We didn’t believe him at first. It certainly wasn’t far-fetched to suggest that a demigod could be Claimed in a dream, but the fact that we’d never seen it happen to somebody threw us all for a loop. My mind simultaneously wanted to believe Jay and scream at him that he was lying. But we knew he wasn’t. I think we just didn’t want to believe it. Jay, a son of Ares? It seemed like such a contrasting combination that nobody could bring themselves to agree with him. We only truly accepted Jay’s claim when he brought his mom to The Tower to back him up. That settled it. Now it was just Asbel and Natasha that hadn’t been Claimed, and Asbel’s mood had dropped tremendously upon hearing the news that Jay had also been Claimed before him.
Last night had been a long night. Henry and Charlotte hadn’t wanted to talk about me – well they had – but not anything like how I’d been doing, or how I’d found life in RoCity, or how I liked being descended from Titan. They wanted all the facts and numbers about being two per cent bird. Of course, I’d regrettably pretty much told Charlotte everything a month ago, but apparently, Henry had wanted to hear it come from my mouth and my mouth only. It had been quite the drag, repeating everything again. I didn’t mind talking about my bird DNA if I was the one in control of the conversation. Last night had felt more like an interrogation than a friendly chat. The two of them constantly pelted me with questions, some of them so obscene that even I didn’t know the answer, and the questions were about me.
But the Christmas holidays had officially begun, and after Jay told us about his Claiming, light snow began to fall upon the city. Now, living in England with its unpredictable weather made this our first time seeing snow in years, so the seven of us were very excited.
After spending a gruelling ten minutes with tight guts, Ethan and I managed to slightly dictate the snow. Very, very slightly. I managed to create a little spiral out of the snowflakes whilst they were in midair and push it slowly towards Jay. He punched it. Jokingly, sure, but I tried hard for that spiral, and he just ruined it.
Ethan, on the other hand, somehow concentrated enough to make a storm of torrential snow chase Asbel and Natasha. I envied how quickly he had grown accustomed to his powers. He had mentioned that he secretly trained when nobody was looking, which I did, too, but clearly not as much as he did. Maybe I should’ve prolonged the time I dedicated to training.
Henry told us about a park up on the western side of the Valley, near the forest. Whilst the rest of my friends Dis-Apparated (like teleportation) with Henry and Grandad, Maltor and I flew. It was great fun, feeling the snow slowly hit my wings and seep through the feathers. It felt magical, as though I were part of some sci-fi film.
There were a few people at the park when we arrived, but we didn’t let that stop our fun. The ‘park’ was really just a big field. Huge trees dotted the area, snow coating their branches. Some kids were having snowball fights, others were building snowmen, and others were just enjoying the weather.
Ethan hurriedly made a snowball and hurled it at me whilst I was trying to land. It hit me in the chest, hard. In return, I grabbed two handfuls of snow and soared back up into the sky.
I balled the two piles together and drew my hands far back. ‘Is that all you got?’
My hands rocketed forwards. The snowball darted through the air like a bullet, smashing into Ethan’s jaw. He let out a muffled howl of pain and fell to his knees. I forgot that I was stronger than a grown man.
When Jay and Natasha went to check on him he waved them away and got back to his feet.
‘So we’re playing dirty, huh?’ he yelled.
He picked up another snowball and threw it at me, I rolled in the air to avoid it. Once righting myself after the roll, I was betrayed. Maltor hurled another snowball at me and it caught my right wing. Then Asbel threw another one at me and it caught my left.
Yelping, I dropped to the ground. It was like falling onto a pillow, but my wings felt numb. I coughed slightly as I sat up. Someone poked my shoulder from behind. Turning, I felt my heart stop momentarily. The girl standing over me had flowing blond hair that fell gracefully down over her shoulders. Her warm brown eyes sparkled with happiness when the two of us looked at each other. She wore a white coat and blue jeans. To complete the outfit, she wore huge black boots.
‘H-hi?’ I said, feeling my face grow hot.
She offered her hand out to me, as though trying to help me up. I stared into her eyes and she stared right back. I slowly reached my hand behind me and she helped pull me to my feet. I turned to face her and the two of us stood awkwardly whilst our hands were still touching. I spluttered clumsily and pulled my hand away, shoving it deep into my pocket.
‘Albert, right?’ she giggled.
‘Huh? Me?’ I said, staring at her blankly. ‘Yeah, I guess.
