The Lightwielder Files

Chapter 4

She made them run towards the train station and Max was about to say that he didn't have his pass and Mona had one and paid at the turnstile for the both of them. They jogged to the red line platform joining others going into town. Max cast an eye at them all in turn as if they had the answer to his bizarre morning. 

“Where are we going?” he asked, looking at the clock that read 10:45 am.

“Washington Avenue”, she replied and as if on cue, the train arrived, they step one and max noticed that Mona was clutching her satchel tightly for some reason he didn't think it was because of the threat of pickpockets. The image of the javelin long spear fitting inside came to mind. He wondered what else was in there. 

The train bounded along as usual and Max could pretend he was on some sort of school trip, well, except for the poncho and the crocs and the girl with a strange bag. 

When they arrived at Wasington Avenue, Max saw Mona look around their coach at each of the passengers just like he had done on the platform but he thought it was for a different reason. 

The sun had gone down thankfully, it was starting to have a weird effect on him and she suddenly remembered the trick he had with the sunbeam in his room. The first strange thing of many, he had realized. 

They exited the station, Mona already grabbing his arm and dragging him in the direction of the cathedral that he always saw on his way to school.

“Are we going to see a priest or something?” Max asked but instead of going in through the front doors which were wide open, Mona skidded to the side and stood opposite the thick wall.

“What are you doing?”

Mona shushed him and she pulled out a pen from her satchel and placed it in the palm of her hand.

She traced a line over an imprint on her palm to Max’s astonishment it began to glow, gentle and silver.

She pressed her hand against the cathedral wall and a panel moved a brightly lit passageway.

Mona turned back to Max who was standing there with his mouth agape. 

She smirked and took his wrist. 

“There’s more from where that came from.”

She pulled him in through the passage and the wall closed back behind him the way it had been before they came. 

Even though the passage was well-lit Max couldn't help but have his attention drawn by the grey light emitting from Mona’s palm, then all of a sudden it was gone. 

“How do you do that?” Max asked. “With your hand?”

“I just unlocked my light”, she said as if that explained everything. “I’m guessing by the look on your face, your dad didn’t tell you anything about the light did he?”

Max’s forehead wrinkled. “Well, he’s an electrician so I suppose?”

Mona chuckled, light and airy. “Oh, you’re something else.”

“I’m guessing we’re not talking about light switches are we?”

“Not in that sense no. Here we are.”

Max turned away from Mona and looked at the blinding sight in front of him. 

It was like the inside of some gothic cathedral but a bright and cheery gothic cathedral. Light was coming out from every area on the walls as people milled about. A lot of them were carrying books and Max could see some had weapons like the kinds found in a Dungeons and Dragon’s campaign. Axes, maces, long swords, and a lot of the spears that Mona had attached to their waists while others had them strapped to their backs.

There were five high arched stained-glass windows; each one had a different design on them. The sun, the moon, a star, a lightning bolt and a flame. 

The one of the sun drew Max in for some reason, it was like the real sun but one he could actually look at without it hurting him or anyone else that he loved for that matter.

“Pretty isn’t it?” Max jumped at Mona who was watching him stare at the mosaics. “I think the artist had a preference for the sun, I mean it looks prettier than any of the other lights. It’s like he didn't even try with those ones.”

“What does it all mean?” Max asked eyes shifting to the creamy pale moon, then the shimmery lightning bolt.

“They’re the five primal sources of light. Where we get our powers from,”

Max was so fixed by the sun mosaic that he almost missed the part about powers.

“Powers, like your glowy hand?”

Mona smiled brashly. “Yes, my glowy hand.”

She pointed to an even smaller mosaic on the floor they were standing on, depicting a man with a long dark beard surrounded by what Mona called the primal sources of light. 

“Long ago, an old wizard found a way to harness natural light from the sun, the moon, the stars, fire and lightning. He showed others how to use this power and they became the first Lightwielders.”

