Authors: Dhayaa Anbajagane
Q snapped out of his flashback and saw that Levi was getting a ton of explanations from everyone. The guy nodded while his classmates smiled and laughed as they chatted.
“Think he’ll get what they’re telling him?” Elizabeth asked Q.
“My explanations were probably better,” Taylor turned and grinned.
Q laughed, “Of course they were.”
Levi went on asking more and more questions, every answer he received puzzling him even more than the questions he had asked.
This really shouldn’t be happening in the middle of class
, Q thought, recalling all the times Juliana had scolded
him
for interrupting her lecture unnecessarily.
He chuckled as he thought about his very first interruption. He had stood up in class on day one and asked Juliana what Aliea’s place in the world was. She had ignored his question that day and asked him to pay attention to her lecture instead. He finally found the answer though, through first-hand experience, and he really preferred he hadn’t done it that way.
Aliea’s purpose was to train warriors to aid in the protection of the Universe. Though that kind of responsibility seemed like a proud thing to undertake, it was quite a pain to execute. It was basically like this: cadets try to protect the Universe and everything in it, while the ‘everything in it’ tries to kill them.
Stupid right? Q called it the ‘How everyone is a big idiot’ Paradox.
Juliana soon tired of all the commotion and forced everyone back to their seats in an attempt to get on with the class. “Okay class, now pay attention to the board,” she turned to the holographic board that was projected from the floor and gestured with her hands, summoning quizzical diagrams onto it.
Q heard Elizabeth scoff at one of the diagrams which meant that this topic, like most of the stuff Juliana had been teaching, was something Elizabeth had learned long ago. He wasn’t really surprised. Elizabeth wasn’t human; rather she was a member of a species called the ‘Seraphians’. Her race was gifted with a naturally high intellect, which was sometimes good and mostly bad.
Why was it bad? Well, her mind knew no boundaries, something that everyone realized when she hacked into the holographic board and got it to play, ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ in the middle of a lecture. That was a fun time. He still remembered Juliana yelling at them, demanding to know who hacked into the board. In the end she had just given up and watched the movie along with everyone else.
Q’s eyes shot open from a loud thud of a door closing. He sat up in his seat and rubbed his eyes drowsily, trying to recollect when he had actually fallen asleep.
“Just woke up huh?” Taylor stood next to him.
He let out a big yawn, “Yeah,” he said.
“I’m heading back home now,” she said. “Oh, and by the way, Elizabeth said she won't be free today. She and a group of cadets left with the new guy. I think they said they were going for karaoke.”
“Oh, okay then.”
“I’ll see you later,” she flashed a smile and walked out.
Q left soon after, but waited under the stone arch. He loved this time of day. His eyes stared at the evening sky and fixated there until the Sun had set. He watched as the skyline filled with the shadows of skyscrapers, each one peppered with white light coming from tiny windows.
A few minutes later he decided he had had enough ‘skyscraper-gazing’ for a day and left his position by the arch, his body still feeling heavy and lethargic from his battle with Ruby. He had just headed outside the academy walls, when he heard someone call out his name.
He turned around and saw Levi run towards him, his neat brown hair now in a tussle, his face terrified with fear. He gasped for breath as he desperately tried to get the words out of his mouth.
“It’s Elizabeth.”
***
Q’s eyes went wide, “Where is she?” he asked.
Levi pointed to the pathway that branched out on the left and Q raced away. He pushed his legs as hard as could, stopping only at a fork in the pathway. The roads around him were washed in darkness, which he found odd. Of course, the Sun had set but there were always a few plasma lamps that lit up the road during this time of day.
He stumbled on something falling flat on the ground. His hands ran along the surface, trying to find what he had tripped over. His fingers wrapped around a cold metal pole almost as thick as his arm. The smooth texture under his fingers gave him a vague sense of familiarity. Too familiar. It was one of the posts that held up the plasma lamps.
It had been knocked down. Rather, it had been torn apart. Q’s heart beat faster. Just what was going on here? Those posts were solid metal and they had been ripped apart like shreds of paper.
His eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, and saw the faint outlines of the broken glass and shredded metal all around him. Every lamp on the street had been destroyed. He looked further ahead and saw dark shadows fighting. Huge figures, almost eight feet in height, battled against a sole girl.
Elizabeth.
The shadows exploded in a bright white light, sending tiny shreds of rocks all around them. Q threw his arms up to shield him from the debris but he never averted his eyes, not wanting to miss any of the details.
Levi caught up to him, “What’s going on?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet,” he mumbled as he focused on the scenery around him, taking in every miniscule detail. The bright lights lingered in the darkness, giving him enough light to see clearly. He saw Elizabeth with almost painful clarity.
She was a fearful sight to see, her face covered with bruises, a trickle of blood down the side of her cheek, her breathing irregular and stressed.
