The Torn Guardian Read online

  “What’s going on?” I ask all three of the brothers, but I look at Jenesis. There is no need to ask. As soon as the words come out of mouth, the globe flashes with dark red and black lightning. I watch as Nilohm’s world cracks and darkness’s magic begins to ooze out.

  To say I am a taken aback by the world erupting with darkness all over is an understatement. None of the dragons budge however. Jenesis’s demeanor is the most serious I have ever seen when he answers, “The world of Nilohm is dying, Lux. Sethos is overwhelming it.”

  Chapter 2

  It takes me a few minutes to regain my composure. When I heard Sethos’s name, my mind went numb and drew a blank space filled with nothing. “Your brother? The immortal dragon of darkness?” I can finally speak again, though I do not believe what I have just heard. It should not be possible for Sethos to be attacking directly. He must have help.

  Oran’s reply made me believe he can read my thoughts, “Yes, Sethos is unleashing darkly powered creatures upon the world. At first we believed, our original structures would hold. It has proven not to be the case. Lux, darkness is destroying areas of that world which have remained largely untouched for centuries.”

  I do not know what to say because I know what they are about to tell me. They want me to go to Nilohm and do what they cannot—interfere. This is my purpose after all. My sisters and I had been created to directly help the world when it begins to lose its balance and slip into chaos. I’m the lucky one that got to stay here, and my sisters were sent to the world to grow stronger without the dragons having to dedicate additional resources. That way, when our souls merge after they die, I already have a great deal of knowledge and power. A smart, yet cold strategy that currently poses a large problem.

  “I am not ready,” I tell the grand dragons before they can even ask me to go aid Nilohm. It is the complete and utter truth. I am not. Two of my sisters are still alive, which means I do not have their memories, skills, intelligence, and most importantly powers. Oran, Jenesis, and Mors always said it will take the collective mind and power of all six of us to watch over and protect the world. Right now, I’m only two-thirds of the way there. That simply is not going to cut it.

  “Lux,” Oran began softly, but I interrupt.

  “No, why can’t you go and hold him off?” I question, and I feel the panic start to course throughout my body. Jo’s tormenting death is definitely affecting me more than it should because it is all I can think about. My palms sweat up as her limp body replays in my mind, and I keep envisioning me falling to the same fate.

  As selfish as it sounds, I don’t want to die for the sake of this world. I’ve never even been to it! I know I’m supposed to protect it. It is the reason I was created in the first place, but I was told I’d be watching over keeping the balance. That sounds routine, almost mundane. In this case, I’m being asked to fight in a suicidal battle I will lose as soon as I enter it. And these dragons know this.

  “We cannot leave our realm; it would risk great catastrophe to the balance even if we could,” Oran met my eyes. I knew this of course. It was one of the many things the dragons had taught me. Their jobs were to maintain a balance between peace and chaos, life and death, light and darkness. Because of this, the brothers made a binding pact between themselves. Not one of them can enter or manipulate the world in his favor. Sethos has found a way to break through, though, and this has made it substantially more difficult to keep the balance at a distance. “The time has come, Lux” Oran continues without missing a beat, “Your presence is needed in Nilohm. There is no way Grace or Adira can win that fight.”

  Both Mors and Jenesis huff their disagreements. I might have been the one they all eventually agreed on, but it is obvious Mors and Jenesis still think my sisters can fair well under the right circumstances. I would actually agree with them if I wasn’t so shocked at Oran actually saying my sisters’ names- Grace and Adira. With the exception of Jo, I only learn the names of my sisters through their memories. Previously I had tried to bring them up in conversations as I desperately want to know why they bothered making all of us in the first place, but the life, death, and light dragons brushed me off every single time.

  “Lux, you are going Nilohm,” Oran orders.

  “But, I can’t win against Sethos yet,” I argue. With how little I truly know, I do still understand perfectly well without the final two souls of Grace and Adira, I am incomplete. This is obnoxiously frustrating because he knows this as well. In fact, all three of these brothers are very well aware I cannot win without my final two sisters’ souls, so why are they trying to send me down to fight I will undoubtedly lose?

