Further north, in the heart of the tundra, a similar conversation was taking place, between the Alpha of the Fire Nexus and one of his newest recruits. The man’s name was Jerik. He wasn’t a very emotional lad, in fact, it wouldn’t be far off to say that he was the opposite. He was very careful and confident in both his training and his conversations with fellow Nexians. Michael, the Alpha, had watched Jerik’s growth over the past months with some interest. He picked up the supernatural art of creating and wielding fire remarkably quickly, even leaving some older recruits behind with the speed of his mastery.
Michael had heard of the condition that some soldiers got after a particularly gruesome deployment. What was it called? Socio-something? Ah, yes. Sociopathy. In most people, it was something you picked up in early life, but Michael couldn’t tell where Jerik had got it, only that he did. This was an affliction that he understood all too well. He was a former soldier himself. It was what had drawn him to Jerik and led to him accepting the new recruit.
Not that it had been easy convincing the council, he thought with a long sigh. Of all the Nexuses, Fire had the most members. Michael had worked hard to refill his ranks after the events of the last Nexus War. When Edward Ambrose died, all the Nexians under him had lost their powers as well. Except for Charlisa, he reminded himself. But that had likely been because she was already inducted into young Will’s Nexus.
Will’s Nexus was, of course, the smallest. It was a strange thing to think about because the man had quickly gained popularity. Many people tried to join the newly formed Thunder Nexus, but he’d turned all prospects away. He’d stuck with his core of recruits, which included his son just over a year after the boy had been born. Born of Nexians, he of course grew to full adulthood in less than two years. Now he was on the fast track to becoming a prodigy like his parents.
Jerik was of a similar vein, he thought, returning his attention to his own recruit. He’d already mastered the basics of creating and manipulating his fame. He was even making good progress on learning Michael’s own skill, the ability to create explosions of fire a fair distance away from his position. He’d been practicing that over the past few weeks. Now, Michael felt it was time to check in on his progress. This decision had come with perfect timing, it seemed, as Jerik had asked him over dinner that night to come to the training ground with him to watch something.
“So, young Jerik,” he said, his face showing his interest, “What is it you wanted to show me?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about the power you were teaching me. Making explosions a fair distance away is tricky, but I’m getting the hang of it.”
He turned away to demonstrate, and Michael watched a small sphere of flames form about fifty feet away and pop with the force of a small bomb. He nodded his approval. “You’ve just about got the hang of it. Good work.”
“Thank you,” Jerik replied. “But it got me thinking. It takes nearly double the effort to summon it far away. If I could just send a bomb in that direction, it would be far more effective.”
“True,” Michael admitted. “But the surprise effect of summoning it further away outweighs that effort. Besides, controlling fire for that distance in a simple straight line requires a great deal of control. Nobody alive has that skill.”
“Well, Edward Ambrose did,” Jerik replied. “I’ve seen a video of him shooting a stream of fire nearly two hundred meters.”
Michael nodded his agreement, remembering seeing the video himself once, long ago. “He could do that. But he didn’t teach any others, even his daughter. It’s a lost skill.”
Instead of replying, Jerik turned back to the long line of fireproof training dummies that were on the grounds. He coated his hands in flam, then put them together. Michael watched, fascinated, as he saw the flames there spinning and condensing in place. It looked like the mouth of a railgun cannon, he thought. Then, with a brilliant flash of light that made even him narrow his eyes the flame erupted from between Jerik’s hands, shooting out in a straight line.
It did closely resemble the jet of flame that Edward Ambrose had been famous for producing, but it was a much tighter beam, barely a foot wide at the end. It just missed the furthest training dummy, much to Jerik’s obvious disappointment, but then made contact with a large rock behind it. The flash of light was much less than Michael had expected, but the explosive force of that impact shattered the rock, sending debris flying high into the air.
“My god!” he exclaimed, taking a step back in shock. “How on earth did you manage that?”
Jerik shrugged modestly, making it seem as if the special attack were nothing special. “I just thought of it like a bullet. The tighter the spin, the further it goes, right?”
