Creatures of the Light

Twentieth Light

Twentieth Light

Creatures of the Light

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##### Twentieth Light #####

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When death calls, a pair of wings answers

Shadow grows with every life that it has taken

Conflict arises and we stand to fight

A man tormented by a breeding evil on a top of a cliff.

The amber of the burning wood from the fireplace makes everything in the room look warmer even more than it already has. As the flame intensified, so does the conversation we are having in it. Bit by bit, the exchange of words allow us to discover the unknowns deeper to the very core.

But of course, that is what most will believe.

“Do tell and I would like to be honest as well.” I pick a piece of a flame from the fireplace that I am standing in front of, taking it by the palm and letting it burn bigger. “I can not help but feeling as if there is something erratic that I must hear, yet I can not place or point out what it is at the same time.” I play with the fire, switch the side between my open hands until it turns dark. “This uneven hunch ─ let’s call it ─ usually appears every so often when trouble seems likely to strike in the most unexpected moment of me, most of the time almost taking me out for good. And do trust me in this one; I am rarely wrong. So please, for the sake of not this stranger, then for you and your blood relatives.” Turning to face my audience, I blow the flame on my hand, dismissing it into small whirl of soft tornado up to the ceiling. The wind stops just before it put any damage to the house.

It is Mike that is first to recover. “W-what do you mean?”

“Something is wrong with this town”

“Excuse me?” Gorge sounds offended.

“It is not just the atmosphere, but the thick air that surrounds it itself.”

“I know that Redwood is not exactly perfect, but you can’t just come here and insult i─”

“No, that is not what I meant. I meant is that I can sense it when something is not right.”

“What? You mean your powers allow you to detect such thing?”

“Yes. And I also can tell that by the way you are unleashing your aura, that there is something that you are hiding from us.” This one causes them to flinch. “So please, do tell,” I narrow my eyes.

They have not told us everything. Whether they have not mentioned about it on purpose or they are just not thinking of including something in up to this point, I have no idea. Judging from the building sweat on their foreheads, it seems like my first suspicion might just be coming true. But as suspected, all they do is just play stupid.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Gorge blurs out.

“Help me understand, then.” I eye the other boys. “Mike? Forwin? Aaron? Is there something you would like to share more about your family? Or even perhaps any other related matter?” They shake their heads. I stare at them for a moment before finally settling. “Alright, then. We will not bother you anymore than we already do. We will be leaving now.”

On that cue, Artro follows me out from the mansion. I am about to step out from the drawing room when a voice interrupts from behind.

“Wait! Where are you going? You can not just come and leave us like this. You have not even tell us about your family, yet.”

I turn my heels to meet eye to eye with Forwin. “Of course we are not going to abandon you. We are just going to retreat for the night. It is already late, if you have not noticed, and after our travel, we do need our rest as well.”

“Oh, is that so?” Relief crosses his green eyes. “When are you planning to leave, then?”

“A day or two, perhaps,” then to the rest to them, “According how fast I can figure out how to prevent you from aging so fast. You see, I might look just like your age in the eyes, but I am actually twenty six years old. Being wizards do not cause us to age quickly; it makes us live longer than other mortal beings instead. So in the meantime, if I might not be able to solve this matter as soon as I expected it to be, then you are all welcome to come back with us.”

“Come back?” Aaron titles his head to a side.

“To the Noirmelns Castle, where you should have been born at,” it is Artro who elaborates it, “But of course, on your free will. We will not push you to come with us if you are not wishing to. Nevertheless, we are a family. Our doors are welcome to you, whether you need our help or a place to stay.” His eyes then settle on me for approval, which I grant.

“So, there are others like you?” Forwin asks curiously.

“We still have three more cousins, two nephews, five uncles and aunties, about thirty distant relatives and ten elders. Yes, there are many more of us. You can even learn all of their names at the family tree back home. There are countless spells and techniques you can learn from the castle, all the information you can get at the library, and even taking part in our kingdom.”

“You have your own kingdom? How can I have never heard of this?” Mike sounds surprised and excited at the same time.

