Hiraeth -- Eleceed FF

Chapter 2

For many young Awakeners of Nathalia's generation, the Great Awakener War was a memory of two generations ago. She had been told about the World Awakened Academy in the forests of the Northwest Territories of Canada, where children from families once at each other's throats had lived and studied together.

Not that she had ever been there– her family, the Espinozas, had never trusted the motives of the Academy and the people who ran it, and they were powerful enough to refuse any invitation to engage with them. They had a few close family friends, but hadn't gone out of their way to make alliances; they mostly kept to their island stronghold off the coast of Portugal. The Espinozas had guarded their force control fiercely; no one outside the family could be allowed to know it: it was the ability to control water, something no other group or family had. Perhaps that was the cause of its demise: the last– and only living– person to use that force control was hiding in a hut high up in the Andes mountains.

Nathalia's eyes opened abruptly. Her mind tended to wander when she practised her force control, even after so many years. It took a while to re-orient; for a moment she had seen the clean white walls of the training room in the house she had lived in before everything– it must be gone by now, she thought– instead of the confines of her hut. Taking a deep breath, she concentrated again on the flow of the energy moving through her body as she had been taught.

On some days, her mind would drift, and she would start to think of the past, and today was one of them. She had been fifteen, she remembered, and it was just before she had had to flee on a speedboat with two days' supply of water and three tins of canned food. Their island had been set upon abruptly, and Nathalia's father had ordered her to save herself and go.

She was trying to make her way to the pier, she remembered, when she had been intercepted by a middle-aged man around her father's age standing between her and the water. Nathalia knew, as soon as she saw the whiplike energy arcing from the man's hands, that she was no match for his power. She dodged a strand of energy that flicked past her, shearing off a few inches of dark hair, and ran for the lake in the gardens. More filaments glowing blue and purple came close to her, but surprisingly none drew blood.

She had seen glimpses of the Bryan patriarch fighting her grandmother earlier as she was fleeing along the coastline, and the suspicion entered her mind: this man, whatever his standing was in his family, was so much more than a match for her that he was playing with her. His attacks were coming far more slowly than she was sure he could achieve, and it was more than a coincidence, she was sure, that she had not bled yet.

At that thought, anger knifed through her, even as it was shot through with fear. She would go down fighting. Adrenaline coursed through her system as she called up her power and brought water up from the lake to form a barrier in front of her. It came up just in time to slow another burst of energy that lashed past, allowing her to veer away.

The man laughed. He said something– she couldn't remember what it was– and energy whipped around her much faster than before. She tried to evade his attack again, but a tendril of energy caught her in the arm, leaving a deep gash. Blood spattered into the water, and she ran.

Nathalia turned around when she had gotten to a safer distance. She raised her hand, and high-pressure jets of water shot out at the man in quick succession. He blocked her attack almost lazily, retaliating with another onslaught that left cuts all over her and a jagged red wound along her thigh.

When Nathalia tried to run again, but stumbled and fell, she suddenly felt cool water-spray over her, and from the corner of her eye she saw her would-be assassin flung aside. She scrambled up, and there was her father, his face pale but resolute, bleeding from half a dozen deep slashes.

He shouted to her in their native Portuguese, telling her to run, take the boat and find somewhere safe, leave me be, but it took her a moment to register his words. When her limbs finally obeyed her, her assailant was already on his feet, sparks of purple-blue energy gathering around him. Her father gave him a smile that contained no humour.

Nathalia could recall his words clearly: "I've killed your brother. You had no right coming here. We did nothing to you." She remembered the dark blue strands of energy that coalesced around him, the water that had hit the man coming back to his hands like an obedient hunting dog, ready to attack again.

The other man laughed. "One Bryan seems almost too much for you to handle. He seems to have given as good as he got. Let's see if a second one will see you face to face with my brother." Without warning, he struck out, and Nathalia's father parried, moving around him to strike out with his power. Nathalia tore her eyes away, running towards the pier.

When she had started up the engine of the boat, she dared to look back. Her father's attacks were coming a fraction too slow now, and she could see his figure staggering as the other man gathered his power. He raised his hand to block the sharp arc of energy coming towards him, raising a protective wall, but Nathalia could see that it was much smaller than the one that he had initially called up, and the whiplike projection faltered for a moment before breaking through in a shower of sparks and wrapping itself around his neck.

Nathalia had closed her eyes then; she could not remember her father scream.

Her boat began to move away from the coast, gathering speed, and her wounds started to throb as the adrenaline wore off and terror set in.