Jesús arrives at home running from town, he enters below the barbed wire fence that mostly surrounds his house. He took a few steps and just stared at the welcoming home.
Finally, feeling his legs weakening, he all of a sudden, felt a great, heavy burden within his heart; it was the pain of devastation.
Jesús dropped down to his knees before falling on his side, wincing as he felt his ribs hit the hard, packed dirt beneath him... and began crying silently. He did that for a few hours (or at least that was what it felt like to him.)
Jesús stood up with dry tears on his face and what he imagined, red eyes, from crying so much, before contemplating on what he was going to do next. Contacting family members was not an option for him, because, technically, he had no more family, his grandmother had died of natural causes in 2002.
He felt so saddened his throat hurt; which was not a new feeling, his throat hurts every time he was truly sad. As for his aunts, uncles, and cousins, they had moved to Cúcuta Colombia 2 months earlier before this event. The reason for their departure is a little vague; all he knows is that there was some big job opportunity that paid more than they were ever going to be paid by working in Covención.
As for the jobs they held before, he doesn’t know, except for one of his uncles, he had worked for the public bus company cleaning buses. Jesús also had another aunt who left right after his grandmother had died, his aunt was dependent on her, she couldn't live by herself because she was a drug addict... she took lots of pills and he didn’t know where she got a hold of them. His family had called her "crazy" because of that. When she left, she took to the streets; he hasn’t seen her to this day. She did have a kid though but he went with the "job opportunity" party.
What a life, “what can I do now?” For no particular reason, Jesús decided to go back into town. When he got there, he just wandered around. Jesús walked until his legs started to hurt. Then he stumbled upon a library that he hadn't seen before. So he went in to see what was in there, that's when Jesús met Mrs. Locatelli...
Jesús just finished his Eragon book. With a pained effort, he stood up from leaning against the tree; his neck muscles hurt the most from reading his book on his lap. He heads towards his 12 by 12 and 7 feet high hut to put the book away.
The hut is made of dried mud mixed with straw, reinforced with long, branch sticks tied together with thin vines; the walls are about 6 inches thick. The roof is just sheet metal that he found near a sugar cane processing factory nearby. The sheet metal is to protect from rain obviously, especially the walls that erode if there is too much water.
After setting his book down, and tossing his straw hat towards the area where he sleeps, he heads back out, taking a shovel with him. He walks up to a steep trail dominated by tall grasses and trees on each side, towards the road that heads to town.
Jesús gets there, stops and looks around for human feces from passing travelers, why they do it here, he doesn’t know.
If he doesn’t take care of the problem every once in a while, it would stink bad, he could leave it to nature but it's just a slow process, so he move the feces away from the trail and bury it.
The trail itself is about 2 miles away from his parents' house, which puts him farther away from town. He doesn’t mind that, it doesn’t hurt to walk more.
After he finishes with his chore, he starts to walk back down to his hut when he spots two figures coming down the road from the direction of town. Nobody visits him so he thinks they are just strangers. Strangers though are usually in cars or taxis; they don’t walk except for a random drunk here and there, the usual stuff.
He wanted to know what they looked like. Where he was standing, it was just a small mountain of dirt covered with wild grass. He decides to get on his knees so they wouldn’t see him, he doesn’t like to attract attention to himself. So he waits and the figures came closer, they were two teenagers about his age, a male, and a female.
Normally if they were two guys, he would become nervous at this point. Guys from town are bullies; a long time ago they took his money and ran away, money that various generous people gave him because he was poor. Other times they spread their arms out to block him and keep him from going home, they laughed at that. He had to trick them by pretending to go one direction and instantly switching to another, he was smaller than them so it was easy to get by.
The two teenagers by this point were close enough to see their faces and hear them. They were talking but he couldn’t pick anything up. It sounded like English, he knew because his mom told him what English sounded like, by saying “Hello”, “Goodbye”, “good morning”, and so on, simple words. Of course, the teenagers were not saying those kinds of words but he picked up the style.
Then something surprising happened that made his heart race, they stopped just below his hiding place on the side of the road. They both got quiet, Jesús was contemplating on whether to sneak away and run back to his hut or just stay where he was to wait and see what would happen.
The female made that decision for him, she was a head shorter than the guy, she looked a little muscular, it seemed like she was capable of beating up anybody. Her skin was pale with barely perceptible green eyes and short light brown hair that touched her shoulders. She raised her small pale hands toward the sky as if she was summoning powers.
