The Heroes I-The Black Fire Lighthouse

Chapter XII-Secrets Revealed

The buck had run into a small Hell Raider fortress, but that wasn't the disturbing part. The beasts were standing around, large whips in their hands, watching the kids work closely. Garen looked over and saw a kid fall over and one of the Hell Raiders coming over to him and picking him up by the hair screaming something at him that he couldn't understand, then shoved the kid off and give him a few lashings to the back. Garen clenched his jaw and started to get up, but Becky held onto his arm to keep him from going. He looked over at her about to say something, but stopped. It seemed like she had gotten over Max's death slightly, but her expression still wasn't the same. Her eyes were softer and she didn't look as old, it almost seemed her age had gone in reverse and she was now a teenager instead of a young adult.


"We must be patient, Garen," she said. "At least now we know why there are never any children at the battlefields of the Hell Raiders. They take them and bring them to work at the fortresses."


"Oh, yea, that does make some sense, I suppose," Garen stuttered.


"You're telling me you didn't put the pieces together at the sight of this?"


"Well, er, I haven’t really been thinking too straight. I was worried about the, erm, deer."


Becky looked over at him, "Yea, okay, I guess."


"No way." Garen looked over at one of the boys that was working for the Hell Raiders and couldn't believe who it was. He was one of the older ones, around Garen's age, and he had a sour look on his face from working all day. Neotasha was carrying two logs placed on his shoulders over to a little cabin. He had a metal collar around his neck with a rope attached to it so the Hell Raider next to him could keep hold. The wounds that he had on him before were gone now, but he had acquired some new ones since then. He had scars that looked like they came from a whip and a scar on his lip where he could've been hit. So at least he's been trying to get away, but it hasn't worked out too well so far.


"How are we gonna get 'em free?" Garen asked.


"Very carefully," she looked over at him with a slight smile. She was getting back to her normal self now, which made Garen happy.


"Alright, well I guess we can sneak on in at night fall and we're going to find his room," Garen said pointing over at Neotasha. "He's from my village and left shortly before I did. I found him almost dead about a day out and was attacked by the Masked One. When I woke up he was gone.'


"He just left you there, alone?"


"Well, we didn't get along very well and had quite the falling out; that's a part of why he left."


"Didn't get along with each other, huh? Hmm, and a falling out," she said this as if it was hard to believe that he didn't get along with somebody. "Well, let's just hope you fix your quarrels with him, but for now let's rest. Your deer is right there."


Garen turned around at where she was pointing and looked back at her, "When did you do that?"


"I didn't, somebody else did for you, but he left as soon as he let the deer go."


"Was it him?" Garen asked, a glare coming onto his face. "I won't accept anything from that beast."


Becky crawled over to him slowly and looked at him, her eyes a soft and gentle blue, "Garen, you don't have to worry about him, he's not a bad person, trust me on that. Now stop with these ridiculous grudges and help your friend over there."


Garen nodded and agreed to wait until night fall before they went to try and help Neotasha out of the fortress, but that proved more challenging than they thought. It seemed as though these beasts never slept. They took shifts all day watching the fortress, and not once did the guards change shift, even as night began to climb its way over the land. Both Garen and Becky were watching the fortress now, not being able to sleep themselves, coming to the conclusion that they would have to sneak into the fortress to be able to attempt any type of rescue of Neotasha.


"So if we die, the world is pretty much screwed," Garen said softly.


"Yep," Becky replied. "Let's go."


Becky scurried out of the patch of woods with her two swords drawn, not making a sound, Garen right behind her just as silent. It was hard to avoid the guards. They left but a few blind spots to get through. When they reached an entry to the fortress they stopped and inspected to find it unlocked for them to get through. As they entered the fortress they saw only a few doorways to choose from, one of them leading to a lower level of the fortress.


"Let's try that one," Becky said.


They ran over to it and hurried down the stairs to find kids all over the floor, some of them dead. Neotasha was over in a corner at the far end, the oldest and biggest of the bunch, also the one with the most beatings on his body. Garen waved over to him and he looked up, the look of helplessness and loss being replaced in his eyes by happiness and hope. He came running over to Becky and Garen, throwing his arms tightly around Garen and then retracting back to look at him, a large smile on his face.


"Boy, did I never think I would be this happy to see your childish ass here," he said with a rough tone in his voice.


"I would have to say I may have grown a bit since our last meet," Garen said sourly. "But I'm here to get you out of this hell hole, where's your sword."


"The Hell Raiders took any weapons we had from us and put them in a room," he said. "I was watching them and saw which room my stuff was thrown into; I hope you don't plan on getting out of here as quietly as getting in."


"Why is that?" Becky asked.


