The Calling
(The Descendants Series, Book Two)
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Copyright © 2016 Destiny Hawkins
FANTASY FICTION BY DESTINY HAWKINS
The Descendants
The Calling
Children of The Gods
Shattered Glass
White Heart: The Prophecy
Angel’s Blade: Episode One
Angel’s Blade: Episode Two
OTHER FICTION BY DESTINY HAWKINS
Abomination: An Alveya Tera Novelette
Krystal Blue
The Dark Bloods
Frostbitten, Book 1 & 2
The Death Run
The Blood City
Caged 1 &2
The Hunted
The Hunters
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
The Calling
The Descendants Series, Book Two
By Destiny Hawkins
Chapter 1
“Torment: severe physical or mental suffering. In either way, all Lytonian’s are suffering. We just hide our pain.” — Sandra
I clenched my teeth as I readied myself to suffer from the agonizing burn of the hot iron rod. Artemis seemed to enjoy this method of torture over all the others since my burns didn’t heal as fast as my cuts or bruises. He kept me strapped down to a spiked chair that drew blood from my bottom, legs, back, and arms, and I thought that after losing so much, he would release me over to the nurses, but since my small puncture wounds only took a few seconds to restore back to normal, he felt no need. Like I hadn’t lost enough blood just yet.
Soon though, the major would have no choice but to send me to medical. The more stress that my body endured, the harder it worked itself to heal, which meant that I’d eventually fall unconscious from exhaustion. I was supposedly the only student in the academy that could heal this fast, but it worked out for me since I was bullied and forced to endure the worst kinds of pain testing.
Major Artemis St. James smiled as he placed the visibly hot end of the rod against the side of my neck. I grunted and shook in the chair, excruciating pain spreading from my neck and down my shoulder, as I tried to keep from crying out. I simply didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of hearing me scream. Although if I did, that might have been just what I needed to do in order for him to go easy on me, but I was stubborn. I wasn’t going to show him weakness no matter how well he thought he knew me.
Artemis pulled the iron from my neck and pushed his long black hair back. “You’re still trying to play tough, Rayah,” he sighed. His piercing blue eyes stared into mine, sending chills down my spine in the heated room. “But I can see through your act. You tried this when you were a child, remember?” He walked back to the fire pit and pulled out a second rod, flinging the old one to the ground with a clang. “But I’ve always found a way through that wall you put up.” He raised the rod into the air and gazed at it in awe, then slowly turned his head to face me. “You’re still the same little girl.”
My heart pounded against my chest. I didn’t know what he was planning, but I knew that it would be painful. I wanted to beg for him to stop, but my mouth wouldn’t open. I just kept it shut with my teeth clenched, hoping that I wouldn’t crack any.
Artemis slowly walked in my direction with the hot end still raised, then stopped in front of me with a smirk on his face and a strange glimmer in his eyes. He reminded me so much of someone else that I knew, but I couldn’t think of who at the moment, and when he leaned down to level with me, I stopped thinking all together.
“You look so much like your mother,” he said before using his free hand to release my dark hair out its bun. “But act so much like someone I knew…” My hair fell in waves over my shoulders. “I prefer it down.” His own long hair hung by the sides of his face. To others he was considered a very handsome man, but to me he looked disgusting. I hated his face, his smile, his smell —everything about him. “Why do you look so afraid now, Rayah?” he asked as he grabbed my chin. “I thought that you were tough?”
My eyes widened as he slowly brought the rod towards me. “Don’t,” I nearly whimpered, flinching away.
Artemis chuckled as he continued to bring it closer to my cheek, and when I flinched again, he grabbed me by my neck and slammed the back of my head against the chair, but not hard enough for the spikes to do any serious damage besides drawing more blood.
Once the iron rod was close enough for me to feel the sizzling heat from it, I whimpered, and when it was pressed against my cheek …I screamed.
—
Lytonia, the Lighter Nation. The land of the strong and the great. Ellison Monroe’s utopia…only it felt like the complete opposite.
Vexton, the god of love, gave Ellison the knowledge of the gods so that he could understand the history of how the new world came to be, then Ellison used that knowledge to build Lytonia. I was sure that our nation’s founder had good intentions, but things just didn’t turn out the way that they should have. At least, that was how I felt, because I had learned the history of the gods myself, and I didn’t believe that this nation was what should have come of Vexton’s sacrifices.
Vexton was once the god of rage until he converted over to the god of love. He had two brothers, Somatrius: the god of wrath, and Kalison: the god of hate. The three of them fought in the Gods Realm under an agreement that the last brother standing would get to fight their father, Kalsoton: the god of destruction, and their god king.
