Elementalist: The New Inheritance Read online

  - E L E M E N T A L I S T -

  T H E N E W I N H E R I T A N C E

  BY: TYLER SEEVER

  THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO

  TATE SEEVER

  JENNICA FAILNER

  © 2017 by Tyler Seever

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  [email protected]

  Table of Contents

  1: The Boy

  2: 13 Years Later

  3: The Play

  4: The Runaway

  5: The New Inheritance

  6: The Old Inheritance

  7: On the Road to Nowhere

  8: The Trading Post

  9: The Nightmare

  10: Training Day

  11: Onward to The City of Darthia

  12: A Glooming Threat

  13: Inside Der’ Tanel

  14: An Unexpected Event

  15: Shunned

  16: Shadow and Light

  17: The Old Sage

  18: A New Beginning

  19: Calm Before the Storm

  20: Blood Dawn

  21: The Light’s Reckoning

  22: Victory. . . Or Was It?

  23: On the Road to Recovery

  24: Revitalized

  25: Behind the Red Curtain

  26: An Unlikely Encounter

  27: The Bargain

  28: Onward to The City of Der’ Tanel

  29: Face to Face

  30: The Grass is. . . Greener?

  31: Accustomed

  32: The Plot

  33: The Decision

  34: Before the Fall

  35: The Fall

  36: All is Not What it Seems

  37: The Great Peace-Keeper

  38: A Farewell All Too Soon

  Epilogue: Incinerated

  1: The Boy

  The house creaked as the dry winds whistled by. The sun rendered the outside dirt and patches of yellow grass blinding to the eye. The home stuck out like a sore thumb next to its surroundings, but blended with the rest of the small town itself. Through the window of the home, a mother hummed a simple tune, a boy at the table behind her. He was no more than three, and was content playing with who knows what. The mother's dishrag dripped with soapy water as she raised it from its bucket and began cleansing the next plate, then the following. The winds picked up, clashing the chimes together as the mother continued to sing. The boy worked ferociously on something at the table. Her song grew louder, and the winds came and went in gusts increasing in power. She picked up a bowl and wiped in circles round and round. The sound of scraping from the boy silenced her humming.

  She paused from her dishes and quietly looked over her shoulder at her son. "Lenthean, my son. What are you doing over there?" The boy gave no acknowledgment to his mother and just continued scraping the wooden table. The mother eyed him, trying to identify what her creation was up to. She set her dish down and grabbed a towel to dry her sudsy hands. She paced over to him and realized he had gathered a knife from her pile of dishes. "Lenthean!" She exclaimed. "Knives are not toys to be played with! Mommy’s only!" She lectured as she carefully pulled the knife from his tiny hands. He gave up the knife without protest but stared persistently at what he had carved into the table. She peered over his shoulder. She was stunned. The woman dropped her knife and bolted to the front door.

  She dashed in the harsh sunlight, thickly woven dress swaying in the hot desert breeze. No more than forty yards and she was in town. Their home was the farthest building inside the small, mountain-range town. The woman exploded into the first building on her right, her brother's butcher shop that provided all of the town's meats.

  "Zuthar!" She proclaimed as he nearly hurled the cleaver behind him.

  "Woman, are you trying to kill me? Can't you see I'm with a customer! I can't have you barging in like—"

  "He's done it again." Zuthar the butcher stopped in his tracks. His mouth slowly opened in disbelief. The stout man untied the apron from his large midsection and handed a large sum of meat to the customer. "On the house," he said.

  He set the apron on the counter and hastily followed his sister back to her home. Zuthar stepped in and asked to see the boy's carving.

  "What do you make of that, huh?!" she cried, nearly in tears. "Twice now he's done this, and I don't know what to make of it."

  Zuthar wrinkled his nose, moving his mustache around. He stared intently at the carving before saying, "You and your boy are in serious trouble, Ayla." He wiped sweat from his brow. "If the town finds out about this, they will surely kill him. And persecute you."

  She fell to her knees and began to weep. Unsure of what to say and what to do, Zuthar turned from Ayla and took stride toward his nephew. The old, dark, wooden foundation heavily creaked beneath his feet. He kneeled on the rug where his nephew Lenthean watched his mother’s weeping from afar, perplexed at the situation.

  "Lenthean, my boy," he said, smiling at him, making things interesting for the youngling. "Tell your uncle Zuthar where you saw that picture you carved on the table back there." He paused but got no reaction from the boy, whose eyes matching his own. "Tell your uncle." He got more serious. Ayla's weeping got more intense.

  "Did you see this symbol somewhere?" Zuthar persisted. Silence ensued. Ayla lifted her gaze, eyes full of tears, and silenced her sobbing to see Lenthean's response.

  Lenthean took some time before saying, "I see it in my dreams."

  "Yes? And?" Zuthar pushed for more.