  “Grace and Adira are also in Nilohm,” Oran counters.

  My panic is momentarily replaced with confusion. It takes me a few minutes to piece together what exactly he means. But when I do, my mouth loses every ounce of moisture it had, and I can barely speak. “You want me to kill them?’” I ask completely dumbfounded.

  “Or they could kill you,” Mors nonchalantly replies.

  Oran quickly cracks heads with Mors in retaliation and roars fearlessly. I wish I had retaliated like he did. I would have looked like an over aggressive idiot, but anything is better than the dumb, stupefied, terrified expression I’m currently sporting. I have not even considered the fact that I might be the one to die at one of my sister’s hands. In reality, I should have anticipated the possible outcome. There is no chance my sisters are pushovers, and I doubt they will lie down and let me take their lives.

  “We agreed Lux gave us the best chance,” Oran scowls at his brother.

  “We agreed that the strongest would be the most appropriate host. True, as of right now, it appears to be Lux, but we do not know how Grace or Adira would fair in a fight against her. You cannot rule out ours entirely because you favor Lux,” Mors fires back.

  I think I am suffering with a major problem or side-effect after gaining Jo’s memories as once again my mind loses its focus. These three dragons who have raised me to protect an entire world’s population by keeping the peace are telling me more or less I need to go to the world I have never been to, find two innocent people, and murder them or have them murder me. My sisters have literally done nothing wrong, and the notion of killing them goes against everything I have been taught thus far. Either they or I must die simply because we all exist at the same time. That is complete and utter shit!

  I must have become pretty pale because it does not take long for the three brothers to stop their conversation and check on me. “I can’t kill them,” I manage to blurt out after Jenesis gives me a slight nudge on the shoulder. Just thinking about the level of pain I will experience if I had to know what it felt like to die at my own hands is enough to make me want to lie down. However, it’s not like I want to be the one who actually dies either. I’m starting to wish the dragons never made me anchor, so I could be in Nilohm completely oblivious to this situation.

  Oran is trying to make me feel better by offering me a different solution. I can get my two sisters to work together, but it will be difficult. Realistically he doubts I can do it, but I do feel a little better. It is an option I had not realized I had. If I convince Grace and Adira to help me, none of us will die. I actually feel a bit better until Jenesis opens his mouth and crushes my little light of hope.

  “More like impossible,” he put bluntly. “Grace and Adira are currently fighting an all-out war against each other. You expect them to drop everything and work together?”

  Now I am really confused because I do not understand how my sisters can possibly be fighting. The fact the daughters of life and death are clashing does not actually faze me. That makes perfect sense, as they are two direct opposites of part of the balance. The question really is how do they know the other exists? None of my deceased sisters ever crossed paths because they were placed on different ends of the world, and I assume that is the case for Adira and Grace. This was done to prevent my sisters from directly fighting each other, to ensure they liv
ed long enough to learn useful skills and lessons.

  My face scrunches creating several long wrinkles along my forehead as I attempt to comprehend how the daughters of life and death came to know each other. Jenesis sees this and further explains that while the two know of each other, they do not know their purpose. Their paths crossed because Sethos’s dark forces have forced them to collide. Grace has moved into a part of the world she was never expected to enter.

  As if getting Grace and Adira to work together is not already going to be hard enough, Jenesis continues to beat every little glimmer of wishful thinking I have out of me. He reminds me both of my sisters still believe they are normal, relatively speaking, which makes this much more difficult for me. If they don’t know who they are, chances are they are not going to believe a total stranger telling them a tale as unbelievable as being created by dragons to help safeguard a world. “So what do I do?” I desperately ask Oran. I’d greatly appreciate any advice.