“Every clan is a kingdom, Mike. And every kingdom needs its leader. It is the leader’s duty to make sure that the people, or should I say the family members, help making sure that the existence of wizards, especially its member, to never be discovered by human society. That is the reason why you do not know about this. You have been living your entire life away from the kingdom. Now might be your chance to get to know more about it.”

“If every kingdom needs its leader, then are you the king?”

“Oh no, I am certainly not. Only the firstborns are strong enough for the title and all the responsibilities they must defend for the family, which is currently being held by none other than my cousin, Arsene,” Artro gestures to me, “Yes, gentlemen. You are currently on the presence of the Queen of Darkness, Arsene Noirmelns.”

They all stare wide-eyed at me. Gorge is the one to recover first.

“What is your duty, then?” he asks Artro.

“I, on the other hand, is one of her second-in-command.”

“So there is no King of Darkness then, I suppose?”

“One does not have to be married to gain the throne. There is a king, her husband. But I am not sure about addressing him with a title such as ‘dark’ to be included in it.”

“Why not?”

“Because the king has his own kingdom to come from. He comes from the family opposite to our clan, you see, a contrast to our legacy. His name is Valline Blancort, the King of Light.”

“Is it just not, or am I sensing an old-century conflict going on or something like that that has been going on for a while?”

“No, it is not just you, Gorge. The Noirmelns and the Blancort are─” I put a stop to Artro by raising my hand on the air, before turning to him.

“Although I do admire your energy, Artro, I still need my rest. So if you do not mind, I am going first to find us a place. You can search for me later once you feel like resting,” I say, before making an attempt to step out from the room again.

“You do not have to look for a hotel, you know. This mansion can fit for two extra guests, I am sure,” Forwin says out loud for me to hear from almost across the room, “right, Gorge? You will not mind if they stay at your guestrooms, will you?”

“Not at all, of course. There are two extra rooms that you can use tonight. You are welcome to stay for as long as you want,” Gorge tells us.

“Good. That will save me the time for the search. Can you please show me the way. My neck is rather unsettling right now and I really need a good sleep,” I say.

“Right away,” he gestures for me to follow him up the stairs.

Slumber has become rather quiet and calm for the next five hours after my head has hit the soft pillow. From what I can tell, at least the life of one of them is almost as good as the castle’s life ─ minus the rules and obligations that it brings along, of course. The guest bedroom is even decorated so fancy that I find myself enjoying the effort the designer was putting on seconds before I passed out.

The tall window beside the queen-size bed tells me that it is cloudy and full of upset flying birds out there, circling around the dark woods. If the scenery come from the Noirmelns’ territory, it would have been a very normal almost-artistic view to look at. But this is Redwood, a town that is supposed to be full of humans, not anywhere near the center of magical activities.

After a soundless, dreamless night, though, I find myself hard to come back to sleep again. Something loud and very quick has awakened me, and now my eyes are refusing to close.

Then comes the knocking.

“You’re up,” comes the statement. My back is facing the door, yet it seems like Artro can notice right away.

I roll in the air until I face him, floating one meter above the bed. The door is still open. He is leaning on one side of the doorframe, hands folding under his chest. His clothes have changed into more casual ones.

“You came to bed later than I am. How can you wake up earlier than me?” I protest.

He simply chuckles by my words. “Let’s just say that meeting relatives that I do not know exist this whole time kind of makes me exhilarated.” Then he unfolds his arms to slip one of them into his pocket instead. “So, have you figured something out?”

“Through the night, I have a few theories. But I would like to test it first before actually revealing any conclusion. In the mean tim─”

I pause when I hear something odd. At first I think it is just nothing. But then I recall the familiar sound from the one that has caused me to wake up earlier. The noise is almost the same, and my skepticism is confirmed when I hark another wave of that same tumbling contact.

“What is it?” Artro asks in concern when he sees me looking for the source of the noises.

“I heard something.”

“Probably just the boys in the kitchen. They are having breakfast downstairs.”

“Not the kind of noise from footsteps. It sounds like a clashing contact of something solid and hard.”

“The plates and utensils then.”

“I do not think so,” I say, climbing off the bed to approach the tall window and open it.