  "It’s always there. In my nightmares." Ayla broke into a more vicious fit of sobbing and crying. Zuthar, visibly distraught by the boy’s words, rose and turned around. "Ayla, please."

  "I can't do this, Zuthar; I can't do it," she said, weeping.

  Zuthar snapped, "Pull yourself together, woman! I don't want this boy taken away any more than you do. We need a plan of action now. If we don't find a way to cover this up, the boy will reveal it to someone by mistake." Zuthar turned back around and grabbed the boy’s chin and turned his head, analyzing Lenthean's left eye in different light.

  "What are you checking for?" asked Ayla.

  "His marking," Zuthar answered. "It's faint, but beginning to appear. We need to do something fast." The house continued to creak from the wind as it always had. Zuthar walked toward her and stood her up. "Be strong, my sister," he said. They both peered down at what Lenthean had carved into the table with his mother's knife. "It will take a massive cover-up if we want this boy to have any quality of life." On the table was the symbol. The hieroglyphic eye. Carved by a three-year-old boy. Gazing right back at them.

  It chilled them right down to their spines.

  2: Thirteen Years Later

  “Mom…” sixteen-year-old Lenthean complained. “I’m so sick of wearing this eye patch to school. I hate it.”

  “You need to wear it,” she said firmly, adjusting it back onto his left eye.

  “If you’re so embarrassed of the tattoos you put on me as a baby, then why did you give the tattoos to me in the first place? Now I have to live my life looking like a pirate with an eye patch,” Lenthean jabbed.

  “It was your father’s idea.” She began putting a glove on her son’s arm, tucking the long-sleeved shirt deep inside the glove. Lenthean yanked his arm away and barked, “It
is so hot outside! I’m getting really tired of wearing these hot leather gloves and long sleeves. What’s the big deal if people see these tattoos. . . ”

  “Someone your age should not be boasting about tattoos in this town. What kind of mother would I be letting my son get a tattoo so young?”

  “It wasn’t even my choice. What kind of father tattoos his kid…”

  “One that isn’t married to your mother anymore.” Ayla stood her son up from the chair and placed both hands on his shoulders. “Now—what do you tell the kids if they ask about your gloves?”

  Lenthean sighed, slumping his shoulders and looking into the distance. “I was badly burned as a child and it protects my skin from further damage…”

  “And your eye patch?”

  “I’m blind in this eye… Also due to the fire.”

  “Good.” She smiled and kissed his forehead. “Now have a good day at school!” She turned him around and shoved him out the door. As Lenthean began exiting the home, he turned around and announced, “Goodbye, Zuthar!”

  Zuthar wiped food from his mustache with a napkin and smirked through the doorframe from his chair without a word. Ayla shut the door.

  “Thanks for that, Zuthar. He’s been giving me more problems lately with the coverings.” Ayla admitted.

  “No worries. If you need me to come here every day to force him to wear the stuff, I will,” Zuthar said, standing from his chair and wiping his face one last time. Zuthar began walking toward the door. “He will only grow more and more curious as he gets older, you know,” Zuthar stated reluctantly.

  Ayla looked down. “I know.”

  “We need to tell him what’s really going on sooner or later. With the way he’s been acting, I’d be surprised if we can maintain this for much longer.”

  Ayla was silent.

  “If you need any help, I am always here.” Zuthar smiled and slowly stepped out the front door.

  ---

  Lenthean walked through Fredrickstown, his home village. This is all he had ever known: a small town of wooden structures tucked between two small mountain ranges in a desert-like climate. He had grown up with the same people, the same buildings, stray dogs, all of it. Lost in thought, Lenthean trudged to school, feeling the hot, dusty breeze caress his face.

  He witnessed two small children throwing pebbles into the loose dirt then skipping around them. The young boy hissed and threw his arms out at the girl. He yelled, “Gotcha!”

  She remarked, “Hey no fair!”

  The young boy replied to her comment, “I’m an Elementalist! You can’t fight against me!” He stuck out his tongue and teased her.

  “No!” she shouted back. “Everyone knows those are make-believe! Elementalists are fake!”

  “No, they’re not!”

  “Yes, they are!”

  “No!”

  “Yes!”

  Suddenly Lenthean felt his shoulder meet the Earth’s surface. Loose dirt puffed into the air and into his face.

  Lenthean groaned and looked up. It was the group of kids who had always picked on him.

  “Couldn’t see me coming, could you?” the leader of the squad said from Lenthean’s blind side.

  “Forget you, Gaundore.” Lenthean spat at the bully.

  “No, forget you!” Gaundore shouted then kicked Lenthean in the stomach.

  Another one jumped in. “Shall we toss the anchor, Captain Lenthean?! Or could you not see it with that stupid eye patch?” they all said, laughing and mocking him.

  They began to walk off to class; Lenthean rose to his feet and brushed himself off. His sleeve had rolled up slightly and part of his skin was showing. He quickly tucked the fabric back into the elbow-high leather gloves.

