Chapter Eight
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Training
Sven walked down the palace main hall toward the parlor, but was cut short by a swirling shadow that appeared in front of him. The portal dissipated, revealing Cinder and Orphenn to stand before him.
“Orphenn says Eynochia wants to train him.” Cinder announced.
“I’m in!” Sven enthused without a second thought. He stepped forward. “Gather everyone up and meet me in the training grounds outside. Don’t keep me waiting, Drifter.”
Orphenn stood in the center of the field. Sven stood a yard or two away, and all the others stood in line on either side of him-Xeila and Jeremiah to his right, and Cinder and Celina to his left. Celina had abandoned her formal robes for the moment and was sporting a white jumpsuit.
The breeze began to strengthen to a heavy wind. Sven’s trench coat flailed behind him, a black and white one of heavy leather, and Orphenn suddenly wondered where he got all these trench coats.
“Shall we begin?” Sven asked Celina, flashing Orphenn a smile.
“Xeila!” Celina called.
“Yes, Commander.” She answered.
“Starting with you, we’ll show Little Brother what we’re capable of. Go!”
At Celina’s command, Xeila surged forward, and before their eyes, she transformed. Her body tensed, chrome scales fanning around her eyes, and saber-like fangs grew from her teeth. Her fingers elongated into razor-sharp claws like filed steel.
She gave a menacing snarl as Jeremiah came forward. An adamant crystal formed on his arm like diamond armor. It grew on his other arm and across his chest as well; then a sharp crown around his head, outlining his face and eyes in glittering gem.
Sven swung his arm in the air. A tail of what looked like sparkling dust followed his hand as he spun around and pointed a golden pistol at Orphenn. The glistening dust gathered at his other hand and produced another pistol, a silver one, which he held in his palm and also directed at the teenager.
Orphenn, now thoroughly freaked out, thought to himself: So. Xeila can transform, just like Cinder had mentioned. It looks almost snake like…Well, some kind of reptile, that’s for sure...Chameleon? Jeremiah can create some kind of crystallized armor-looks formidable. Sven can summon weapons from thin air…I have yet to see what else they all can do…
At Celina’s signal, she and Cinder both unfurled their wings, with spans of at least thirteen feet across, and black feathers like that of a raven.
Each Enma took an offensive stance, ready to strike. Though Celina’s stance was something more confident-both hands held behind her back. Orphenn wondered what that was about.
“This is training…” Orphenn thought out loud. He let his golden wings fan out behind him.
“Ah, our little bird has come to show us his abilities.” Sven mocked. “Should we teach him a lesson?”
With a hiss from Xeila, they charged, and Orphenn turned to escape. Before he could take a step in the opposite direction, he collided against something, then looked up to realize it was Jeremiah.
Is he a teleporter like Cinder? Orphenn started, rearing back just as Xeila caught him and turned him to face her. Her face was beginning to morph into a serpent-like shape, the fangs and claws making her all the more frightening. She shoved him backward into Jeremiah’s stone grasp. With the strength of a god, he hurled Orphenn into the sky. “Fly!”
Celina and Cinder immediately shot upward to follow their brother.
Orphenn was flung higher into the sky than he had ever flown. He careened and plummeted toward the ground. His eardrums seemed to implode at the affect of Sven’s gunshot, the bullet whistling as it barely missed him.
Orphenn screamed, struggling to catch the air on his wings.
“You’ve got wings, dip wad!” Sven shouted, then shot again. “Use ‘em!”
The bullet again whirred just past his head. He was shocked into flight-his wings finally carrying him on the wind.
“Those almost hit me!” Orphenn squealed.
“Don’t let down your guard!” Sven ordered, discarding his pistols into dust for a newly appeared rapid-fire machine gun. A wicked smile cracked his face as he opened fire at the golden-winged angel.
Orphenn squealed again, banking low in an effort to dodge the bullets. He barely escaped them, just as Cinder appeared with Celina through a dark portal. The two flapped to either side of their brother.
Cinder clutched his arm, and from his elbow down, it disappeared into a portal from her hand. Another portal materialized above his head, and his hand reached out of it and bopped his forehead.
“Holy-” Orphenn hastily pulled his arm from the portal, watching and rubbing his wrist as Cinder keeled over laughing, barely managing to stay in the air.
“Don’t get distracted!” Celina smiled.
“Let me help you out there, Celina!” Sven called upward. He grinned maniacally and from the air, swirling in that summoning dust, came hundreds of small throwing weapons-needles, knives, daggers, and the like-and without any indication or hand motions, she raised them to arrange behind her, and with minds of their own, each little knife and needle shot in Orphenn’s direction like a flock of ravenous bats.