  Mors is the one to respond, and he says nothing that provides any guidance or alleviates my spirit. Essentially there are three options for me. I either kill my sisters, have my sisters kill me, or perform a miracle for the ages and get them to work together. He explains killing them provides the most direct route to ceasing Sethos’s advances. Getting my sisters to get along and learning to fight together takes time, and Nilohm does not have much of it to spare. While he believes it is impossible for me to succeed without killing Grace or Adira, the dragon of death does admit it would be nice not having to witness the death of another daughter.

  Jenesis has no problem voicing his pessimism. He also has no problem pinning the blame for the failure to work as a team on Mors’s daughter. Mors glares back at his brother and moves closer. He admits Grace can be difficult as he gets in Jenesis’s face but reminds his brother she is a good person.

  Right as the two dragons of life and death are about to go at it, Oran commands both of his brothers to calm themselves. He wedges his large body between the two who had gotten dangerously close to each other and waits for them to back off. Once they do, he returns his attention to me after he is sure the other two are done and says he will send me to Nilohm. My sisters’ fates are up to me. The last thing the dragon of light does is order me to stand still.

  “Wait. I’m really not ready,” I try to say, but it is too late. The three dragons are already gone, and I am standing in the middle of a very dense dark green jungle. Panic is beginning to become a normal state of mind for me.

  This is not any part of Nilohm I recognize. Jo has never been here, Elizabeth has never been here, and Linette would not be caught dead in a place like this. I should not be too surprised. Nilohm is a huge world with five major world powers and several hundred significantly smaller ones. But Jo was from the much more sophisticated region of Oriare, Elizabeth the calm forests of Flothe, and Linette the historically regal Amuria, so this is really nothing like I was expecting.

  I am outside in the open world for the first time, but I’m still having problems catching my breath. The air hear just feels different from the Otherworld. It is so humid, I am practically breathing in water. I kneel down on the ground and try to center myself taking care to monitor my breaths. It works after a few moments.

  After the panic subsided with a few deep breaths, a different emotion I have been experiencing excessively quickly comes forth—anger. I am downright livid. My entire body is clenching, and all I want to do is hit something. Hard. I know nothing about where I am, I was not debriefed about what was actually going on, and they did not even tell me goodbye. Oran my creator, my father, and thus far biggest mentor has abandoned me!

  I return to focusing on my breathing, and after my mind settles down, I’m no longer intent on killing anything or everything, which is at the very least a start. I don’t know what my next move will be, but I need to figure it out fast. With Sethos finding a way to break through into this world, it will not take long before it is completely lost to maddening chaos.

  Chapter 3

  I stand up and begin to check over myself to make sure I am still all here and pieced together properly. I am, but I'm no longer wearing the long, simple cloth robes and hood I wore in the temple. Instead I have on a pair of light brown cloth pants and a white cotton sleeveless top. My dark brown leather boots are light weight and comfortable yet very durable, and there is a matching belt. Finally, attached to the belt is my long quiver which houses an endless supply of arrows. The quiver completely covers the arrows when I close the hatch so I can protect the arrows from the harsh elements and keep them in sharp, pristine condition.

  This outfit is the one I wore whenever I trained with Oran, Mors, or Jenesis. There are however some differences. The biggest being that I am carrying all of the armalos my sisters and I were originally gifted by our respective creators. Well, the armalos of Linette, Elizabeth, Jo, and myself anyway.

  Oran gave me the armalo known as the Blessed Bow, so I have spent years becoming an elite long ranged fighter. The bow itself is elegantly crafted rosewood. An intricate design of spirals and curves are carved into it. It looks like a mere decorative piece, meant to be showcased on someone’s wall, but in my hands it is quite deadly. It is heavy and much larger than the other bows I’ve seen in my sisters’ memories, but I’ve grown used to carrying it around. It no longer slows or weighs me down.

  The Blessed Bow is currently my only weapon as the other armalos have different uses. When Linette died and her memories became my own, her armalo also transferred to me. A fairly small magnifying glass hangs upside down from neck, resting right above my breasts. It is attached to a small golden chain and at the tip of its handle is a single large sky-blue jewel. This little device aided Linette in becoming such a great diplomat. The magnifying glass allows the user to understand any text, regardless of language. It will be invaluable to me, as my knowledge gained from my sister’s passing is limited to strictly what they knew. Thankfully, Linette not only used the magnifying glass for diplomatic purposes but also academic, so I shouldn’t come across as a complete buffoon to the people here.