Q couldn't believe that she had taken that much damage even after suiting up with her battle armor. The famed ‘blue tears’ armor had caused quite a ruckus at Aliea, mainly because it was one of the only pieces of weaponry that had been custom made for a cadet. Its blue and white color scheme made it look like a royal artifact, keeping in touch with the rest of her. She had pulled out two daggers from the sheaths in her calves, slashing and hacking at large humanoids.
Q had to strain a bit to see what these things actually were.
Golems
, he realized.
Blue streams of energy formed a vaguely humanoid body. Their faces were void of any emotion, two white dots and a streak below, their eyes and a mouth, being the only identification on their faces.
Four massive chunks of energy walked at Elizabeth, surrounding her completely. Q raced towards her as she dodged their barrage of fierce blows as fast as she could. She jumped about with amazing speed, her feet touching the ground for hardly a second, but the sheer speed and power of the golems’ blows proved too much for her. The creatures finally managed to catch her mid-jump and landed a blow to her sides, knocking her through the air. She shot out from the cluster of golems and smashed into a wall.
Q could only watch as her body fell to the ground, limp and still. The golems now turned towards him, their face empty and calm. He knew who they were going to come after next. He braced himself and warned Levi.
His mind analyzed his options. Elizabeth seemed badly injured and clearly needed treatment, but to get her to safety he would have to abandon Levi. Levi was an unknown entity at the moment and Q didn’t know if he would be able handle all of the golems on his own. Q secretly wished Taylor were there next to him, he could’ve used a Dark Knight just about then.
In his moment of distraction something charged into him and he fell to the ground hard. He activated his battle instincts and prepared to take the first swing, only to find Levi standing in front of him.
“You would have died you idiot,” Levi yelled. “What were you doing spacing out like that? That golem would have crushed you into a breakfast pancake.”
Q looked in front of him, at the golem’s blue fist that lay buried in the pathway, right at the spot he had been standing just a few seconds ago.
“Thanks, Levi,” he said, “I owe you one.”
“Of course you do,” Levi smiled.
Q snapped his mind back into focus, and prepared to attack. Right now he had no other choice; he had to defeat the golems. It would be terrifying to have those things loose in Aliea’s streets.
“We can’t beat them with a regular attack,” Levi said. He closed his eyes, forming a red glow over his arm, and jumped high into the air, ramming his fist into the golem and using the recoil from the punch to bring himself back to a safe position.
Power infusion
, Q thought. Certain warriors could use their life energy to temporarily boost their physical strength. That punch Levi landed would have probably broken a regular person’s bones. The golem, though, just kept fighting like nothing had happened.
“See?” Levi said. “No regular attacks work.”
“I guess we’ll have to use another form of battle then,” Q said. He took a step back and raised his hand, his palm facing the golems. He felt the life energy inside him and imaged a small river of it heading towards his palms.
A rush of power surged into his hands. Two arcs of lightning hit one of the golems and pierced through its body, but a blob of energy just flowed back into the gap and covered it up like it was nothing. The golem was acting more like a blob than a humanoid.
“You’re a mage?!” Levi burst out.
“Yeah,” Q said sheepishly. “I probably forgot to mention it.”
Mages of course were the pinnacle of cadets. But Q though, was banned from using his mage powers. Well, to be fair, he wasn’t exactly a mage. He was actually from a separate class, neither a warrior nor a mage. He was a
sorcerer
. A cadet capable of mastering any and every Elementa as long as he honed the skill.
The Academy’s board was afraid he would lose control of his vast life energy reservoir and decided to ban him from using his powers. He was to use his Elementa only during a regulated battle, a category his everyday death match with Ruby did not fall into.
So basically, he was like a super powered mage.
“You’re a mage aren’t you?” Levi asked. “Use a lightning Elementa attack!”
Q looked straight at the golem. Those attacks of his had passed right through them. He didn’t know if it was because of his inability as a mage or just the way the golems were built.
He summoned a larger stream of energy from within and four bigger arcs of lightning hit a golem. The attack passed right through him this time as well.
“It doesn’t work,” Q muttered.
“Oh dear,” Levi said, “I had hoped a mage’s attack would work on the golems but these things seem to have a counter for that as well. They’re made of pure energy right? So they can probably absorb any sort of energy attack that you throw at them.”
“Well, isn't that convenient,” Q muttered.
“They were just rock golems when I left to come get you, but now they seemed to have evolved into these energy golems,” Levi said, his voice quivering with fear and curiosity all at once.
“Evolved huh,” he said. That didn't seem very normal. What were these things?
He turned off the curiosity and put his mind to work, figuring out his paths of action. If the golems were made out of energy, there was always the option of manipulating their internal energy to fit his will, turning them into ten-foot puppets that he could control.
On paper, the idea seemed simple, manipulate another energy source the same way that one would do with their own life energy, but in reality, an external energy source would be really hard to manipulate. Even for him.