Years passed by as the brothers fought one another, causing destruction and chaos in the Human Realm below them. The storms that the brothers caused destroyed homes and families, leaving people homeless and alone, and slowly, but surly, the world began to crumble. People stole, killed, fought, raped, and tortured one another until suicide became their only option for peace.
As more time passed by, Somatrius and Kalison realized that they wouldn’t be able to defeat their older brother unless they worked together and intended on killing him, but Vexton proved to be stronger than they thought. He lost the battle against his brothers, but he didn’t lose his life. Instead, he had fallen into the Human Realm where he lost his memories and powers.
After falling to the Human Realm, Vexton fell for a woman who eventually gave birth to his son, Soton. He was truly happy with his family and his life, subconsciously converting into the god of love, but when his memories came back, and he regained his powers, he realized that he had to make a decision that would save the world but destroy his family.
Vexton needed to fix what he helped break. The Human World, the world that he should have been protecting instead of using as a fighting ground, had to be repaired, so he left his family and went back to the Gods Realm where he fought and defeated his brothers, locking them away. Not long after that, he fought his father and won. He had become the next God King.
> With his new power and authority, he asked his father to use his powers of destruction to destroy the world, cleansing it, and therefore creating a new one.
Kalsoton agreed to help his son, not because he was the god of destruction, but because he saw Vexton as a true king and was willing to do the right thing for him.
Vexton then lost his family in what was called The Great Destruction without so much as a goodbye to them. He started a new world, creating new people, and gave them each a small portion of the three royal brothers’ powers, which was a randomly dispersed to all. Once a person’s Lighter energy could be used, they were classified.
Vexton’s light was turquoise blue, Somatrius’ was royal blue, and Kalison’s was white. The human descendants of the gods were born with either color energy inside of them, therefore making them a Vex, a Soma, or a Kali.
After Ellison Monroe was born and raised with the knowledge of the gods, he spread word about them. He taught others and preached about a nation where they could prevent chaos from ever occurring again. Following that was the founding of Lytonia.
I wasn’t sure if Ellison meant to make Vexes the high class, Somas the middle class, and Kalis the lower class, but that was how things turned out. I bet that he never expected for there to be a Null class. A class where there were people that couldn’t use their Lighter powers, therefore they were neither Vex, Soma, or Kali. Nulls were hard to find, but I happened to see one every time that I looked in the mirror.
I couldn’t bring forth my light energy, disgracing my family and myself. My father was a high leveled Vex, and my mother was currently a slave, but before she became one, she was a high leveled Soma. They were both legendary for their strength and time spent in the Wild Lands as collectors but were now known as the only parents with a lightless daughter.
It was a shame, but maybe it was karma for their wrongdoings. I didn’t believe that they were bad people, but once upon a time, they took part in destroying families.
In Monroe Academy, we were taught that collectors collected savages that lived outside the Lytonian walls and brought them back to serve and expand our nation. I called that legalized kidnapping.
The people in the Wild Lands may have been free to do as they pleased, but from what I had seen, they weren’t savages. Some were kind and some were not, but they were organized according to their lifestyles.
I knew this because I had been there. I jumped to the Wild Lands almost every night.
When I first started going, I thought that I was dreaming, but Soren had proven to me that I wasn’t. I might have been labeled as a Null in the Lighter Nation, but outside of these walls I was so much more, and I was someone powerful. I just couldn’t use my abilities yet. At least not fully. All I knew was that as I slept, I could sometimes jump out of my body and into my Lighter Form. Something only the elite Lighters could do.
I wanted to tell people about my new-found ability, but there was something different about me compared to the other students, and in Lytonia being different was not a good thing. I decided to continue to act as if I were just a Null, which wasn’t very hard on account that I still couldn’t summon light, but that meant that I would still receive poor treatment because of my label.
Pain and torture for me was nearly never ending, and after I lost Tristan it only seemed to have gotten worse. The only person that could truly brighten my day was Soren, but he lived in the Wild Lands, and my time there was limited. He couldn’t hold my hand through the hallways as my peers gave me dirty looks, he couldn’t tell me to be strong when a professor pointed out my short comings, and he couldn’t protect me from Artemis. Soren might as well have only been a dream, because him being real meant nothing. I was trapped in Lytonia, and he was outside the nation’s impenetrable walls.
Chapter 2
“Love is a funny thing. You can love someone and never receive it in return. Sometimes, it even goes unnoticed.” — Carmen
I stared at my reflection through the mirror on my wall, waiting for something to happen, but nothing ever did. A few weeks ago, I was staring into a cracked version of this very mirror and watched as my eyes went from green to black. They were only black for a moment, but long enough for me to worry. I repeatedly told myself that it was just my body going through changes because I was still developing as a Lighter, but I knew that there was some other reason for what happened.
