Chapter 35: Compromise
THERE WAS A BOOM AND the Adepts went flying out of the stairwell, shoved out of danger by an unseen force, their clothes singed and soot covering their faces and limbs. Daniel sprinted forward. “Kurt!” She dashed after him, in case he tried to go back into the stairwell. Both of them got close enough to see the two figures left in the exit, silhouetted from behind by the roaring flames. One of them had its arm stretched out, pushing at something invisible. Telekinesis. “Christopher!” Daniel kept going, but then she sensed the whirlwind underneath them give one last burst of speed, an implosion of magic set to obliterate and destroy. Reaching out, she got hold of Daniel's arm and dragged him backwards, snaking her arms around his chest and keeping him there.
"No!" He strained against her hold, but she gritted her teeth and held on till the fire devoured the exit of Camp and the figures of the twins disappeared in the red and yellow flourish. Her skin burned and her hair felt singed. Below her, Daniel's face and arms had turned red from the heat. Any closer and both of us would've been killed.
She left Daniel sprawled on the ground so he could get his act back together, standing to face the remaining Vortex members. Some of them had their hands on the ground, presumably keeping the explosion contained so the ground didn't collapse underneath them. The structures of the rides around them rattled, but held. Leone had a slight frown on her lips, speaking first, "That was disappointing, I have to say. I had hoped that this generation's Adepts would've been able to contribute to the power stream as well." The Adepts in question shifted and the older ones pushed their juniors behind them, faces no longer confused, but set in defiance. Calida glanced at them, made a subtle shooing motion that only Amber caught, and the Camp Adepts hesitated, before the older ones grabbed their juniors and escaped out of the amusement park.
"We wanted to wait till all four of you fulfilled your potential," Leone continued, spreading her hands as if she hadn’t seen the Adepts leave, "but this confrontation has put a wrench in our plans. We hope you won't mind if we bumped up the deadline a little." Amber kept her mouth shut, fixing her with a baleful glare instead. "According to criterion number seven, all of you must do this willingly, as in, simply say that you agree to going through with this."
"And what makes you think that we'd do that?" she asked, feeling out the air around Vortex, taking care to not alert the Air Adept they had. She didn't have much magic left - the stunts she'd pulled in the battle, added on to what was left of the drugs they'd given her in the med bay, plus the effects of the Demon attack, all that didn't leave much for what was to come. She could take one last shot though, while Leone stalled, not allowing her cronies to attack.
But there was something just behind Leone. She could feel the outline of a figure in the air. Leone smiled when her face probably betrayed her confusion. "There is the non-violent way, of course," she told her, stepping aside and allowing a group of Adepts to push something forward. Her eyes narrowed. "Say hello, dear. I'm sure your friends are delighted to see you."
On his knees, he didn't respond, letting his pale hair – the exact colour of Leone's – shadow his face. Calida started forward, jaw tight as Robert held her back. Even Daniel rose to his feet, looking shaken. "Nicholas?"
"Emblems don't ever really die, huh?" The boy's familiar wry tone almost made her smile. He lifted his head and Calida gasped. Bruises had rendered the area around his eyes a deep purple. Blood trickled from his nose with every breath he took. When he smirked at them his bottom lip split – it didn't look like the first time that had happened – and he winced and coughed and spat. Red spattered the ground at the Adepts' feet.
"Nicholas," Daniel repeated. "Can you bring them back?" His voice sounded hollow.
His slight smile faded into something even more serious than when they'd spoken in the cafeteria. "The Daron twins?" Lips flattening, he tilted his head and told him, "You know I can't."
Daniel. He glanced at her. It seemed that her mind was still open to him. She put more force behind her thoughts. They're dead, let go. You did it with me, and Nicholas.
His face twisted. But now there's hope - a way to bring them back. I can't just— He cut off his train of thought when she gave him a deadpan stare. You're right. His shoulders slumped. I'm sorry.
Don’t be, she replied. And Daniel? He looked at her. When it starts, don’t hold back with your magic.
There was a quirk in his lips. I won’t. Control over my powers is the one good thing they gave me. Adepts that murder each other are worse than Demons.
When she returned her focus to the situation, Leone was in the middle of speaking, “—selfless and sacrifice for the future by donating all the power that you have gained to the next generations of every race. This is what we stand for and what we ask you to do now. We have done our best to fulfill our part in this already.”
Daniel stiffened at that. “What did you do, apart from murdering our parents?”
“And killing Kayden,” Nicholas added his voice to the pseudo-interrogation.
“All these are well-kept secrets…” She paused, took in their icy looks and said, “Well, if you insist.” Leone smoothed down the floral print that was visible under her armor. “The Beast that attacked you in the tunnels to the Athenaeum was a Rogue that we hired to test you, but you should already know that, shouldn’t you?” she said right off the bat. Test us? More like to kill us. “Your aunt was a Vortex agent,” Leone told Amber, tone blunt. She blinked, stepped back, fists clenching and unclenching, not really knowing what to feel. So that hag was twisted up in all this too? Figures. But killing her seemed a little more okay now. Leone turned to Calida. “Your mother’s death was no robbery.” Her response was a low hiss.
“And your excuse for killing our families?” Nicholas coughed again.
“Criterion number eight,” Daniel said before Leone could answer. His voice sounded strained. “You took The Elemental Legacy in the most literal sense and treated our families like fuel to burn in a bonfire, giving us hardship and loss before anything had even started. You knew everything about us from the moment we were born.”
