Chapter 21

  Aquiles’ mind was without thought or emotion. He’d heard the most absurd words he’d ever heard out of someone’s mouth, then just went blank. His brother pulled Aquiles back to reality and his focus back to the chamber round them.

  “Come on, hermano! We are leaving!” Arturo pulled on his arms and slapped him on the face. That did the trick.

  “What do you mean betrayed, Socorra?” he contested.

  “We need to get you two out of here right now.”

  “That legion is ten minutes away at most,” Josefa added to the commotion from up the hatch.

  “Alright, we’ll pack bags of supplies in the mess and come right back here,” Socorra responded, and as if thinking to herself, “That’s enough time, right?”

  Arturo chimed in, “We can easily make that, let's go!”

  “STOP!”

  Lightning burst from Aquiles and connected to the ground ceiling and walls around him. It blinked, a white-blue, and scorched the hay. Juan protected his brother and Socorra raised her own hands to dissipate the bolts. They passed right around Arturo. “What do you mean betrayed? We’re here barely three days and already the Ministry has sent a contingency of guards. This is insane.”

  “I told you, the Father betrayed us. Something isn’t right. We-”

  “The Father betrayed us? Or you betrayed him? You’re right, Child. We,” he pointed between himself and Arturo, “aren’t right. We’re demons after all. You heard him.”

  “The Ministry will kill you, and everyone here, for harboring you. Whether they knew or not, the Ministry will kill them.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  The Juans, Josefa, his brother, and Socorra stared back at him, their fears plain on their faces.

  “Then this has all been for nothing,” Socorra looked from Aquiles to Arturo to the Juans and up the ladder at Josefa. “We lost.”

  “...I believe you…” Arturo whispered, terror spasming in his legs and his hands jerking to grab at the ladder rungs. “I can’t die. I have someone to see.”

  The last of Aquiles’ guilt choked him, “We must die.”

  Arturo’s eyes began to water, and Aquiles scoffed as he forced his own tears back.

  “I’m turning myself in,” he said, then pushed past them all to climb the ladder.

  ***

  Arturo couldn’t control his breathing. He panicked, not for his death, but for how he’d said goodbye to Valeria. He couldn’t stand it. Tears flowed freely down his cheeks, and he gasped to fill his lungs to no avail. He worried dying would hurt. A life of agony, and he worried the end would be as painful still. Socorra said a Thunderhead’s torture at the hand of their sibling’s death should be avoided at all cost, choose any other death. Arturo was scared. Why did this have to be happening? Arturo wanted a normal life. Not this. And now, the Ministry wanted to take- and Aquiles…

  Aquiles was going to let them.

  He shouted something primal. He flew up the ladder after Aquiles, and his legs shook, and the ladder shook, and his hands pulsed with bursts of air, and his body was going to explode.

  “NO!”

  Arturo clawed into his brother’s shoulder and yanked the bastard around.

  And finally, surprise. Not smugness, not a scowl, not indifference, but genuine surprise lit on that familiar face.

  He slammed his knuckles into Aquiles’ jaw. A meaty crack resounded at the base of the Parents’ statue, and his snapped back, drops of blood flung against the wooden ground. The back of Aquiles’ head smacked into the wooden floor with a thunk. He stared up, eyes glassed over.

  Arturo stood over him and bent down, gripping the boy’s robes in white fists and holding him off the ground. His mind was a calm, grass meadow swept to nothing by a howling wind. A firestorm tore through the land now.

  “You don’t get to decide when I die!”

  There wasn’t understanding there in Aquiles’ eyes. He closed them and his head lolled.

  Josefa watched on, stunned. She shook herself, smiled, and gave him a little clap on the back. Arturo called down the ladder, “Juan! Carry Aquiles to the mess! We are getting our supplies then leaving.” They were running out of time. He rubbed his knuckles. The big twins came up, one after the other, followed by a scared looking Socorra. That was more unnerving than even the Father betraying them. Socorra experienced fear, and gods lied.

  Bolt Juan scooped Aquiles’ limp body up and threw it over his shoulder. They all rounded the Parents’ statue, but something was off. The great hall smelled like burning wood and rain. Always rain. Arturo’s stomach dropped. He spun, expecting Aquiles to blast the lot of them, but it wasn’t him.

  Wood scraped under his feet. Arturo turned back around and looked at the entrance to the Great Hall from the city, to where he’d spotted his brother for the first time. There wasn’t some squadron of Storms, or a group of Bolts, but one huge man with a gray face, the Stranger from town, preceded by three bloody and beaten prisoners, chained with drooped heads.

  The Stranger yanked at the chains around their necks, and their heads raised in unison. Antonio watched him through black and swollen eyes, Miguel stared off into space with blood dripping down his cheeks from cuts on his head and face, and Barto grimaced with a broken smile. Arturo’s gut twisted. His tears returned.

  “What do you want?” he called to the Stranger.

  “Do you know these men,” Josefa questioned him.

