Disclaimer: I do not claim any ownership to the Lorien Legacies Franchise. I hereby wave any rights to profit from the proceeding story. If anybody tries to sue me, keep in mind that my mother is a lawyer and you will lose. Thank you.

Chapter Four: The Death of Number Four

The pitter patter of the rain on the library window is mesmerizing to me. I only have a few hours before this essay is due, but I don't really care. It's not like it matters. I've only been here for four months and I'll be relocating in the next few months. Besides, grades don't really have any relevance to me anyway.

"Daniel, we're gonna be closing up here soon. Go ahead and pack your stuff up and arrange for a ride home if you haven't already." It's the school librarian, Ms. Ryan.

I learned to speak English on the way to Earth in the spaceship. Our course set the 18 of us to land in the eastern part of Washington State in the USA. We had to learn English in order to assimilate to our initial locations of hiding. I know several languages now, but I prefer English since it reminds me of being with other Loric. Ms. Ryan is the librarian at an English school in Wichtrach, Switzerland.

"Yeah I texted him. He should be here any minute now."

"Awesome. You get much work done today? I couldn't help but notice that you've been staring out the window for the last several minutes. Is something up?"

"No, Ms. Ryan, everything is fine. I just need to get more sleep." I force a good-natured smile to let her know that I'm really okay. I can't afford to have people digging around into my life. Johan does a solid job of putting up the façade that I live with here.

Johan is my cêpan. He's somewhat of a tech genius. At our house, we always have at least a dozen computers with programs that automatically scan internet websites all around the world for Loric images and news stories indicating occurrences of miracles or sightings of extraterrestrials. Considering the beastly and grotesque appearance of the Mogadorians, they've been remarkably capable of remaining hidden from sight.

Unfortunately, for my Loric brothers and sisters, we have not been so skilled at it.

Nine months ago, for Johan's 50th birthday, we went on a hike at the base of the mountain the humans call the Eiger. It was a spectacular sight. I've always preferred the solitude and peace found in nature to the buzz of civilization. Maybe that's why I make few friends. We found our way down to a beautiful mountain stream. The gentle trickle of the water on the rocks had always seemed like the best music to me. As we sat on the rocks in silence, taking everything in, I felt a spike of pain in my right ankle.

"AH! IT'S HAPPENING AGAIN!" I shouted out loud enough to scare the birds out of the trees. I had felt this pain twice before. And I knew what this meant. Number Three was dead. Johan said nothing at first. He only raced over to me, ran me to the water's edge and dunked my foot in the ice cold mountain stream. The water turned to steam where my foot was, and the sudden temperature change hurt a ton. But quickly, the frigid, icy water numbed my foot and the pain slowly subsided.

For a minute, neither of us can say anything. The chirping of the birds steadily returns and life animates once again.

"We should get home. I don't think anybody say that, but I wanna scan the internet to see if anybody posts a story on Facebook or on some obscure blog about this," Johan states matter-of-factly. He rises. His slim, lanky frame looks awkward as he begins climbing the slope to get back to the trail and the car. After a few seconds, I get up to follow him—though I'm still in shock over what happened. I'm next now. I have to stand up to the Mogs all by myself. As I walked up that hill, I couldn't help but notice my mind playing tricks on me. Only it wasn't really just tricks—my mind was creating things from nothing and projecting them in front of me. For instance, Johan split into two Johans and they walked side by side. One occasionally asked me if my ankle felt alright. Next, a bowl of gelato appeared on the ground in front of me. I tried stepping on it and my foot fell right to the ground.

I brought this up with Johan on the car ride home. He grinned wider than I've ever seen him grin before.

"Really?! You're seeing things now?"

At first I thought he had gone crazy. Maybe the pressure of me being next on the hit list had put him over the edge. "Y-Yes…" I stammered.

Johan pulled the car over and wrapped his arms around me and pulled me in for a hug. "Oh thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank Lorien! You're really seeing things! This is happening here and now! Oh thank you!"

I like to think I'm a pretty smart kid. And this gratitude gave it all away. "I'm developing my first legacy?!" I inquired. I needed to know!

"Yes!" Johan had tears running down his face now. This was a massive deal for us. The other garde were too young when they were murdered to have legacies… Johan remembers how old all of them are. I'm one of the oldest. I'll be 15 in three months. Finally, when the Mogs come for me, I'll have legacies! I let myself cry too.

"This is where the countdown stops," I whispered. Johan pats me on the back and nods his head in agreement.