He descended, wings struggling to keep him aloft.
Celina can manipulate objects….Mentally? He pondered. What’s that called…? Oh…Telepathy? No….Telekinesis!
Finally gaining his balance, he glided, inches away from the marble of the palace’s back wall.
Celina never took her hands from behind her back. She sent the blades slicing through the sky toward Orphenn. He dove to dodge them, and landed in the branches of a tree.
Countless became embedded into the railing, centimeters shy of Eynochia’s fingers. “Wow, you guys!” she beckoned. “You all are really good at missing!” She had decided earlier to come out on the balcony to watch Orphenn’s progress. Apparently it was pretty tough training.
Orphenn clung to the branches of the tree, catching his breath. Only a slight moment’s reprieve though, for more shards of metal cut through the leaves, lodging themselves in the trunk and branches.
Attempting to escape, Orphenn swung to the other side of the tree and climbed to the top.
The wind had died down….so what was this rocking back and fourth when he reached the top? A tremendous crack sounded as Orphenn rose with the tree slightly higher into the air.
“Hey, whoa! What the-” Orphenn looked far below to see that Jeremiah had bare-handedly uprooted the entire tree from the ground. He then let the tree drop, as well as Orphenn, and stood back to watch as it tipped and started to fall.
“Whoa!” Orphenn leapt out of the tree and soared with the accuracy of a hawk, and touched down to the ground just as the tree did behind him. Dirt and grass and leaves flew everywhere. Cinder and Celina arrived at Orphenn’s side, picking the debris from his hair.
Sven turned to Jeremiah and nudged him. “Nice work, Jerry.”
“Just a warm-up.” Jeremiah remarked, his crystal armor cracking and receding. This put a smile on Xeila’s face, now free of fangs or claws.
“Aw, that’s my boy!” Sven laughed.
“And you, Orphenn,” Jeremiah said, stepping over to the seventeen-year-old, “that was pretty good for your first time.”
“Although, I did try to go easy on ‘ya.” Cinder shrugged.
“Obviously.” Orphenn sneered, recalling her little portal trick.
“I didn’t.” Sven snickered.
“Also obvious. You almost shot me!”
“Good thing you’re quick on them wings, eh?”
The laughter in the training field could be heard from a few stories up, on a slightly damaged balcony. Sven had reclaimed all his weapons by now, leaving gauges in the marble where the blades had been imbedded.
Orphenn glanced up at Eynochia, who was smiling at him and leaning on the balcony’s railing.
He fluttered up to meet her, gingerly sitting on the hole-scarred railing and tracing one of the gauges with a fingertip. He wiped sweat from the back of his neck. “That was one hell of a training session.” He sighed.
A week or two passed of Orphenn’s training, growing more vigorous and violent each day.
He found that Xeila transformed into a white chameleon-like serpent, though not completely-her body stayed in an in-between phase and couldn’t morph any further; unlike Eynochia who could transform totally into a white wolf.
Jeremiah was not another teleporter-he was incredibly fast, and inhumanly strong and seemingly weakness less as his adamant armor.
Cinder could mold shadows into weapons and use them to her desire. She and Celina could take advantage of the strong link between them, automatically knowing what the other was thinking and acting on it.
Sven’s many varieties of weapons were drawn from a large armory inside the palace, for him to summon whenever he wished.
One day he made the decision to orient Orphenn with weapons.
After a short discussion, he tossed the boy a loaded revolver.
Orphenn caught it in wary hands. “But I….”
“No complaining.” Sven interjected.
“Complain!” Orphenn whined.
“Search your feelings, Little Bird.” Sven teased, drawing a broadsword from thin air. ‘Little Bird’ was a new pet name for Orphenn. Sven seemed to be fond of giving everyone his own nicknames.
“But…” Orphenn moaned, “Guns can kill-”
“Boy,” he countered before Orphenn could finish his objection, “sayin’ guns kill people is like blamin’ misspelled words on your pen.” He took a look at his sword and grimaced. “Oh, not this one,” he chastised, flipping the weapon away, and it faded away in shiny dust as another sleeker one appeared in his hand. He spun the hilt in his fingers. “Now shoot.”
It actually turned out pretty well.
Sven had deflected the bullet with the blade of his sword, and it shot into the ground.
From that point on, target practice became a part of daily training. Though the targets were now scattered about the place, rather than just shooting at Sven.
Orphenn was also trained with the sword and spear, and the bow. But out of all of them, he enjoyed the firearms the most.