by Rachel Rener
THE LIGHTNING
CONJURER
- The Reckoning -
Rachel Rener
© 2021 Rachel Rener
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN: 9781687576750
ASIN: B0979PZFMG
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Edited by Sara Lawson | https://www.sarasbooks.com
Cover Design by Miblart | https://miblart.com
Hail to the [wo]man who went through life always helping others, knowing no fear, and to whom aggressiveness and resentment are alien. Such is the stuff of which the great moral leaders are made.
– Albert Einstein
Elemental Classifications
Prologue
arryl Shaw stood on the roof of his compound, surveying the arid plain before him. The dry, red soil was dotted with clusters of scrub and the occasional mallee tree, all shimmering behind the rippling heat waves that had been radiating from the ground since dawn. He eyed the thermometer posted on the inner fence of their settlement: forty-eight degrees Celsius. One of the hottest days they’d had to endure since the great expulsion thirty years ago. The women and juveniles were all inside, taking shelter from the torment of the midday sun. Even the eunuchs had abandoned their duties to wallow in the shade with the cattle. But not his boy. He was right where he was supposed to be, at the height of what their rapidly expanding tribe had dubbed “Storm Ridge,” where dozens of his half-brothers had succumbed to the deadly heat, the venomous taipans and death adders, and the frequent electrical storms.
Though the rest of the sky was an endless, cloudless blue, its horizon still hazy from last night’s dust tornadoes, an ominous black storm swirled and roiled above the flattened mountaintop, Lightning churning through the underbelly of the purple clouds that had been summoned there. A funnel cloud was suspended from the heart of the storm, bursts of Electricity and Fire flashing from inside its spiraling core as its vicious tail ravaged the scorched earth, whipping it into a blood-red cyclone.
Its young conjurer cried out in triumph as his forces of nature encircled him, thrashing and beating the Elements into a terrible frenzy that he alone could control. When the storm finally died down and its indomitable master descended upon a gale of Wind from his throne on the highland, he looked up at his father with an exultant grin, his purple eyes flashing with hunger and unbridled power.
With tears in his own violet eyes, Darryl beamed down at his progeny. His son was a mighty subjugator of the Elements, a living deity, which made Darryl himself a creator of gods.
Together, they would set the entire world aflame.
Chapter 1
he Fireball flew at me from out of nowhere, blazing white as lightning. Its searing edges shimmered against the frigid winter air like a mirage – but this fiery inferno was no illusion. Even through my thick sweater, I could feel the heat radiating off it in smoldering waves. I couldn’t afford to hesitate. With a determined grunt and two outstretched, sweaty palms, I seized the flames from the air a fraction of a second before they could char both clothing and flesh with equal and instantaneous ferocity; after all, even Pyromancers aren’t immune to Fire’s destructive wrath. And while my assailant’s abilities were a full level below mine – a fact he was loath to admit – he was no novice. It took me a long moment to wrest control of his Element away from him as I struggled to bring the seething flames to my submission. Unlike Water, a cooperative and amiable Element, Fire can be a stubborn and fickle beast.
Then again, so can I.
I flung the beads of sweat from my brow, straining to make out the narrow path to victory through a heavy cloud of steam. On the other side of the target, my opponent let out a loud guffaw – but his glee was cut short as I charged straight for him, clutching all 2,000 degrees of fury while making my attack. Eyes wide, he launched his counterattack, liquid flames spraying from his outstretched fingers like a punctured firehose. The acrid smell of burnt clothing filled my nostrils as I lunged out of the way, hurling my arm sideways and over my head as I let the Fireball roll off my fingertips, willing it to find its target—
“Son of a bitch!” the man snarled as the blazing sphere sank cleanly through the metal rim. It let out a loud hiss as it landed in a pile of snow, sending a cascade of steam into the air and rivers of melted snow onto the driveway.
“Take that, old man,” I smirked, wiping my brow with the back of my hand. The sweater Evelyn had knitted me for Christmas was drenched in sweat that was already turning to ice, thanks to the cold snap that was rolling in from the north.
“That’s no way to talk to your father-in-law,” Ted retorted, a hint of a grin tugging at his pursed mouth.
“Almost father-in-law.” I corrected. “Remind me again of your wedding date?”
“Definitely sometime in the next decade. I think.”
I raised an incredulous eyebrow. “Why the long engagement? Cold feet?”
“Cold feet. Cold arms. Cold ass. Whose idiot idea was it to shoot hoops in a blizzard, anyway?”
That elicited a laugh from me. Despite the chill in the air, Ted always wore his signature Polo shirts well into January and was presently rubbing the goosebumps on his bare arms for warmth. You’d think that after experiencing four Colorado winters, he’d finally cave and buy himself a winter coat, but the man once skied in cargo shorts. He was a lost cause.
“I believe the idea was yours,” I remarked, glancing at the low-hanging clouds above. “I would have much preferred the alternative, which, as you might recall, involved mulled wine and a holiday movie with the fairer sex.”
Ted chose not to hear me. “Speaking of long engagements, what about you?” he retorted, one eyebrow raised. “You two’ve been engaged a lot longer than we have.”