"Absolutely. In a few weeks, you'll be able to plant illusions in the heads of others. On Lorien, people like you were called 'illusionists.' Your mother had this legacy. I believe it was her first one as well. I knew you were due for it any day now!"

"Awesome! I can't wait to hone this legacy so I can use it to confuse an entire army of Mogs." The more I thought about it, the more useful the legacy seemed. I knew that this was game-changing. Soon, I would develop telekinesis and more powerful legacies.

Nine months have passed since the day Number Three died and my first legacy developed. I'm 15 now and I've done a lot of practice with my illusions. I can make any human believe the craziest things. Once, I made my teacher chase a non-existent raccoon around the room for a solid four minutes. Needless to say, the class was shocked at first, then humored. My telekinesis has come in and I also appear to be able to control water. I can create water in midair and I can freeze it too.

I wait inside the school for another two minutes until I see Johan pull up in our Volkswagen.

"How was school?"

"Fine. Hung out with Nico during lunch and schooled him in football."

"Nice. You finish your essay?"

I hung my head. "No… I was a bit distracted. The rain on the window was calling my name. I wanted to roll up all of that water into a big ball and drop it on a car or something."

"Well we'll get some more training in. Soon, you'll be able to do that without looking, kiddo. You really should do some of your schoolwork, though. I don't want low grades attracting attention."

I don't understand why Johan worries about my grades. In Switzerland, almost all of the grade is based off of in-class testing. The essay I didn't write is really only about 4% of my grade. I'm smart enough to get 100% on every test. But Johan got mad when I made honor roll back in the United States. So we packed up our stuff and moved to Helsinki. Now, I purposefully get B's on every test.

"Yeah, don't worry. I have everything under close management. I'll close out this quarter with a B average like I've always done."

"Cool. Hey, there's a showing of Shakespeare's The Tempest showing in Bern later. You wanna go see it?"

"That sounds awesome," I say as smile. I image a lot of the other garde here don't really like Earth. They've had to spend their whole lives hiding on it. But I don't really need much to be happy. I've always been content to have very few friends. I've been content with moving from place to place. Johan and I get along well, and I keep my head down. I like the theater here on Earth. It's like the actors and actresses can be someone else. I like being Daniel Mosner. I like pretending that I'm not really Number Four.

"Aren't you gonna take your jacket off? I'll blast the heat in here."

"Yeah. Thanks." I unzip my jacket and glimpse myself in the mirror. My eyes are a sapphire blue and I have light blond hair. We chose to hide in Europe because I blend in here well. We take every precaution we can to remain hidden. We even have tried to find out how the previous three garde were located.

We're not sure how Number One was found. But we're fairly certain we know how Number Two and Number Three were discovered and killed. In fact we knew that their deaths were imminent. However, we had no way of alerting them directly and to reach out over the internet in a shot in the dark style would've certainly ended with us getting captured.

A day before Number Two was killed, an image surfaced on Twitter, a social networking sight used by humans. The image was of what looked like an 11 or 12 year-old boy with a large man, presumably his cêpan, purchasing some oatmeal from a vendor in a market in South Africa. The boy had long socks on. The sock on his left leg was pulled up. But on the right foot, the image of Number One's symbol was clearly visible. The person who took the photo did so on their phone and uploaded it to Twitter and tagged it #coolgangsign #anybodyelsewantin. Poor Number Two had been so used to protecting his left ankle from sight, but he must've forgotten to pull up his right sock in the heat of South Africa. Less than a day later, I received my second scar.

Number Three had lived in Florida. Apparently she went wading in the ocean one day, and a marine biologist noticed that an astounding number of fish were swimming with her. Number Three noticed one of the sea turtles and laughed. The marine biologist, Nancy Harrington, snapped a picture of this and later wrote an article detailing the incident. Johan had spoken of animal telepathy developing in Loric garde around the ages of 11 or 12 and not becoming functional until 14 or so. Apparently, Number Three had budding animal telepathy. She didn't know it yet, but she was subconsciously sending out messages to the fish. They were intrigued that she was capable of doing this so they swam nearby to investigate. Unfortunately, the Mogadorians, like Johan and I, caught wind of this article, and they spent no time setting up surveillance on the St. Pete Beach peninsula. Three days later, Number Three was killed and I received my third scar.

Johan is pulling into our small garage now. We've lived here for about 5 months now. Before this, we lived in a small village farther south. Johan and I like living in Switzerland. Life isn't too stressful and the people here don't make a big deal out of new folk moving to town. Not to mention that the beauty of the country reminds Johan of Lorien's beauty. I climb out of the car and toss my schoolbag onto my bed in my room and saunter towards our small living room.