My eyes furiously scan the surrounding outside, though not finding any moving creatures in nature's landscape that lies as far as I can see in a flash. I consider using my sight-seeing to search at distant locations. Dark shadows are swimming at the frame of my range, sweeping each corner of the land carefully. No living creatures are out there though, other than a few harmless herbivores out in the woods, looking for meals of their own.

“What is it?” Artro rushes from behind to my side, looking around on his own. I pull back and let the darkness bequeaths my eyes.

“Nothing. It is just me being too worrying, it seems.”

He calms down and asks if I would like to join breakfast. I am just about to step away from the window and follow him to the door when a shadow darkens mine from the tiles. By the time the intruder is inches away from me, it is already too late for me to prevent the ambush. Two strong arms, smaller than I thought they would be from considering the size of the shadow, circles around my waist and pulls me back.

Artro has his face turning to me by the time I am yanked from my footing. His facial expression turns to horror when he realizes what is going on. One of his hands extends to me, which I lean forward in return. Our fingers are this close to brushing against each other when I am being evulsed out through the window, exit from the mansion.

When I blink again, I am already thirty feet high from the ground. Artro is looking out, watching as I am being lifted further away. No sound is coming from what I hear, except for the rush of tormenting annexes subsequent to me and a flash of falling pure white feathers.

Struggling to find my way to be released from the intruder, I summon all the shadows I can find from my beset. By the time I try to brush anything at the circle, all I can find is just endless layers of clouds. The tiny spec of shadow that I can find is gone with the awful weather that accompanies the sky. The next luck I can come across is when a lightning by any chance strikes near us ─ not something even Artro can manipulate from the ground even when he can recall it. Black lightning will not help me right now, but he can deliver real shadow for me to use. The question is whether or not he can detect where I am right now, since all I can see from above is nothing but more grey clouds.

Using the only last remaining skill I can think off, I sink my nails into the intruder’s arms and try to pull them apart manually, hoping that somehow he will drop me. Falling from for how many miles above the ground is better than wherever this creature is taking me to. He seems to know my restriction quite enough to prevent me from using my magic. I do not think he is expecting me to release myself manually though, because I can hear him gasps from my ear when I manage to move his arms for a few inches, almost this close for me to slip out.

That is all I need to let the hold I have gone from his arms and find myself falling very quickly. The wind bases around me, jerking me from left and right for my first few meters. The cloud hits me harmlessly and emancipates my eyes to look down at the landscape from high up. The ground is closing to me in mere seconds. There is no water that can decrease my body from the impact as I brace up to hit the earth. Just a few meters before I finally hit the grass though, the same pair of arms catch me again and lift me up back to the sky.

This time I trash from the hold in a rather than an aimless manner out of frustration. He is too quick for me to outmatch up in the air, because just two seconds after he catches me again, I already find myself back in the sea of clouds.

“What do you want from me?” I demand yelling in irritation.

My black sharp nails are sank back into his arms’ flesh while my legs are trying to find his to kick. Different from the last time, the intruder seems to be more cautious of me than before, making no muscle reflex to move. To make me even more vulnerable than I already do, he releases one of his arms from holding me and circles it around my arms. He does the same to his other arm and lock both my arms down. I increase my struggling by putting more effort in trudging in his hold. So much that I can even hear the sound of some material ripping.

A series of efforts later, I can see that we are heading to a nest storming clouds. It does not seem like he is going to fly away either, because we going straight ahead.

“What are you doing?” I want to scream at him, but finding my throat even too dry and tired to say it out loud.

Two white wings are extending forward from behind, beating up and down promptly. A flash of light shines with its golden holy blinds me until all I can see is just an image of a cross. Funny how the sun reflects such shape.

When I opened my eyes again, everything is dimmer and less intense, though still too bright for my liking. Before I know it, the arms have let go of me, allowing me to fall on something solid and has a structure like cloud. The floor is white, and once I examine it better, I realize that I actually am standing on a cloud. A solid one, indeed.