"Because we," he motioned to the kids behind him, "are going to kill every last one of these monstrous bastards in this place."


There was then a loud explosion behind them and a tall figure came walking through the smoke, a wide grin on his face. "Then you're going to need all the help you can get," Cody said looking over at Garen. "I can't help what the Dark Lord did to me, Garen, and I am in no way responsible for Max's death, except for the fact that I was too weak to save him."


Garen walked over to Cody, an expression on his face that was difficult to read, then he placed a hand on Cody's shoulder and smiled at him, "You weren't weak Cody, none of us could've stopped him. I believe that you have nothing but good left in you now and I trust you to the full extent, but only if you promise me you will never let him take you over again."


"I promise you that one," he replied, a smile appearing on his face, "but they'll be down here any second and our friend here doesn't have a sword."


They could hear the sounds of Hell Raiders coming down the stairs and the first one that appeared was blown back by a stream of Silver Fire. Neotasha ran past them, quickly going up the stairs with explosions going off everywhere with the kids right behind him. Becky, Cody, and Garen were left behind in the cellar; they all looked at each other and ran after everyone else to join in the fight to keep the Hell Raiders from killing anymore. When they reached the surface they could see Neotasha slicing away at every beast in sight and the kids putting up a good fight themselves. It seems Neotasha had been training them well, Garen thought. Cody was gone fighting off a group of Hell Raiders and Becky was up in the higher end of the fortress tossing them over the side for the kids to beat up on. Garen ran over to the Hell Raiders next to Neotasha and started cutting everyone in sight. He felt Neotasha's back hit against his but paid no attention. They spun each other slowly around to attack any Hell Raider that came within their reach and as soon as they started to stay back, a combination of Green and Silver Fire busted toward the beasts. Cody and Becky no longer had Hell Raiders to fight off for they all went down to try and stop the two from killing them off, so they watched in amazement as the two former enemies fought in sync with one another. They may have hated each other back in Kio, but they were also training partners and knew how to fight as a team better than anyone else and could do it without question. The last bit of the Hell Raiders fell in a pool of blood as the pair of them sheathed their swords and looked around at the damage.


"None of us were killed off," said Neotasha, then he looked at Garen. "You were right. You have grown quite a bit. You fought better than most people I know alongside me back there and as your former Fire of Color master and training partner, I have to say that I'm quite proud. I would like for our past quarrels to be that; the past." Neotasha held out his arm and Garen looked at it questioning, then grasped hold of his hand firmly.


"We can put our past behind of course," Garen said. "This is a war anyway and we can't be fighting when we're on the same side."


Cody walked over and draped his arms over the two of them and looked off in the distance, "I'm glad we're all buddy, buddy now, but we have a Lighthouse or seven to protect and another town to be getting to and now we have ourselves a lovely bunch of kids with us." He looked down at Neotasha. "What are we gonna do with them?"


"They'll find their way to safety," he said. "They've been through a lot and I'm sure they can handle a walk home. So let's go to the next little town of, Kadara, I do believe."


Garen nodded and they started walking off towards the town in the distance, regrettably leaving the kids to themselves. He looked over at Neotasha, noticing a slight change in the way he looked, his eyes were a bit more catlike and his skin a slight bit smoother than usual. "So, what happened to you after I was nearly killed, Neotasha? How did you end up here?"


"Well," he started, "as you know, I left the village in anger and jealousy, so I decided to go look for these guys myself to stop them and to show the Protector that you were nowhere near being as worthy as I am for the task. I, of course, see now that I was completely wrong about that and soon after leaving the village I came across a masked man. I tried to fight him because I knew he had something to do with the Tablets, well he nearly killed me. I woke up to see you in a bit better condition than I was and someone else there by the name of Max."


Becky turned her head away quickly and put her hand up to her face, holding the tears and Garen just looked at Neotasha, his eyes turning slightly red as he was also fighting the warm tears from climbing down his cheeks. "Max told me he never saw you," he choked. "Why would he lie?"


"I told him to," Neotasha replied. "I was ashamed, you see, ashamed that I was beaten by a complete stranger and distort that you were near death yourself and so early in your journey, so I just got up and left telling him to say he had never seen me. I continued my way to Langholm, the trip taking much longer than it should've, and then I came into some sort of realm, seemed to be a ghost town of some sort, an old, lost village I think. Well, as soon as I started getting frightened of the place, it vanished and I walked into a camp of Hell Raiders, not a little camp either. No, it was a small army of Hell Raiders, making weapons out of the legs they just got from the men they killed and forcing the kids to eat the meat of their own parents. It was a horrible thing, and then I was caught. I was thrown into that fortress prison and after a while, started training the kids to fight back to plan our escape. And just as we were about to attack, you come charging into our prison and we were rescued."


