The Lightwielder Files

Chapter 15

Then Abetha, with a slight flick of her wrist summoned an iridescent door behind her. She gestured for Max to go through and realized that that was the end of their lesson for the way. He walked past her, his head hung low in shame for what her did not know, and pushed the door open. Instead of entering into the castle ruins, he found that he was back in his borrowed room in the Order. He turned to make sure this was real and found that the door behind him had disappeared into thin air. 

He huffed again, his chest aching instead of his bones and he flopped down onto the bed, chest heaving as if he had just run a marathon and the pain was excruciating as if he had broken rob. What was happening to him? He turned to the oil lamp beside his bed. He cautiously reached out with his little finger to see if he could light it like he had done the day before.  

It stayed dark. Kind of like how he felt.  What was happening to him? Yesterday he could summon light just as easy as breathing, hell he could even control it. Why couldn’t he do the same today? He groaned pressing the heels of his palm into his eyes to snuff out the light. How ironic. He wished immediately that Mona and Adam were there with him. They had been his guides so to speak in his Lightweolder journey so far.  Though he knew he couldn’t rely on them. They were warriors, he would just be a liability in the field if he ever got good enough to go out on the field that is. He turned to his side facing the wall where the door he had come back into the room had been. 

He needed to get out of there. For some reason, his mind drifted to his house back in the Streeterville district. It seemed to call out to him if that was possible, that a house could talk. He got up and followed where his heart led him or was ti the Light he wasn’t so sure. 

He stepped out the door into the thankfully empty hallway. He walked briskly keeping his head down while at the same time trying to look as casually as he could as he found himself at the library’s door. He pushed it open and went directly to the front desk. Boyne’s assistant sat there reading a book where the pictures seemed to be moving.  He cleared his thoughts and the young woman looked up from her book.

“Uhm hi”, he began, “I just wanted to ask if you had any books on being a Lightweilder.”

She quirked an eyebrow in his direction as if he had just asked how can he sit in a chair that he was already sitting in. Which if you really think about made sense in the predicament that he was in. 

“I mean the basics about using Light," he clarified noticed how weird his earlier request had sounded. 

The woman came out from behind the desk and directed him to a nearby shelf she pulled out about five heavy-looking tomes and handed them to Max and he quickly realized the assistant librarian was a lot stronger than her size had suggested earlier. He straightened his back to make sure he wouldn’t fall from the strain. 

“Theses should cover the basics and a little more”, she said looking over the spines of some of the other books on the shelf.

“A little more?” Maz stage whispered. 

“I can give you some more advanced stuff when you’re done reading those “, she said, hand already wrapping around three more ginormous tomes and Max was already starting to blanch a little.

“I think these are enough for now”, he said hurriedly with a smile.

He looked him over, her whole face pinched then it relaxed. “Indeed, well let me know if you need anything else, Max.”

“I will thank you”, he replied as she made her way back to the library’s main desk. Max walked to a secluded space and position himself between two cushy-looking pillows. 

He looked at the smallest looking book which in all fairness was just a small dictionary relatively in size. 

He opened it to the front page where technically there was a table of contents. He read the chapter titles with his finger and found one with the word Solar in its title. 

He found a brief paragraph on the history of Solars and what their powers could do. He read a list gently under his breath; illuminating, banishing, concealing, and healing. Max thought he had banishing down to an at or at least a passable act until that afternoon with Abetha. He continued reading and found some breathing exercises to do as well as some physical ones. He took his phone out and wrote some notes to study later then he saw he had only a few hours of battery left then went to a table with some looking empty parchments and some pens and took those to make his notes. 

He was a bit iffy when he found a section on how to deliberately blind an opponent but then he thought that it would be useful when he was dealing with monsters again. 

He took more notes until he came to an interesting section on concealment. He always thought that Light was supposed to reveal things but he found that Solars were the only primal light users that conceal things. Astras did something similar but involved hiding things in the dark rather than in the light. 

They were demonstrations in pictures that Max tried to follow along with. After almost thirty minutes of trying he was able to hide the corner of one of the books from view. He thought that at least that was something as he wiped a bead of sweat away from his forehead. 

