Ren's Tale Books 1-3: Chronicles of the Seventh Realm (Ren's Tale Omnibus) Page 2

  He climbed the stairs—avoiding the spots where it creaked—and slipped into his room, careful not to bump his door.

  Ren grasped he was luckier than most in the orphanage. The oldest boys got rooms to themselves—including Ren—while the younger ones slept two or three to a room. Mr. Griffin said it was the natural order of things, and the younger boys would understand when they got older.

  Aside from Mr. Griffin—Ren assumed he'd never been married—Ms. Belmuth stopped by most evenings after dinner to check in on the little ones. Some weekends she would watch the children while Mr. Griffin went out.

  Ren changed out of his school clothes and put on the only pair of jeans and non-school shirt he owned. Mr. Griffin disapproved of the children having personal belongings, but he never took them away once the children paid for them.

  Mr. Griffin had told Ren once, "If a person goes without for long enough, it will force them to either make something of themselves or they will wither away and die. Either way, that person will no longer be a burden on society."

  Ren worked odd jobs around the school on weekends and over summer break when they were available. He didn't earn much, but enough for his real passion, Magic Club.

  Ren pressed his ear against his bedroom wall to make sure no one was nearby. With the coast clear, he opened the window. He'd snuck out his own window more times than he could remember, and he was always careful not to slip on the icy ledge. If he hurt himself, he worried Mr. Griffin would leave him in the snow to "learn a lesson".

  As he shimmied down one of the heater vents, he saw Mr. Griffin at the front door talking to someone. He froze. If they caught him, it would be the end of his magic lessons.

  Ren didn't recognize the other man Mr. Griffin spoke with. They appeared to be arguing. The other man raised his voice but not loud enough to understand the words from twenty feet in the air. The man pointed his finger at Mr. Griffin and jabbed it into his chest with enough force to push Mr. Griffin backward.

  Ren stared in shock. Mr. Griffin would never stand for someone to disrespect him like that, despite his lower standing in the society. Then it struck him. Ren recognized Mr. Belfry Jr. from the one time he'd come to pick his son up from school and knew just how much trouble he was in.

  Mr. Griffin wasn't a dumb man. Ren assumed he was aware of Ren sneaking out at night for magic lessons, but Mr. Griffin had always ignored the issue. Likely because the other children didn't know it was happening, and it cost Mr. Griffin nothing. In fact, it saved him money since most of the time Ren missed dinner. This time would be different. Ren could either go back and face the consequences now or leave and risk a harsher punishment—if that were even possible.

  Ren would have to use the front door as usual, but this time the other children would realize he'd snuck out, and Mr. Griffin would be forced to punish him in front of them to prove a point. If he waited until late at night when the doors were locked, Mr. Griffin would be livid for him not being in the kitchen.

  After the door closed and Mr. Belfry Jr. got back in his hover-pod, Ren dropped to the ground rolling in the snow to soften his fall. He ran, hoping to make it to Magic Club as quickly as possible. Mr. Griffin wouldn't go inside the club and make a scene, but he would drag Ren back to the orphanage if he caught up before Ren got there. It was a race, and if there was one thing Ren was gifted at, it was running fast.

  The streetlights were already on, casting shadows as Ren ran through the back streets, to reach Magic Club. The air was cool—only a few degrees above freezing—but Ren was acclimated to cold weather, and with the roads clear of any ice he had no issue keeping a great pace while he ran.

  The arc of the overhead source-light gathered speed in the past few years shortening their days, ever so slightly. Now darkness was upon the Pearl Nation before dinner. Ren watched families in their dining rooms. The sights made Ren long for the parents he'd never known.

  As Ren turned onto the back alley leading to Magic Club, he caught sight of Johnathan at the far end talking to a girl from their school. He was the tallest boy in their class, with bright gray eyes and walnut hair he kept pulled back in a knot. Besides being the richest boy in school, all the girls thought he was the handsomest. Fortune favored the Belfry's. Ren had never "officially" met the girl, but he recognized her button nose from lunch period.