I shrugged. “She wants to wait until after graduation, and I can’t blame her. Planning a wedding while finishing an Electromantic doctoral program does sound like a major pain in the ass.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ted conceded. “Very logical.” With a flick of his lighter, he quickly formed another ball of flames between his fingers. “Alright, I demand a rematch – best of three!”
Before I could reply, the sound of a clearing throat drifted across the driveway. “Gentlemen!” Elizabeth called from the front porch. Her arms were folded across her gray knit sweater – another one of Evelyn’s quick-fingered yarn creations – but she had her usual warm smile. “Given the approaching snowstorm, I’d much prefer if my new, toasty-warm cabin wasn’t reduced to a smoldering pile of cinders. Now come inside and wash up – dinner’s almost ready.”
“On our way!” I called.
Before turning to walk away, her eyes honed in on the blackened fabric running across the hem of Ted’s shirt, its frayed edges still smoking. “Oh, Ted! Not another one!”
He glanced down and groaned. “Crap. Sorry, honey!”
Elizabeth tossed her hands in the air. “The man spends more money on clothing than I do.”
As she turned to go back inside, Ted’s eyes narrowed mischievously as he knelt to tie a shoelace that didn’t need tying. The moment Elizabeth’s back was turned, he lobbed a hastily constructed snowball after her, aiming for the center of her back. Before I could shout a warning, a concentrated gust of Wind sent it hurtling backwards and across the driveway where it smacked Ted squarely between the eyes.
“What the hell!” he yelped, franticall
y trying to shake the slush from his collar.
I didn’t have to guess where the counter-attack originated. A victorious cheer from inside the cabin let me know exactly what – or rather, who – the source of the shifting wind was.
I left my wet and spluttering “almost” father-in-law in the middle of the driveway and trotted up to the front porch, where two dark-haired women had their heads together, giggling conspiratorially in the doorway.
I kissed Ted’s flushed assailant on the forehead as I passed. “Nice shot,” I murmured.
Aspen casually blew on her fingers. “Serves him right. I saw that cheap shot he threw at you!”
“Right? That should have been a foul!” I heartily agreed as I kicked off my frozen boots. “I need you to be our referee next time.”
“After what happened last week? Not a chance!”
“Aiden, sweetheart, you don’t have to take your shoes off,” Elizabeth smiled as she tucked a stray hair behind her ear. With only a few gray strands to betray her age, and clear cobalt eyes, she looked more like an older sister to Aspen than her mother. Evelyn had taken good care of her since her years-long stint in Containment.
As usual, the memory of her forced imprisonment reminded me of the complicated history between our two families, as my father’s sole purpose had once been to track down and capture Aspen’s parents. Although he’d been the driving force behind Elizabeth and David’s imprisonment, he later sacrificed himself to save Aspen’s life. For that, he would have my everlasting gratitude. But I didn’t want to broadcast my fleeting melancholy to the two Electromantic Empaths beside me, so I quickly shifted my thoughts back to slushy boots.
“I know I don’t have to take them off,” I replied. “But my father was a stickler when it came to wearing shoes inside. Besides, I didn’t want to track snow into your brand-new home… Can’t say the same for that ‘roommate’ of yours, though,” I added, jerking my thumb over my shoulder as Ted trudged up the porch steps in his muddy boots, muttering something about cheap shots.
“Hmm, too right you are,” Elizabeth said, tapping her chin thoughtfully. Crossing her arms, she turned to the red-faced man huffing up the steps. “Ted! Shoes off!”
“Since when?” he protested, side-stepping around her to get inside.
“Since you decided to play Pyromantic basketball in the middle of our muddy driveway!”
“Would you prefer we play in the living room?”
Aspen took my arm in hers. “We should probably leave them to sort out their footwear issues,” she winked as she led me further inside. Her mother and Ted’s new cabin was quite a bit bigger than ours, which was situated just a few miles down the hill on the large plot of land Evelyn owned. With a tall entryway and a rustic-looking chandelier that hung from the vaulted ceiling, it was also fancier than our small, simple cabin. But it was cozy nevertheless, and these days it usually smelled of cookies or homemade chicken soup. Since Elizabeth had custom designed a spacious kitchen with a double oven and a large island for food prep, she and Evelyn had started cooking and baking there well before the last of Ted’s belongings had been shipped from California. Before the builders had even finished the rest of the house. Not that any of us ever complained.
In fact, Aspen and I had been spending a lot more time there lately, given our full schedules. My application for promotion had just been accepted, granting me a full professorship to fill Robert’s recent vacancy in the department, and Aspen was less than a year away from completing her Electromantic Neuroscience program – a full year ahead of schedule. Per the final wishes of the late Magistrate, Barish, the program was funded by the Asterians and led by Dr. Kevin Shirvani – the same surgeon who saved Aspen’s life in Istanbul. As the world’s most renowned neurosurgeon and a Level-three Electromancer, he and his team were on the cusp of discovering a way to eradicate a half-dozen neurological diseases, using their findings to recreate non-Elemental therapies that mimicked the same life-saving results for the rest of the world.
