The Warlord - Chapter 1 & 2

As are all my Fledgling pieces, this is a rough draft. If you want to see more chapters, Rate and Review!



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Chapter 1

"Are you s-s-sure about thi-i-is?" Mia asked, her words broken by the chattering of her teeth. The uncertainty in her voice was unmistakable, however, and he couldn't blame her.

She sucked air through her nostrils loudly. Her breathing was becoming erratic, and the cold wasn't helping. But they were all miserable, even with the help of the two air users.

"How many times do we have to go over this?" Sido asked, exasperated.

His mentor wasn't known for worrying about the 'minor details'. One of the most experienced air users in the world just didn't believe in the word 'no'.

"We'll be f-f-fine," Jay assured her. He still had a long way to go before he could function normally at fourteen thousand feet, one skill he wished his mentor would hurry up and teach him.

His assurance mustn't have been convincing enough because she glared at him.

"You forget that I can read your thoughts," her smooth, yet disembodied, voice whispered from the depths of his mind.

Jay shuddered, and not just because of the frost that clung to him. He'd never get use to that.

She turned her glare to his mentor but he had already moved on.

"Jinx, where do we stand?"

Jinx, their pilot, looked over the burrock’s neck and down at the sea of clouds below. Jay felt a little nervous watching the pilot lean over the edge like that. Burrocks were infamous for their rough rides and sudden unexpected jerks.

Shrugging, he said, "She thinks we’re above the drop point, but you know how they are."

70 seconds of free-falling into a 'maybe' landing, Jay thought with a sense of dread.

"Jay th-th-thinks th-this is a b-b-bad idea." Mia's voice was laced with desperation, but he had to hand it to her; the accusing finger she pointed at Jay held steady.

Jay made a note to keep his mind blank when he was around her. He wasn't used to Mia being in his head constantly. She normally kept to herself for the sake of their privacy, but tonight was different. She was bringing her A game.

"It's a good thing he is the apprentice then," Sido said, signaling Jay to start the preparations.

Quickly shrugging out of the heavy coat, Jay focused on checking his gear for the third time that day.

He mentally checked off each item and its securement. Boots, boot knife, belt pouches, short swords, buckles, under coat, scarf, cap.

Check, check, and check.

Jay gave the thumbs up shortly after Sido finished his own checks. Turning, Sido patted Jinx's shoulder. Jinx in turn directed the huge beast to a complete stop. They were at max altitude, a height nobody in their right mind would be at, but they knew better than to assume anything. That's why his mentor looked at Mia expectantly, but she stubbornly kept her silence. Well, he couldn't assume that. Most likely she was having an unwinnable argument with Sido in his head. Her lips pressed together progressively tighter as the seconds rolled by.

"Fa-Fine," she said with as much ugliness as she could muster. "You are c-c-clear for a f-few miles out in ev-very d-direction. It's sa-safe to -- jump. I'll g-guide you on the w-way down, but if either of you d-die, I w-won't be sh-shedding any t-tears."

Sido grinned. "It's not like we're doing a two man deep dive through an airnet and into an enemy-occupied city where everyone is expecting us.

“Oh wait..."

Mia's smoldering glare narrowed in on Sido as he fell over the edge backwards, into the empty night.

Jay stepped up to the spot his mentor just fell from and started counting down the seconds.

"D-Don’t be a h-hero,” Mia growled at him. She was still amped up over Sido.

He continued looking over the edge, counting.

Pulling the scarf over his mouth, he said, "You know me."

"That’s p-precisely why--" Mia's voice ended abruptly as the wind rushed over his covered ears.



Deep dives. Jay hated deep dives. Not only did the lack of oxygen and cold made it a miserable trip up, but the trip down was retire-early-kind-of-dangerous. Not only did the diver have to concentrate on staying invisible within the airbubble but he also had to land without dying. And in this particular mission, there was an airnet above the city. Talk about paranoid.

Airbubbles were designed to alert people on the ground that someone was coming from above. To circumvent it, it required the air user (Jay) to gently slide in between the weaves that made up the bubble. Doing so takes a lot of concentration and without manipulating the surrounding air, otherwise they would know he was there. That's why it required falling through it from above. Airbubbles were typically made just above the highest building; otherwise the air user who made the bubble would get an overload of information from the people on the ground… which meant he had to slow his decent starting at a hundred feet or so, a very painful process to say the least.