  What was her name, Megan maybe?

  To avoid being harassed further, Ren crawled behind a trash compactor and waited for them to leave the alley. The girl pointed in his direction. Fear struck Ren like a hammer to the head, he froze unable to think of a way out. He'd crawled into a trap.

  "Yo..." Johnathan yelled. "Yo. Yo, I'm talking to you behind the compactor. Come out unless you want a beating."

  Ren didn't move. His mind was empty and while he heard Johnathan, Ren couldn't comprehend what he was yelling. An orange light filled his vision, and he forgot everything around him. The light emanated from within himself, but he couldn't decide what it was. Ren hunkered down tighter into a ball and squeezed his arms around his knees. The cold bit at his face as a cold sweat ran down his forehead.

  The hazy figure of Johnathan stood outside the orange glow waving his arms about, mouth moving—Ren didn't understand. His head jerked to the side, as Johnathan dragged him by his hair.

  Ren's vision cleared as the orange light concentrated into an orb the size of Ren's hand behind Johnathan's head. Johnathan's fist came straight at him, busting his nose–blood ran down his chin. His vision blurred again as tears covered his eyes.

  Laughter filled his ears, and he blinked away tears. The orange orb corkscrewed around Johnathan's head and down his arm, and Ren realized he was the one laughing. The next punch bloodied Ren's lips against his teeth. The orb slipped between Ren's eyes, into his head.

  Ren's trance broke, and he screamed in pain. Realization sunk in, he was being attacked.

  "Stop!" he yelled.

  Johnathan stutter-stepped and examined him. Blood flowed down Ren's face onto Johnathan's hands, which held a tight grip on Ren's shirt.

  The pain was enough to make Ren think that he'd broken something. His busted nose made his breathing labored and his face stung like mustard.

  Johnathan raised his fist to strike again. Ren screamed, but rather than sound, a blue light erupted from within him throwing Johnathan across the alley into a wall. Johnathan crumpled with a wet thud and didn't move. The blue pulse rippled across the alley and struck the girl—she wobbled before falling into a snowbank.

  Ren took a knee and leaned against the compactor. His life was forfeit. Never had he been able to use magic powerful enough to attack. The most he mastered was the ability to move small objects across flat surfaces.

  Once he caught his breath, Ren pulled himself up and staggered away, ignoring the pain that coursed through him. Thoughts of if Johnathan and the girl would be okay, and the fear of legal repercussions—or worse, Mr. Belfry Jr.—plagued his mind.

  What was with the orb? Where had it come from?

  Caught up in his own thoughts, Ren hurried to Magic Club and Brandon, who'd know what the orb meant if anyone did.

  CHAPTER TWO

  REN YANKED OPEN THE DOOR of the repository, where all the nation's information could be accessed by the public. He walked through a vast network of server-towers designed to maintain records of the Pearl Nation. Terminals lined the walls where any citizen could read public records from chamber meetings to power plant schematics. Information is a fundamental right.

  In the back were a set of double doors where Magic Club was held. Ren stood before the doors and gathered his composure, slowing his breathing. The adrenaline coursing through his blood made his pain seem like a distant memory. It was of dire importance he explained to Brandon what happened with precise detail and calm delivery.

  Careful not to disturb his club mates, he slowly opened the door. Three steps led down into the main gathering hall, where Brandon, Julie, and Gareth—the core members of their club—sat at their usual table, one of four spaced through the room. The walls were much like those outside the room, lined with terminals, except two hooded figures stood in a corner talking amongst themselves. Their dark robes clearly marked them as outsiders to the Pearl Nation, but Ren couldn't place who they were.

  Pushing his curiosity aside Ren sat down at his usual chair. Books were piled around them opened to pages or closed with slips of paper sticking out the top to mark places. Magic Club had a few other members who stopped by occasionally, but only the three of them took it serious enough to show up daily.

  Julie looked up from her books and her beautiful face turned sour at the sight of Ren. She pushed her black hair out of her eyes, about to speak.