“Lightwielders?” Max repeated, trying out the word to see if it would last out in the real world. Funnily enough, it did. 

“Yeah, sounds like some medieval sword right?” that had been what Max was thinking about. 

Mona continued on with the story as walked to another part of the floor. On this mosaic, there was a young-looking man with golden hair and lightning coming out of his fingers but as Max looked closer he saw that the lightning bolt was black at the ends.

“But one of the wizard’s followers, wasn’t satisfied with his powers over lightening so he found a way to somehow control darkness as well.”

“Did he?” Max asked anxiously, totally invested in the tale.

“He did”, Mona replied, “But at a very heavy cost.” She gestured to another panel on th e floor where the young man’s lightning bolt was completely darkened and hole in the earth had formerred and from it, a bunch of meneaninvg looking creatures came out. 

“He unwittingly opened a gate that he wasn’t  supposed to. A gate to the shadow world. The monsters came out and ravaged the earth and it was only through the combined power of the Lightwielders that they were sent back, but little pockets around the world opened that could not be closed, allowing some of the monsters to come in and out. That’s where the Luce Order comes in, an order of lightwielders made to protect the humans from the monsters.”

Max tried to wrap his head around everything Mona had told him. Magic, secret, orders. It couldn;t all be real could it? But a part of him believed, no knew that it was. 

“So that pygmy hound in the apartment”, Max mused, “Was that a monster?”

“Yes, it was”, said Mona, walking towards an arch corridor past another mural depicting the primal sources of light. “Of the lesser circle but it can still do damage.”

“You said something about someone sending it”, Max remembered.

Mona nodded. “That’s what I meant about the pygmy hound being from a lesser circle of monsters. They’re more servants than anything, they like to be left alone.”

“So do you have any idea who sent it?” Max asked.

“That’s what I hope to find out.”

Throught the white arch, they went and on the corner was a stack of shelves holding various wooden gobltes. Max could think of a touseand ways he could carce each of them much more interrsiting. Mona picked one from the nearest shelf then put what looked like a piece fo fur inside. 

“This should help us find where the pygmy was last at before your place.” 

Before either of them could say another word, a long winding whip came across the air, wrapping itself around the goblet and pulled it away. Max and Mona both whipped around at the cortle from where the whip came from.

“Don’t you remember you can only use a spyglass after you’ve briefed the circle?” a voice said and in the shadowy alcove stood a boy about Max’s age with tanned skin and blue hair. “Or did you leave your manners downtown?”

Mona groaned and marched up to the boy snatching the goblet, which Max learned was a spyglass right out of his hands. 

“I was going to before you interrupted”, Mona snapped. “Max, this is my brother Adam this is Max.”

Adam gave Max a friendly look down before turning to his sister with a wry grin. “Is he another one of your boyfriends?”

“Shut up, no”, she seethed, making a motion of throwing the goblet at her brother. “He’s that kid I was telling you about. The shiny one? His house was attacked by a pygmy hound and his dad’s gone missing.”

The smug look disappeared from Adam’s extremely pretty face. 

“You mean his dad was...”

“Wait”, Max interjected, obviously clueless to the subtext of the conversation going on around him. “You’re talking about my dad as if you knew him.”

“Well we know of him”, Mona said admittedly. 

“Yeah, ever since the breaking and went missing he’s all anyone could talk about. “

Max, more confused than ever, looked back and forth between the two siblings. 

“Okay is my dad famous here or something?” he asked, desperate to understand what was going on around him. 

“More like infamous”, another voice added. The smiles dissipated from the sibling’s angelic faces as they and Max turned to the voice of the newcomer. 

He was a tall dark-skinned man with a flawless well-cut beard. He wore a dark brown suit with no tie and had a spear just like Mona’s strapped on his hip.

“I’m glad your back later than I expected and another thing I didn’t expect was that you brought the very person we’re investigating into our order.”