  “They’re damn near family,” he turned back to the stranger and yelled across the hall, “Let them go!”

  The Stranger just watched on.

  “I know that old man,” Socorra gasped, voice strangled with horror, “he came looking for you.” She shook her head back and forth in disbelief, “I should have never turned him away. I’m so sorry.”

  Barto choked a laugh out and said, “Hola, nin?a. It's good to see you again.” The Stranger yanked on his chain, and he collapsed to his knees.

  “Enough,” the gray man’s voice cut the air, “come quietly and I will let these men go, free to return to whatever place they came from.”

  “Let them go, and I won’t kill you! I’m a Thunderhead of a Greatstorm!”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The man laughed, a wagon axle grinding in its place, “The Father has told me all about your ‘abilities’, Arturo.” His laugh cut off, his hands were enfouldered, sparking and crackling with the blessing of a Bolt.

  “Come freely. And they live.” The Stranger swept a hand popping with arcs, some connecting to the walls and ceiling, “And, as a gesture, I won’t burn this accursed place to the ground.”

  Socorra seemed to have found her strength again, “How dare you? We are the Monastery of the Parents!”

  The Stranger snickered, “Yes indeed. Well, you can plainly see the Parents’ opinion of you.”

  Arturo’s mind was blank, gripped by the sights of his friends chained and hurt. Voices carried on outside of him.

  “You cannot harm anyone in their name, they would never stand it.”

  “Who’s to say they stand still?”

  Socorra blazed to light on her own, shoulders wrapped in thick bands of light, jumping up to her head and down her arms. “Heresy!”

  Her strength emboldened him. Arturo felt more confident now, he breathed in and felt the energy in his fingertips. He pushed out two shockwaves to the floor, a display of his strength. “Let them go!”

  The Stranger scowled at them, “I said come freely.”

  Like a snake striking, he shot his huge hand toward Barto’s head. The lightning wrapped around the Stranger’s grip, thick as Arturo’s wrist, and Barto seized. The Stranger’s fingers pressed into Barto’s skull. His skin blackened and the smell of meat cooking dominated the rain. Barto’s hair caught fire, and his eyes melted, thick tears to paint his cheeks. He didn’t scream, he couldn’t.

  The Stranger twisted his grip and ripped Barto’s head free.

  He reared back and threw it at them. It splattered against the stone of the Parents’ statue. Barto’s lifeless body slumped against the ground, smoking at the stump on his neck.

  The world stopped.

  Two separate bolts connected the Stranger to Socorra and Juan. He worked to dissipate the attacks.

  The world was silent.

  Juan’s face twisted, his lightning as thick as his own arms, purple and dancing with energy. Socorra looked calm. The Stranger struggled with them both, but clearly not with all his effort. With two quick motions, he redirected the lightning into Miguel then Antonio. They didn’t seize. They exploded forward, ruined and still.

  Some whine grew in Arturo’s ears and his vision went red. The energy grew over his entire body, a blood-curdling scream, a blast of white expanded from his mouth. A rush of wind sucked the air from his lungs.

  The whine stopped, and he PUSHED.

  The great hall disappeared before him. The lightning was gone.

  Had the world gone?

  He looked about, debris about him. The big twins laying on their backs.

  Socorra was sat with her legs out front. Her face was pure terror.

  Cries from the market were the first thing to crawl back into Arturo’s ears. The sloped wall at the opposite end of the great hall was empty space. The hall was empty of pews, and the walls were empty of torches. His ears rang. He watched rubble rain down on the far mountainside.

  Rectangles of stone, some taller than two men and twice that in length, bounced off the natural formations hundreds of paces away, flattening trees, splintering outcroppings. They completely cleared the market outside the church, and left an open, clean wound into the Monastery. His whole body felt hot like a fire.

  People outside screamed.

  He looked back at the gore on the statue. All that was left of Barto. His body and those of Miguel and Antonio disappeared on the white wave of Arturo’s entire life of pain. He felt nothing. Just emptiness. He looked down to the floor where Aquiles was looking at him like the demons out of their children’s stories.

  “Did you see him, Aquiles?” Arturo couldn’t hear his own voice. He could be shouting. He put his fury into the next words, “Do you believe her now?”

  Aquiles nodded, watching Arturo with awe. Arturo’s hearing slowly returned as they ran down the hallway towards the mess. His brother ran next to him looking at nothing, his breath steady with his strides. Behind him, Socorra spoke with wonder, “All the stories of the power of a Greatstorm. They’re true. You’re proof.”

  But his friends were torn to pieces like nothing. And he felt fragile.

  “I don’t care.”

  He hoped the Stranger was dead, smitten to pieces on the mountainside. But if the beast lived, it would come to fear Arturo. For he would kill it, it who ended his friends, slowly and with all the savor of a delicious meal.

  He didn’t care. But he did relish it.