An airnet on the other hand was designed to--discourage--air users from attempting a deep dive (assuming the threat of imminent death by gravity wasn't enough). Airnets were solidified strands of air sharpened to a razor point. Since it took a lot of will power to make one, let alone maintain it, there were typically gaps in the net that allow someone crazy enough to squeeze through. To make matters worse, the longer an air user was in the airbubble, the harder it was to get out--which was why the moron who decided to do a deep dive through an airnet had to reach terminal velocity beforehand--which explained the max altitude jump.

If I were to design a net and really wanted to do it right... Jay's mind raced as the sea of white clouds drew closer and closer. He called up his Sight and took a deep breath.

"Sido says the net is after the cloud bank," Mia whispered.

His vision was instantly obscured by the clouds and the moonlight disappeared. He took another deep breath and concentrated.

"The real bitch about nets is that they are hard to see against the backdrop of an airbubble." Jay recognized his old flight instructor's voice with perfect clarity. Mia must have found the memory in the depths of his mind and wanted to remind him of the perils--not that he needed it. "Like floating slivers of threads, they would be near impossible to see without using your Sight. And if you think that's bad, throw in the fact that you're falling like a rock and the time window of seeing it and adjusting your trajectory is about 3 seconds. Want my advice?"

The voice suddenly stopped. Jay laughed and finished the memory aloud, "Tell the dumbass who asked you to make the jump to go fuck himself."

While it was impossible for anyone to hear him over the wind, Mia still heard him.

She didn't necessarily say 'I'm sorry', but he felt her regret. Yet another thing he could add to the every growing list of 'never get used to'.

The cloud bank ended and a dazzle of lights bombarded his senses. His Sight showed him every manipulated thread made by an air user. The city below had an intricate weave so vast that it made his heart skip. It was HUGE.

"Focus, Jay," he muttered.

Zeroing in on the space directly below him, he saw the bubble. The thought of slowing his descent flashed through his mind, and he instantly regretted the moment of weakness. He wouldn't fail his mentor.

Slowly the mass of blue swirling threads crept closer and each second went by like an hour. The wind was deafening, and the blue lights of the airbubble hypnotized him into a near lull.

"Focus, Jay. Focus."

And then he saw it. A sliver of blue light just a tad sharper than the other swirling lights below. From his point of view, the nearest gap shifted with the wind, almost like a physical deep blue net floating atop of a just slightly paler blue ocean. Acting on instinct--too quick for him to even 'think it'--he made a sudden change in angle with a flash of air manipulation and prayed.

One moment he was above it, and the next moment the wind in his ears vanished.

For a split second, he thought he'd died.

"Jay!"

Mia's voice snapped him back to reality, and he parted the bubble in front of his nose.

Not a second too soon.

Jay would have cursed himself for forgetting that within a bubble all normal flows of air didn't exist, but he didn't have the time.

Navigating an airbubble undetected required moving strands of air around him at 200 miles an hour. It was very much like riding a horse standing up while citing a five-hundred-page book word for word from memory—while piss drunk. It took a lot of concentration and a 'special' kind of crazy person.

He didn't know for how long he had been in it, but he knew if he ever got out of it alive his hair would be stark white. The moment the strands came into his Sight's range, he had to push the strand aside without breaking it. He must have manipulated hundreds of threads away from his falling body.  Tears and perspiration formed as quickly as they were ripped from his face. He didn't dare blink.

"Five seconds," Mia whispered.

How she knew was a mystery to him, but he trusted her completely. Five grueling seconds later, he was outside of the bubble and falling fast towards a barren street.

With all the remaining will power he had left, Jay called forth winds to catch him. But the deep dive had made his descent too fast for his own bands of wind to stop him completely and the ground was coming up faster than he was comfortable with. Juggling between a quick death and the pain of slowing down faster than his body could handle, he tossed plan A and went with plan B: pull out of the dive.

“Come on, Jay. Pull up!” he growled .

Between one panicked heartbeat and another, he came to a sickening realization.

He wasn’t going to make it.



Chapter 2

As if his body had a mind of its own, he started weaving a complex thread. Jay hadn't the faintest idea of where it'd come from. Just as the last strand fell into place, he realized what the weave was. The strands of air buckled under his weight, and the ground dented inward as the force that his body had generated from the fall was spread out into the ground across the entire city.