It wasn’t normal, and I couldn’t go to anyone for help about it. I thought of telling Soren, but I didn’t want him to think differently of me. Lately, he had been the only person that I could really turn to in my moments of need. He made me smile, and he could make me laugh. We had fun, and I wasn’t ready to feel like an outcast around him just yet — or ever.
I met Soren in the Wild Lands one night after jumping from my body during my sleep. I still never figured out why I had jumped there, or how I even could’ve jumped there on account that Lighters only had the ability to jump to places they’ve been before.
I had never been to the Wild Lands in my physical form, so I wasn’t sure of how it was possible, but somehow, I could do it.
Even though this was all still very unexpected and new to me, I wasn’t complaining. Having the ability to jump was like a gift from the gods, and all I had to do was go to sleep. My light energy would then form into a duplicate version of me, leaving behind only ten percent of the energy that my body needed to function. After three days of being away from it though, I was likely to die, so I always had to jump back to Lytonia before then.
After a few weeks of jumping passed, I learned how to leave the Wild Lands, but I had no control of where I jumped to after falling asleep in my dorm. I could have jumped anywhere, but luckily, I always ended up where ever Soren was. It was as if we were connected somehow.
Soren was a Gods Son. A Defect. His light was a lime green color, different from the three classes, and he also had all three abilities where Lytonians could only master one. There were Brights, Dim’s, and Elem’s. Brights had an incredible speed and strength, Dim’s could form their light into any weapon, and Elem’s could form theirs into either fire, water, or lightning. Based on their gene’s any three classes, either a Vex, a Soma, or a Kali, could have any one ability to master.
Defects were known as The Gods Children: descendants of Somatrius and Kalison, but I’ve learned from Soren himself that his kind take after all three brothers. At the academy, we’re taught that The Gods Children were evil beings, but they were nothing of the sort. It was possible for them to turn dark, but they weren’t born that way. Soren was good. He was actually one of the kindest people that I’ve ever met.
I smiled at the thought of him, giving myself butterflies, but when my thoughts flipped over to Tristan, my smile faded. I still couldn’t get over his death. He had become a slave after failing to reach level six before turning twenty, and I knew that I would never see him again at the time, but I guess there was a part of me that remained hopeful. We had grown up in the academy. It was always me, him, and Carmen, but now it was just Carmen and me.
Tristan activated his collar while under the watch of his master, and it killed him. I couldn’t believe my ears the night that Carmen told me, but then again, I could believe it, because I understood why he did it. Tristan was strong, hard-working, and prideful, and after everything that he went through the government reduced him to a lowly slave all because he couldn’t reach level six. He killed himself…
If my mother hadn’t sacrificed her freedom for me to have more time to reach my required level, then I would have done the same. I had to get her away from Artemis, which is the only reason that I hadn’t offed myself yet.
My door slid open and Carmen stepped inside, giving the dull room a little life with her caramel colored skin. Her blond frizzy curls were pulled back into a tight bun, and she wore her navy-blue one-piece suit with a pair of navy-blue shoes.
“We should start heading to class,” she said. “Fix your bun.”
When I looked into
the mirror, I saw nothing wrong with the bun on my head. Carmen was usually the one who put it together for me, but lately she seemed a bit off, keeping her distance. She never told me how she came to find out of Tristan’s death, and after that night she wasn’t the same. She was sad. Depressed even.
Emotions like those were discouraged at the academy, making me worry about her performance in her classes. She was a level eight Soma Elem, but if her performance dropped, and she couldn’t reach level nine on her twenty-third birthday, then she would be stripped of her rank and made into a slave for the high class Vexes.
I didn’t know what to do, but I couldn’t let that happen to her, so I tried my best to keep a positive attitude whenever we were around each other.
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked, looking for any loose strands.
Carmen sighed and looked up at the clock on the wall before walking behind me. I watched through the mirror as she gently pushed a few loose strands of hair up into my bun.
“Better.” She glanced at me through the mirror with sad brown eyes, but then hardened them, summoning her cold demeanor. “Let’s get to class.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said in a low tone.
I followed her out of my dorm and through the dormitory. She only had access to it because she was authorized by me, but if she wasn’t, then she’d be penalized for trespassing. Only three visitors per student were authorized to enter a dormitory that wasn’t theirs, which was a very strict rule around here.
About a month ago, a student named Kaydar entered my dormitory with two others and cornered me in my own dorm. I was beaten to unconsciousness by his accomplice, named Sandra. She was a level eight Kali Bright, but recently I’ve been hearing rumors about her leveling up to nine. It was hard to believe that I beat her in a fight when I was just a kid.
The Calling Page 1