"So are you and Nico becoming decent friends?" Johan asks me as I enter and sit at the small table for two we have.

"Yeah. You could say that. But then again, I've never really had a close friend. I just never really saw the point of trying for that. Let's be honest, we won't be here forever."

"I understand, Daniel. I'm sorry that it has to be this way. Someday, we won't be running from the Mogadorians anymore, and you'll be able to build your own life." He pauses, looks at me and continues, "hey, wanna help me prep dinner?"

"Sure. What're we having?"

"Your favorite Italian dish, spaghetti carbonara."

"Awesome! Yeah I'll help. What can I do?" I've never had much experience with cooking. But I think I know where Johan is going with this.

"Why don't you go ahead and use your water manipulation and make that water boil a little faster?"

"Just watch me." I grin as I step forward to the pot. Temperature control of water is tricky. I'm glad I'm getting a chance to practically apply my legacy. I focus on the water in the black pot. I take note of the air bubbles. I see how fast they rise. Then, I focus on creating more. Heat it up, I think to myself, I need more air bubbles. I need more water to heat up. I lock my stare on the pot and sure enough, it begins to yield more and more bubbles. Finally, the steam begins pouring off the surface of the water and within a minute, I've gotten a pot of water to the perfect temperature for boiling spaghetti.

"Nice job, Daniel! Well done indeed. You're catching onto that legacy quickly. It'll be useful to have. It'll be especially useful here on Earth—a planet that's 75% water."

"Yeah, it wasn't too hard at all," I confide. I'm pretty pleased with myself. I want to be a formidable force for the Mogadorians to overcome. I'm well on my way to that.

Johan and I chow down the carbonara. I absolutely love it. The egg and pancetta that go into it make it the most delectable dish I know. Additionally, I want to be on time to see The Tempest.

"Ready to go?" Johan finishes rinsing the dishes in the sink and sets them delicately on the drying rack. He and I both like things to be orderly. That's part of the reason we have little to no tension.

"Yeah. Let me get a new jacket. The one I wore today is still drenched."

I select the deep blue rain jacket from the closet in my room. Blue and green have always been my favorite colors. I like green because of all of the green scenery in nature. But I love blue because it is the color of water, the element I control, and my Loric pendant glows blue sometimes.

In no time, we're off towards Bern to see the famous Shakespearean play. I know that the human culture isn't the same thing as Loric culture, but I still love immersing myself in something. Shakespeare is a fine choice of immersion material. His plays are often times funny, brilliant and relatable. Even the tragedies are beautiful in structure. They are the birthplace of the concept of a hero's hubris, or tragic flaw or weakness. I often times find myself wondering what the Mogadorian hubris is. Perhaps it's their lack of respect for their surroundings. Perhaps it's the distrust that runs rampant in the blood in their veins. Whatever it is, I plan on finding it and using it to my full advantage.

We're cruising through Bern now. If I wasn't running from a bloodthirsty race of aliens, I would settle down here. Bern at night is a stunning spectacle. They stand out against the dark of the cloud-covered horizon. The buildings aren't tall enough to be overwhelming. In fact, very few would qualify as tall anywhere else. The architecture has always fascinated me. I've always wanted to bring back some of the artistic brilliance of Earth to Lorien.

We park along the street about four blocks up from the theater.

Four. It's the number that's doomed me to be next on the hit-list of the Mogadorians. Obviously, I'm better off than Number One, Number Two and Number Three. But the position of Number Four carries a lot of pressure with it. If I go down, we'll only have five garde at most to fight the entire Mog race. And in all honesty, five garde isn't enough to do it. Long ago, shortly before Number One was killed, Johan told me that we would need at least six garde alive to do the job. As of now, we have that many intact, but I can't go down too.

"Two tickets, please," Johan asks the woman in the ticket window. Johan never buys anything online for fear that it could be the Mogadorians collecting addresses to investigate. "Thanks," he says as she hands two blue tickets to him. I can't help but notice an odd-looking tattoo on her arm. It looks kind of like a weasel.

"Where are we seated?"

"Looks like we need to go up two flights of stairs to get there. But we're in the front row of the second balcony."

"Sweet. I love sitting there. You get an unobstructed view of the play." As I say this, I realize that I'm suddenly feeling very afraid. The ticket lady's tattoo was bit interesting but this intense feeling is coming from something else.

"Dad, I want to leave." I use "dad" to seem less suspicious to anybody around me. It's not like it would throw off any Mogadorians if they were already here. But I certainly don't think they know who I am. But I know they're in here. I can feel it.

