Chapter 1: Pete

Daniel looked down the side of the bridge as the rushing waters of the Thames surged by below him. The freak summer storm that had occurred a couple days prior had surprised many people. Not that any sane Londoner would be surprised by rain at any time of the year, that was just London. What people were surprised by was the sheer mass of heavy drops, and even some hail that fell from a completely cloudless sky, for exactly twenty-two minutes.

Daniel knew it was exactly that long, because that was exactly how long he was talking to his father over the phone, hearing the man's excuses for why, for the eleventh consecutive time, he would not be able to visit Daniel on his birthday. The conversation had ended with a "I'll be 'round next year, sprat, I promise," just like it always did.

Then the freak storm over London had ended, just as abruptly as it began, with the click of the phone disconnecting. Daniel looked up at his mother. She seemed pensive and a little concerned. They had gone out for ice cream after that to cheer themselves up.

Daniel remembered that day nicely, but now he had to return to reality. He had made his way back to the flat where he and his mother had been living for the past three years. It was his birthday today, that meant that against Daniel's advice, his mother had invited his whole year from primary school.

Daniel did not much care for other people his age, he found most of them lacking in a certain ability to engage in interesting conversations. Most of them wanted to talk about rubbish like dolls, action heroes, and computer games a two-year-old could handle. Daniel recognized, of course, that these feelings and his own intelligence, were far outside the norm; so he pretended.

There was actually nothing Daniel hated more than pretending. But, when he did not pretend to just be an ordinary kid, adults looked at him and shuffled uncomfortably, children made fun of him and then got hurt. Daniel knew he was somehow the cause the other children's random accidents, but he never did anything on purpose to hurt them and was extremely upset when he got detention or expulsion when there really was no reason to suspect him for children falling off jungle gyms when he was nowhere near them, or those same children being chased by birds or snakes. It was all incredibly inconvenient and drove his mother up a wall. Once Daniel had figured out he could control the inexplicable incidents to some small degree, his thirst for knowledge set him to experimentation. After one of his experiments went awry, he was once again blamed for the accidental harm that had come to a classmate, he decided it best to use non-human subjects, at least until he had better understanding and control, while playing the perfect simple primary student for his teachers and classmates.

Three very select people were the only ones who knew the truth. They were the only people his own age he ever considered true friends, and the only people he actually wanted at his birthday. Instead, there would certainly be droves of people there. "Danny" was surprisingly popular among the other students once he began to act in predictable ways.

Daniel sighed as he opened the door and the mass of faces and bright colors rushed toward him screaming "Surprise!" Daniel smiled. His real friends were here, and a little partying with dullards would actually be more fun than trying to figure out where the freak storm had come from or any of the other mysteries he had noticed cropping up more and more around him recently.

The party was great. Daniel's mother had managed to afford quite a spread of food and games, including, and this was Daniel's favorite, a man who took care of tamed big cats who could no longer survive in the wild. Daniel was even allowed to pet a tiger kitten, until the man felt his mother was no longer comfortable with him so near a vicious predator. If only she knew what he got up to on his "nature hikes."

Sadie, Patrick, and Nina all passed each other knowing looks when the naturalist carefully returned the cub to its carrier. Daniel rushed over to his friends and gave them all a big hug.

"I was wondering when you were going to say hello to your dear old friends." Sadie smiled sarcastically and hugged him back. Patrick and Nina looked to each other and smiled in unison, looking too eerily similar, even for twins.

"So how are you guys liking the party?" Daniel asked, his eyes shifting back and forth to be sure no one was listening in. Sadie did the same. The twins merely looked in one opposite direction each, as if they could read each other's minds and need not check the other direction.

"Fun, but we are going to visit our other friend, aren't we?" Sadie whispered, still checking for eavesdroppers. "I bet he's missing us. We haven't gone to see him for nearly a week!"

"I'm sure we can go 'hiking' after the party, just bear with it." There was a reason Sadie and the twins were his friends, they had all bonded over the most fantastic discovery ever, one that would make them all famous if they ever decided to share it.

After presents, cake and more games, the many tired children left the flat with their parents and only Daniel and his real friends remained. They all helped Daniel's mother with the clean-up and waited a few minutes while she relaxed after the long day.

"Mum, Sadie, Patrick, and Nina want to go for a walk up in the hills, would that be alright?" Daniel asked. The woman contemplated for a moment.

"Please, Miss Morgan." Sadie added in the girliest voice she could muster when it seemed her hopes would be dashed. Daniel's mother shook her head and smiled.

"Be back before it's dark, and that goes for you three as well. I don't want any frantic phone calls from your parents tonight." She said, waving them out the door. The kids all but tripped over each other as they rushed out. "And don't track muck in when you get back!"

The four children happily ran off, through the suburban streets until they reached the nearby hills. The area was often gloomy and was covered mostly in old gnarled oaks and ashes. Daniel stepped lightly into the bush, followed closely by Sadie, Patrick and Nina, all looking around nervously. They always complained about dizziness, motion sickness and heightened nerves when they went through the forest. Daniel, on the other hand had never noticed any discomfort when trudging through the muck and underbrush.

They had figured out quickly that the strange disorienting feeling could cause them to get separated and lost quite easily, but also that the sensation was almost wholly removed by all clasping hands.

Eventually the gloom lifted and the four of them skipped happily into a green, flowery clearing, still all hand-in-hand. On the far side of the meadow was the gaping maw of a small cave.

Sadie and Daniel gave each other a meaningful look, then bolted for the cave's entrance. The twins just shook their heads in unison, following them at a brisk walk. The cave was dark and damp, as always. The sound of water dripping echoed through the burrow.