Suffice it to say, neither of us had much time to cook, and since Aspen was a little too content to settle for microwave popcorn in lieu of a home-cooked meal, Elizabeth and Evelyn often fought over who could have us over for dinner – the end result usually being all six of us crammed around a table that was bowing under the weight of far too much food. One of the many benefits of inhabiting the vertex point in a three-mile isosceles triangle of cabins.
As Aspen and I made our way out of the foyer and into the sitting room, I glanced over my shoulder at Elizabeth and Ted, who were still play-fighting in the doorway. As serious as Aspen’s mother had always been, I never expected her to be laughing like a teenager, red-faced and giggling as she playfully swatted Ted on the bottom. Ted, too – usually so gruff in demeanor – seemed genuinely happy after their decision to move in together.
So, why the long engagement? I wondered.
The moment the question entered my mind, Aspen shook her head slightly. “It’s a ‘brother-in-arms’ type of thing. Not to mention a lot of unwarranted guilt on Ted’s part.” Before I could protest, she cocked her head in my direction. “I’m not trying to be intrusive – it’s just that you have the same thought every time we come over. And it’s a pretty loud thought at that.”
I ran a sheepish hand through my hair. “Yeah… I’m sorry for that. I wasn’t quite sure how to bring it up. I figured it might be a sensitive subject.”
Aspen took a step towards the fireplace. A sad smile crept across her face as she surveyed the framed pictures above the mantle: old school photos from a time when she went by the alias “Rose Smith;” a faded picture of Evelyn leaning her head against Aspen’s late grandfather, Donald; a gold-framed portrait of Ted’s daughter, Jenny, who passed away years ago; and about a half-dozen photos of Aspen’s father. There were pictures of David with Elizabeth, others with Aspen, and a few of him palling around with Ted. One picture had all four of them waving from the deck of his old sailboat. Being a gifted Hydromancer, David had apparently loved all things water-related.
It took Ted and Elizabeth two years before either of them would admit their feelings to one another, another year and a half of covert, guilt-ridden dating, and, finally, Evelyn’s ambush intervention before they decided to move in together. As Aspen traced her finger across the photo, she sighed. “My mother has accepted the situation and is at peace with it, knowing Dad would be too. But Ted is still struggling. He thinks a decade-long engagement might appease my father, should he harbor any ill-will towards him from the afterlife.”
That elicited a wry chuckle from me. “I didn’t take Ted for a superstitious man.”
She shrugged. “It’s how he feels. He wrestles with the guilt daily.”
“Ted’s crazy about your mother,” I replied, scrubbing the damp curls from my forehead. “Anyone can see how much he loves her. Wherever your father is, I’m sure he’s grateful that his best friend is taking care of her in his place.”
“Agreed,” Aspen murmured.
I didn’t need to be an empath to understand just how much the three of them missed Aspen’s father. I, too, grieved his loss. While I never had the privilege of knowing David directly, I was fortunate enough to have shared a private moment with him in the hospital when I told him how much I loved his daughter and vowed to take care of her as long as she’d have me. I’d like to think he heard me and gave me his blessing. The day he was taken off life support affected me almost as much as my own father’s passing weeks before. I mourned the relationship we would never have. I grieved for the toll it took on Aspen. Most of all, I raged at the circumstances. Both of our fathers’ deaths were needless, both were caused by the old, corrupted ways of the Asterians, and both left our families with voids that could never properly be filled again.
Those were the faded photos, the lost memories, that always gave me pause.
But as Aspen continually reminded me, no matter how low things may get, life always goes on, bringing with it new and brighter memor
ies. Those, too, were showcased on Ted and Elizabeth’s mantle, and they never failed to put a smile on my face: last year’s Thanksgiving dinner with both the Fulman and Lawson families, Evelyn and Robert’s marriage ceremony at the courthouse, the beach photo from Eileen and Sophia’s tropical honeymoon getaway – which we had all been invited to crash the year before. But my favorite picture, by far, was the one Eileen had snapped of Aspen and me at the hospital. I’d just proposed and she’d thrown her arms around me, kissing me fiercely from her hospital bed. Pale and fragile as she was, her radiance was blinding. She was alive. She was going to not only survive, but make a full recovery. Everything she’d sacrificed had paid off, and our future was bright and limitless.
“Hey.” Her gentle voice interrupted my reminiscing. “Are you alright?”
“More than alright,” I replied with a smile. “I was thinking about the happiest moment of my life.”
Her eyes were twinkling. “The day you got new speakers for the Jeep?”
“Come here, you,” I laughed, pulling her body against mine.
She let out a small yelp. “Your skin is freezing! Let me ask Ted if you can borrow a sweater.”
“Does he even own a sweater? How would he flash those taut tan muscles of his year-round?”
“Hmm… Good point,” she replied, crinkling her nose. “Well in that case—” With an easy flick of her wrist, she drew the water from my sweater, creating a small, shimmering orb that hovered between us. She frowned at it for a brief moment before evaporating it into steam.
“Thanks, love,” I smiled at the endearing quirk. Apart from her time in the Electromantic lab, using the rest of her extensive powers for the day-to-day always seemed like an afterthought. “Do you think it would be alright if I used the guest bathroom to clean up before dinner?”