She giggled again. A sweet noise that made my heart beat a little bit faster. She looked at me expectantly and I realised what she wanted me to say.
‘Uh, and, who’re you?’ I asked hesitantly.
She giggled yet again. ‘Emma.’
‘Emma?’ I said faintly. ‘Oh, yeah, Josh mentioned you a while back. You saw me flying right?’
‘Of course, I did,’ she said, grinning. ‘Along with you falling to the ground.’
I uncomfortably ran my fingers through my hair. ‘Yeah…doesn’t help when you’re mates throw snowballs at your wings, though, does it?’
‘I guess not,’ she said, gazing at me in a strange way that made me stare at a group of Year 8 boys making a snowman.
Trying desperately to make conversation, I stuttered, ‘So…have you been Claimed?’
‘Oh, yeah, ‘course I have,’ she said brightly. ‘I’m a daughter of Apollo.’
‘Apollo? That’s new,’ I said, staring at her in amazement.
She laughed, not giggled. ‘You’ve only been here a month, right? I’m kinda surprised you haven’t met more of my siblings, my dad has quite a lot of kids.’
‘Really?’ I asked, in disbelief.
‘Yeah, you know Daniel? I think he’s in your Form. He’s a son of Apollo,’ she said simply.
My heart sank.
‘Do you have any special powers, you know, as a daughter of Apollo?’ I asked quickly, trying to change the subject from Daniel.
‘Don’t say it like that!’ she said, pushing me playfully. ‘Of course I do!’
I looked at her, waiting for an answer. She leaned close, stepping on her tiptoes and brought her mouth very close to my ear.
‘I’ll tell you later,’ she said teasingly.
Goosebumps emerged all over my body, and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention. She giggled as she ran towards a group of girls. They had evidently been watching me and Emma, unbeknownst to the two of us.
I stood in a sort of stunned silence for a few seconds after she had run off. The moment I turned around to go back to my friends, Isaac dashed a snowball in my direction and it caught me in the stomach. I can guarantee that he had shown up at this park randomly, joined us, and stood there with his arm ready to throw that from the moment he saw me.
Grandad and Henry smirked at me as I slowly walked back over and I blushed furiously but tried to ignore them. My friends made sure not to let me forget that I had just spoken to a real-life girl.
We had a snowball fight for the best part of an hour, and afterwards, we all went to the café across from The Tower. We laughed, ate doughnuts, drank coffee, and the whole experience made me feel as though I were king of the world. I felt like a god. At one point, Peter and Quinn had a competition to see who could fit the most doughnuts in their mouth. Quinn managed one. Peter managed two. Thrilling competition, to say the least.
***
It had been two days since the snowball fight and café fun, and I was itching to train. I wanted to fight Amy. And if she used magic then I guess I would have to, as well. I found Henry and asked him where Grandad was. Upon being told, I took the lift up to the top floor of The Tower and knocked on the door of Grandad’s office.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Upon being allowed in, I was instantly struck by the warm homey smell that masked the inside of the office. It wasn’t the largest room but two bookshelves littered with documents and files sat in each corner at the back of the room. Perfectly in the middle of them lay a crimson wood desk, with a nameplate sitting in the middle of that. A longer wooden table sat at the right side of the room, and the left side of the room was bare other than an ovular dark blue carpet, which is where Grandad was standing. He was gazing up at a picture on the wall. The image showed a beautiful young woman with glossy black hair standing next to a tall man who I immediately recognised as a younger Grandad. In front of them stood three children, all of them beaming at the camera. On the left stood a young boy, fourteen at most. In the centre stood a girl, the shortest out of the three. And on the right stood another young girl, but taller than the one in the centre. They all looked young and carefree.
Grandad turned to face me. He was wearing a beige cardigan and rectangular-framed glasses. It was the first time since I had first met him that he truly looked like a grandad. He smiled when he saw me and took a deep breath.
‘You okay, Albert?’
‘Can you teach me how to fight?’ I asked quickly.
‘Pardon?’
‘Can you teach me how to fight, please?’ I repeated, realising that it would not do me any favours to be impolite.
‘What on Earth do you mean?’ Grandad replied blankly.
‘Like, are there any spells that I can learn to help me fight? Please?’ There was a noticeable pause between my request and the ‘please’, but Grandad didn’t appear bothered by it.
There was also a noticeable pause between my request and Grandad’s answer. After what had to have been an hour, he finally said, ‘Well, there is one I can think of.’
I beamed at him. ‘The Gym at school should be free.’