Then all of a sudden his vision went dark like a camera losing power and still trying to hang on. Jesús was afraid because he had a sudden thought that he was going to faint. But it was over in a few seconds, his vision returned but he had a slight headache. Surprisingly, he could finally understand the guy, who was also muscular “can he understand English yet?” He asked pretending to be impatient and smiling.
“My spell should have worked, why? Are you doubting my powers Nick?” she answered smiling back.
“No Casper, I would never doubt you, you should know that.”
Casper shook her head at their situation and directed her voice at him. “Jesús, we know you are hiding and watching us, show yourself.”
Ashamed at himself, he did as she bid; he got out of his hiding spot, walked down the small incline and faced them.
“Hello, Jesús.” Greeted Nick, he had dark brown eyes, dirty blond hair that was almost curly and light skin. With a grin, he held out his right hand, Jesús took it and shook it. “Well, apparently you already know our names, you must have heard us.”
“As a matter of fact, I did,” I replied a little surprised; I must have spoken English too because I saw that they understood me. “What brings you to these here parts?”
Casper replied, “Do you remember Gukumatz the god? The one that showed up after your parents got taken away?”
Jesús nodded his mind recalling how confused he was, the most devastating day of his life.
“Well,” she continued “he mentioned ‘a magical being named Scott’, we are here to take you to him.”
Nick added “In a way we are recruiting you, being that you are the most powerful wizard in the world right now. Also, you have a chance to save your parents, they are still alive.”
"Really? how come nobody told me about this?" Jesús asked angrily, he couldn't control himself, Jesús yelled, "Why was it kept from me?!!!!"
Calmly, Casper replied, "Scott couldn't let you know because he was afraid you would do something that you would regret. Maybe even end up killing yourself."
Nick, just as calm added, "you were young Jesús, a 9-year-old can't be let loose to fight. It was too risky."
"Now, Scott has decided at this time to let you know, because you are more mature. Naturally, it wouldn't as risky, you can go and save your parents now." Casper said, waiting for some other reaction.
Taking a deep sigh, Jesús replied, “I guess I don’t have a choice then, what’s this wizard stuff anyway, I don’t have any powers that I know of.”
Smiling, Casper said, “That’s the main reason we are taking you to Scott in the first place, you powers are not activated per say, or at least they are not at their full potential, he has a friend with the powers to do so, once your powers are activated, you must use them to save your parents and defeat an evil dragon, Gukumatz mentioned that also I believe.”
“What does this evil dragon have to do with anything? Apart from being evil, what did it do wrong?”
“According to our intelligence, he was the one that ordered the kidnapping of your parents, his name is Stephen, his goal in life is to destroy and kill every magical being in the world, so evil, and himself can rule the world, we are afraid that he will make everybody his slave, in a way it would be like hell on Earth.” Nick replied sadly.
“Well that sounds terrible, especially with my parents as prisoners, fine I will help you defeat that dragon, for the sake of my parents, and the world if what you say is true, and I’m guessing you guys are magical beings too unless I am truly imagining things.” Jesús said.
“You guessed right, we are magical beings, we belong to a secret organization called Kanan Kuxtal, and it’s Mayan for protecting the life.” Casper informed.
“Ok… so then how do the Mayans relate to this secret organization of yours?” Jesús asked Casper a little confused.
“The Mayans were the ones that started this organization in the first place, we are just carrying on their work.”
“why…”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Nick interrupted “look Jesús, Scott will answer those questions for you, right now we got to take you to him. We can’t linger around here long, Will, Stephen’s sidekick, can detect unusual concentrations of magic depending on where he is, he is a real trouble maker if you ask me.”
“Yes,” Casper agreed, “We must go.”
“Then off we go.” Nick declared.
Then all of a sudden, Nick blurred a little bit and transformed into a bald eagle. It was a mighty one, three times the size of himself. Majestically, he jumped into the air and gained altitude. He soared a few times and glided back down at a high speed. In a swift move, he grabbed Jesús’ arms with his rough talons and found himself in the air.
It was scary because he felt like he was going to fall at any moment, Jesús decided to look down at the road below him that Nick seemed to be following.
He saw Casper running at a great speed like a car, I knew because there happened to be a car traveling closely behind her. He yelled up at Nick “Hey! Wouldn’t people get scared if they saw Casper running that fast?!”
“No” he spoke to him mentally “she has a spell on her that makes her undetectable by non-magical humans”
“Geez I got to get used to this magical stuff”, this morning Jesús woke up thinking everything was normal, in a non-magical sense of course, apparently he was wrong.