Still in the brink of confusion, another figure appears. He has long, golden blonde hair, high cheekbones structure and a tall frame. What alarming me the most from him is the pair of three-meter-wide wings that are unfolding behind his back once he lands a few pillars ahead. I try to back away, but my legs feel sore out of the unfamiliar change of temperature and immeasurable situation.

“Whoa, hold it there. Easy. I am not going to hurt yo─”

His worried expression turns into a frown once he sees me, and a flash of anger resurface from his blue-as-the-sea orbs. He can not be mad at me though. I just got here. I am the one that is being kidnapped here, so I should be the one that is doing the angry part.

“Alex, what do you think you are doing? You are supposed to bring her here unharmed, not taking advantage of the situation!” There is an unraveling fury from his voice when he looked at the white crow behind me ─ the one that kidnapped me.

“What are you talking about?” Alex asks lazily as he steps into my eyesight, the nail marks all over his muscular arms healing.

“I am talking about you assaulting the girl,” the long haired points out through gritted teeth.

“Assault? Assault?” Alex inhales deeply with raising anger. “I am the one that is being assaulted here, Saliver!” He shows his friend the arms I have stabbed my nails on previously.

“Oh yeah? Then how do you explain the torn nightgown?” Saliver arches his eyebrows, not believing his friend.

“What torn gown?”

Saliver gestures at the black nightgown that I am wearing. Alex follows the direction of his friend’s stare. His eyes widen instantly, and soon a blush deeper than the shade of blood creeps up to his cheeks. He looks away almost immediately, trying too hard to erase the evidence of his embarrassment as fast as he can. I look down on myself as I notice the opening between my breasts, showing the size beneath perfectly well.

“Here,” Saliver hands me his blazer, which is the same shade as his wings. He avoids looking at my direction before I take the blazer and cover myself.

“State your purpose of having me here,” I demand once more. “If you are not going to talk, then you better show me the way out immediately so that I can get back to what I have to do.”

The two white crows before me only smiles at me as if I am a fool, for the moment, forgetting about the disagreement that they have just minutes before.

“As if we are going to point the exit to you,” Saliver mutters in amuse.

“At least not until we are finished with you,” Alex says darkly.

And to think that I am the dark one here....

Folding a pair of arms of my own, I glare at them with narrow eyes myself.

“Alright. What do you want, then?”

I am in their territory right now, a different dimension from Earth. In here, no shadow even appears from behind the light effect. I can not do anything related to shadow right now. To avoid being harmed, I have to make my moves carefully.

The room I am standing in is an open podium, bigger than a castle. I am guessing that this is their lobby, a gateway through the White Crow Kingdom’s portal. The sky above us is still the same, but this is a sky above the sky ─ a world apart from mankind’s. White pillars are standing all around the podium. I can not see anyone else from down here, but the others will find to hard time in hiding at this place.

Alex takes a step closer to me, neither he or his friend is taking their eyes off of me. Perhaps I should be feeling slightly threatened by this? But when his palm reaches out to meet my cheek, I pull the same arm down and twist it to his back, causing him to whimper in pain underneath me when I spin him around.

His friend surely does not expect me to still fighting back after being restrained from any sheer of darkness, only looking at the scene in front of him in frozen state.

Kneeling on the floor now, Alex withers from the unpredictable impact my physical force has brought to him.

“If that is all, then I suggest you show me the way out,” I exclaim out loud.

Hearing my challenge, the other winged ones start to come out from their hiding place, showing their heads and a pair of wings from all over the level of the podium. Nine.... twenty three.... thirty six.... I stop counting when their numbers have grown larger than fifty. More heads are showing. There are at least a hundred of white crows present, if not more.

I am officially outnumbered.

Situation becomes worse when they begin to bring out their weapons ─ spears with blinding light at the sharp tips and swords ─ behind their backs.

I know what those kinds of weapons really are. They are used them in the battles and wars. Lethal and deadly, there is only one obvious end to whoever that is unlucky enough to be struck by it. I personally have never seen those things before so directly like this, but I do learn enough from books to know what kind of fatal injuries that those sharp edges can deliver to mortal flesh ─ such as mine.