Johan catches the fear in my voice and understands immediately what's happening. We turn around and leave the theater and retreat to the hallway.

But in the hallway, we see a line of eight Mogadorian soldiers. Their hideous little teeth gleam even in the dim lighting of the hallway. Johan doesn't have to say anything. The Mogs have blocked off the staircase, there's a dead end to our left, but to our right, the hallway stretches for a ways.

Johan doesn't have to say anything. Together we sprint to the right. With my legacies already developing, my physical enhancements are much stronger than they used to be. A Mogadorian soldier leaps in front of me in an effort to block my path and force me to slow down and go around him or else be captured. Unfortunately for him, I have another trick up my sleeve.

BOOM!

The Mogadorian who thought he had a chance of stopping me is hit by a powerful blast from my telekinesis. He flies against the wall at tremendous speed. His head hits the brick layer of the wall and he bursts into ashes.

Just like I planned. I actually have great control over where they fly.

I hear a pained scream over my shoulder. While I was able to just blow the Mog in front of me away, Johan has no such ability. He was able to get around the Mogadorian, but not before he plunged his dagger into Johan's left shoulder. I focus on the Mogadorian and blast him with my telekinesis. This one flies off the balcony and lands with a thud on the tiles below. He, too, bursts into ashes.

But it's not enough to save Johan. The other six Mogs have been active during this time. One of them has pulled out his blaster and hit Johan in the heart. He flies into the wall and falls to the side as he lands. His body is lifeless.

"No!" I yell in anguish as the only real friend and father I ever had lays limp on the ground. It's enough to fuel me with rage. I will avenge him.

One of the Mogs advances towards me from the left. I see him with my peripheral vision. As he approaches, I concentrate on imagining his brain. This is how I create illusions. I plant four images of myself in his head. He stops advancing and scratches his head for a moment as he lowers his sword. I take this opportunity to thrust his lowered hand upwards towards his chest. The sword punctures his chest where his heart is and he crumbles to dust. Three down and five to go.

Unfortunately, it takes all of the concentration I can muster to create such a complex image in a Mogadorian brain. I don't notice another Mog has been sneaking up behind me. He puts me in a headlock and attempts to rip off my pendant. But I have more fight to give. With a swift, smooth motion I flip him over my head and as he lands in front of me, I'm able to slip my head out of his grasp. Next, I create a pool of water that completely submerges him, and I plummet the temperature of it. He's completely frozen and encased in ice. Using my telekinesis, I pull him upwards and towards me at a remarkably fast speed. Johan always was big on me learning Loric martial arts, and I use a roundhouse kick to break the ice cube, and the Mog with it, into little smithereens.

Suddenly, I feel a sharp, searing pain pierce through the middle of my lower back. Another Mogadorian has taken advantage of my state of being distracted. It only took me about a second and a half to get loose from the previous Mogadorian's headlock, freeze him and smash him to pieces. But that's all it took for this opportunist to attack. But I'm not dead yet. I spin around quickly tossing the Mog aside, but his sword remains stuck in my back. It seems to be getting more and more painful. It's almost as if it has a toxic chemical laced into it.

As the Mog lands with a thud where the wall meets the floor, I create a pool of water above him and freeze it. Then, I use my telekinesis to drop it on him as hard as I can. His head is crushed under the weight of the ice, and he, like his four fallen comrades, turns to ash.

Two of the remaining Mogs pull me down from behind and pin me to the floor. One of them rips my pendant off before I realize what's happening. The pain I feel in my back is growing in area and intensity. I'm exhausted from using my legacies with such rigor and precision. I try and fight against the Mogs holding me down, but it's futile. They're stronger than I am. I try creating an illusion, but I'm too flustered to concentrate well enough. Finally, I try my telekinesis. But I'm only able to inflict minor hits with it. I can't shake them off of me.

"Tell our leader that this one developed legacies," the third Mog, the one not holding me down, hisses to one of the other two Mogs.

"Yes, sir," one of the Mog holding me down replies.

The third Mog looks at me through his beady, lifeless eyes. He lifts his blaster from his pocket and points it at my face. I know it's over now. I tried. I really did try, Johan. Maybe Number Five can stop these monsters. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I feel like this really isn't the end for me. Perhaps, even in death, I can help the other garde somehow. I refuse to cry for these disgusting creatures. I won't give them the pleasure. As a final act of defiance to the Mogadorians, I open my mouth up in front of the blaster. I'm taking away part of the joy they're getting from this kill. It looks like I'm accepting my fate at this point as opposed to fighting it.

And then a white light emits from the gun, and things go dark.