They had just passed a house next to a bridge below, soon after nick started circling an unusually thick clump of trees at the base of a large hill, where the road turned sharply right. After several passes over the trees, Casper caught up to them and without stopping, disappeared into the clump of trees.
By this time, Nick started descending, when Jesús was five feet above the ground, he unexpectedly dropped him, Jesús fell to the ground with a thump, rolled a little and ended up on his back. When he got up and looked around, Nick had already transformed back to human and was heading toward the trees.
Jesús figured he should follow him, since he bothered to carry him all this way. He strolled into the trees and it felt cool in there, although some sunlight seeped through the branches above. He looked around, nobody was around, so Jesús decided to walk deeper into the trees, and he was following a none-too-worn-out path with trees on each side. This led him to believe people didn’t walk through here much. When Jesús got around a bend in the trail to the left, he came upon a pool of water, since it was clear he could see to the bottom.
To his left, Jesús was hearing a trickling of water and so he turned his head. Casper and Nick were both standing next to a circular basin carved out of rock. The hot tub sized basin was overflowing with the trickling of fresh water from the mountain, which filled the pool he saw earlier. Casper and Nick were both smiling staring at Jesús, which looked like anticipation.
After a few seconds, Casper spoke up, “Hey Jesús, glad you made it through the forest of trees.” She said with sarcasm in her voice. “If only what you are about to do next were as easy that.”
“As you know Jesús we belong to a secret organization.” Nick added, “which leads us to creating a system to entering our hiding place. Every new member must pass a worthiness test.”
“Ok… what am I supposed to do to test my worthiness?” I asked.
Pointing to the pool, Nick explained, “You are supposed to jump in there and grab a snake that swims around at the bottom, it’s a magic snake so when you grab it, it will vanish. Once that happens, you pass the test and you are permitted to our hiding place. Since Casper and I have already done the test, we usually enter automatically but with you around we can’t enter.”
“What will happen if I am not worthy?” He asked just to hear the answer.
“The snake will bite you and swim away, thus we would have wasted our time on you.” Casper informed.
With that said, he stepped toward the pool, looked around the bottom and as expected, Jesús saw a normal looking snake with the color of light clay. He watched it for a while to pick its swimming pattern. As it turns out, it was doing circular laps at the bottom.
“Well that’s easy enough, since its doing laps, I could just intercept it and grab it. What is so hard about that?” He asked turning to Casper.
She smiled again and said, “The fact that you have to swim all the way to the bottom, wait for it far enough away so you don’t scare it, capture the snake then resurface all with the time you can hold you breath.”
Jesús smiled, “Now that you put it that way, it is hard.”
“Yep.” Casper replied.
Jesús had blue shorts and a white t-shirt. He decided to jump into the pool with that on just because he wanted to get the test over with. Jesús waded a little bit taking deep breaths, and then he started his struggle swimming downwards toward a calculated spot, with as much air as he could possibly inhale.
When he got to the spot, he already wanted to breathe. However he didn’t have to wait long, through his blurry vision under water, Jesús saw the snake closing in. He extended his right arm and got ready to strike. When he got the chance, he struck the snake as fast as he could and grabbed at it near the area of the head. As soon as he did that, there was a slight tingle all over his body, which lasted for about a second. Right when the tingle disappeared, so did the snake, as if it never was in his hand in the first place.
With an extreme longing for air, Jesús made his way back up to the surface and clung to the side of the pool gasping for air. Before getting out of the pool, he waited for his breathing to get back to normal.
As Jesús made his way toward Nick and Casper, his clothing clung to him as water dripped down to the ground. When Jesús looked next to them to see the basin, it had risen about six feet along the wall where water was running down to it. Below the basin, there were carved out stairs leading down to what appeared to a wooden door.
“You guys don’t happen to have extra clothes do you?”
“First of all, congratulations on passing the test, and second you don’t have to change your wet clothes.” Nick informed like it was an everyday thing.
“What do you mean I don’t need to change my wet clothes? Walking around in them is quite uncomfortable.”
Cheerfully, Casper said, “If you would follow us down the stairs, you will find out what he means now come on! There are people to meet!” She said with excitement, "And remember to be yourself! Don't be nervous."
“Ok then.” And Jesús followed, when he started stepping down the stairs, his clothing was instantly dried. Another one of those weird magic things, by this time, he didn’t think he would be surprised of anything magical from then on. “I see what you mean Nick.”
When Jesús went through the wooden door after Nick and Casper, he didn’t know what to expect. The room he found himself in was round and white. Around the entire room were white doors including the one he just entered, except that door had a red exit sign above it.
