Mind Forged: Book One of the Enchanters of Xarparion (27 page)

Alex, when she met you, the ghost of the valiant white knight resurfaced
again in her thoughts, like a long forgotten melody, and the nightmares miraculously stopped. In her mind, she placed you inside that gleaming white armor and she fell in love all over again. In training, when she first saw you pick up a war hammer, swing it and become proficient with it so naturally, again the image of the white knight with your face came to her mind.

Today for the first time, seeing you in
the ring, in that armor, Maya realized that you are, and have always been, her knight!”

Maya
’s arms were moving now, but her eyes were still closed tightly, as she fumbled clumsily trying to remove my helm. I reached up with my free hand and removed it, letting it drop to the ground next to us. Instantly, her lips hungrily found mine, and after a few intense moments that elicited some gasps from the younger crowd, her eyes snapped open just inches from mine. I was instantly lost in those emerald green, searching, frighteningly fierce eyes.

“
Just to make sure I’m clear on this,” she whispered. “I am never letting you go, like ever! I don’t care if there are a dozen crazy prophecies out there saying I will be a queen someday. If I can’t have you and be a queen, then I will happily remain a simple weapons trainer forever as long as you stay by my side.”

“
No need to worry, my lady, I am your humble servant, always,” I whispered back, and gently lowered her feet to the floor.

She smiled
, drying her tears with the cuff of her robe. “That was the right thing for you to say.”

We were brought back to reality by the sound of Julia trying to lift my helmet
. Looking down at her, it was kind of funny to watch; she didn’t even have a chance of rolling it over. Both Maya and I burst out laughing, much to the confusion of everyone else. Defeated Julia gave up and with a huff, kicked my faceplate and then hopped about from the pain in her foot.

“
What the hell, Alex! How much does that thing weigh?”

I picked it up and held it so they all could get a better look
. “Well, I would say somewhere around a hundred pounds or so when Maya or I aren’t holding it.”

The twins and
druids seemed to be fascinated. They crowded around it, touched it, and lifted the face shield. Dawn was the first to notice something was wrong. “Um, as a dragon, human armor is not one of our strong points, but how can you see out of that if you don’t have eye slots?”

“
I don’t need to see anymore, well not normally, anyway. I can see things all around me, even through things. I can also follow the flow of magic and predict what people are about to do.”

Maya grew serious and added
, “It also enables him to use his tower shield unconventionally.” Dropping naturally into her weapons instructor persona, she continued, “Normally a tower shield is a liability in single close combat. It’s slow and heavy to move, and it’s difficult to see what your opponent is doing on the other side. Alex doesn’t have those issues. To him, the shield is as light as a training buckler and transparent as glass, and with his ability to anticipate his foes position, he can utilize even a relatively slow weapon like the war hammer to maximum effect. That makes him very hard to beat in our duels.”

She stopped, noting the glassy
-eyed stares from the mages in the group, and fanned herself vigorously. “Sorry, but weapons and tactics are so…”

Lin rolled her eyes
dramatically and then shifted her attention to me. “Ok, so you’re supposed to be an enchanter. I thought you guys couldn’t cast spells.”

Rosa was kind enough to
answer that one. “You would normally be correct there, Lin. But as you can probably guess, he is not just an enchanter.”

Julia asked next
, “What do you mean by that?”

Rosa
smiled and placed a hand on my armored shoulder. “It’s simple really, he’s not human.”

I would
imagine that most people would be shocked to find that they were not what they thought they were. For me, it’s kind of a relief in a way. I knew that my real parents are something much more than human, but my real question is, how much more?

The twins came
over and started smelling me; in truth, it was a rather odd sensation. Dusk took a deep breath before shrugging her shoulders. “He smells human to me.”

“
Actually, he smells really, really good for a human,” Dawn added with a soft sigh, which earned her a wicked glare from Maya. “What, Mistress? Some humans don’t bathe often enough,” she explained.

Still
smiling, Rosa handed me a steel practice rod. “We shall see about that, not the bathing part,” she snickered. “Alex, I would really like for you to show everyone your new power your father gave you. Nia is biting her tongue to keep from telling everyone.”

I looked to Nia who was indeed trying hard not to say anything
. “Nia, you don’t need to try so hard to hurt yourself.” She relaxed and nodded. I turned back to Rosa. “What do you want?”

“
How about a necklace?”

Well
, that would be easy, a small chain is nothing compared to the complexity of a suit of armor. I didn’t even have to try real hard to get a small amount of the steel rood to melt. Everyone gasped as the metal liquefied and floated in the air, slowly starting to re-harden in the shape of a twisted chain necklace with the elf rune of magic as the pendant design. Once done, I slowly lowered it around Rosa’s neck; she placed her hand on it and smiled.

“
It’s lovely, thank you. But, please, tell everyone what your power is.”

I glanced
around at all the looks that I was getting; most were of amazement, but Maya nodded calmly.

“
One of the powers that my father gave me is the ability to control metals from a short distance. I can melt and shape them into anything I want. I can even enchant them as I work. One of the things Mother gave me was my extra sight, another is much more control of the magic in the metals. Basically, I can do things with metal that many wizards can’t even do.”

Everyone seemed ex
cited by that and wanted a demonstration, and I had a great one. “I’ll demonstrate. Rosa, would you please stand over there.” She stalled for a bit, and I could tell she was trying to read my mind, but I have long learned that if I think about armor she can’t get past it. Giving up, she walked to the far side of the tent. For safety’s sake, I placed a fire proof enchantment on the tent and then returned to the center with the others.