“Well, yes, but if you don’t have a long barrel, that spin could go in either direction!” He countered. “How do you make sure it stays in such a straight line?”
Jerik frowned thoughtfully for a moment, trying to put the thoughts into words. “Well, I suppose the simplest way to explain is that I keep giving it power, even after it leads my hands.”
Michael stroked his beard. He did remember seeing a trail of light streaking behind the projectile as it flashed away from Jerik, but he’d attributed that to mere light. The beam of fire, concentrated down to the size of an orange, would of course have a tremendous tail. But if that were increased with even more firepower, it was possible…
“Ah, I can’t understand it,” he finally said, admitting defeat. “I’m a simple man myself. I know how to make things explode from my time in the military, and I’ve got a mind for strategy. But you’re leagues above me in that.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Again, Jerik shrugged, refusing to take the compliment. His modesty was almost annoying, sometimes. “I wouldn’t say that. I just understand the workings of a sniper rifle and wanted to make one with my powers. I still have to work on the accuracy, and it takes too long to charge up.”
“That’s certainly true,” Michael agreed. “But you know, this is most definitely a Rank-A skill in terms of lethality. You won’t be able to use it at the Nexus Games. Or really anywhere, as long as we’re not at war.”
Jerik shrugged for a third time. “I realized that, of course. But it just proves that there’s more to our powers than we thought.”
His Alpha gave a deep, booming laugh at that. “Well, that’s true enough. You and I are living proof of that.”
There was a long pause as they both looked at the distant cloud of dust still hanging in the air. Then Michael added a point. “I mean it though. This skill won’t do you any good at the Nexus Games. I think you should focus on a new application. Or just harness your basic skills further if you can’t.”
“I’m already thinking of something else,” Jerik admitted. “It’s much harder for me to put together because it doesn’t deal with the energy side of fire, but the light.”
Michael shook his head in admiration, putting one hand on the man’s shoulder in encouragement, the way he once did with the soldiers under his command. “You’re a promising recruit, alright. I think I’ll have to show off your talents at the next Council meeting. Keep practicing it if you must, but focus on other things more.”
Jerik gave a swift salute, putting just two fingers to his forehead. “Yes, sir.”
“We’re not in the military anymore, lad,” he said. “Call me by name. I’ll leave you to it then. Good night.”
Jerik watched his Alpha walking away, his mind running through the many simulations he’d taken to creating for his training. Using the powers of the Fire Nexus was easier than he’d expected. Sure, it had been a struggle at first, like using a muscle he’d just discovered. But once he understood the principles behind the power, it became no more difficult than proper imagination and patience. Fire was, at its core, divided into three parts. Heat, Force, and Light.
The attack he’d just shown his Alpha had taken great advantage of the first two parts of fire. If you condensed heat with enough force, the resultant explosion was incredibly powerful. He’d already experimented enough to learn that he could make the attack less or more obvious by tweaking how much light the weapon gave off. It may have amazed his leader, but for Jerik, it was nothing more than the first step of many.
Less heat, he thought to himself. It was a principle behind one of the most basic skills to give a Fire Nexian a quick boost of power. The colder it was around you, the more powerful you became. But Jerik had been the first to ask what happened in the reverse. What if the air around you heated up? Well, you’d get weaker, the others said. But there was more to fighting than outright power, he thought.
He looked down at his hand now and increased the heat in the air around it. At once, he could feel the power of his flame retreating. Still, he increased the heat further. Snow around him was steaming now. Still not enough. He put as much force into it as he could, and now his vision was beginning to blur. He fought past the disorienting sensation, pouring as much power into it as he could. Before his eyes, his hand flickered, as if heat waves were wrapping around it, obscuring it, making it much harder to spot.
He felt a slow grin cross his face as he finally gave up. The cold rushed back in with a greedy sort of hunger, the tundra wind blowing away the heat he’d amassed. The sense of power flooding back into him only made him grin wider. It was good to have a powerful weapon on hand. But more importantly, he had to master this new skill for the mission. He was still a soldier, even if the military was swiftly becoming a distant memory. He knew what his end goal was, and he’d flip the world of the Nexus on its head to gain the tools he needed.