“What the...”

“Patrol, move it!” Mia snapped.

Before Mia had finished her sentence, he’d flung himself upwards with a flash of air manipulation. Sailing up into the air, he easily cleared the edge of the nearest rooftop. He landed like a cat and moved towards the nearest water catcher. Ducking behind it, he sat down and tried to control his panicked heart.

“Give me Sido's location,” Jay 'thought'. Patrols were easy to evade. Compared to what he had just done, he could dodge them in his sleep.

Mia didn't respond right away, and Jay wondered if she had missed the thought. And then he felt her uneasiness.

“What is it?” he demanded.

“Sido... didn't make it.”

Like a slap in the face, Jay suddenly felt disoriented. “What?”

“He misread the airnet and he—the bubble was disrupted.”

Jay shook his head in shock. She had to be joking, he thought. There was no way his mentor could die by something as simple as an airnet. He was invincible.

“Jay... I'm sorry. I should have--”

“No,” he whispered aloud, stopping her.

His mind was overrun by a maelstrom of emotions and thoughts. Anger, fear, even betrayal. What was he going to do?

Reading his thoughts, Mia parroted, “What do you want to do?”

The sounds of metal on flagstone came to his ears, and he was reminded of his situation once again.

They know we operate in twos, Jay reasoned. He tried to keep his mind busy and away from the knowledge that Sido's remains were most likely spread throughout the city in blooded clumps.

“They know I'm here,” Jay thought. “The logical choice would be to abort the mission and get out of here through the escape route.”

“Jay...” Mia said his name in warning.

“Dammit Mia. Don't you even dare.” The thought snapped out of him.

He closed his eyes. “Sorry.”

Mia was quiet for a time, and then a map appeared in front of him. Another talent Mia had that made her invaluable to the team.

To him.

He focused back on the map. Red dots peppered an area around a white dot. The map shifted and it moved to a yellow dot many blocks away.

The yellow dot was his objective. The swarm of red dots were either late night strollers or—more likely—patrolmen. And the lone white dot in the sea of red was him.

Pushing up from the water catcher, Jay latched onto the only emotion he thought could help him through the night: anger.

“Before the night is though, blood would be spilled,” he promised himself.





“Slow down,” Mia warned.

He'd been nearly flying from rooftop to rooftop at a break neck pace, only stopping briefly to consult the complicated map. It was as if they were closing in on him. Already he’d had a few close run ins with the increasingly more numerous patrolmen. Rooftops weren't as safe as they were once. It was only a matter of time before--

“Down!”

Jay's head felt woozy after ducking a little too quickly.

“Where is it?”

Mia's thoughts drifted for a bit, and Jay got a taste of what she was thinking—one unfortunately side-effect with being mind-melded with someone of her talents. Images and words flew by his conscious faster than he could processes. It was really frightening how quickly she calculated things. Like waking up from a nightmare, her thoughts weren't tangible enough to completely understand, but the overall gist of it was there. She was scared.

“Third window, second floor.”

The space between his thighs shimmered and wavered until another illusion appeared. This time it wasn't a map but a window with a light on. But the image was as if he was looking through another man's eyes.

“Creepy,” Jay thought. “What about the footman?”

The window disappeared and in its place was a picture of himself in third person. He was crouching behind a chimney, and just over that chimney was a footman trying to hide a yawn behind his hand. Just over the man's shoulder Jay could see a familiar candlelit curtain. The window.



“Jay?” Mia's disembodied voice interrupted his thoughts.

He didn't 'think' anything.

“Don't do anything stupid.”

Jay pulled out his boot knife. “Too late.”

Turning around the chimney's corner, and out of the shadows, he came up from behind the soldier and rammed the blade up under the patrolman's chin. His hand jarred at the impact, but he grabbed the falling body. Trying to look in all directions at once, he lowered the already limp body onto the flat roof and dragged the corpse back into the shadows. Propping the dead patrolman against the chimney, he looked around the corner and surveyed the landscape.

No alarms yet, Jay thought with a bit of satisfaction.

“Clear,” Mia confirmed.

He took a steady breath and mentally prepared himself for what was to come.

Mia's concern seeped into his consciousness.

“Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

Aloud, Jay whispered, “I'll tell you in a few.”

