Now Lilly,” Reed said.
“Think about it Reed. Andres has a passion for Rhen. The minute he knew Max was named Rhen, he focused all of his attention on him. He made Rhen into a great warrior. Would we have done that? I don’t think so, just look at Charlie. We ignore him completely. The only reason why we’re paying any attention to Rhen right now, is because we’re afraid of him. If our futures didn’t rest on his becoming a part of our family, we probably wouldn’t have ever spoken to him again.” Lilly took a deep, shuddering breath. “He deserved better from us.” Turning she said, “He was right you know. We are all assholes. At risk to himself, he came to our aid against the Ustarians, and we didn’t even thank him properly. We criticized him. What do you think the Surpens would’ve done? They probably would’ve thrown him a feast. We let him get beaten instead.” Lilly shook her head and moved towards the door. Kate tried to grab her arm to detain her, but Lilly slipped through her grasp. She didn’t want to look at her parents. She was too angry with them.
Over the next two weeks, Rhen continued to decline. He even fell asleep during lunch. One moment, Rhen was chewing on some meat, and the next there was a loud thud as his head smacked down onto a plate of bloody liver. Ceceta glanced over at him then turned back to Crystam, who was explaining something to her about their astronomy homework.
Reed, Sage, Lilly and Rachel, who were on Rhen duty, felt awkward. “Um, Ceceta. We probably shouldn’t leave him in his food. Do you want us to take him to your apartment?” Reed asked.
“No. Just leave him there. If you move him, you might wake him up. Leaving him there will give him more time to sleep.”
“But,” Sage asked. “Why does he need to sleep?”
“He hasn’t been getting enough of it lately. In fact,” Ceceta said, in a rare moment of openness, “he hasn’t been getting any sleep at all.”
Charlie staggered over to their table and plopped down next to Latsoh. “What do you mean Ceceta?” he asked before burping. Latsoh waved away the stale beer smell from his burp as he added, “He gets a lot of sleep. He sleeps during every class.”
“Charlie,” Ceceta said. She watched him with trepidation, hoping he wasn’t going to be throwing up in her toilet later. “You mean why is he sleeping during the day? He’s sleeping during the day, because he’s up all night with his father.”
Her words put the Thestran Royals on alert.
Erfce was the first to recover from her comment. “Wha
t do you mean?” he asked. In his dreams, he had seen the King of Surpen torturing Rhen. The man frightened him.
“Andres has been showing up at our apartment every night after study group. He stays up with Rhen all night long, talking about the most inconsequential stuff. He doesn’t leave until the next morning when Rhen is getting ready for his workout,” Ceceta informed them.
“Wow,” Latsoh said. “Rhen must be exhausted. How long has this been going on?” She was a little surprised that Ceceta and Rhen hadn’t mentioned it to them earlier.
“It started about four weeks ago,” Ceceta informed them.
The timing corresponded with when Rhen had begun to act strange.
“I think Andres believes that if he stays up with Rhen every night, it will undo any ‘damage’ the Thestrans are doing to him during the day. He’s in a struggle with you guys,” Ceceta told the Royal Family while looking at Reed, “over Rhen’s allegiance. He’s planning on keeping Rhen up every night until we return to Surpen.”
“What do you mean by any ‘damage’ we’re doing?” Crystam asked.
Reed answered for Ceceta, “The King thinks we’re ‘damaging’ his son by corrupting him to our Thestran ways.”
“Definitely,” Ceceta agreed.
When lunch was over, Ceceta shook Rhen until he woke up. Groggily, he wiped off his face with a napkin before shuffling off to class. The hair on one side of his head was still clumped together with dried blood.
“Why?” James asked, when he met with the others while Rhen was in class. “Why is he keeping Rhen up?”
“By now, he must know that we’ve removed the Zorthan mind-controlling device from Rhen’s brain. Do you think he’s trying to brainwash Rhen?” Reed asked the others.
“Can we ban Andres from visiting the University,” the Air Elf King asked.
James shook his head. “He’d declare war on us immediately, if we kept him from Rhen.”
“So, what should we do,” Reed asked.
They talked for a while but couldn’t come up with any ideas that would keep the peace while allowing Rhen to stay at the University and forcing Andres to remain on Surpen.
Over the next week and a half, Rhen continued to decline. He was losing weight and had fallen asleep during his morning prayers and fight class. “I saw him sleeping next to Andres last night as they sat in our living room,” Ceceta told her friends during Astronomy, as Rhen slept in the chair beside her.
After class, Ceceta woke up Rhen and told him it was time to go home. He blinked his bloodshot eyes a few times before nodding and walking off towards the exit. “Love, I have a question for the teacher about tomorrow’s test. I’ll meet you back at the apartment, okay?” Rhen waved a tired hand over his head as he kept walking.
When the teacher had answered their questions, Ceceta and her friends took a short cut to return to Ceceta’s apartment, hoping to catch Rhen before he fell asleep. As they pushed open the exit door that led outside, they were startled to find Rhen standing on the school’s grassy hilltop. His hand was on his chin and he was watching Reed in the distance.
Reed had been riding his jet bike with friends, when he had realized he was late for ‘Rhen duty’. It was too late for him to return to the Wood Elf Castle to change first, before meeting up with Ceceta and the others, so he decided to ride his jet bike over to the University. As he came out of the woods onto the University’s lawn, he noticed Rhen on the hill watching him. Reed did a few stunts for Rhen to keep his interest. When he saw the others emerge from the building, he turned his jet bike to ride up to them.
Ceceta covered her ears as Reed approached.
Reed lowered his landing gear in front of Rhen and turned off his engine, settling his bike on the ground. “Hey, how was astronomy tonight?” he asked, after he had pulled off his helmet.