Leone shrugged, smiling, like she’d taken Daniel’s words as compliments, as if killing her own son for something bigger than us was noble in every conceivable way. She was insane, all of Vortex was. But she believed in her own sanity so much that she was willing to sacrifice everything for it, and expected others to do that same. She spoke again, "We simply hope that you will agree to sacrifice your lives for the sake of the power stream. If not, we will eliminate him by force." A Vortex member had already edged behind Nicholas, a dagger at his throat. Leone sighed, somehow managing to look helpless. "We've tried to obtain his acceptance, but his...unique abilities made him quite difficult to persuade. In this compromise, we no longer need him, as long as the three of you consent."
For some reason that got a chuckle from Daniel. "Your Mind Adepts couldn't get into his head, right?" The two boys smirked at each other like both knew some inside joke.
Leone shook her head, still smiling. "So what is your answer?" When none of them said anything, she pursed her lips. "Calida? You must understand. I love Nicholas just like how your father loved you, even though we need to make sacrifices for things bigger than us."
Calida's jaw tightened and Robert grabbed her hand. Amber looked at her. “Do you think he still loves you?” “Of course! After my mom died, he just needed someplace to vent without damaging our reputation.” "Parents are supposed to love their children," Calida said. Leone smiled encouragingly. "And that's exactly why I think that you’re not Nicholas's mom, just like my abuser will never be my dad!"
In hindsight Leone shouldn't have picked Calida to start on first, because the girl had the title of War for a very good reason. When she charged she was a devil wreathed in flames, and for the second time that day her fire clashed with Leone's water, letting Robert duck past her. Amber covered him, together with Daniel, air and water interwoven over each other, constantly moving. Robert cut Nicholas’s bonds and then dashed out – Calida had probably convinced him to leave before they pulled out the big guns. So Nicholas got to his feet, shaky and weaponless but still grinning.
The four of them drew together, facing out towards the crowding Adepts as they encircled the pale-haired boy. “Nicholas,” Amber said, surveying the numbers they were up against. “Can’t you use that shape-shifting thing? Turn them into cats, or something?”
He shook his head, glancing down at his hands, flexing them open and closed. The cuts and bruises on his fingers stretched and contracted and she caught his wince “My stay with Vortex wasn’t exactly pleasant.” Sugarcoating again, the idiot. “I can’t heal myself, but I’ll give them something to regret.” He shot her a grin and a wink, the bruise on his eye crinkling up as a drop of blood rolling down onto his chin, and she felt her lips twitch.
Things dissolved into straightforward battle – a kind of monotony that somehow sent adrenaline rushing through her veins. Calida stomped her foot on the ground, and sharp spires rose from the earth, designed to impale and disembowel. Adepts leapt away, some even dashing on the air to flee. Nicholas dashed about in the fray, using his own hands as his weapons as he touched random body parts like he was playing a game of tag, except whatever he touched turned into weird things like the leaves and stalks of plants.
When the injured pale-haired boy got surrounded, a stream of water broke the group apart, followed by a pulse in her head that she knew wasn't directed at anyone on Daniel's side: You’re sparring together in the Athenaeum. It’s just training, don’t hold back! Most of their enemies began to fight among themselves, throwing punches and the like, seemingly forgetting that their weapons could kill and maim. It was clever; instead of telling them to attack each other, he’d weaved an illusion that was easy to believe, targeting habit to let them slip into something that they did everyday as Delegates. But that mental attack was soon countered by a defense that snapped the weaker-willed Adepts out of their daze. Their counterattack made her freeze for a moment, in the middle of raising her whip, and open her mouth. "I..." She blinked hard and snapped her whip forward, yelling, “I won’t let you in my head, you bastards!" The Adepts scattered away.
The longer the battle stretched, the longer they fought for their lives, the more her blood seemed to burn with a heady rush of energy, magic, something that made her feel powerful. To realise their potential as Emblems – perhaps it had never truly been about training, but about having a drive to use all the power they’d been given. It was happening though, she could feel it. She didn’t have to hold back on her magic anymore, since her reserves felt almost full again. Every gust of wind became stronger, the links in the air clearer, her hands when they moved and twitched and swung and pushed so much faster, more deft, instinctive. Her magic practically called to be used.
But the legacy held true, not just in that aspect. The attacks she fired off were stronger, but so were the ones from her attackers. Leone had so, so many Adepts of every element left – more than she had time to count, and they were ganging up on her. No matter how strong she grew, it would mean nothing if they overwhelmed her with sheer numbers.
Somehow, they’d surrounded her, and when she whirled her whip around her, sending wind along the stingray tail to make for a ranged attack, the Adepts threw up a wall of earth around her, closing up at the top. Earth Adepts? When did they get to me? The walls began to close in and the space inside got smaller and smaller. She straightened, whirled the air around her, turned the edges sharp and snapped everything up and around like her whip. Gouges formed in the earthen walls, but she'd underestimated their thickness. Was this what Adepts could do when they worked together?
Gritting her teeth, she raised her dagger above her head. Weapons wouldn't do anything against elements, so she channeled her power over the blade till the tip of her magic was as sharp as the dagger she held. One, two, three and she jumped up, boosted by a burst of wind, to slam everything she had into the top of the dome.