Pushed to an urgent state, I only have a brief moment to act wisely. I let go of the hold I have for Alex’s arm, quickly extending my hand out to the front in the air. I block my sight from those massive, angry groups of white crows, taking in the risk so that I can channel all my might into reaching in the darkness that I have stored inside me.

Attaining it is easy; it feels just like getting my inner arms ─ the arms of my soul ─ to get in touch with another part of my soul. Only when I do, I establish contact with something more. My heart feels like it has suddenly acknowledged the weight I have put on it by storing some of my entire authentic powers inside.

What I do next is that I hook my soul’s fingers to the black core, and in an instant my heart beats louder than ever. The pulsating of the adrenaline is so high that I can hear it exploding in my eardrums for each lash. Breathing feels easier as well after that.

Then finally.... I open my eyes.

My fingers, the physical ones, already start drawing a circle in the air vertically.

Five pair of wings, each from two opposite direction, makes out from behind twin pillars.

Dark ink blurs like water reaction, embracing the wheel at each other’s end.

A few white crows decide to jump from the top of the higher floor to reach me quicker.

Unawarely, a black pool of rippled surface bolt to fill the inside of the circle, being the only swarthiness in the whole dimension.

Saliver and Alex takes out their own weapons from out of nowhere, probably drawing them out from thin air through their kind’s own trick, and are ready to lash those pointy ends on me in mere inches.

The portal is created and I jump into it without sparing anything, feeling it embracing the outline of my body tightly until it closes right behind my back.

I land rolling on grass. Once my body stops acting out of force, I end up lying upside, face engages with the sky. It is still upsetly grey above, so I assume that I have not gone that long.

It takes me no time to rest and I get on my feet quickly, stumbling a little when I feel one of my legs failing me a little through a jolt of agony from my right ankle. The journey back to Gorge’s mansion takes a while after I create a random walking stick to help me walk faster.

When I arrive in front of the door and about to knock it, the door swings open from the other side and a relieved Forwin.

“Where did you go to? I though you have left us without saying a word─”

He abruptly stops once his eyes really settle on me, though they look like they are focusing on something behind my back. I check to see what he is looking at, in case those white crows tried to race me, but all I can see is just an empty field.

Settling my eyes back on him, I play back his words in my mind. It seems like he has not been told, which highly means his close relatives are probably has not as well. Come to think of it─

“Where is Artro?”

I push my way in when Forwin is not moving out of the front door, walking into the hallway and enter the drawing room straight away. In there I can see Mike and Aaron sitting on the couch, while Artro is having his back on me. No sign of Gorge though.

The two boys notice me when their eyes fall on me almost instantly. Artro acknowledges the changes in their expressions and turns to look at me as well. While I can say that the boys have reactions just like Forwin’s on the doorway, Artro looks less surprised than they are.

“Is it really that doubtful that I am still alive?” I ask them torpidly when none of them seems to be planning on filling in the silence in the mansion.

Artro recovers first. “No, it is not that. I just have not told them about what happened, knowing that you will handle that crow well. It is just that,” he nudges behind me. I turn around to spot Forwin walking into the room.

“What? Him?” I arch an eyebrow, feeling confused by his words.

“No, not him. Your aura. You are scaring them by unleashing your true powers all around air,” he points out.

“Oh, that.” I reclaimed the powers back to where I stored them, turning calm and less in a rush all of a sudden as a result. The heavy pressure is lifted, and the boys look as if they can breathe fresh air again. “I have to use my true powers for emergency. He brought me to his dimension, so of course there was not even a sheer of darkness,” I explain to him. Artro nods in understatement, but the others are still in shock.

Silence.

“What. The. Hell. Just happened?” Mike breaks it out. “We were just talking, and then I suddenly choked on my lungs. You suddenly appeared and I started to feel really hard to breathe that I could not even make a move to do anything.... and just watched as the two of you chat as if nothing happened!” He stands up and eyes us widely. “Then, everything just disappeared, along with the fear that came with you.”

The others just look more disbelief than angered like Mike does.