Alarm bells sounded in Max’s mind immediately.  Why were they investigating him? Max was beginning to think that the only reason that pygmy hound attach happened was to lure him out to follow Mona to where they would arrest him for what he did not know. Maybe they had done the same thing with his dad? Suddenly the story Mona was telling him felt very ominous indeed. He thought back to the way he had come. Maybe it wasn’t too late for him to run away. Then he remembered the hundreds of people walking through the halls and their assortment of weapons. He could be dead in an instant if they wanted him to be. No, the trick for him now was to play it cool and maybe somehow gather enough information for him to find his dad. So he stayed quiet as Mona respond to the taciturn-looking man’s questions. 

“ I did so with good reason”, Mona replied, looking now like a foot soldier reporting to her army major instead of the cavalier warrior from before. 

“His dad was taken and a pygmy hound was there about to eat Max which I saved him from.”

Max didn’t think it was necessary for her to add in that last part.

However, the man seemed to ignore mona and turned his attention to Max.

“You have your father’s eyes”, he said out of the blue. 

“Uh, thanks”, Max replied, then took the opportunity to launch into his questioning. “Sir, do you have any idea where my father is? That’s all I want to know and then I’ll be out of your hair for good I promise.”

Max didn’t see himself ever wanting to come back to this world of light and shadows and pygmy hounds and ancient weapons ever again. Unfortunately, he could not get that desire into his subconscious level, the part of him that thought as impossible as this all was, that it was all familiar like he belonged here.

“If what Mona says is true…”

He looked skeptically over the red-haired girl as if he very much doubted the words coming out of her mouth. 

“Then the Luce order is the safest place for you. Here is where you belong, well your father belonged at least.”

He turned on his heel back down the alcove. The three teenagers moved to follow him until he held up an ebony gloved hand. 

“Just Max”, he said.

Max tried to steady his breathing as he followed the man down the dimly lit passageway. 

The hall was long and the walls were covered in colored dots almost like braille. Then they come to a chamber in the center. There were gold-plated benches surrounding a fountain, hushing aquamarine water into a ruby basin. Max stared mouth agape at the opulence of the room. He wanted to ask if the jewels were real but thought better of it. 

The man obviously had a specific purpose in mind for bringing him here and he looked like a man who would loathe having that purpose interrupted. 

The man led him to the center, next to the fountain. He cranked a lever at the side and a high desk unfolded itself out. Max came and stood on the other side of the table.

“Your father was one of us”, the man began his wrist on the table. 

“A lightwielder?” Max siad. “He could control light?”

The man nodded solemnly. “Sunlight.”

Something in Max’s mind clicked. Was that why his dad avoided the sun as much as possible, and whenever he couldn't, he’d wear a hat and a special jacket? bBecause the sun had some effect on him or he had some effect on the sun? The moving sun beam came to mind, like a haunting spectre, something that had been so pretty and calming before.

“Could he like move a ray of light? Sunlight?”

The man’s eyes widened, they returned to normal. 

“That and so much more”, he said, then gestured to the walls which had more depictions of the five primal sources of light. “Every light source comes with its own various powers. Your father’s sun powersdin’t just come with light manipulation but with healing as well.”

Max remembered always feeling better when his father was around after he had been sick compared to any other doctor  visit. 

“We call those who control sunlight Sonars.” he gestured to each of the light sources in turn as he gave their abilities. Lunars control moon light and can cast illusions and in some extreme cases, control minds. Burners control fire and other forms of heat, Astrsa’s control starlight and unlock memories while others can predict the future.” He gave a wry smile at Max’s stunned expression. “I don’t take much stock in their predictions though. Fate is ever changing as the wind, which brings me to the final primal source, lightning and those who control it are called flashers. They are at their most powerful during storms of any kind.”

The man took out a long pen-like object similar to what Mona traced over her hand before they entered the Luce order. 

“This is just a small test to see if you are a Lightwielder too and what kind?”

