I wake up in a fit of rage, kicking and screaming at invisible enemies. I try to see the Mogadorians, any way to escape, but my eyes are is still stinging from all the fire and poison in the air. I gasp for breath, trying to cleanse my lungs of all the smoke I've inhaled. Hands grab at my limbs, holding me in place. My Terric kicks in and crashes into the earth, like a tree toppling in the forest. My vision clears enough for me to see a small, lithe figure kneeling beside me.
"One, it's okay," the voice says in a stern but somehow calming voice. "Just breathe."
Hilde.
Acknowledging the nightmare, I manage to calm down enough for the earthquake to lose its strength. I don't have to fight its rage—the energy just flows back into the kelp. Once everything has stopped shaking, I take a look around. I'm in a room, lying across a bed, so I guess that means we made it to Alder. My fingers graze the side of the Chest. Hilde must have had us open it in my sleep, during my nightmare. She stuffs the old kelp back into that plastic bag before slamming the Chest shut again.
"I'm really sorry," I mutter, rolling my sleeves down over my taut arms.
"It's okay," Hilde replies. "Sudden episodes of a Legacy tend to happen shortly after development, especially in your sleep."
"That's kinda shitty. I could knock the whole house down during a bad dream?"
"First off, I won't let that happen. Secondly, these episodes will usually be accompanied by visions that trigger your Legacy. It's called erkōsa."
"Yeah," I mutter, trying to keep my hands from shaking. "I know what it's called."
There's silence for a moment, and I realize as Hilde packs away the Chest, that she probably didn't factor in erkōsa with the development of my Legacies. "We're too far from the source," she'd said a year after I'd developed telekinesis, far long after I should have gotten my next Legacy. "It's likely that, if anything, they'll develop spread out from one another." Yeah, no shit. A yearlong gap between TK and Super Balance, something I didn't even consider a Legacy when it first showed up.
When did I even start getting into surfing?
Two months ago?
No, I'd been getting better at staying upright in combat training long before that. So, that would have been when I started skateboarding in Austin.
A motherfucking two-year gap between that and being able to make shockwaves when I get pissed.
And only now am I going through erkōsa. I'm assuming these next couple years, if it takes that long for the rest to develop, are going to be full of some trippy shit.
"So," Hilde finally asks, "did you have a vision?"
I try to recall the dream, but it's really hazy. "I'm not sure if it was just a bad dream or not. I can't really remember it."
She sighs, annoyed, even though I'm the one who just went through some shit. "Get dressed. We leave for Alder in thirty minutes."
The walk from our house to Alder takes about an hour and it's dismal as shit. The sky has grown opaque with clouds that remind me of my creepy dream. I can almost smell the water in the air, waiting to hammer down on the earth with sheets of ice. We follow a commonly used trail along the shoreline. Alder is a small, lakeside town that is part of the Ojibwe First Nations. Most of the buildings are old and rotten. The street running through the town is cracked, icy, with weeds still growing where the cold hasn't reached. Street lines have faded.
We find a small general store near the center of town. A man and a woman stand in front of the store, huddled around a small, makeshift firepit. They size Hilde and me up as we enter the door.
"Aaniin," Hilde says, nodding at them. She must have learned some key phrases of the language while I was asleep.
They don't respond.
Instead, the couple stares at me with curious eyes.
"Hey." I nod at them.
They don't answer.
I don't care enough to try and make them.
The walls of the shop are made up of a recycled storage container. It's probably the only store for kilometers around, because it's stocked with almost everything. Near the back of the shop is a freezer with produce and a deli. At the front, behind the register, the wall is lined with ammo and hunting guns.
We are officially in the backwoods.
"Gather any essentials," Hilde tells me, passing me a shopping basket. "Stuff that'll get us through to summer."
"You mean Spring, right?" I ask.
"Nah," Hilde replies, already starting down an aisle. "Snowfall here lasts until late April."
"Oh, great," I mutter. "The lake will be frozen before we know it."
This place is probably Hilde's nightmare. Some of the boxes that have been left on the shelves are emptied out. Hearing her grunt in annoyance from across the store dredges up memories of our time in Coahuila. Back then, I didn't really give a shit if I left an empty box of cereal in the cupboard. But in a frozen wasteland, I can understand why it's getting on her nerves.