‘Pardon?’ he said incredulously.
I stared at him. ‘The Gym at school should be free. We can go there.’
Somewhat surprisingly, it didn’t take any more convincing to get Grandad to follow me. He just wordlessly grabbed his wand from a drawer in his desk and followed me. I had made sure to grab my wand before leaving my room so that we didn’t need to go back.
It didn’t take long for us to reach school, and Grandad used his special power known by many as the ‘I’m-The-Prime-Minister-So-Let-Me-In power to grant us access to the Gym. As expected, it was completely empty. Grandad and I stood about five feet apart and Grandad began to explain.
‘Possibly my favourite spell of all time is Velere,’ he began. ‘Fun fact about it: it comes from the Latin words for ‘quick’ and ‘fall’: ‘velox’ and ‘cadere’. So the spell literally means ‘Quick Fall’.’
I nodded, intrigued. I certainly did enjoy learning about the history and etymology of spells, but something about the situation caused me to grow impatient. I felt as though I would burst if he did not begin to teach me immediately.
‘What does it do?’ I asked.
‘Sends the person it hits unconscious,’ he said, as though it were obvious.
I stood there, aghast. This was certainly a spell I wanted to learn.
‘So, how do you do it?’ I said, bouncing on my heels from pure excitement.
‘The same as any ordinary spell, I suppose,’ he said as he wheeled over a powered-off Combot. ‘Use this as your target, please. I don’t want to have to wait whilst Henry teaches you how to wake me back up.’
The two of us smirked at each other and let out stifled chuckles. He sauntered over and stood by my side, guiding my wand arm up and helping me aim at the Combot.
‘Steady your breathing…anything is possible, so long as you can keep your breathing steady…’ he whispered in my ear. ‘Concentrate on the spell. You want to harm the Combot. Send it flying. Whenever you’re ready, Albert.’
I took a few deep breaths, allowing myself to become one with my wand. I poured my soul into the tiny piece of wood in my right hand and stared at the Combot. Stupid thing. It deserved this.
‘Velere!’ I shouted. A few red sparks flopped depressingly out of the end of my wand. Tutting, I tilted my head slightly to the right and looked at Grandad. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be silly, Albert,’ he said reassuringly. ‘You’ve got nothing to apologise for. These things take time.’
We kept that up for about half an hour. I would try my hardest to fire the spell, and I always got the same results. Apart from one time, when yellow sparks had emerged from my wand, and even Grandad failed to hide his concern at that one. It was supposed to be a red spell.
The two of us even carried our practice over to the next day. My Christmas Eve was not spent in the traditional way, whatever that may be, and I made it so that Grandad’s wasn’t either. We spent upwards of three hours in the Gym as I tried my absolute hardest to stun a stupid robot. I began to wonder whether or not it was even possible for the spell to work on a robot. I mean, how would you knock that unconscious? If you really wanted to, couldn’t you just press the power button?
Grandad assured me, however, that it could work on a Combot, on or off. He said that they had been used in exams for a few years, so there was definitely no fault in the machine. Despite the fact that this did not make me feel any better in the slightest, it gave me a strange mindset. Like I had to do better, had to make progress. Made me truly believe in myself.
But on that cold Christmas Eve, as the clock slowly ticked closer and closer to five in the evening, it happened. And a lot quicker than Grandad had expected.
It started as usual: I aimed my wand directly at the Combot’s chest (centre?) and poured all of my willpower into my right arm. I spoke the special word, genuinely expecting nothing to happen, and watched as a red jet soared from the end of my wand and hit the middle of the Combot, sending it soaring into the back wall of the Gym.
Grandad and I stared at each other, both of us at a complete loss for words. I had done it. In that moment I felt such joy that I thought I was about to explode. There was more hope. Now I didn’t have to get up close and personal with Amy to try and kill her. I could watch from afar as she duelled someone else, before quickly sniping her consciousness from her body. There was actual hope. Real hope.
‘You learn a lot quicker than any other student I think I’ve ever seen,’ Grandad remarked, sounding thoroughly impressed. ‘I thought we’d be here for months, and that is by no means an insult to you. This spell is usually taught to Year 9s or maybe even as late as Year 10. You really do make me proud, you know that, right, Albert?’
I smiled at him. It was certainly comforting to know that I made someone proud, even if it was just one person. But at least it was the greatest person in the world I knew.
‘Really?’ I asked joyfully.