  As I look over the magnifying glass and twirl it around between my right hand fingers, I notice Jo’s armalo given to her by Jenesis, and I’m surprised I did not notice it before. For one, it’s hefty and fairly bulgy. I have no idea how this is going to affect my ability to hit my targets. It feels weird having this metallic wrist guard around my wrist, and I know I’m going to have to practice with it. It appears to be made of solid black metal and tied together with leather strips.

  I honestly am not entirely sure how to use it. I've seen Jo use it a few times, but this is the first time I have ever had her armalo in my possession. I can feel some sort of lever device in the palm, so I clench my fist. When I do four long black, sharp blades burst from the knuckles appearing to form some sort of claw.

  Upon seeing this my head begins to feel extremely hot, and I close my eyes to try and alleviate the discomfort. However, instead of feeling better, something weird happens. When I open my eyes again, I am no longer in the jungle. I am talking to a woman in a regal red dress about possibly traveling to some land called Briza. The green rock I am holding glows and is the center of our conversation. Supposedly this Briza is where it came from.

  I want to examine it more, but I am incapable of controlling my actions. These are Jo's memories. Instead I look up to face the woman, who does not seem keen on me leaving for an extended period of time, but I persist I must. I tell her we will speak more of it later, but I am about to be late for a very important meeting across the city. And once again, I clench my fist and the claws appear. This time I use the claw to slash through the air. A purple portal appears, and I see a room filled with men and women wearing navy uniforms sitting around a round table. I jump through the portal, but I am not in the meeting. I’m back in the jungle, right where I first appeared.

  I just experienced one of Jo’s memories in a way I have never done before, and it leaves me feeling m
ore than a bit uneasy. I thought unwillingly seeing the memories through the eyes of my sisters only happened when we first merged souls, but that is apparently not the case. As I think more about it, something else starts to bug me. I did not know how to use the claw until that memory. Literally ten seconds ago I hadn’t the faintest idea as to what it was, but I am supposed to have all of my sisters' skills, knowledge, and talents.

  I go back to what I can recall from Elizabeth and Linette, but everything is fuzzy. I do not think I ever just knew how to use any of the items. I always had to be instructed.

  I have many questions I doubt I will be getting an answer to. I thought I had all of their memories, but that does not appear to be the case. There is most likely more to my sisters than I can recall, and that might prove troublesome in the future.

  Beside the fact I am not as knowledgeable about my sisters’ pasts as I believed, I hope I do not have to experience any more memories as the after effects are very much like those I experienced in the Otherworld. I feel terribly nauseous as soon as I get back to reality, and I fall to my hands and knees to place my head on the cool ground in attempt to alleviate myself.

  I am tempted to stay in this position, the soft dirt makes an excellent pillow, but I must keep going. After a few moments pause, I push through the uneasiness of my stomach to go over the remaining armalos. The last one once belong to Elizabeth, and it takes a bit of time to find. The sudden and uncomfortable heat my head experienced made me forget what exactly I was looking for. I absently reach into my pant pocket and pull out what I wanted: a tiny red, translucent orb with a thin, black metal band stretching across its middle. This is Elizabeth’s armalo from Mors.

  I walk over to a nearby plant that stands taller than some of the trees. While holding the orb in my left hand, I softly touch one of the dark green leaves with it. The red orb has black smoke appear inside, and it fills the entire small space. After a few seconds the smoke disappears, and I see it has left behind two words-poisonous and deadly. This fern is inedible and will potentially kill me if I try to eat it. This is how Elizabeth managed to create such powerful healing potions and deadly poisons. Her knowledge of nature and ways it can be used to kill or heal someone was unrivaled by nearly everyone.