There was another option as well, but that would either destroy the golems, or leave him bedridden, or both. And as always, he chose to go with option two, simply because it was the easier one, even though the side effects were the most dangerous too.
Q didn’t worry and focused on the river of energy that was flowing into his hands. He willed it to flow further and further away from his palm, through the air and into one of the golems. He felt his life energy flow inside the golems’ deluge of energy and dissolve within them, turning part of him into parts of them.
The key part to a successful Elementa attack was visualization, something that was hard to do if one knew nothing about it. The Universe is filled with solid matter that one can touch and feel. This matter also exists simultaneously in the form of waves. An Elementa attack manipulates the wave part of these objects, an act more commonly called a wave-skill.
So one could use their life energy and manipulate these waves into say, becoming more energetic, and thus heating up. Or they could move the block around by directly moving the wave around. Basically it was like one could form an invisible connection with an object they were trained to manipulate.
Q though, had a very different wave-skill in mind. He visualized his attack and focused on just one of the golems. His face strained with effort as he tapped into more of his life energy. His chest contracted with a clenching pain, but he ignored it and fought on hard. He couldn't stop now, not when he was so close.
The golem’s energy slowly turned from a bright blue to a volcanic red. Q’s mouth twitched into a small smile. His idea had worked. The golem’s face seemed confused, but that only lasted for a few seconds, and it exploded with a deafening noise, dissipating into a wave of red energy.
The wave of energy from the first golem fused together with the energy of the other three golems and overloaded them as well. This time Q was the emotionless one, as he watched the three confused golems explode, leaving nothing of their existence other than a cloud of dark gloomy smoke.
“What did you do to them?” Levi asked.
Q smiled broadly, “I overloaded the first golem’s internal energy by providing it with more energy than it could handle. As a result it exploded. The other golems took in the energy that was dissipated when the first golem exploded and overloaded themselves. So they exploded as well. Poof!”
“Nice,” Levi said, grinning in admiration.
Q headed towards Elizabeth, his smile dropping and his face turning serious. She lay frozen on the ground, her body as still as stone. Q’s emotions were in turmoil as he thought of how those golems had attacked her.
He knew the general way golems worked. They had a mage who created and controlled them. These golems were just empty shells that served the commands of their master, for better or worse.
“Who did this?” Q asked Levi, his voice deathly and quiet.
“I don’t know,” Levi said. “I was walking along with everyone to the karaoke bar and all of a sudden these things attacked us. Elizabeth tried fighting them, but when she got knocked about everyone ran away in fright. She still kept going against the golems to give everyone else more time to escape. I figured the best thing to do would be to get you.”
Q bit his lip. He didn't know anyone in Aliea who could summon golems. The perpetrator had to have come from outside, but he didn't start worrying about that right away. His main priority was to get Elizabeth to safety, and make sure she was okay. “I’d better take her home,” he said, lifting Elizabeth up.
Levi nodded, “I’ll go inform the officials and check on the others to see if they’re okay,” he said and ran off.
“Levi,” Q called out. The brown-haired cadet stopped halfway and turned around.
“Thanks for today,” Q smiled.
“Hey, I’m an Aliea Academy cadet too, you know,” he laughed and ran off.
Q liked this new kid. He seemed determined, and strong too. He had never seen anyone throw an energy-infused punch with that much power. He was sure even Taylor would be stunned by that move.
He turned his attention towards Elizabeth, “We better get you home,” he said, hoping she would wake up if he talked to her.
He saw her unconscious face wince in pain when his fingers ran over her bruised arm. His heart ached to see her in so much agony, and yet he couldn't help but feel a sense of awe when he looked at her. This girl had fought not one, but four golems, all by herself, just to make sure her friends escaped.
He looked ahead, into the dark night sky and its polka-dot stars. The stars here never twinkled like those on Earth. Instead they remained defiant and bright. The wind blew on his face, its coldness both stinging him and refreshing him as he walked along the silent road with Elizabeth in his arms. He thought about the golems that had appeared out of nowhere. Those were high level golems, which meant there was a powerful mage lurking around Aliea.
There was only question on Q’s mind. Just what was this mage after?
***
Taylor basked in the silence as she walked through the calm night. She had been worried about Q lately. He hadn't shown it, but he had seemed down ever since their friends Kai and Christina, or ‘Chris’ as they called her, had left on a top secret mission. Of course, even though it was top secret, she, Elizabeth and Q got to know the details.
Kai and Chris had been asked to head to Moon Base to fix its weapons system which had reportedly crashed a few weeks ago. Apart from being a first class pilot, Kai doubled as a handy mechanic so it wasn't surprising that the Academy asked him to go. Chris, on the other hand, was one of the best healers the Academy had, so she had been deployed for any medical assistance required in case of an emergency.