The number of doors was about a couple dozen he thought, Jesús didn’t bother to count. The eight foot high ceiling illuminated the room with five pairs of florescent lamps, fifth one being in the middle of the room above a round wooden table.
Seated around the table were eleven people, they seemed to be about his age or younger. The group was playing what appeared to be Texas Holdem.
He couldn’t help but smile as he commented to them, “Well, well, I didn’t know the Knights of the Round Table played cards.” All but one directed their eyes at Jesús; apparently they didn’t seem to be as amused as he was at his own clever joke.
The one who wasn’t looking at him stood up all of a sudden pumping her arms up and down and exclaimed, “Yes! I win!” Apparently she realized that she had the best hand of cards. She stopped celebrating and looked around surprised, and then understanding showed itself on her face “Wait… Jesús is here isn’t he.”
Without waiting for an answer she looked directly at him and said, “Welcome to team Kanan Kuxtal Jesús, we have been looking forward to meeting you.” She sat back down with an almost embarrassed smile, probably from being the last one to notice him.
Another of the eleven people around the table stood up from his seat. The guy was a little taller than Jesús and around his age, his eyes appeared greenish from a distance but then again Jesús wouldn’t care what color they really were. His hair was sandy blond and it was short.
He made his way toward Jesús and then held out his hand, Jesús of course shook it, “Greetings I am called Scott, I am sure you have already heard of me Jesús, as we know about you as well. I will introduce you our little team here and then you will go to my office with me and I will answer any questions you may have.”
Scott turned toward the group of people and spoke up louder so they could hear him, “Alright, come on you lazy bums! I need to introduce you all to Jesús”
They all got up with groans; as if they thought it would be better to be introduced while sitting down. The first person that came up was about Scott’s height, with dark brown hair. He reminded me of the main character from Nacho Libre, Jack Black I believe was his name, the person in front of me just looked like a younger version of him.
Scott put his left hand on the guy’s right shoulder and said, “This guy is Zanithos, or Rob as we prefer to call him. He is an immortal daemon, born of another universe that is different from ours, it currently does not exist. Because of that, he is older than this universe. His weakness is magical objects, they could kill him.”
Rob looked like he would rather be doing something else, like back to playing Texas hold ‘em perhaps. When he saw that he was done being introduced, he nodded and went back to the round table.
Next up was the girl who jumped up and announced she won; Scott of course informed me that her name was kali, her powers are unique in that she can take powers away from people and use it against them if she wanted to.
Kali smiled and went back to the table to sit next to Rob, his mood seemed to have been improved when that happened.
Next person was Vincent, he was a little shorter than me but he was tough looking. Vincent was an African American; he said that he has been living in the U.S. for most of his life.
I noticed that he was holding a red cooler with ice in it, he took of piece of ice and magically molded it into a goblet. Next he took another piece of ice and melted it with his hand that had turned bright red, the water should have fallen to the floor but it had been held suspended in the air, Vincent played around with the water swinging it around, then he let it fall into the goblet he had made earlier.
Vincent took a drink of the water then smiled and said, “How is THAT for an introduction.” Vincent melted the goblet until it had turned into steam; no water had fallen to the floor.
After that he said that he could also make ice using the moisture in the air but he liked carrying the ice around, but he showed the process by recovering the steam he put into the air, it was basically a mini winter on fast forward until he ended up with ice on his hand, he put it into the cooler and walked away back to the table.
The fourth person, was a girl named Sehrish, she was fairly tall, with medium brown hair, and skinny. She was quiet, with intelligent brown eyes. Her special contribution it turned out, was that she was a vampire, the type that feeds on blood, runs at a high speeds and can’t be in the sun because she would die.
Right after that, I found out that vampires of her species could be revived via magic. The fifth was an Asian girl shorter than I, her name was Alina and she was Vietnamese, and she had “ninja powers”, which means she uses magic to put up a good fight.
The sixth person had the same powers and she too was a girl, short with long brown, straight hair past her shoulders, her eyes was hazel looking, and her name was Brooke.
The next person after her was Gabe, he could control earth and minerals, he was a big dude, with short dark hair and huge side burns, the rest of his face was shaved.
Next up were twins, they came up together side by side, and their names were Walker and Witt. They were both dragons, they couldn’t change into dragons because they were too big for the room we were in.
The last person was Dobby; he was an American with dark brown and was about my height. He could morph into any animal he could think of, his favorite animal to be was a raven.
After everybody was introduced, I looked around for Nick and Casper; they were nowhere to be seen. I asked Scott and he said, “Your escorts are in their rooms, they will be out any minute.”