“
Nia, if you would kindly throw a fireball at Rosa, please.”

Everyone
’s jaws dropped, but Nia looked like I just gave her a birthday present. She eagerly flew over to my shoulder and stood on her stand for support. She started a fireball spell, really hamming up the preparations like she was readying the biggest fireball of all time, and giving Rosa time for a few last words.

“
Alex, please call off the pixie, call off the pixie!” She was in full panic mode.

“
This is for trapping me under a pot!” Nia cast the fireball and it hit her right in the chest or, at least, it looked like it did. At the last second, the fireball splashed across a light blue shield that put itself between Rosa and the fireball. Realizing that she wasn’t dead, Rosa removed her hands from her eyes and quickly patted herself down, looking for injuries, smoking holes, etc. There were none, but I’m pretty sure she was wise to me all along, as least as far as realizing I would never intentionally hurt her.

“
That necklace will block most magical casts directed at you, but it can’t stop everything and can be broken with a powerful spell. If it does ever fail, then you might as well throw it away because it only has one shield in it.”

Nia was very proud of herself
. She was the only other one in the room who knew of all my new tricks before now. She was sitting proudly on her perch on my shoulder gloating at Rosa. The twins, as soon as things looked safe, ran up to Rosa and looked her over, and then were all examining her necklace trying to find out how it works.

Lin came over to Nia and
me. “So what are you?”

“
I truly don’t know. My parents aren’t able to tell me yet.”

She thought that over for a few seconds
. “Fine, I’ll accept that. But you still haven’t answered why your armor weighs so much when you’re not holding it.”

I
smiled and the others must have overheard that because they gathered around us again. “In truth, its weight never changes; it’s just really light to me and Maya. In my full combat gear, I’m over six thousand pounds. My shield alone is over eight hundred pounds. Thankfully, it seems that our horses were given the same gift that we were, so I don’t crush them.”

Rosa
wrapped her arms around my waist and tried to lift me up. She grunted and strained her muscles but wasn’t able to even move me. “Ugh, you’re heavy. How can you even walk around without sinking or bringing the place down?”

I lifted my
foot. “Enchanted boots. They stamp enchantments onto whatever I walk on; it’s really one of my cooler new enchantments.”

Nia flew off my
shoulder and got everyone’s attention. “Ok, people! I know all of you love Alex and his new abilities, but we have wasted over two hours talking, and I have two hours to get him out of that armor, fed and back into it. So with that said, EVERYBODY GET OUT! Except Maya, I’ll need your help.”

I
laughed as the others left the tent, grumbling about a pixie with an uppity attitude. Rosa gave me the look saying that we would be having this conversation again later; of course, she wasn’t even out the door before asking questions through the link. But Nia was right, time was short and I didn’t have time to talk her through all of them at this point.

I
ignored the rest of Rosa’s questions and turned to Maya and Nia. Maya was very happy, but Nia was in her drill sergeant pixie mode. “Alright, Alex, spread ‘em!” I laughed, but stretched out my arms and legs as ordered. “Ok, Maya, this is my gift to you, you get to unwrap Alex!”

I don
’t think Maya could be happier with any other present. She proved it by keeping her lips pressed to mine, while her hands worked on removing the armor. Soon I found myself desperately short of breath, and my moral compass was flailing about like a drunken gnome in a pickle barrel. Finally, Nia tapped her on the shoulder and sent her on her way with a smile and a sinful saunter. With a deep cleansing breath, I headed to a late lunch with Nia.

I shouldn
’t have been surprised that people came up to me, but I was. Most of the people came over to wish me luck and to congratulate me on my first win. But three others had a different approach; they threatened me with humiliation and grave personal injury should I be impertinent enough to stay in the competition. Sadly for them, I could see how much magic they were capable of using, and I didn’t think they would even last half way through the tournament.

But one
visitor really surprised me. Ranny, from my first match, was being dragged over to me by a stern looking, older girl, also in blue robes. She stopped him right in front of me and pushed him forward with a dark look. He looked from me to her and back before offering to shake my hand. “I…it was a good match.”

I
shook his hand and smiled, trying to be friendly. The girl with him rolled her eyes and stepped forward.

“
What my brother is trying to say is ‘thank you.’ He was forced into the tournament by his idiot friends, and I was afraid he would be killed. You beat him without hurting him and saved him from having to fight others, so again, thank you!”

I sho
ok her hand as well. “I’m glad this worked out for the both of you, but I am sorry for scaring you.”

Ranny
shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. Just do me a favor and win, so I won’t look like too much of a wimp.”

We all
smiled. “I plan to do just that, don’t worry.”

We said goodbye and they both
promised to cheer for me in the rest of my matches. As the two left, I could make out the last few comments that they made to each other. The sister asked her brother questions about me and Nia. I think I heard the girl ask if I had a girlfriend, too bad for her that I do and have no desire to leave Maya at any point in my life.

Once they were gone
, Nia returned to forcing food into me and got me back to the tent as fast as she could. Finally back in the tent, I had about three seconds to rest before she had me suiting up again. And fifteen minutes later, I was back in the standby area.

When I was called to enter the ring
, I was disappointed that I missed the name of my opponent. But after seeing him, I got the feeling that I wouldn’t get along with him anyway. He was shorter than I was - but most people are - and was wearing the gray robes of a wind user. He reminded me of a diminutive version of Naton. Another thing that stood out was his obvious attitude.

“
Hey, Enchanter, you ready to be blown away? I saw your last match and your speed won’t help you with me! Ha, I’ll be the one who puts you stupid enchanters back in your place!”