Cody looked over at him, studying him carefully, his eyes shifting from Neotasha's ragged boots to the messy blonde hair on his head. He then said, "Did you hear anything?"


"What?"


"While you were in there did you hear anything?" he asked a little more furiously.


"What do you mean?" Neotasha asked, coming to a stop.


"Don't play stupid with me, boy!" Cody grabbed hold of Neotasha's collar and lifted him up to his height. "Did you hear the Hell Raiders saying anything? Anything about who they're working for, or about what they plan on doing? Answer me!"


Neotasha put his hands around Cody's arms and said in a low, angered voice, "I remember them saying that they work for the Dark Lord and that they wouldn't touch you because you were a previous one, the only one to have survived and kicked him out of your soul." Cody dropped him to the ground and looked over at Garen. "They also said you were too weak to carry on as the Dark Lord."


"I am not weak," Cody hissed back. "Is there anything else, anything important?"


"They never died out. They were never extinct like we all thought, just in hiding until the right moment. They are also going to be involved with the War of the Lighthouse, which is planned to spark up sometime after the second or third Lighthouse is lit."


"We won't let it go that far," Cody said as they came over a hill.


They all stopped at the hill and looked down at the city below and then looked over to the left where the forest lay and saw an army of Hell Raiders marching toward the city, which was now blocked and protected. Cody held out his hand and everyone grabbed hold, all vanishing in a wisp of smoke and reappearing at the city gates.


"Why not just take us in?" Becky asked.


"I actually tried, someone's blocking it off." Cody then took out his stolen sword, that started to change shape to his old one, and knocked it against the door three times.


A small hatch opened up and a little face peered out at them, "As you can see there's an army of beasts coming at us, if you wouldn't mind, but go away."


Garen and Cody lit their hands up with Green and Rainbow Fire and the man instantly disappeared and the door opened up for them. A little man stood beyond them, beckoning them in and quickly shutting the door behind them.


"He said you would be here to help, but I didn't believe it," the little man squeaked happily.


"Who?" Cody asked.


"Oh, he's such a smart and powerful man," the little man continued. "I never thought he would possibly be right."


"Who are you talking about?" Cody repeated.


"Planned the whole battle and everything, such strategic thinking, that man. And at his age, he's still so powerful and ingenious."


"Hey, you tiny, little shit!" Cody shouted, cause the man to jump and look up at him. "Who the hell are you talking about?"


"Well, no need to yell, prick, you only need to ask and I would've been happy to tell you," squeaked the man again. "I would be talking about the high and mighty Langholm of course."


Cody stopped walking at that point. If Langholm was here, then that means Jake would be here too and he would be involved in yet another battle, but this time he would be much closer to the danger. Cody thought he had sent Jake away from danger when he took him away from his mother, but Langholm clearly attracted more. He started walking again, the others not noticing his pause, except for maybe Neotasha, who had glanced back him quickly.


"...so powerful and great, but I don't know if he's even a match for these giant beasts," the little man was still saying. "Ah, we're here now."


He lit a finger up with Silver Fire and slid it down between two doors and they slid open for them, showing a large mass of frightened warriors.


In the center of these warriors, was Langholm and what looked like a teenage boy with long, dark brown hair and brilliant blue eyes. He looked over at Cody and smiled weakly at him and Cody smiled back as if they knew each other. King Lang was also standing there, discussing plans with Langholm until he looked up and saw Becky, Neotasha, Cody and Garen standing in the doorway. Langholm walked over and shock hands with them, along with the king, but the boy stood back.


"Won't you say hi, Jake," Langholm asked kindly. "I do believe you are familiar with one of them anyway."


"Jake?" Cody asked. "You were a boy when I last saw you, it seems like you've grown years ahead of your time."


"It is something he cannot explain, Cody," Langholm came in. "His ability for Fire of Color is great and he is highly gifted with it. He will be involved in this battle, being stronger and much more mature then when you last saw him."


Cody looked over at him and looked into his eyes as if trying to read if he was really ready. "You sure you can do this?" he asked simply.


"I can, Cody," Jake had replied in a deep and confident tone.


Cody drew out the sword he had taking from the falling warrior. It was now the color of a wonderful rainbow, the blade long and slender and the hilt curving perfectly around Cody's hand. He handed it over to Jake, who took it carefully.


"Then you'll need that," he said.


"But what about you?" Jake asked.


"I can manage without one for now, and I can just pick up a new one like I did with this." Cody looked at the sword carefully, then said, "But there's no time to worry about our weapons; the Hell Raiders are on your doorstep."