Garthia: The Forgotten King

Chapter Fourteen

~Chapter Fourteen

As soon as I feel the water go over my head, I hold my breath and keep my eyes squeezed shut. When I open them again, they sting like crazy and everything is blurry, but I force them to stay open.

"Blow up the wall already, Hayden!" That's Eve's voice. I turn to her, and, from what I can make out, she's breathing normally. So Eve can breathe underwater. Cool. Not like I'm jealous or anything. I still get to blow up this wall. I guess that's cool too even though anyone can do it. But that's fine, I guess.

Anyway, I spin to face the wall and place both hands on it. I close my eyes and picture blowing a big hole in it. It doesn't work. I can feel myself losing air, and I panic. Probably not the best thing to do in this situation.

I calm myself by a imagining cute puppies. Playful, cute, furry puppies. For some reason that always calms me down.

Again, I imagine blowing a hole in the wall. Just before I'm about to run out of oxygen, the wall blows up with a boom that's muffled by the water.

The water pours out and us along with it. As we cascade downwards, I catch a glimpse of the dark alleyway about ten feet below us. Oh yay. Another alley for me to nearly die in from a long fall. Well, actually, this time I might not be so lucky as to find a random mattress that breaks my fall. All I can see below me is cold, hard ground.

I imagine landing on a heap of soft pillows. But I'm just daydreaming. There's no way I'll be that lucky.

I see the ground again. This time it's only a couple feet away. I brace myself for impact.

But I hit something soft. At first, I think I got lost in my dream and landed on pillows, but when I open my eyes, I see that I did land on the ground.

The stone is sunken in where we just landed on it, and when I touch it, it ripples like we're sitting on a water bed. The others see to have noticed this too, because Cam and Eve are jumping up and down on it like a trampoline, while Fera scolds them for being immature, while she struggles to find her footing, partly because of the ground, and partly because she's soaked.

But it's different for me. When I stand up, the ground goes back to normal around me. And under my feet, it turns into a sort of spongy material, and soaks up the water from my clothes before returning to normal. I can't help but smile. So what if Eve can breathe underwater. I can make the ground do my bidding. So there!

I turn the rest of the back to normal, and everyone adjusts themselves.

Eve wasn't even wet in the first place, and Cam conjured up a hot wind to dry himself off. Poor Fera. She's just standing there, soaked and shivering, glaring at us angrily. She starts out of the alley, muttering about how Elementals think we're all that. I just roll my eyes and follow.

The street is buzzing: people are rushing back and forth, discussing something that I can't quite hear yet, but they all seem to be talking about the same thing.

Fera nudges me and points to a couple having lunch outside of one of the city's many cafés. "Take Air Head over there and go eavesdrop on their conversation."

"You mean Cam?"

"Does it look like I care what his name is?" she snaps.

"Fine. Whatever." I grab Cam, and we walk over nonchalantly to the couple, standing with our backs against the wall so that they won't notice us.

"Did you hear?" the man asked the woman.

"Hear what?"

"An announcement straight from the king himself."

"Really? I thought he never did that?" The woman leans forward.

"He doesn't. That's why everyone is talking about it."

"What did he say?" The woman asks eagerly.

"It's about those things that attacked the city. He said not to worry. That it was nothing to worry about, and that it was just a lab experiment gone wrong, or something like that. And then he said a bunch of stuff about how this is what happens to people who defy the throne. But honestly," he leans closer to the woman and lowers his voice, so that I can barely hear him. "That doesn't sound very believable."

"Are you saying that King Salem lied to us? His own people?" The woman snaps, keeping her voice as low as his and glancing around nervously, as if someone might be listening.

"Well, I don't know about that." The man leans back and pulls his sleeve up to scratch his arm, revealing a strange mark.

It's only about the size of a quarter, but if I thought it looked like just a regular tattoo, I would move on. But somehow this mark is different. Significant.

There are thick, black lines that go vertically and horizontally, dividing the circle into four sections. Where these two lines intersect is a circle. In the center of the circle is something that looks like a ghost or some sort of dark creature like the ones we encountered. Each of the four sections is filled with a microscopic picture. From the top left going clockwise is a rock, a tornado, a fire, and a waterfall. The four elements.

While I stand pondering why in the world this guy would have the elements etched into his arm, he notices me. He smiles at Cam and I brightly.

"You're them!" he says, sounding a lot more cheerful than he did a second ago. He waves us over to the table and says, "Come on! Join us!" He puts extra emphasis on the word join.

I walk over timidly. The woman doesn't look so sure about this. "No thanks. We were just leaving anyway. Right Cam?" Cameron nods vigorously.

The man looks genuinely disappointed. "That's too bad. It be a great experience to have a chat with two of the Elementals." Again, he adds a lot of emphasis on that one word.

"Maybe some other time." This guys getting a bit suspicious now, as if he wasn't already.

"What's with all of the resistance?" Again with the emphasis. It must be some sort of habit or something. He lifts his sleeve again, revealing the mark once more.

The woman places a hand on his arm. "Let the poor children go, dear. If they don't want to sit they don't have to."

He looks at her and, after a while, nods in agreement. "Alright. Well it was nice meeting you."

"You too." I hightail it out of there as fast as I can without it looking like I have to use the bathroom really bad.

When we get back Fera and Eve are talking to each other. They look up when we return.

"Hey guys," I say. Eve says hey back, but Fera just narrows her eyes at me. I don't know what she has against me considering we just met about an hour ago, but she obviously doesn't like me very much. "So," I continue. "What are we going to do now?"

"First," Fera says immediately. "You're going to fix my wall, rocks for brains." I don't argue, but mentally, I'm sticking my tongue out at her. I fix the hole in the wall and then turn back to her. "Now, we have some business to take care of." She starts out of the alley and up through the street.

"Where are we going?" Cam asks, struggling to catch up with her long-legged stride.

"The castle," she replies without slowing down. "We need to have a little chat with the king."