Max started blankly at the man in front of him who began wiping down the pen thing.

“You mean I might be Lightwileder?”

“Does that bother you in some way?”

“Well, yes”, Max said, really thinking about everything that had happened and what he had just learned. “Because if you do your test now, and I’m really a Lightwielder then everything up to this point in my life has been a lie.” And that was what he feared the most,that his dad the most important person in his life, his best friend, the man who had taught him everything he knew, made Max who he was today, had been lying to him about this whole piece of his life. A piece of his life that had come back to bite him or rather steal him away. 

“Not a lie”, the man said sagely as if what he would say next would heal Max’s soul from the inside out.  “Just a concealing of the truth.”

Max borrowed his emerald eyes at him, tired of all this secrecy. “A lie by omission is still a lie”, he snapped but the man looked unbothered, he looked rather impressed from the way Max could see it. 

“A good sense of honesty. We need more people like you. You’d do well here.”

Then he gave a cryptic smile and max as he was turning him inside out so that his skeleton and his internal organs would be out on the floor in a minute.

“That is if you really are a Lightwielder.”

He gestured for Max to put his hand on the table. 

Max’s hands shook involuntarily. This was the moment of truth. Was he Lightwielder or was he not? Did he have this magical light connection thing to his dad or did he not? 

Eventually, he got his hand to move enough that he could place it on the table directly opposite the man in the suit. 

“It’ll sting a little”, he said. 

“And then what?” Max asked.

“We’ll see.”

The man’s hand was cool like the edge of a marble sink and Max feels the sharp nib of the pen object and decides it should be compared to a needle instead of a pen. 

The man presses the nib into a smile in Max’s palm nearest his fingers and draws along the smile. Nothing happened except a dull spark of pain. So he’s not a Lightwielder. He was about to ask what was supposed to happen next when suddenly a honey-thick feeling came on him, the same kind as yesterday’s only this time instead of it feeling like it was being poured from the outside, it felt like it was seeping out through his pores, enveloping him in a cozy glow and from the line in his palm a golden beam of light, radiant as the sun, Max was nearly thrown back by the force and familiar heat of it. 

Then the man removed the pen and Max noticed that he had been shielding his eyes. 

He blinked his brown eyes rapidly which were still fixed on the palm from which the light had come. 

“All that light came out of you”, he muttered amazed. 

“ Is that a good thing?” Max asked anxiously, while in his mind’s eye the searing burst of light kept replaying like a neverending dream. 

“Well for one it means you're a Lightwielder, a Solar to be exact, quite powerful.”

A Solar. So there was a name for what he was, what he could do. It wasn’t weird or out of the ordinary and there were others like him. But then his joy turned to bitter fear. This couldn’t be amazing as it all sounded because his dad was still taken over it. And why did his dad leave this life in the first place?

“You said something about my dad being infamous around her, what did you mean by that?”

A deep frown came across the man’s face as he wiped the pen thing clean.

“That is a story for another time”, he said. It was Max’s turn to frown.

“My dad was kidn*pped because he was a Solar. I need to know everything about him.”

“You can never know everything about a person no matter how hard you try”, he said morose, “ but all I can say is that he ran away from the Order, he had a falling out with another wilder one who fell to the darkness. Malcolm was so heartbroken that he left.”

Max wanted to ask who this person was and what was the falling out was about but before he could open his mouth he heard a patter of footsteps into the chamber. 

“What are you two doing here?”

Max turned to see Mona and Adam running out into the chamber. Mona was holding the spyglass and the pygmy hound hair which was glowing or maybe that was Max’s eyes. Everything was glowing in his eyes. Adam was at her heels with his whip at her waist.

“Sorry to interrupt the tour but this was urgent”, Mona said. She did a double-take at Max’s face, which was still in the afterglow of the Lightwoelder revelation and the rest of his illumination experience. “I was able to pin where the pygmy hound was last.”

