by Corey Tate
Suddenly Sam froze, silent, her mouth still open. While she had been yelling at Kane, he had stated something to them in a quiet, calm voice.
“What did you say?” Claire whispered, her face white.
“I said,” Kane replied, “the game is called ‘kill Sam with this sword and you’re free.’”
Kane held out his hand, and a sword about three feet long appeared out of nowhere. It was jet-black on the serrated side and pure white on the smooth, deadly sharp side. The girls’ petrified faces reflected off the white side.
“Do you know why I like this body the most?” Kane asked no one in particular.
Both girls numbly shook their heads.
“It’s because I do not have a curse of my own, per se. Whenever I shift into a person that I have personally killed or for whom death is near, I acquire their gifts. Typically, the person has only a run-of-the-mill curse, but the man who used to be in possession of this body had a doozy. Do you want to venture a guess as to what it was?”
Both girls shook their heads again, watching the sword that had been created out of thin air.
“This man could, on a medium scale, imagine anything in the cosmos. He could then create what he was imagining using nothing but the quantum particles around us. He was a god. And I killed him.”
There’s No Place Like Home
Seth had just taken the coolest elevator trip of his life. He had been in elevators on Earth, but this was a whole ‘nother ball game.
On the way down into the volcano, everyone had been silent. Now they got off the disc of fire, and it dissipated into the air with a hiss.
“Follow me,” Cameron ordered.
Seth walked behind Cameron and another guard. The guard behind him fell into step. They walked for a couple seconds down a short hallway and took a left.
Seth and the guards were now standing on the top level of the complex. He looked down, and far, far below in the volcano he saw chambers of molten magma. Above those—but below the top level where Seth stood—were at least fifty stories of living space. Stairs coiled on the walls throughout the entire volcano. They ran all the way to the magma below. Thousands of people could be seen on every level.
Every level had a platform that extended to its corresponding stair level. Each level also had a sort of mini-village in which people interacted with each other. All the levels looked the same—except the uppermost one. The top level was made of purple rock instead of the black rock of all the other levels.
Seth noted that each level was held up by a support system. From what he could see, every level had four bracers, also made of rock, that jutted from the side of the volcano to the underside of each level. It was these support systems that were supposed to keep Seth from dropping to the level underneath him. He kept that in mind as the guard behind him pushed him in step behind Cameron.
He walked down the three steps that brought him onto the topmost level of living space. Seth took a tentative step onto the purple rock. He didn’t die.
Phew! He kept walking behind Cameron and the other guard.
“So what are your guys’ names?” He directed his question at the two guards.
“We are almost there,” the guard in front said.
Seth was about to ask again—just to be annoying—when a little girl with red pigtails skipped in front of them.
“Cameron! Josef! Tim!” She hugged each of them in turn. “Thanks for saving my mommy yesterday! You guys are the best! I told my daddy that you guys are heroes, but he just says that you’re doing your job.” The little girl looked at each of them and then realized Seth was there too. “Who’s he?!” She pointed at Seth.
“He says his name is Seth,” Cameron answered shortly.
“Okay! Bye, guys! Bye, Seth!” The little girl immediately lost interest and skipped away.
They took another step before Seth opened his mouth. He was grinning like an idiot between Josef (the guard in front) and Tim (the guard in back).
“Hey, Igor. Oh! I mean, hey, Josef.” Seth grinned. “You’re walking with a bit of a hunchback there.”
Seth expected the guards to laugh, but they didn’t.
Oh, that’s right! They don’t know who Igor is! Seth thought. Earth stuff.
“Very funny, kid,” Josef said, clearly not getting the joke, “but I’ll be the one who’s laughin’ when you get kicked out of the mountain, and I get to do the kickin’.”
“Josef, stop talking.” Cameron looked back at him. “Don’t give him anything. Just stick to protocol.”
“Right,” Josef agreed.
“Um, Igor?” Seth mocked. “I think it’s pronounced yes, master!”
Seth exploded into laughter at his own joke.
“We have arrived. Do not speak unless spoken to,” Cameron said. He kept walking right through a big white door.
Seth looked up at the building he was about to enter. It was a huge, white circular building unlike any of the other buildings, which were all square and black. This building looked like a circus tent compared to all the others.
The first thing Seth noticed as he passed through the doorway into a large, ornate room was a massive orb of pure energy floating in open space. The orb crackled, sparked, and occasionally erupted with flames.
The second thing he noticed was that, beyond the orb, thirteen people sat around a semicircular table. The woman in the middle of the table, sitting in the highest chair, was in a direct line with the orb. On her left side sat six men. On her right, six women. It reminded him of a courthouse on Earth, sort of.
“Greetings, my Guards,” the woman said. “What business have we tonight?”
“Council, we believe that this boy may be the shape-shifter,” Cameron announced. “However, if we are wrong, then it is not a total loss. He has shown considerable talents in either fire-starter or ozone abilities. He may be of use to us.”
There were murmurs through the council; then one of the other councilwomen spoke.
“What do you advise?”