“The only other Lightwielder I had ever seen use concealment is your father.”

Mas looked up and saw Lucian Boyne looking down at him with a knowing smile. He c****d his head at an odd angle to be able to look at the page that Max was reading. 

“You mean other Solars can’t do that? “Max asked.

Boyne had a weary look in his eyes that seemed to be brought out from the inside e when he talked about Lightwielders passed and what they did and didn’t do. 

“Concealment is one of the lost arts not so much taught anymore because the Order didn’t see much use for it.”

He came around to where Max sat and looked at the table of contents for each of the primal light sources. 

“You see those marks right there?” he pointed to some faint brown marls that Max had just thought maybe were spaces where the paper was rotting but the way there were spread out among the different chapters of the book. “This mark shows the abilities that were not to be taught in the Order formally. Mind you. You always have those hungry for  knowledge like your father who teaches themselves or some that might find other older or more experienced Lightwielders who are willing to teach them.” 

“So are the marked chapters like f*******n knowledge”, Max asked suddenly curious as to why concealment was a chapter that jumped out to him the most. 

“Not f*******n so today but rather unseemly.”

“But why? Like concealment, wouldn't that be easy to hide from an enemy or to hide something important from sight?”

Boyne had a hand perched in his five-o'clock shadow as he looked thoughtfully at Max and considered what he had just said. 

“You make a very good point Max but most Lightwielders would rather fight than hide.”

“Well, that sounds foolish.”

Boynes’s eyes seemed to laugh along with his mouth. “Is that what you think?”

Max shrugged his hands waving over the edge of the book he had concealed. A jolt of happiness shot through him when he found he was able to reveal the book corner to the world again. 

“I think it’s wiser to avoid a fight if you can.”

“I would agree with you there, but Lightwielders are a fighting sort.”

“Not all of them of course, you have the bookish ones and the scientific ones.”

Boyne chuckled then covered his mouth as if he had done something he wasn’t supposed to.

“What a nice way of putting it Max, I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

Max felt safe with Boyne and proceeded to tell him the cause of his visit to the library that afternoon. 

“I’ve been having trouble with summoning Light with Abetha”m he admitted and then tried to bring a spark from his fingertips but nothing came out. He sighed in a gentle huff and Boyne unexpectedly came and sat down next to him.

“Interesting. Abetha has been known to coax Light out of the most unwilling of subjects.”

That was not what max wanted or thought he needed to hear. 

“Then I must be an anomaly," Max said looking hopelessly at the picture of a Lightwielder with pure sunlight coming from his hands. To think that that had been him just yesterday. Well, him before he landed in a heap on the ground in the modest of a dozen or os Lightweidlers. What the hell had happened to me?

“Don’t say that. Yes, you may be different from a lot of the Lihgtweilders here...”

“Try all of them," Max said drolly. 

“Tell me what were you think about when you were with Abetha.”

Max had the slightest sensation that he had heard this question before and it turned out that he had. Abetha had asked it of him when talking about the attack on the pub yesterday. 

He had told her that his main concern was trying to make sure that his friends were alright and she had counted that down to battle instincts and reminded him that he couldn't rely on them at all times. But that wasn't what Boyne was asking, he was asking what he was thinking about when he was trying to summon Light with Abetha.

“I was thinking about my dad, to be honest”, he said. 

Boyne hummed methodically.  “And what about your father in particular?  What were you feeling when you thought about him?”

Max thought long as he could and as deep as he could about that, then after a short amount of time to him, he had his answer. 

“I was worried about him where he was what he was doing right now. To tell you the truth I still am but I was also angry?

“Angry?” Boyne repeated in mild confusion. 

“Yeah, at him mostly and kind of at myself. Like there was this whole part of himself that he had kept hidden from me and now it was coming to bite me in the ass.”

He felt like he had just vomited emotionally on Boyne which he had to admit that he had but Boyne was the one who had asked it of him. 

“That is completely understandable. Everything that you are feeling is understandable but unfortunately, it is also holding you back. Holding back your Light that is.”

Max turned to face him with a frown on his face. 

