stellaR (Editing)

Chapter XV

Chapter- XV

Don’t be afraid to take a big step. You can not cross a chasm in two small jumps.     -David Lloyd George

     Chaud moved first, approaching the brown-haired girl slowly. He moved cautiously, with his hands down by his sides. To most people, this would appear more threatening than raising them into the air. But for us, it meant our powers were pushed down to our sides. I doubted that this strange girl would understand that, though.

Once again, the tips of Chaud’s fingers were lightly twitching. I wondered if I was the only one who saw how actually restless he was at the moment.

     As Chaud reached the girl, she lifted some of the pressure up off the man’s back. Like a bullet, he bolted, scrabbling up from the ground and throwing dust everywhere.

     Chaud looked around at me with a lazy grin, and I knew what he was thinking.

     With a sound similar to that of a clap of thunder the man seemed to hit face-first into an invisible wall. My eyes widened, and I wasn’t sure how I had manipulated space to do exactly that- perhaps thicken a standing medium?

     But I covered my surprise quickly, and hoisted the man up into a bubble, floating him right on back to us.

     As the bubble hit the ground and burst, Chaud grabbed the man. He wasn’t giving him a second attempt to escape.

     I watched the girl out of the corner of my eyes. Her face was impassive, though her hair was still blocking me from seeing nearly the whole right half of it. She had her arms folded across her chest, and dirt was smudged across her left cheek. She didn’t seem in a hurry to move away from us and she had captured the man for us. I was sure, however, that any of the Five could have easily done the same. But for now, she didn’t look threatening. No, she simply looked… bored?

     I turned back when I heard Chaud speak to the man in his arms.

     He bowed the man’s head forward, and as he did, something must have caught his interest.

     “What is this?” He demanded, shoving a finger sharply into the base of the man’s hairline.

     The man struggled against him, writhing about in Chaud’s arms. Chaud had the man’s arms pinned behind his back, leaving him immobile.

     “What is it?” Chaud asked again, his voice sounding dangerous.

     The man spat harshly at the ground, but said nothing. I peered over Chaud’s broad shoulder to get a glimpse of the mark that he was talking about.

     It was a tattoo, seemingly engraved into the area just below the base of the man’s hairline, at the base of his neck. The tattoo was of a black-outlined eye, but the iris of the eye itself was filled with symbols. I leaned even closer and, with a start, recognized the symbols.

     From left to right, the iris contained a blue flame, a wide-spread, branched tree, the outline of a breeze, a tidal wave, and a single star. In the bottom right hand section of the iris was a strange ‘H’. All of its ends were pointy, and the bottom right one had a long tail added from the lower right end. And where the pupil of the eye would have been was instead an oblong oval shape, half of which was shaded a dark gray, and the other half white.

     I frowned. “Is it a crest of some kind?”

     Chaud stiffened at my words.

“This is the ‘Hunter’s Crest’?” he asked mockingly.