  ***

  Josefa trotted alongside Arturo. She watched him wearily, waiting for him to have another outburst and kill them all. She wished Socorra had told her about this plot to bring the Greatstorm together sooner. Maybe she could have advised the desperate old woman against it. Josefa looked back at the Child. Socorra wouldn’t meet her gaze, staring at her pumping legs to keep up with the younger pack.

  Gaze back on Arturo. His skin gleamed with sweat, and his arteries stood out from his long neck as he ran. It would be so easy to end it all right here. Her fingers tickled the hilt of her knives. She could run the edge along that little rounded part there and stop this fight before it began. Yet, she couldn’t trust the Ministry. That poor man’s horrible death had cemented that truth.

  The Thunderhead’s run looked so normal. Harmless, mild. But that shockwave picked up everything in its path and exploded a wall, three feet of stone and twenty feet high, several hundred paces out into the countryside. That immense power contained in this simple man next to her. Josefa shivered.

  The guards would get here in no less than five minutes by now. She estimated three hundred men and women to be in that pack. There were probably a dozen Storms following them as well. She’d relayed her estimations to her party. They all just nodded, speechless now. Just heavy breathing and wheezing from their exertions.

  Aquiles ran just behind her. She glanced back to see his pallid expression, numb with shock at what was transpiring and that beast of a punch his brother threw at him. She worried what he was capable of now that she’d seen a Greatstorm truly use its blessings. Josefa and her sister were so regular. Their use of the blessings would pale in comparison to what these brothers were capable of. She kept on shivering.

  They arrived at the mess. People were running around the main square, trying to figure out what caused that massive blast that made the entire pyramid rumble. Socorra seemed to have gotten through her thoughts and began giving out orders. “Juan and Juan, grab supplies. Cheese, rice, whatever. And the vials! Arturo, Aquiles! Keep your damned heads down. We need the monks to fight for us. Help those two for the Parents’ sake!”

  Josefa watched on and waited for her orders. Socorra just stood there waiting for the two Storms to come back with the supplies but passed on all the apologies she’d ever need to for Maria. Josefa would follow this woman to the horizon and to the moon. She wrapped her hands in wool for what was to come and stared into her mentor’s eyes, her friend’s eyes. “Te quiero, Socorra.”

  The other woman choked on a sob and nodded her head. The Storms returned ladened with foodstuffs. Socorra jumped back into action.

  “Juan and Juan! Take them back to the chamber and out the passage to the stables. There should be mounts there. Arturo and Aquiles, ride out of the city. Keep an eye on the road for five days. If none of us come, hide and rebuild your strength.”

  Those four ran off, the Greatstorm lowering their heads in the chaos. Many Children were entering the mess now, calling out questions for Socorra to ignore. The wizened woman looked to Josefa. “Keep to the shadows. If guards truly do enter this pyramid, pick them off quietly. Scare them.”

  Josefa smiled. A chance at revenge at last.

  Socorra lowered her head and whispered, “And as for me…”

  She turned, and the old woman seemed to grow to a new height.

  “Children of the Monastery!” The crowd went silent. Young Ones and Children crowded around the Arm to hear her words.

  “The Ministry is marching on us as we speak. That blast was their first attack!”

  Josefa let the lie roll off. A gasp ran through the crowd. A man cried out, “How is this possible? We only just learned of their treachery! You said months!”

  Josefa watched Socorra, wondering what she would say. The woman took a moment to think and spoke with conviction, “The Ministry has strayed from the guidance of the Parents, as you know. The Father pleaded with us for help, and the Ministry is striking first to solidify their hold on our land!”

  The crowd was silent again. Fear and worry were palpable on the air.

  “We must prepare ourselves to fight for our survival! There are a few hundred guards and dozens of Storms on the way.”

  The fear grew into crying and anxious moans.

  “Will you fight with me against the heretics threatening our home?”

  Silence. Josefa was stricken with doubt. These people had never known real violence, this attack was not a possible reality to them.

  The ground began to rumble like thunder in the distance. The Arm of the Monastery smiled.

  “Do you hear them?” Malice now streaked Socorra’s voice, a rasp from deep in her throat.

  That storm grew closer.

  “Do you hear them coming to break us? US? The Parents’ Children?! HERE WE STAND!”

  A dark-skinned man with protruding eyebrows and deep wrinkles stepped forward from the crowd. Child Horacio placed a hand on Socorra’s shoulder, “We hear them.”

  He turned to the crowd and shouted, “WE HEAR THEM!”

  The crowd roared in response, adrenaline replacing the fear and worry with resolve. The few Children allowed to carry swords unsheathed them now and held them above their heads. Horacio unsheathed his own, ringing metal breached over the cacophony.

  Socorra raised her hands, “I know our time to train was cut before having started, but Children! Come! Come fight with me!”

  “YES, CHILD!” A single voice

  “Come fight with me! BREAK US?! Let these bastards break their steel on something HARDER!”

  Goosebumps rose on Josefa’s burning flesh.

  Another roar echoed around the hall.