“I submit to the council that we use the Etherfire to look into his soul.” Cameron didn’t bat an eye, but Tim and Josef tensed.
Some men and women in the council gasped, but others just sat there, stock-still.
“Lieutenant, stay. Second and third, leave,” ordered one of the councilmen.
Tim and Josef turned on their heels and power-walked out of the chamber. Josef was so fast that Seth felt a light wind as he brushed past him.
Once they had left, one of the councilwomen cleared her throat and spoke. “We cannot use the Etherfire whenever we please. It will diminish its strength.”
“If we do not, we all may not make it out of this room,” Cameron said calmly.
“Dude,” Seth interjected, “I’m not the shifter. It’s probably Kane, Terminus’s right-hand man. That’s what his famous power is.”
“And how do we know that the real Seth did not die, and that you are not Kane?”
“Because Kane speaks like a computer. I can use surfer lingo if you want, bruh.”
Cameron shook his head, keeping his composure and choosing to ignore Seth.
The woman who had spoken previously nodded her head curtly. “The council shall vote on this matter.”
In less than three seconds, everyone seated at the table except for the woman in the center had cast a vote. In total, twelve council members had either red or blue fire coming out of their outstretched hands. It was a tie.
The woman in the middle slowly outstretched her hand. It revealed a red flame.
Someone tell me what that means, Seth thought nervously. I’m not Sherlock Holmes here.
“The Etherfire shall be used,” the woman in the middle said with no emotion.
Surprisingly, Seth still didn’t know if he should be relieved or terrified. What exactly was the Etherfire? Everything was happening so fast, he barely had time to process anything.
“Step forward, boy,” she instructed.
As he stepped towar
d the sparking floating orb he presumed was the Etherfire, he noticed that the twelve council members appeared to reflect different ethnicities. But what really caught his attention was what each of the council members was wearing: white shirts, each of which emblazoned with the Icranu symbol!
Seth had that symbol, too, on the right side of his shirt. He looked down at himself and saw that his clothes were almost completely covered in ash.
Seth concentrated on the ash and, with his thoughts, caused it to implode on itself until there was virtually nothing left. The result was mildly clean clothing that was slightly charred. He could now see his Icranu symbol.
“Ahem!” Someone cleared his or her throat loudly.
Seth looked up and realized that the woman in the middle of the council was no longer there. She was right next to him, and they were both close enough to touch the Etherfire. If the large orb of energy was in fact the Etherfire.
“What you are looking at is not the Etherfire,” the woman told Seth.
Oh.
“It is the power generator to this mountain. Every day, we have a ceremony in which the people of this mountain surrender some of their energy to the power ball.”
“Like the lottery?” Seth joked. “Mega millions?”
Not getting the joke and refusing to dignify the interruption with a response, she merely continued. “The energy is taken in and used in many ways. For instance, it keeps the magma at the bottom of the mountain from surfacing, it places magma at the top of the mountain to camouflage what is hidden below, it prevents other Energens from entering the mountain, and, most importantly, it provides hope for our people.”
Seth nodded.
“The Etherfire is strongest inside me. It resides in everyone seated at this council, but I have the power to use it or to create more council members. In your case, I will use my Etherfire to look into your soul and see who you really are.”
“Okay,” he agreed after a moment’s hesitation. “But why are you telling me this if you think I’m Kane?”
“I am telling you this because if you are not a true fire user, this will surely kill you. And even if you are, you must pass the test.”
“Lieutenant!” one of the councilmen barked at Cameron. “Watch the outsider! Do not let him try anything.”
Cameron stood behind Seth. The woman in front of Seth reached her arms out and rested them on his shoulders.
“Be still and try to stay calm,” she said in a soothing voice.
Seth looked up at her. She was a little taller than he was.
The woman closed her eyes. When she reopened them, they were burning bright gold. Her body shone like the sun, and Seth was forced to look away. He had a strange feeling that if the woman got much brighter, his body would be blown up or something on the spot.
Without any warning, there was a slight pop, and the room returned to its normal glow. He looked back to where the woman was standing, but she wasn’t there.
“Where did she—”
His sentence was interrupted by a shrill scream—his own.
He dropped to his knees, then curled up in the fetal position. His head and heart felt like they were burning through his skin.
Seth saw his life in the back of his eyelids as if he were watching it on a movie screen. He closed his eyes, and the images floated across the darkness.
He saw himself growing up on Armadron with his parents and meeting Nick for the first time when both boys were five. He watched himself meeting Claire about a year later; even at the tender age of six, he believed he was in love with her. Seth watched himself, as an adolescent, befriending Sam at the Training Grounds. He watched as Thaught sent him on his first solo assignment when he was eleven, then teamed him with Claire, Sam, and Nick when Seth was twelve. He observed his journey to Earth and his years of friendship with Scott, and got to relive the moment he dove off the side of the cruise ship after the brainwashed Conjurers into the swirling waters. The events of the past few days streamed past until he saw himself standing before the council. Finally, the images stopped, and he opened his eyes.
