20. Raya
RAYA
“I cannot. I cannot do this. I am so tired.”
- RAYA.
“Contrary to what you might think, your first task is the most important.” Khol’s voice rang out on the empty training field behind The Temple.
A tall, grey stone wall stared at us from around the field, the wall circled the entire Temple, from the training pitch here, to gardens around other side, and the door at the very front. It had been only moments since our conversation with Ezra, but it felt like hours. Khol had stormed across the grass, leaving me to catch up with him.
“You’re not ready to fight with your… abilities yet, so the first test is combat, physical combat.” He stood staring at me, his hands resting on his hips. I bit my lip, grateful that most of the previous night’s dream had washed away.
Most of it.
I stared at him, willing my eyes to look away but failing. He picked up a long sword, cutting the steel through the air in quick, elegant movements. His arm muscles tightened, and a thin sheen of sweat gathered on his neck.
I clamped my teeth together. Gods. I wanted to lick it off. I shook my head softly, hoping to clear my mind. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t be this person.
“Why are you staring at me?” Khol’s blunt voice broke my trance, I stumbled on my feet.
“I’m not staring at you,” I said defensively, backing up slowly. He rolled his eyes.
“Pick up the sword,” he pointed to the sword on the grass beside me. “If you can handle that.” I threw him a cold smile.
Clearly, he was not daydreaming about me.
I mirrored his positions, feigning an inability to fight with a sword the best I could, I had picked up a long sword before I had picked up a pencil. The weapon felt like an extension of myself. I fumbled with the metal like a child, dropping it.
“Pick up your feet!” He jabbed my shin with the handle of his sword as we begun sparring.
“I thought you said you were trained in the Sage Guard?” I ignored his words… if he only knew. I could cut him down without a thought, I could hold his life between my fingers. Swinging and swooping, quickly wiping off the sweat that soon pooled on my forehead. I made my feet stumble.
“No wonder they are all dropping like rocks in a pond. They’re unprepared and sloppy,” he muttered under his breath as he easily blocked my blow. My blood raced and my heart pounded.
Something in me clamped tight and I knocked the sword from his hand without thinking of the consequence. I threw my own sword down, stabbing the earth with its metal tip.
“Those people are my friends!” I heaved my body toward him, shoving him backward, hard, and forgetting to hide my training.
The ground began to shake.
“How dare you speak of the dead and dying in that way?” My body shook, and tears began to well in my eyes. For some reason his words had cut deep, so deep that the well of power that sat in the middle of my stomach began to overflow. I was once a part of that team, of the Sage Guard, those people were my friends.
But would they welcome me back? Even if I brought them information, would they still treat me like one of their own? Or would I be cast out? A member of the Sage Guard, but no longer a member of their team.
“Why would you say that? I knew you were a brute, but I never thought you cruel!”
I smashed my foot against the grass and the earth split next to us.
The world opened. A gasp got stuck in my throat, and Khol wobbled on the earth’s edge, almost falling into the cavern I had created.
“They may hunt our kind, but it is only because they don’t know any better. They are only human.” My verbal assault continued. Thunder cracked and rain, heavier than a wet blanket, fell atop us. We were soaked in seconds.
“While you sit here and pray to your Gods, hiding your power, innocent people are dying.” A sob shot through my body as I thought of my slaughtered team.
“My people are dying.” My voice was a whisper.
A gust of wind blew my hair around my face wildly.
Khol stared at me and I heard his heart beating so loudly the sound hurt my ears. I backed up a step, squirming at the sound.
“Why can I hear your heart beating?” I asked, and the earth stopped shaking but the rain fell as heavy as it had before.
I felt a tremor of fear shoot through me, but it did not belong to me.
“Are you afraid of me?” I asked, my voice almost getting lost in the wind.
“I don’t know,” he whispered, and I stepped forward.
He flinched.
I stared at him. Then my hands, at the scorch marks that never let me forget.
“I’m sorry.” The words left my mouth before I even had chance to understand them.
