Axel Light Trilogy: Wands and Shield

Chapter 01

Axel Light would had given everything in his life to have things back to normality. No matter how he had hated his life up to that point, he wanted them back.

The whole lot of them.

In a normal day, he would come home to a mother, draped in an apron, sometimes soiled with grease or flour or soap that splashed from dishwashing. Sometimes smiling at him, sometimes frowning worriedly, sometimes with menacing glares because he was late to come home.

He would then argue his case or shared a joke sometimes, most of the time about his best friend, Elliot Green's antics. His mother, Natasha Wyndham-Light, might laugh or just looked blankly at him, because sometimes, a sixteen-year-old joke might be too much to reckon with.

His father, Edward Light, would be home around dinner. He would look tired from work. He did not seem to enjoy his work in a bank, but he had persisted and continued to work in the same bank for as long as Axel could remember. It gave them a comfortable life, so why change when things were, well, perfectly normal?

But change was in Axel's mind ever since he could think on his own. Maybe when he was four or five. Maybe ten, more likely.

He was always restless. He could never sit still. There was something always nagging at him. An unfinished business at the back of his mind. But he had no idea what it was.

Until this very moment, staring starkly at him.

All sixteen years of his life, suddenly, he heard a click in his head.

'Are they dead?' asked Axel.

He had just walked into chaos and rubbles. His schoolbag was still on his shoulders. He knew he was late from school; he had sneaked off for a ride on Elliot's new broomstick at Anthill Park. He had been thinking of excuses for his mother on the way home because he simply could not say that he had a ride on a broomstick. His mother hated everything Magical. Even the word 'Magical' was a taboo in the Light's family.

But everything Magical was in the middle of his living room right now.

Or what was left of it.

Including his parents, Natasha and Edward Light, dead.

They had to be because they looked dead. And they were holding wands in their hands.

'Are they dead?' asked Axel bluntly again.

Axel looked at the people standing around in his living room and everywhere else in his house. He tried to look at their faces but his eyes could not focus. His mind was going wild, his heart thumping wildly, he could not breathe.

Reality sinking in.

Slowly, but surely.

'Are they dead?' Axel asked again, biting at every word.

Why aren't they answering him?!

A tall man in a black cloak, his short, dark grey hair tucked in a hat with the word 'MAXPOL' emblazoned on it stepped forward to face him. Axel spotted pins on his cloak collars – straight and rigid like a lot of starch was used when they were ironed. White gloves holding a dark brown wand. His deep grey eyes looking forlornly into Axel's striking blue eyes, which Elliot would occasionally comment that they looked like swirling seas when the sun shone on them.

Axel knew perfectly well who the people in his house were – at least those who were standing. They were all wearing the same hat as the tall man. And the same cloak, but with different colour pins. They were MaxPol – or Magical Police.

In the city of Stirling where Axel lived, there were two types of law enforcements – City Police and Magical Police. Because Stirling was a Maxon city – a city where Magical and Non-Magical lived together.