Kingdom of the Nine: Hail (I)

Chapter 3

———Hail———
I daze into the distance looking over all of the men. I then look to Zen and Mom covered in snow. What have I done? Mia squeezes my hand gently, her warmth pulls me back to reality.

"We need to get out of here," she says softly. "Before she comes back."

I nod "But where? I don't even know where to go from here. I don't know who I am anymore, look around, I did this."

Mia looks at me, her eyes full of determination. "We go where the journal takes us. Eluna gave it to you for a reason, she said everything we needed would be in there."

I pull the journal from my pocket. I flip through the pages. "It's so hard to tell what it is exactly I would even be looking for. There is so much in here. Wait..."

I see a map, hand-drawn and detailed with symbols and places I've never seen.

"There's an X here, it's a place called The Bastion of the Gods. It was a meeting ground for the gods after they came here from Amerei. It's here on Zenot."

Mia pulls the page down so she can see it more clearly. "Maybe there's something there that can tell us more about the Amerei Crux or the DragonsBreath... those things Vermidia wanted."

I take a deep breath. "Then that's where we go. If we really are gods... maybe there are answers there as well. Things mom never told us."

I hear the ice around us begin to crack. I hear her in the distance. Vermidia's dark laughter echoing faintly on the wind, distant but unnervingly close.

"We need to hurry!" Mia urges.

I grab Mia's hand again and place the book back into my pocket.

We start to walk toward the outskirts of our village and into the mountains to the north. As we walk I see the density of snow fade back into the dirt.

"At least I didn't freeze the entire planet I guess, still scary to think about, not being in control with a power like that..."

"It could have been much worse... I know, but it's not your fault Hail." Mia tries to comfort me. "You know, if your name is Hail and you freeze stuff, what do you think I can do?"

I laugh. "That is a great question. If we are the same person, in a way, do you think maybe you could have the same power as me?"

"I guess that would be a fair assumption, wouldn't it? Maybe we should try it out? See if anything happens maybe?"

"Try it out? I don't know if that's the greatest idea Mia."

"Why not? What if I can do something. I'm just saying, we have a demonic witch after us, might not be a bad idea if we tried to see if you... if we could control something like this."

"And freeze another village? Where's mom when you need her, or Zen for that matter. At least if they were here, we'd have someone to help show us how to control it, whatever it is."

"We'll figure it out, together. Here, hand me mom's journal."

I reach into my pocket and pull it out. She eagerly snatches it from my hands and starts to flip through the pages. "Unveil your secrets." She giggles.

"You're so weird." I start to laugh and she laughs along with me.

"Well I'm you so, you're weird too."

I nod. "Fair point, or maybe you just took all of my weirdness so I don't have anymore."

"I guess I didn't think about that," she giggles "shut up I'm trying to read here. You'd think the people trying to protect us would have told us a little more about these kinds of things before they died. Even so, there's nothing in here about our powers."