  Ren held a hand up to silence her questions and leaned into Brandon's ear. "I need to talk to you in private. Something unbelievable has just happened!"

  "What? You can tell me here, we're safe." Brandon looked at Ren more closely. "You look awful."

  Brandon was an important man in the Pearl Nation, head researcher of the Ice Plains artifacts, and custodian of this repository location. Only in his early thirties, Brandon was a bit of a prodigy. His gray eyes peered at Ren, taking in his appearance.

  "What in the hell happened to you?" Julie asked, "You look like you've just been beaten by ten men."

  "Not quite, just Johnathan. He caught me on my way here. Who are the new people before I explain what happened?"

  Gareth looked up from his books but didn't say anything. He never said anything. He looked Ren over, his blue eyes glancing between his book and Ren's face. When they made eye contact Gareth combed his blond hair back out of his face and stuck his nose back in his book. Everyone was welcome in their club, but Gareth always rubbed Ren the wrong way. He'd never done anything wrong, he just didn't seem all there.

  "They're diplomats from Amethyst Nation," Brandon said. "They've come to remind us the choosing will be in the Sapphire Nation this year─"

  "When?"

  "In three weeks," Brandon finished.

  "I think they're trying to rub it in our faces," Julie said, her gray eyes roaming over Ren's face. "We've not submitted a sorcerer in three hundred years. That's why we've not held the choosing ceremony in nearly two hundred."

  "I doubt they're here to offend us," Brandon slammed a book to draw Gareth's gaze away from the diplomats in the corner.

  "Regardless," Ren said. "I'm not comfortable talking in front of them. Can we speak alone somewhere?"

  "Of course." Brandon rose and looked to the diplomats, "Excuse us for a moment while I help my student."

  Brandon led Ren through a side door which opened into his private office, a room roughly half the size of Magic Club's. A crystal desk—the prize jewel of Brandon's office—sat at the far back in front of a tented window looking out upon a field of grass, a rare sight for sure. The piles of books shoved onto shelves in no discernible pattern left little doubt this room belonged to a scholar. Brandon's desk was covered with papers and two portable terminals which displayed charts.

  As the most powerful magician the Pearl Nation had produced in over fifty years, Brandon passed as the High Sorcerer as far as anyone was concerned. Twice he tried, and failed, to pass the selection process of the Amethyst Nation for proper sorcerer's training, a dream nearly every child of Fencura held. Once—he may have been drunk—Brandon told Ren the only reason he became a guardian of the repository, was for the freedom to run Magic Club. A small fragment of his former dream. Brandon's desire was to produce a magician powerful enough to pass the test and break Pearl Nation's three-hundred-year embarrassment.

  Brandon sat behind his desk and gestured for Ren to take the seat in an armchair across from him. "So. Tell me how you got so bloody, while I look up a remedy on my terminal."

  As Brandon tapped away on his terminal's display, Ren explained—starting a few days before—how Johnathan's anger had been building up.

  "This is where it gets weird."

  "How so?" Brandon asked.

  "Well I don't know how to explain it exactly," Ren said. "One minute I was watching him from behind a dumpster, the next I was engulfed in orange light."

  Brandon stopped looking at his terminal's display and stared at Ren. "What do you mean engulfed by orange light?"

  Ren felt like Brandon's gray eyes were drilling holes into him, so he glanced between his feet and the bookshelves. "It's hard to explain. One minute I was behind the dumpster. The next, all I could see was light. As the light faded an orange orb flew straight into me. That's when I felt the pain of Johnathan beating me. It came at me all at once."

  "I've never heard of this happening before." Brandon stroked his chin for several moments before continuing. "I think you're concussed from the beating. Most likely the pain caused you to see lights as you passed out. Your mind just mixed them up—"

  "No."

  Brandon's arm twitched, and he pinched his chin. "I'm sure you're confused, but I'll get you an ice pack and you'll feel better soon."

  "No!" Ren said. "That's not what happened. I saw the light first because, after I came back from the light, Johnathan was about to hit me again. That's when this blue light, like the light of a hover-pod, erupted from within me and threw him across the alley. It also hit the girl he was with. I'd forgotten about her."