Cameron was sitting cross-legged on the floor, yawning loudly. The rest of the council members were also yawning.
A member of the council suddenly cried out, “Lieutenant, attention!”
Cameron shot himself into the air with a burst of fire from his hands. He landed smoothly next to Seth, who was still lying on the ground in a fetal position.
Seth noticed that the woman who had been seated at the middle of the council was still absent. That’s when he heard her voice from somewhere inside him.
—Seth! Your inner fire is too strong! Put some of your power into the ball so that I may leave you! There isn’t much time! Do it now, Seth!
Seth jumped to his feet, raised his hands, and shot fire into the glowing, floating orb.
“Stop him!” the councilman shouted at Cameron.
Cameron took a step toward Seth.
“No!” Seth bellowed. “I have to lose some of my power so she can get out!
“Liar!” the man shouted. “He is probably absorbing our resources! Lieutenant, that was an order! Do it!”
Cameron was confused. He took another unsure step toward Seth.
“Stop it, man! I’m trying to help!” Seth yelled.
“Kill him!”
“Just wait a second!”
“Lieutenant!”
Boooooooom!
Seth was thrown several feet sideways, and another body was flung across the room as well.
He slowly got up and looked around. The woman who had been inside his mind was now on top of Cameron. They both got up looking at Seth in confusion. The rest of the council was equally flabbergasted.
The woman brushed herself off and slowly took her seat again at the table.
One of the men seated at the table leaned out of his seat and asked, “What happened, Abigale? What is the verdict?”
“No. He is not the shape-shifter,” Abigale answered. “However, I have seen that he has lived on Earth. He could be helpful.”
Seth looked at the council members. They were all nodding their heads and murmuring their agreement.
“No!” Seth stepped forward. “I need to get back to my friends! I can’t stay here!”
“Friends?” one of the council members asked.
“He is allied with a powerful group, as well as a half-Armadronian he met on Earth,” Abigale told the council. “Team 61.”
“Interesting,” one of the women in the council mused.
“Yeah, whatever. I need to leave,” Seth said. “My team and I are trying to gather people to fight Terminus. If Thaught or Artam have not been here yet, then they will come soon to try to recruit you to the fight, too.”
“There is one more thing,” Abigale said, clearly not acknowledging that Seth had said anything.
One of the council members asked, “What is it, Abigale?”
Seth stopped mid-speech. These people were totally ignoring him!
I gotta get back to the team, he thought as he took a silent step back.
“Seth’s body has consumed and mutated with the Etherfire,” Abigale explained. “And not just mine. All of yours too. His body has absorbed some of everyone’s Etherfire through the air, although I don’t know how. He’s been doing it subconsciously since the moment he walked in here.”
Every person in the council gasped and rested their eyes on Seth. He looked at all of them guiltily and stopped trying to slink his way out of the room.
“He didn’t even have to touch us—”
“Any minute now—”
“He will change—”
“We must answer—”
Okay, now he was getting really freaked out.
A small flame appeared on the front of his shirt. He swatted to put it out, and another one appeared on the back of his wrist. Just as he moved his other hand to swat the fire out, lightning seemed to shoot through his limbs. His back arched so much that the top of his head sla
mmed to the floor.
He didn’t feel the pain, though. He only felt the pain of the Etherfire as it took over his body. Seth wriggled on the floor like a worm as bolts of lightning shot from his fingertips and flames erupted from his eye sockets. Black smoke covered his body and rose to the ceiling of the council building. His body erupted into flames and his hair burnt off completely.
All the people in the council room except for Abigale were taking cover. Cameron had backed away from Seth and was watching him with horrified fascination.
Seth did not see what the others saw. He only saw fire. Fire in every color anyone could ever imagine. Inside the depths of his mind, the fire rose up and burned through his entire body. The fire would consume him if he didn’t do something to stop it.
Cameron and the entire council gazed at Seth as his body began to give off a faint glow. The glow intensified to a blinding light, and soon the room shook as if it were caught in an earthquake. Seth’s skin began to peel off his body in some places, and they all watched as he screamed helplessly.
In his mind’s eye, he saw the fire grow. Just as it was about to burn through his soul, he thought of Claire. He thought of the time they had spent together and how he would never be able to tell her how he really felt, and how much he would miss her.
The fire instantly halted inside him.
Seth realized his thoughts of Claire had thwarted the fire. He thought of Nick, Scott, Sam, his parents, Scott’s parents, Artam, Thaught, and many more. Soon the fire changed direction. Instead of going outward, it fused with his memories and he remembered them more clearly. He no longer felt the pain of the Etherfire. It had turned into a warm glow that made Seth feel happy again. The last time he had ever felt truly happy was when his parents were alive.
He got up and saw the universe differently than he ever had before. As he looked at Cameron, he saw the electrical currents of his brain, nervous system, and heart coursing through his body. He saw and felt the body heat of everyone in the room. Seth could tell who was afraid, who was confused, and who was happy. He could even tell who was tired! Everyone gave off a different inner flame, the color of which somehow reflected the state they were in.