When I pick a box of crackers off the shelf, a pair of brown eyes stare back at me from the other aisle. I would be startled if the girl in front of me weren't so small. Her frail, coffee-colored face looks a couple years older than my own, but she's about a head shorter.
"Hello," she says quietly, with a slight accent that I don't recognize.
"Um, hi," I reply. "What's up?"
"I haven't seen you around here before. Very few newcomers in the wintertime."
"Yep. Well, first time for everything, I guess." I try to kill the conversation before it grows into a mess that'll make Hilde and me have to move again, but the girl circles the aisle and comes to stand beside me. Her hair is concealed by a dark blue headscarf, revealing her slender neck and prominent collarbones. She's alarmingly thin, her clothes ragged and old. It almost looks like she's homeless.
"So, did you move back into town, or are you on some sort of business trip?"
"Business trip?" I ask. "I'm fourteen."
"Usually the waabishkiiwed don't pass through here unless they're delivering mail or food."
I start to ask what a bitch kiwi is, but I get the gist of its meaning pretty quickly when she glances at my loose blond hair. "Oh, no, my dad's Chippewa, but my mom's white."
"Oh." The girl turns back to the sparsely stocked shelves in front of us. "Sorry, I guess you get that a lot."
"Not really, or at least not that word. I gotta use that later."
She chuckles softly, looks back at me. "What are you called?"
"I'm Taliya," I reply, then look over at Hilde, who stands at the produce section, I guess trying to decide which fruits are less rotten than the others. "The uptight lady over there is my grandma, Hilde."
"Taliya and Hilde. You guys are definitely not from this town, are you?"
"Grandma's from Montreal, but she's full-blooded Ojibwe," I lie. "What's your name?"
She hesitates for a moment, then finally says, "Mumbi."
I stare at her. "Oh, sure. Mumbi is totally a local name."
"I'm just passing through," Mumbi says. "Staying here 'til the sun comes back."
"Are you here with your parents?"
"No. I'm on my own now."
Before I can ask about the sketchiness of that statement, Hilde calls me over to the register. "I gotta go. But, uh, maybe I'll see you again later, Mumbi."
I meet Hilde near the door. Her basket barely has anything in it. From the way she looks at my own half-empty cart, things probably aren't looking so good.
"We don't have enough stuff, huh?" I ask her.
Hilde shakes her head. "This will barely get us to February. We're going to need to ration."
"I'm assuming that's not gonna be as easy as it sounds."
"With your Legacies becoming more powerful, you…"
"I'll what?"
"You'll be fine," she finally says. "There should be something in your Inheritance that'll help you with your metabolism."
"Okay, and what about you?"
"I'll ration."
"Fuck that. I'm not getting some ancient nutrition remedy while you starve for the winter. You know what we should do?"
I look over her shoulder at the rack of firepower. Most of our training for the past four years has been hand-to-hand. We never went beyond knives. But maybe that's because I kept slacking off. A gun would probably keep us fed and safe from the Mogs at the same time.
"Excuse me," I ask the cashier at the register, an older man with tattoos wrinkled across his leathery skin. "Which one of these is best for hunting?"
The cashier gives Hilde a look. "You two from around here?"
"Yes, up the road." Hilde snatches the basket from my hand and walks to the counter. "We don't need any guns."
"Ahaaw sa, is this all you're getting?"
"Yes. Do you stay open all winter, or do you close when the snows come?"
"All winter, but I don't think we're getting any more stock 'til March," he replies. "Are you sure you don't want to try hunting?"
"Not unless you have a bow or spears."
He lets out a raspy chuckle. "None that I sell. Most people up here just make their own."
"Never mind, then," she says. "We'll just be taking this."
The cashier packs all our stuff in a paper bag and tells us to have a safe winter. I look back at the store before we leave, but it's empty. Mumbi is nowhere to be seen. On the way back, I notice Hilde isn't speaking to me. She walks a few feet ahead, white-knuckling the bag. Clearly still pissed at me about what I said back at the store.
"Sorry I even suggested spending some of our money to buy a gun," I say. She doesn't answer. "It's not like we don't need it or anything."