After a few minutes of walking, Daniel and Sadie reached the back of the cave. They flipped the switches on their torches, shedding light on the large nest of hay and tree branches. In that nest lay the sleeping form more than twice as large as any one of the children now gazing upon it lovingly. Daniel approached carefully, amazed at the beautiful creature. He stroked its huge feathered head and down its back where the feathers seamlessly transitioned into wiry fur coat. Both feathers and fur were a slate color, almost Maltese, and where the feathers were marked by strips of metallic black or blue, the fur coat adorned by a dark blotched pattern. Its two cat-like ears were laid flat on its head, its two massive wings folded against its sides, longer than the creature's entire body even while folded. It was a griffin.

"We missed you Pete," Sadie cooed "did you miss us?" Sadie came up next to Daniel smiling as she too began to stroke the magnificent animal's coat. It opened its beak, perked its ears and let off a shrill yawn. All the children smiled and stroked Pete's coat as he made a contented purring-squawking sound.

After a while of petting Pete, he was clearly ready to play when he began swatting Sadie with his fore-talons and mewling. Sadie had managed to convince her parents that her ripped clothes were a fashion statement and the gashes she received every so often were just from tree branches.

"Looks like Pete wants to play, is that what you want, baby?" Sadie asked the griffin, who responded to the word "play," which he knew and liked, by happily squeaking and beat his wings.

The four children all ran out the cave laughing, chased by their griffin. They all stopped, except Pete who rocketed into the air, circling playfully above, when the saw a tall man with no shirt. His body was painted with swirls and mysterious writing and his face seemed to have no emotion on it. Pete landed, butting his head into the strange man's hand, seeking affection from the stranger, who smiled momentarily as he ruffled the feathers on the griffin's head.

"The wind carries ill tidings. I have come to warn you Daniel, one heralded Hero, Savior, Master of Death comes, but he comes to deal you great pain in the name of peace. Daniel Morgan, you are The Bridge, do not let the old ways bias you, you will have an ally among the people of the Land, Sea, and Sky before the final choice is made. The world still spins toward two paths, one leads to death, the other leads to life. Daniel Morgan, you must lead the world on the path to life, you must be The Bridge." As the strange man spoke, he walked up to the children, but somehow Daniel could not remember when he actually walked, he was just aware that the man was now before them.

He touched each of Daniel's three friends in the center of their foreheads before he began to walk back towards the forest without another word.

"Hey, wait! What did you just do, what's going on?" Daniel shouted as the man reached the tree-line.

"You do not know me now, but I have offered some protection to your friends, when the time is right they will remember. I must return before the Master of Death and the old enemy arrive, but we shall meet again, Daniel Morgan." The strange man walked into the shadow of the trees and disappeared. Daniel started to run down the slope after him but just ahead of him there was a loud crack and a puff of smoke as woman appeared out of nowhere. Her long grey robes were singed, scorched and tattered and her face was twisted into a deranged wide-eyed smile.

"Ooh, Bella's found herself some muggle children to play with!" The woman, Bella presumably, cackled happily as she pulled what looked like a tree-branch from her tattered robes pointing it toward Daniel in a clearly threatening gesture.

Pete dove toward the mad-woman and clawed at her, distracting her from her previous preoccupation, she began flinging her stick around madly and, to Daniel's surprise, shooting variously colored bolts out of the tip of it. Pete easily maneuvered out of the way of bolts as he flew in, screeching to strike.

Just as Pete raked his claws across her face, the woman screamed and became a cloud of black smoke which swirled away and reformed on the other side of the clearing. "You worthless creature! Take this, Avada Kedavra!" The last two words, the woman shrieked with undisguised and unprecedented malice. A long, pale green bolt shot quickly out of the woman's stick and seemed to make the sound of distant screams as it careened through the air towards Pete, who did not have enough time to fly out of the way before being struck and falling out of the sky.

"You foul bitch!" Sadie screamed as she ran dangerously quickly down the slope and rushed to Pete's side, checking on him. "N-no! Come on, Pete, get up. It's me, Sadie. Let's play Pete, play, PLAY!" Sadie shrieked the last word as she collapsed in tears on top of the young griffin's body. The mad woman in tattered robes cackled, even as blood gushed from the four deep gashes on her face.

Daniel was angry. Bad things tended to happen when Daniel was angry. He had figured out after a few toilets exploded on bullies he hated and a few snide laughing children inexplicably fell from tightly gripped metals bars, breaking wrists, arms, or legs, that somehow, he was the one that caused them and for once, Daniel did not care what happened, he let himself be angry, he let the feeling of electricity he associated with his strange power build and build.

The wind was picking up and the mad woman could barely see. Nina and Patrick were holding each other close, hiding in the cave. They could feel that this time there would be no way to calm down Daniel. The woman shouted and cursed and said those two horrible, painful words again as she pointed her stick toward Daniel, but the powerful winds ripped it from her hands, shattering it against a boulder before the green bolt could be released. Then she realized what was happening and shrank down in fear at the power the child had.

Daniel felt his power fill him up to point where it began to hurt, so he let the power go, directing all of his anger at the woman who now sat stunned and pleading on the ground. He felt the air charge around him and lightning of every color imaginable shot from his body arcing toward the woman. When the lightning connected, Daniel felt as if it had somehow completed a circuit, energy seemed to pass through him from deep within the Earth, arc through the air, strike the woman who flailed in agony, then flowed back down into the Earth to begin its journey once more. Daniel felt as if he could not let go of the energy, because he could not let go of the anger and hatred he felt, even after he knew the woman was dead and the her lifeless was being charred and tossed about meaninglessly. He worried the current would continue to flow until it burned him out like a used-up battery.

As soon as Daniel began to feel the power flowing through him eroding away his thoughts and emotions, a red bolt came from the corner of his vision and struck him before he even considered moving out of the way. He passed out and the energy flowing through him instantly cut off.