“What do you mean?” he asked genuinely conducted at this point. “Light is supposed to be a natural part of me, isn't it? Why should it matter then how I feel or don’t feel.”

Boyne’s gaze was soft and non-judgmental it felt like he was being wrapped in a warm blanket, protected and safe from the dangers of the world around him. 

“That would be a much better alternative wouldn't it.” Boyne’s eyes grew wistful and a faraway look in them as if this was a question that he had pondered often himself. “But the thing is Max, that as much as Light is a part of you, so are your feelings and if I may be so blunt you’ve had more time to cultivate your feelings than you’ve had time to cultivate your Light. So when you’re feelings bout your father clouded the source of your Light which even though you have access to great sources of power you have little control of it.”

Max was beyond exhausted of people telling him how little control he had. He would be much happier and in a much better place if they would just tell him how to control his powers instead of just leaving it all entirely up to him in the first place. 

He huffed gently blowing a piece of overgrown hair out of his face. 

“So then what would you suggest I do next?” he asked, trying and failing to hide the desperation in his voice, he needed something to change if he was going to be able to be in a good place to help his dad. 

“The trick is," Boyne began in a low voice, “to let go.”

“Let go?” Max repeated skeptically. “Let what go?” 

“All of it. Bitterness, resentment, fear, worry. Don’t let it vlog up the pathways to your Light. Give the Light a place to flow through. Focus on the task at hand why you need to come into your power.”

Why he needed to come into his power. Why did he need to come into his power? He closed his eyes and thought about it for a brief couple of seconds. Every surface thought led back to his dad and how if he was more powerful perhaps he could be ablet o help find his dad but there was another reason he felt he needed to come into his powers. For himself. As crazy as it may sound, he knew for a fact that when not if, when he found his dad would not want to come back to his life as Lightwielder. He had done so much to avoid it and Max doubted that if not for this unexpected turn of events, he would have had nothing to do with the Lightweilders and would have continued to do so for the rest of his life. But Max on the other hand? Max thought that maybe just maybe, the Luce Order might be a home for him, it might be where he belonged. Even those some of the Ligitheweolders may not have thought that he belonged there, he knew in his heart that he did. He couldn't help but smile fondly as he remembered his dad telling him that if you know where you belong it doesn’t matter if other people tell him that he doesn't belong there. He really wished his dad was there but he had the feeling that he would tell him to get the hell out of there immediately but that was something Max knew that he wouldn’t do. 

So instead Max did what he knew he needed to do at that moment. He’d come into his power come hell or high water.

He closed his eyes and did as Boyne instructed, trying his best to let go of the resentment but that proved difficult it stayed there stuck in a pipeline between his head and his throat, it wouldn't leave his body. He decided to change tactics. He decided to shift his focus to the task at hand. Which was this time not to bring Light out of his fingertips for his own satisfaction and to have faith in his own self-importance. No, this time his priority was what it was before; to protect his friends and family. He felt the light bubble up on the inside of him, filling every crevice of his being. Once he was satisfied with what he was able to find inside of himself he directed it to his fingers. 

He heard a faint gasp beside him and opened his eyes and saw pure wonder flickering through Boyne’s eyes and then he looked down at his hands and could see why. 

In both of his hands were pulsating balls of light. He playfully moved them from hand to hand and then with a small calp they disappeared. 

“I think I got it”, he said a smile coming onto his face which Boyne prompt returned.

“It wasn’t like it wasn’t in you all along," Boyne pointed out with a wink.

“Well it was you who helped me to get it out," Max replied with a hint of shyness in his tone. “Thank you.”

Boyne scoffed gently. “No need for that.”

Then he clapped Max on the back and got up from the cushions. Before leaving he turned to give max one last word of advice. 

“You can keep these books for as long as you need them. You’re just at the beginning of your Light journey Max, I hope they would help you along the way.”

Then with that, he turned on his heel and went back tot he the chained books behind the main desk. Max wasted no time in looking through each of the book’s table of contents and marker which chapters would help in his journey as a Solar. He resolvedin his mind that he would study every word in every chapter.