I give up and just walk the rest of the way in silence. The sky has turned gray and a gentle dusting of snow drifts down to the earth. Back at the house, Hilde sets the groceries on the kitchen counter and wordlessly retreats into her room. While she sulks or whatever the fuck, I go through the bag and start to put away the stuff we picked up. Unfortunately, it's not much. We made off with a box of stale Cinnamon Toast Crunch, some canned peaches and corn, and a package of frozen meat.
Hilde returns to the kitchen with the Loric Chest, which she sets down on the coffee table in the living room. I join her on the couch. Before I can apologize (again) about the gun thing, she starts lecturing.
"If we're going to do this, if we're going to be serious about the war we're fighting, and if we're going to return to Lorien, then you need to understand," she says, "not just your Legacies, but your culture, your religion, and the history of our people."
"I know."
"Do you? Tell me, then, how your Legacies came to be?"
I sigh but begin to recite the ode I've heard a million times before. "Twenty-five thousand years ago, before we Loric mastered the stars, our world was on the brink. That is, until the Elders harnessed the power of the Phoenix Stones and brought bounty to Lorien. They—"
"Their names, Tali."
"Obviously Pittacus Lore and Loridas, then Bias, Ayar Kachi, Periander…um, Cleobulus?"
"And?"
"Solon, Chilon, and that last guy with the T, um, Thales!"
"And the Lost Tenth."
"Right. See? I told you that I knew what happened!"
She's not amused. "What did the Three Tribes do away with in order to maintain this rebirth?"
"The Pyrré abandoned the weapons that razed the lands, the Hælan abandoned the chemicals that infected the seas, and the Wraith abandoned the gases that poisoned the skies."
"The Pyrré abandoned weapons that razed the land," Hilde repeats sternly. "No more guns and bombs. Pyrré, One, was the same Tribe your grandfather hailed from. No matter how bad this war becomes, we won't lower ourselves to that level ever again. Do you understand?"
"Yes, I'm sorry."
"Good. Now let's get started with tempering this Legacy."
We open the Chest together and she pulls out the roll of kelp before shutting the Chest back. I undress, following Hilde's instructions, and lie down on the couch. She starts from my arms again, but this time she goes past my elbows and knees, wrapping the kelp all the way up my limbs. Apparently, only wrapping up my forearms and my legs below the knee is what caused that repulsion part of the Legacy to develop. I shouldn't be able to do that yet, according to Hilde, so now we have to redistribute the Terric from where it has concentrated itself to the rest of my body.
The kelp is tight around my limbs, which fall numb after about half an hour. I have to keep my eyes closed during the session. Hilde starts to massage my limbs, sending a red-hot energy that crackles through my veins. Or maybe my nerves, because my spine hums in response. My breath catches in my throat and I try my best to keep myself from convulsing.
"Just relax, One," Hilde says. "Let your mind go blank."
I try to clear my mind and breathe slowly. All of a sudden, Hilde's voice drifts away from me as an echo. The wind that whips against the house softens, and somehow, I can feel it on my bare skin. It's oddly warm. I get the urge to open my eyes, and when I do, I'm no longer in the house.
Or in Alder, Ontario.
Or on Earth.
I'm standing on a beach, the ocean stretching ahead as far as I can see. A red giant sun glows through the clouds on the world, its companion a blue star that pushes through the overcast sky. I open my mouth and take a deep breath. Between the bend in the horizon, the beautifully irregular waves that distort it, and the salty air on my tongue, I know I am on Lorien. Our world is about a tenth of the Earth's size, has two moons, and is several billion years older, so it's pretty distinct from Earth.
The water is practically calling to me. I rush into it and let the waves carry me from the shore. Marine animals swim alongside me, caught up in the current. Some of them are eel-like with feathery pelts, others are armored and crustacean, like giant shrimp. They're familiar to me, creatures I have either seen in the flesh or read about in encyclopedias. Far more natural to me than the exotic mammals and fish on Earth.
I turn back toward the shore. The beach is cut off by these massive, droopy-boughed trees that sway with the warm rain. As the day speeds ahead into night, the waves increase their intensity and the moons hang on opposite sides of the hazy horizon. A brilliant display of fireworks explodes over the jungle from the city that must lie beyond.