Before he could talk himself out of it, he sprinted across the rooftop and jumped off the ledge. Pulling up his hands and knees up to cover his face, he broke through the window a floor below the roof he'd just jumped off of and hit the floor with a roll. Just before he came to a stop, he unsheathed his short sword in a well-practiced maneuver. The world around Jay steadied and his eyes searched for any threats.

None.

He had to act quickly.  Jay knew it wouldn’t be long before they came to investigate the noise he'd just made.

Taking three long strides, he made it to the door. Opening it, he looked down the hallway and saw and heard nothing. Yet.

Closing the door behind him, he crossed the hall to another door. He checked the doorknob. Locked. He knocked three times: one short and two long.

Jay pulled up his short sword and leveled it at what he'd judge to be neck height.

A knock came from the other side of the door that gave him pause. Two short and one long. The acknowledgment was code for 'all clear'. There was an audible click as the door’s lock was released.

Sheathing his sword, he opened the door and slid into the dark room. The door closed immediately behind him and someone pushed Jay into the wall with enough force to knock the wind out of him.

The sharp edge that pressed against his neck warned him to not make any sudden movements. The room was pitch-black near the door so he couldn’t see his attacker.

“You are not who I was expecting,” a calm masculine voice whispered into his ear. “Who are you?”

“With all due respect sir, now isn't the time to be asking twenty-one questions.”

The blade sliced a little bit more into his neck. “You could be an elaborate plot to get information out of me,” he countered.

“Believe me, I'd prefer if you didn’t talk,” Jay said through clenched teeth.

“You are not Mo'hian,” his nameless target commented, ignoring Jay. “So I'm not sure how you know my family's secret challenge. Perhaps you coerced one of our retainers?”

The smile in the man's voice was unmistakable and Jay was starting to question the man's sanity.

“What would it take to prove I'm on your side?” Jay demanded.

“There are two men in the hallway,” Mia warned. “They are a few seconds from your door.”

“Now you tell me,” Jay muttered.

“What was that?” his assailant asked.

In a reckless move that would have earned him a scolding from Sido, Jay grabbed the knife and moved away from its edge while thrusting his other arm's elbow into the man's face. There was an audible crunch as the cartridge and bone in his nose snapped. Jay almost felt bad for him.

Pulling free his two short swords, the man before him took a fearful step back.  His once captor had forgotten to strip his weapons—a fatal mistake if Jay hadn't been there to save him. For the first time, Jay got a good look at the man as he stepped into the light. He was about Jay's height and wore a red silk robe. Definitely Mo'hian with his brown hair and brown eyes but Jay was surprised at the man's age. He couldn't have been much older than he.

Jay took a stepped back, deeper into the shadows. A look of confusion flew across the Mo'hian's face, but he didn't get a chance to do much more than that because right then the door flew open. Two soldiers charged in with weapons drawn. They first saw their hostage standing there, and Jay thought it took them a bit off guard seeing their captive just standing there—confused and face bloodied.

Not giving them a chance, Jay struck. He kicked the left soldier's knee out and killed the soldier to the right with a downward swing to his neck. Blood sprayed outward, but with a flash of air manipulation, the blood didn't come near him. Leaving his short sword in the man, he reached for his dagger. The temporarily disabled guard to the left recovered enough to raise his guard but Jay's other short sword was there to stop it.

Sparks flew as he swatted his opponent’s blade back and, in the same motion, Jay pulled up the dagger in his other hand. Before the soldier could react, there was a red line across his neck.

There was a clatter of metal against stone as both bodies and weapons fell. It had all happened within ten seconds.

“Impressive,” the Mo'hian murmured.

Jay's eyes went to the door. “How many?”

“Four left in the building, but none are heading to your location,” Mia reported. A map appeared in front of him. It was the building they were in and the surrounding buildings. There was a lot of red.

“How many of what?”

Jay blinked and looked down from the map to his new ally. He was crouched in front of the nearest downed soldier, relieving the man's weapons.

Jay had forgotten he was no longer alone.

Thinking quickly, he said, “How many can you hold off on your own?”

The man gave him a wicked grin. “I'm the King of Mo'hian. You just worry about yourself.”

Jay didn't know much about Mo'hians. In fact, there were only two things he knew about them—their perverse sense of honor and that they were practically raised from birth to fight.

“Yes sir.”