Rhen nodded absentmindedly, taking in Reed’s jet bike. The bike was an eight-foot long, open, mini jet that flew about four feet off the ground. They were used for traveling short distances and pleasure riding. When the jet bike was on, it had a ten-foot wingspan. When the engine was off, the wings would fold into its main frame. The seat for Reed’s jet bike was located before the wings, so his legs hung down on either side of the main frame to steady it before liftoff. When he was flying, Reed would lean forward and tuck his feet up into the foot holds under the main frame.
“Do you want to try it?” Reed asked Rhen.
Rhen took a moment before asking in a tired, whisper of a voice, “What is it?”
Reed cringed at the sound of exhaustion in Rhen’s voice. “Don’t they have jet bikes on Surpen?”
“Thankfully no,” Ceceta told him. “It’s too loud.”
“Jet bike?” Rhen repeated. He walked around the bike, examining it.
Reed handed his helmet to Rhen. “Come on, I’ll take you for a ride.”
Rhen hesitated. “How’s it powered?”
“It uses the same power the portals use,” Reed told him.
“Not fuel?” Rhen asked.
“No. Regular jets use fuel, but the jet bike is small enough it can use the power strain that was left over from the Genisters, the same one we use for our portals. We have scientists working on a new type of spacejet that will also be powered by the Genisters’ powers, but it’s not yet functional.” Rhen nodded, his eyes on Reed’s jet bike. Reed flipped his leg over the frame and tilted the jet bike into take off position. “Come on,” he told Rhen. “I can see you’re curious. Swing your leg over and I’ll take you for a ride. Just hold onto my back.” Rhen continued to hesitate. “You’ll love it, trust me.”
Rhen took a step forward and swung his leg up over the bike, so he was standing behind Reed. “Maybe you should leave those behind,” Reed said, indicating Rhen’s swords, which dangled beside the shuddered wings. With effort, Rhen moved to unhook his belt. Ceceta was there at once to take it from him.
Seeing how tired his little brother was, Reed took the helmet from Rhen’s hands and put it on him.
“No,” Rhen said. He reached up to remove the helmet, but Reed smacked the top of the helmet and told him, “No helmet, no ride. You can heal amazingly fast, but if you should fall off onto something that kills you, I’d be dead meat.”
Rhen paused then lowered his hands. When Reed had finished tightening Rhen’s helmet, he pulled Rhen’s arms around his waist. “Hold on, so you don’t fall!” he shouted, starting the engine.
As the bike rose into the air, they tucked their feet into the footholds on the mainframe then Reed turned the jet bike back towards the Wood Elf Castle. They shot across the lawn entering one of the paths that led into the Wood Elf Forest.
“I can’t believe Rhen actually found something he likes on Thestran,” Ceceta said.
“Thank Themrock,” Lilly said. She couldn’t believe they had been working on Rhen all this time with no results, and just by chance, Reed had appeared with the one thing that Rhen had shown an interest in. Maybe now they would have some success.
“Reed and his jet bikes,” Rachel said. She shook her head. “He’s obsessed. They have races at his castle every third month. He’s very good. You should check it out Ceceta. Their next race happens to be next Sunday.”
“No, they’re too loud for me,” Ceceta said. She turned to go to her apartment with her friends. They had a lot of homework to do and she wanted to get started.
“Stop,” Lilly yelled, startling everyone. She stepped forward, placing her hand on Ceceta’s arm. “Ceceta, I can’t take it anymore.”
“What?” Ceceta asked.
“I’m really happy that Rhen has finally found something Thestran he can relate to, but it’s not enough. We need your help Ceceta.”
“With what?”
Lilly hesitated. “We’re worried about… you see… when we were dressed as soldiers on Surpen, we heard the King talk about a war between Thestran and Surpen. Do you remember?” Ceceta nodded. “Well, we’re worried that Andres is going to turn Rhen into a God of War and
we won’t be able to stop him. We believe he’s going to kill us when he conquers Thestran.”
Ceceta caught sight of Erfce nodding vigorously beside her. “No,” she told him. Turning back to Lilly, she said, “You don’t have anything to worry about. Rhen won’t fight you. He may be forced to attack Thestran for Surpen, but he won’t kill you. He likes you.”
“You’re wrong,” Sage said. “He will. It’s been predicted by all the oracles in the Universe. He’ll be turned into the Surpen God of War, and he’ll kill us. Even Erfce has seen visions of Rhen as the God of War.”
Ceceta glared at Erfce until he dropped his head in shame. “It’s true,” he admitted while his friends gawked at him. “I’ve been having nightmares about Rhen turning into the God of War every night.”
“What?” Latsoh asked. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Wait,” Ceceta said. “You keep mentioning this ‘God of War’. You do realize that Rhen is already called the God of War by the planets he’s conquered.”
“They call him the Surpen God of War?” Rachel asked.
“No, not the ‘Surpen’ God of War, just the God of War,” Ceceta said. “It’s nothing more than a name. That’s all.” She turned to go, but Lilly tightened her grip, forcing Ceceta to turn back.
“Do you know what the ancient Surpen God of War looks like?” Sage asked.
Ceceta shook her head. Lilly pulled on her arm. “Come,” she told Ceceta. “There’s something you need to see.”
Ceceta and her friends followed Lilly to the school’s portal, where they passed through into the Thestran Royal Castle. They mounted the Family’s private staircase and entered the Royals’ private library where they took seats as Lilly walked through the wooden stacks looking for the book she had shown her family almost a year ago. When she found it, she brought it over to Ceceta and opened it to the pages that displayed the vicious, dragon beast known as the Surpen God of War.
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