‘Why would I lie?’ he replied, smirking at me. ‘Now try again, see if you can get the hang of it.’
Using his own wand, he righted the Combot back into its original position, and I readied my wand again. On my first attempt, a spell definitely shot out, but it must have been too weak because when it hit the Combot all it did was rock it slightly. On my second attempt, however, I succeeded again. So much joy ran through my veins as I saw the Combot fly through the air that I practically floated.
I was desperate to continue practising, but Grandad suggested that we head for dinner and get an early night, as it was Christmas tomorrow. This, however, may have been a mistake on his part. I was buzzing with joy for the entire walk home. Grandad tried to get me to calm down on multiple occasions, but it was useless, nothing could ever ruin what had just happened.
Once we arrived back at The Tower, Quinn and Maltor were engaged in a hushed conversation on the right side of the room. Maltor kept glancing around, as though he was checking to see if anybody was watching or listening in on their conversation, which was evidently supposed to be a secret. I, however, had to check something with them, so I stood a few feet away from them; just enough so that I couldn’t hear their conversation but so that they would know I wanted to talk.
From the angle at which I was standing, Maltor had his back to me. At one point, Quinn gestured to me and Maltor spun around quickly. Upon seeing that it was me standing there, he said, ‘Did you hear that?’
‘Hear what?’ I asked, both confused and playing dumb.
‘Okay, good,’ Maltor said, nodding his head back as a gesture for Quinn to get up.
‘You okay?’ Quinn said quietly.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ I replied, watching him curiously. I knew how to put pressure on people, and a part of me secretly hoped that Quinn would fumble with his words and reveal what their conversation was about. ‘I just wanted to check that we’re still up for giving Christmas presents to each other, yeah?’
‘Yeah, of course,’ Maltor said in mock offence. ‘What if the others get us stuff, too, though?’
‘They won’t,’ Quinn murmured glumly. ‘Look at us three. Why would they buy something for us?’
‘Because they’re out friends,’ I replied, staring at him in utter confusion. I had dropped the pressurising act unwillingly as it had been suddenly replaced by worry and bewilderment. Why wouldn’t they get us something? But, on the other hand, if they did get us things, I would immediately feel immensely bad because I had not gotten any of them anything. It’s not that I didn’t want to, it’s because I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to buy worthy presents with my money.
‘So, they’re our friends,’ Maltor continued, without a hint of awkwardness. ‘They’re bound to get us something, right?’
‘You’re probably right,’ I said regretfully. ‘But we haven’t gotten any of them anything.’
‘We could gradually give them each a gift across January as we get more money,’ Maltor suggested.
‘No,’ Quinn interrupted instantly.
Maltor continued, ‘As a sort of late gift, you know?’
‘Yeah,’ I replied, trying not to look at Quinn, ‘that’d probably work.’
‘No,’ Quinn repeated.
‘If not, then they’ll understand that we don’t have enough money to buy something for them, right?’ Maltor murmured, uncertain.
I thought for a moment about how I was the grandson of the Prime Minister, using the fact that I didn’t have money as an excuse. Of course I had money, well, Grandad did. But I was sure that if I asked for £5 for each of my friends then he would gladly give it to me because that’s who he was.
‘That’d be morally wrong,’ I said slowly. ‘We’ll just use it as our last resort.’
‘No-’
‘What is your issue?’ I snarled, rounding on Quinn. ‘Why can’t we get them each a gift? It’s Christmas, in case you forgot.’
‘I’m not getting gifts for people that don’t know I exist,’ Quinn growled.
Maltor and I blinked.
‘Don’t know you- What?’ Maltor said quietly.
‘Are you dim?’ I said quickly. ‘Didn’t you literally come to a café with us all the other day? And have a competition with Peter? The doughnut one?’
‘I don’t care,’ Quinn said, slowly making his way over to the lift. ‘I’m not buying them gifts.’
Once the lift doors had shut, Maltor and I stared blankly at each other, trying to process what Quinn had just said.
‘Has he told you how he feels at all?’ I asked hesitantly.
‘He tells me he’s fine,’ Maltor replied. ‘Clearly, that’s not the case.’
I nodded. ‘But what have they done to upset him? I thought everything was fine.’
‘I don’t think it’s them,’ Maltor assured me. ‘I think it’s Quinn. You know how he can get sometimes.’
‘Yeah…’ I said, and that left the two of us in a deafening silence. Trying to lighten the mood, I continued, ‘Oh, yeah, I learnt a new spell today.'