“And where was that?”

“A dumpster at the back of a pub?” Mona looked oddly smug and impressed with herself. Adam shook his head, Max looked on confused while the man in the suit didn’t look too pleased.

“And does this help Mona?” he drawled.

She wagged an imperious finger in his face. 

“Ah but it’s which pub he was found in; Fado pub.”

Fado pub, why did that sound familiar in Max’s years? That's when he realized that was where his dad always went for a birthday pint. Could the people there have something to do with dad’s k********g? Then what did Fado pub have to the with the Lightwielders and his dad?

He got his answer soon enough but it wasn't what he had expected. 

“Fado pub?” Adam repeated isn’t that a werewolf haunt?”

“One of the main ones in the city”, Mona answered while Max whipped his head from both the siblings in turn, making sure he had really heard the word werewolves in the same sentence as Fado pub. 

“I’m sorry did you just say werewolves?” Max asked, emerald eyes going wide. “They exist too?”

The man in the suit looked sheepish, while Mona and Adam just smirked at his confusion.

“Max, you’ll be surprised at the number of things that exist in our world hidden within the world you know”, the man said. Then he turned to a still smirking Mona and Adam who was still holding the now glowing pygmy hound fur in his hand. 

“I think it’s time you go talk to Portia see if she knows anything about the pygmy hound”, he said looking at the siblings. 

“Are you sure that’s a good idea dad?” Adam asked, pocketing the piece of fur. “We can’t go waltzing into werewolf territory without probable cause.”

“One of our won is missing, perhaps in grave danger. I can see no probable cause than that.” And with that, he began to leave the cavern until Max stepped out in front of him with desperate eyes, the possibility of his dad being in grave danger spurring him in front of the slightly intimidating man. 

“What am I supposed to do while they’re gone?” he said, desperate for something to do. He couldn’t just stay still especially not that he had found he had some sort of sun powers. 

“He can come with us”, Mona offered already at Max’s side. “You can never have too many Lightwielders especially when werewolves are concerned.”

Suddenly Max’s Lightwielder status became to feel heavy, and the never-ending dream became like a neverending weight. 

“ Wait, I’ve just been a Lightwielder for less than an hour!” He exclaimed.

“That’s not true”, Adam retorted, “You’ve been a Lightwielider your whole life, you’re now just discovering your powers.”

Just discovering his powers might not have been how Max would have put it, but how was shifting light rays meant to help his dad? He guessed time would tell. 

“But am I good in say a fight?” he asked.

“Definitely not”, retorted Mona, “but if it comes to that which I  seriously doubt it will with us there, we’ll have your back.”

“Okay”, Max replied.

“Get going now!”, the man who Max had just realized was Adam and Mona’s dad said. 

He turned back to go to a passage at the other end of the cavern. 

“So we leave for the pub now”, Max said already walking towards the way he had come in, ready to get some more leads on his dad.

But then Adam pulled him back with surprising ease. Adam was gangly but not too tall, he almost looked like a doll. 

“Not like that you’re not”, he said, looking at Max rapidly from head to toe. 

“What why not?”  Max asked, wondering what on earth his clothes had to do with anything now at a time like this, 

“That poncho does nothing for your arms”, the boy replied simply as if it made all the sense in the world. “We want to make a good first impression, and this boho chic isn't working.”

“Well sorry”, Mona gripped her hands on her leather-clad hips. “It’s not like I could fit Dolce and Gabanna into my bag. I didn't know I was a stylist for a fashion show.”

Adam rolled his eyes then took hold of Max’s elbow and led him out of the cavern. 

“Come on, we’ll find you something suitable for interrogating werewolves.”

“You have outfits for that”, Max asked dryly. “You have outfits for interrogating vampires too?”

Adam smirked at the quip. “ Not standard issue, no, but I would suggest turtle necks perferably with the scent of garlic.”

“Oh great.”