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Megan, like Eric and Jerik, was training as hard as she could. She’d come back to Earth for a specific purpose, and training was just another expected thing. She’d been accepted into the Water Nexus almost immediately, and when Rachel Smith had shared her power, she’d found herself in a new sort of family that had proved far warmer and more comforting than anything she’d ever experienced in this world.
Life in the Water Nexus of Miami was always relaxing, even when training. With nearly as many members as the Fire Nexus of Alaska, they had no shortage of wisdom to share with new recruits as they mastered the basics and worked on perfecting the craft. Weaving water, Megan decided, was a lot like the magic of Ahya. The comparison of her own reservoirs of energy to the mana she’d grown accustomed to using in Ahya had helped her acclimate to the strange power much more quickly.
In no time at all, with the help of daily stamina training and intense focus on one area at a time, Megan was quickly rising through the ranks of the Water Nexus. When she’d mastered the ice techniques that Felix and Olivia had created, Rachel had jokingly said that she might just be a Captain by the end of the year. Even the twins’ father couldn’t hide his shock at how quickly she was picking it all up.
The twins were something that she hadn’t expected. Olivia was a smart, patient, and fiercely determined woman who welcomed Megan with open arms and guided her through her training. She reminded Megan of her friend Rachel from the College of Milagre, save for the fact that she seemed much stronger. She and Rachel had been classmates in school, and Megan remembered those days fondly.
As for Felix, the comparison was even stronger. Apart from his deeply tanned skin, he was the perfect picture of Megan’s friend Michael Ciayol. He was agile, nimble, possessed tremendous skill in combat, and had so much confidence in his skill that it was bordering on cocky. There was even a similarity in their attitudes, though Felix was much less of a playboy than Michael had been for the first few years.
And then there was Rachel Smith, the Alpha of the Water Nexus. Her kind nature, motherly demeanor, and ability to solve Megan’s deepest troubles were a wonderful thing to behold. Her own mother had been a harsh failure in all categories and died early in her life. Rachel was a perfect mother, not just to her own two children, but also to the Nexus. It was wonderful. It was also confusing.
Megan knew that her reason for being back on Earth was to help Grimr with his mission. She still understood exactly why he had to do it because the Nexus was an alien power not of this world. It would tear Earth apart if it was left to its own devices for too long. She’d even learned about the bloody history of the Nexuses, and how much damage they’d done to the world in her absence. Just fourteen years, yet they had a footprint in history that would never fade.
Yet, living amongst the Water Nexus had given her an entirely different impression. Rachel wasn’t the harsh, uncaring monster that had allegedly flooded half the Midwest. She was fierce and powerful, but more than kind enough to temper the worst rumors that Megan had heard. Even the regular humans of Miami loved her, for they lived under her protection and benevolence.
The Nexus power had to go. That was the mission. Grimr intended to take that power back from the humans of Earth and return it to where it belonged. But the Alphas, as far as she knew and could hear from others, were kind figures of authority that were doing their best to protect their own. The two opposing facts warred inside her mind constantly, troubling her deeply and resisting even Rachel’s warm attempts to help her. Could she really find it within herself to destroy the peaceful life that the Water Nexus had created, and rob these people of the thing that made them so great?
*As mentioned in the previous chapter, there are several beings from another world coming to Earth. Though born on Earth, Jerik and Megan have spent the past several years in Ahya, and have been conscripted to Grimr’s mission of ridding Earth of the Nexus powers once and for all. Megan has no children, but she has found a long-term boyfriend in Michael Ciayol and a fulfilling life as a student-turned-teacher at the Mages College of Milagre in Ahya. This part of her storyline is outlined in Path of the Outsiders and Curse of the Outsiders.
*Unique among the others, Ahya is not the only world that Jerik has been too. He was the leader of a force of people fighting to free another world, Menora, from the evil force that had clutched it. As a reward for his efforts, the god of that world gave him the ability to travel to other worlds at will. This is what brought him to Ahya to meet Grimr. His storyline begins in my story “Mech and Magic”, and he has a small presence in “Curse of the Outsiders”.