"They've been here far longer than I thought," Hilde's voice fills my ears, reminding me that this unfortunately isn't real. "I'm afraid they might have abducted Malcolm Goode, and if they found him, they probably found the other Greeters, too."
The night lapses ahead into the morning. All of the fireworks have stopped. The trees have stopped blowing in the breeze and the storm has dialed back to a dense, nearly opaque fog. There's like a whole new vibe now. It's overwhelming with dread and grief and Hilde chiming in doesn't help.
"Our human allies are being hunted on this planet," she continues. "That puts us at even more of a risk. Humans are weak; they'll talk. They'll tell them something about us we don't want them to know."
Another day, another night, and more fog. It's thicker than it was before, darker, and carries with it the smell of death. As the next day ticks by, a hulking, armored, arthropod spacecraft emerges from the looming clouds. I never thought that I could experience a memory within…what the fuck is this, a dream? I'm still not fully understanding how this erkōsa thing works, but my mind flashes back to that night we left. The sky red from the fires, Hilde tugging me by the arm, my grandpa dressed in his crimson and gold kinetic dermis, the blue light that gathered in his glasses as he yelled, "Retō!"
This is a Mogadorian warship, and it has finally made its way to the city of Deloon.
"Eight years ago, we sent recon missions to almost every one of the Krugós, preparing for our Egress. We knew that other worlds would have unwilling allies, but we managed to luck out with Earth. Even though they'd forgotten about us and nearly wiped out all of our powros, we found allies—communities of our descendants in the Caribbean, Cêpan populations hiding out in Europe, the Greeters in the United States.
"They agreed to help us if the Defense Council agreed on Earth. But when we got here…like I said, the Mogadorians have been back on this planet far longer than we all thought. The Greeters were the only ones who responded when we landed. None of us knew what happened to the rest. Maybe the Mogs killed the bigger groups first, and then once they were out of the way, that's when they picked off the Greeters. Heldos Elkos, that might have been what happened to the Wolf."
The warship starts shooting at the jungle with weapons I wouldn't imagine in my nightmares. The Garde rush out of the burning tree line, retaliating with their Legacies. But they don't stand a chance against the war beasts that the ship drops on the shore. I have to look away.
I dive under the water and swim as deep as I can go. All the creatures I saw earlier have disappeared. Probably retreating to safety. More likely dead from the smoke choking the sea. Somehow, I'm able to breathe underwater. I keep swimming until the ocean gets too dark for me to see. The surface must be a hundred feet above me. The sky goes from smoke-filled to red, and the sea churns. Terrified. Dying.
"Let me out," I say. Hilde doesn't answer me. "Let me the fuck out!"
I should be scared, watching the death of my planet with no filter or comfort. But I'm not afraid. I'm infuriated. I want to surge back to the surface and rip every last one of those motherfuckers apart, but this is all in the past. There is nothing I can do to change anything I'm seeing up there.
"Hilde, get me out of here!" I shout louder. My anger must be translating into the real world, because the vision begins to shake and the reality I see before me is bathed with a fire that seems to come from my own being.
I inhale, the water filling my lungs.
When I exhale, I'm breathing out artificially warm air from our house's heating system.
The earthquake ends when I sit up. Hilde doesn't even need to calm me down. My anger flows back into me, that electric sensation buzzing at the base of my spine. I don't tell Hilde about the euphoric energy that sends tremors through my limbs. Maybe that is a part of the Legacy.
Maybe not.
"You're okay, One," Hilde tells me. "You did good holding in the Terric."
"Thanks." I control my breathing again. My arms are still wrapped up. "Can we get rid of this?"
"Not yet. You need to wear it for the next couple days to even out the Legacy to the rest of your body. I'm glad about the lateral repulsion, but I'm worried you're going too fast. How do you feel?"
"I feel good, like I'm in control again."
"Excellent." Hilde presses her hand to the side of my face. "Did you see anything when I…?"
"Yeah, I did."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"It happened, Hilde. What else is there to talk about? I could go on for millennia venting my feelings about what I saw, and it won't change anything. Learn from the past, look to the future, right?"
She almost smiles. "Exactly. These assholes will not stand a chance against us."
"I know." Fuck yeah, I know. I'm done slacking off, running away.
From now on, I train and I fight and I kill until we win.