“I’m sorry.” This time to spoke to myself.
In my mind, I wanted to ask where the rain had come from, why the thunder cracked and why the earth split, but I did not need to.
I knew that it had come from me.
I fought to calm my erratic heart as Khol knitted the earth back together with a wave of his hand. With everything that had been going on, I had barely noticed the ease of which Khol used his power.
“I thought you were a MindWonderer?”
“I can get inside the mind of any living thing,” his voice was quiet and closed. “Even the earth.” I nodded, trapped in the silence between us. My pulse skittered.
MindWonderer, EarthShaker, SkyChanger, FireBringer.
But how was it that I could wield all four? How could I, an untrained Sage Guard soldier, a woman full of mistrust and betrayal, wield all the gifts from the Goddess?
“Are you familiar with The Prophesy?” Khol asked a moment later. I scoffed; everyone was familiar with The Prophesy.
“The bedtime story?” I raised a brow, feigning indifference.
“It is more than a story, I think we both know that,” he whispered softly, as if he were any louder it might be true. “No Sorcerer can manipulate all of the elements, no one until you.” His voice was small.
“Perhaps…” He looked away, staring at the storm clouds slowly softening. “Perhaps you are one of them? One of the Celestial…” I stared at him as his words trailed away, eyes wide and brows crumpled, how had he spoken of such things so casually? Nervousness sat low and heavy in my stomach. This was madness. I was not the one they waited for.
“But The Prophesy states there are to be two,” I countered. “And I do not have anyone else.” The hard truth slammed into me like a rock. “Even Alias is gone.”
Khol nodded softly. He lifted his sword again and we sparred. This time he was distant and his movements soft. I tampered down my training further to prevent causing him harm. The image of him flinching away from me played over and over again in my mind as our swords clashed together halfheartedly.
“I wanted to join the fight,” he spoke again, his voice soft as a whisper, and my sword paused midair. “The war, but my mother won’t risk it, if anyone found out about us, about any of us…” he paused as if catching his breath. “We will be hunted until they find our home, until they find The Temple.” Sorrow and loss filled his eyes. “We cannot lose anymore, we have already lost so much.”
In that moment I thought I understood Khol. Everything he did was for his family, every choice, every move, everything. I hated the envy that flooded me, why had no one protected me this fiercely? Not even Alias had stopped Jala when she tortured me.
My hatred for Ezra burned a little brighter. Placing such high expectations on a man only a couple years older than I, it wasn’t fair. Nothing is fair for those of us who were different.
“I do not think even our power would stop the war in Zetka.” The war that had raged for over one hundred years. “I suppose I was talking more to The Goddesses than to you…” I stepped closer and rested my hand on his arm. “How could they be so cruel?” A soft wind floated over the grass, brushing my hair over my face. Reaching over, Khol swept the hair behind my ear.
“I’m scared, Khol,” I whispered. “Why has this… power, only manifested now? Why didn’t it show itself before when I was angry or sad?” I would not let myself cry, not now. I had been punished for less.
“Most of us, our power, it awakens when we are young,” he stumbled over his words. “We do not have it when we are born, a single tantrum could split the earth in two.” I smiled at his words. “My power awoke on my eighth birthday, three years after everyone in my training.” His face turned placid in the way one does when they are bringing forth a memory. “And yours awoke now, sometimes it is buried so deeply that it never wakes.” I soaked up his words, determined to learn everything there was to know about the new life I was living.
We strolled back to The Temple’s main building. Khol laughed at my ever-present questions and hatred for short answers. We drank tea from the grand food hall, we talked and walked and talked some more until the sun began to set.
“And what about me?” I asked, bowl of curried lentils in hand. Khol paused, stuffing a large spoon of lentils into his open mouth.
“I don’t know.” Despite his words he looked calm, almost serene “You are something different, I haven’t quite figured you out yet.” I laughed, rolling my eyes.
“Let me know when you do.” I reached for the book beside me and flipped through the pages.