“That, my cousins,” Artro puts an arm around Mike’s shoulder, a gesture I notice is used to calm him down, “is the reason why Arsene is our queen.” Then he finally begins to explain my absence to them, probably choosing the timing of me coming back so that they do not have to be unnecessarily worried.

The soreness I felt for my ankle has long gone as they speak, yet I can not ignore this exerting feeling on me. It weakens me strongly that I have to sit down.

“I know. He, the one who kidnapped Arsene, is an angel, right? I saw the evidence of white feathers,” Mike guesses boldly, earning a laughing Artro.

“Oh, no. He is certainly no angel, Mike. His kind preferred to be called as white crows. They lived in a different dimension than ours. And although they do resemble the angels that humans’ religions picture, he is not an angel, even when the white crow’s dimension somehow close to looking like human’s version of heaven.”

Artro elaborates to the boys about the nonexistence of angels or demons in this supernatural world, since heaven is not required like how the humans’ bible works. This kind of thing is really new to the boys, since this is the time when they will learn that there is no such thing as a god. Everything that they have believed about the world is wrong, if Salizar has kept the truth from them and spared danger from foolishness for their sakes.

“Do you think I can meet Gorge’s father?” All eyes turn to me when I ask that question.

“Why don’t you just ask him yourself?” He is staring at behind me. I follow his eyes to find Gorge walking down through the stairs. We all are waiting for his answer.

“Sure. Let’s take the car.”

The four of us ─ including Artro and Aaron ─ enters his car. Mike and Forwin can not come because they have other plans. We drive through the meadow, heading in another direction from where we first went through to get to the mansion. Miles away after spending our time in the car for a quarter hour, we spot old fences and an abandoned-looking cabin in the middle. The car can not pass further from the fence, so we walk for a good thirty meters before reaching the cabin.

An elderly caretaker, probably around his seventies, opens the door for us just in time when we get to the front porch. He leads us upstairs, the stairs chiming when we step on the brittle parts. At there, I meet a man that is supposed to be in his late forties, but find someone looking older than the caretaker himself. Finally, everything clicks. But I do not reveal my theory yet, until we all gather back at Gorge’s living room.

“It is all in the blood,” I begin to explain as I stare into the burning fireplace. “I understand how your fathers grew old so quick. It is because when Salizar cut his family ties with the clan, he did not go back. He picked a city in a human’s society and stayed there. And then, he must have married a human. That is the only logical explanation of why none of your blood is black like we do. You got your grandmother’s traits.”

“How does our blood color have anything to do with how we age?” Forwin interjects.

“I am close to that part, and trust me when I say this: it is very close. You see, we black bloods can heal very quickly, far beyond any other mortal beings. The reason is because our magic has been a big part of our daily lives ever since we were born that the magic and the blood bond together into inseparable part. They became one, for each can not function without the other one. The coexistence build a higher defense system in our body, thus ends up slowing the growth of our bodies. That is how I and Artro still look so young despite our age.”

“Your bodies have complete different reaction because your powers do not merge with your blood. This causes the magic in you to be overwhelmed from the inside, fast-forwarding the process of the metabolism in you instead up to the point when your powers overfull you. Your bodies were supposed to be part of the vessels that contain your powers, yet it turned out your blood and magic to be in complete opposite.”

“Do you know how to stop this then?” Mike asks, fear and hope filling his eyes.

I nod, “By training.”

“Training? That’s it?” he sounds surprise.

“Yes. And it will be easier to teach the four of you if you come with us. If you still have any more questions, Artro can fill you in.”

I take that time to rest and let them go on without me. The recent events this morning has been a complete turn from planned. We have been so busy as well that it looks like I will need some extra rest. My back is throbbing through the muscles, hurting me.

“Hey, are you alright?” At first I think I just imagine the voice, but then it continues. “Artro, I do not think Arsene is fine,” I can hear Aaron talking from the distance, even though he is just sitting across from me.

“What? Impossible.” Pause. Then a hand on my shoulder. “You are sweating. Your lips have paled.” His hand drops to my back, when the pain starts to increase ever so drastically that I begin to scream.

It is not an echo of a pain, but misery.

Then I drop to the floor and everything vanishes.

- END OF BOOK FIVE -