  One day, I’ll show them. I’ll show them, Lenthean thought.

  He attended school all day. It was the usual, hot classroom—no one to talk to and daydreaming. The teacher always called him out for daydreaming in class. The subject taught, as usual, was the ongoing war. Fredrickstown wasn’t involved, but the town was allied to the greater powers like the city of Darthia. Fredrickstown had no standing military—no resources worth pillaging—no reason to invade this little place. The teacher was always reassuring the students, “The forces of Der’ Tanel will not move past Denduthal into Fredrickstown.” Denduthal, otherwise known as the City of the Great Staircase, was only ten miles from Fredrickstown on the other side of the bordering mountain range. Unlike Fredrickstown, it was a massive marble and cobblestone city that used to be a self-standing civilization. That is, until the invasion of Denduthal five or so years ago, when the Der’ Tanel faction invaded.

  From what little he had been taught, Lenthean gathered the Der’ Tanellian folk to be that of a high-class race of person. Tall, pale skin, and white or blonde hair. No one in Fredrickstown had ever seen an individual from Der’ Tanel, but they had all heard about them, that’s for sure. They were portrayed as the utmost of evil, waging war on all other civilizations in plays and novels promoted by the town. Lenthean had never encountered this faction before, so he could not validate these claims as fact or fiction.

  “Lenthean!” the teacher called. The boy leapt from his chair in the midst of his daydream. “Tell me, in what year did the Battle for Denduthal take place? And how long before it fell?”

  Lenthean stuttered nervously, searching for the answer.

  Gaundore mocked him, “Uh-Eee-Uh!” The class laughed and chattered.

  “Quiet, Gaundore,” the teacher said, silencing him. She motioned for Lenthean to finish his thought.

  Lenthean announced, “Year 153.”

  Gaundore boasted, “Wrong. 155.”

  The teacher acknowledged, “Gaundore is correct. 155. So, class, who can tell me—”

  Lenthean trickled off into thoughts again. He was ready to go home, and tomorrow he was to work with Zuthar. It was going to be the first week on the job at the meat shop.

  “Class is dismissed,” his teacher announced. Lenthean rose from his desk and went home for the day.

  That night was a full moon. Lenthean had begun climbing up the ladder in his home in the hallway. “Goodnight, Mom,” he said, climbing up to his bedroom.

  “Goodnight, Hun,” she answered, resuming her housekeeping tasks. “Oh, and honey?”

  Lenthean shouted down from his room, “Yeah?”

  “You’ll do great tomorrow with Zuthar at the meat shop. It’ll be wonderful to have a helping hand there; I know he’s been needing that for a while now!”

  Lenthean smirked to himself. “Good,” he replied. He walked the two steps it took to get to his bed, carefully placing himself on the straw mattress. He didn’t want to hit his head on the slanted wood ceiling, for it was directly adjacent to his bed. He took off his gloves and eye patch. Finding a place to put them was tough. His room was incredibly small—long enough for him to lay, but no more. He brushed his black hair aside and sprawled out on his bed.

  Lenthean pondered for quite some time, as he usually did at this time of the night. Just before bed he always thought about what happened that day. Maybe he would make a friend soon. Maybe someday he could surprise everyone and say, “Look! I got these tattoos!” He smirked, laughing at the idea in his mind.

  He lifted his right arm to eye-level and analyzed the markings on his forearm. A long, thin line—the blackest black—started from his middle finger and extended past his wrist onto his forearm, where it took a sharp turn away from his torso forming the letter C. The curve met the top line, where it then merged down into an eye that appeared to be a hieroglyphic of some kind.

  After silently staring for quite some time, he placed his fingers on his left cheekbone and slowly swept his fingers across the bump caused by the black line on his face—his “scar.” He never really understood. Why would my dad tattoo a scar on my left eye? A straight black line? And what is with the eye on my forearm? Was this for style, or did he have some obsession with an ancient culture?

  He could never really
figure it out.

  The scorch marks on the ceiling were well-lit from the moon’s light shining through his open windowpane. He had noticed the slanted square of light had moved across the ceiling toward his bed, he had spent so much time occupied with this thoughts. The scorch marks were from the fire many years ago. His mother had claimed he was inches away from burning alive, although he was too young to remember the event. She told him this event scared the whole town, and she had used that as a cover-up for the tattoos he had.

  Lenthean stretched out his hand, sliding it down the wood panels. He could feel the difference in the two types of wood. Structurally, the new repairs were sound, as they were done by his uncle Zuthar. He had always looked up to Zuthar as a father figure, not an uncle. Zuthar was there to guide him when he needed guiding, help him when he needed help. However, whenever he probed about his father, Zuthar would always reply, “It’s not my place to say.” Lenthean had always thought negatively about his mystery father; he didn’t even know his name.