  Ren gasped in a deep breath, he'd managed to ramble all that off without taking a breath.

  Brandon leaned back in his chair and quietly stared at the wall behind Ren. Ren waited a few moments, expecting him to speak. Surely, he knew something more than he was sharing. Brandon was, after all, the most powerful sorcerer in Pearl Nation. People twice his age were clueless about magic. The only people who could know more than him were the Amethyst diplomats.

  After what felt like ten minutes to Ren, Brandon stood and said, "Come with me."

  Ren had no idea what Brandon was thinking, but he followed close behind. They passed through the club room and out into the main room where terminals lined the walls. Four people tapped away quietly on their terminals.

  Brandon led Ren through a side door he'd never noticed which opened into a hallway with several identical doors. They walked faster down the hall. Ren read signs on the doors, the right side read Alpha 1, Alpha 2, etc. . . . while the left side read Beta 1, Beta 2, etc. . . ., and toward the middle of the hall they entered room Alpha 9.

  "This is our testing room," Brandon said. "Normally we use it for artifacts we've found buried in the Ice Plains, but the instruments can be used for other purposes."

  "Like what?"

  "I'm going to show you," Brandon said. "Please sit on the examining table and relax."

  Brandon went around the room gathering silver objects Ren didn't recognize. He trusted Brandon completely, but relaxing on the table proved difficult—it hadn't been designed with human comfort in mind. A large device hung from the wall on a swivel with data cables running to a terminal. Upon closer inspection, Ren made out a small light and laser.

  And a needle.

  "I'm going to test you for a few minutes and then afterward I'll get you healed up," Brandon pulled the probe from the wall and positioned it above Ren. "This might be uncomfortable, but the results will be worth the discomfort. Remain as still as possible while the probe examines you. Normally we use the probe to examine inanimate objects. Do you have any questions?"

  "Why do I need to be examined?"

  "I'll be able to explain more after I have the results. I don't want to give you false expectations."

  Brandon handed Ren a small silver orb that weighed more than he would have thought. He made as tight a fist around it as possible. Brandon strapped cords around his fist which ran wires to the probe.

  "This will be the most painful part."

  Sweat stung Ren's eyes as Brandon aligned the probe with his fist, less than an arm's length away. Ren could see a chart appear on the terminal's screen. Several lines moved up and down across the screen. The probe shown a pinpoint laser at his fist which switched between red, blue, and green. Ren's breathing grew erratic. The rate at which the probe switched colors increased and Ren felt a burning sensation from the orb held in his fist.

  Ren screamed in pain as the heat seared the flesh of his palm. The probe instantly stuck his hand with the needle and extracted a small blood sample. As quickly as the pain started, it stopped.

  Brandon ripped the straps off Ren's wrist. The orb fell to the floor with a loud ding, cracking a floor-tile.

  "Shit!" Ren said as he clenched his hand. "You said it would be uncomfortable not blood-curdling pain!"

  "You will show me respect as your instructor," Brandon said. "I'm sorry for the pain but there is no cause for your language. I did what I had to. Look here."

  Brandon turned the screen toward Ren. There were hundreds of colored lines, but only four of them rose from the bottom of the screen: blue at the highest, then red, yellow, and black.

  "Each colored line represents a different element present in your blood at the point of expulsion."

  "Expulsion?" Ren asked through gritted teeth. Now his hand was bleeding—it had not been his day.

  "Expulsion," Brandon said. "is what I call the point where elemental forces leaves an object. This is what I think makes magic. None of the other nations have focused on the root cause of magic that I know of. Except perhaps the Amethyst Nation. It's why I think they've been able to maintain power and authority over all nations, while only producing sorcerers."

  "Interesting," Ren said. "But can we get me fixed up? My hand is hurting worse than my face."

  "Follow me."

  Brandon took a portable copy of the chart, leading Ren back into the hallway, toward the door they'd come in. At room Beta 5 Brandon went inside but made Ren wait in the hall.