CH 28 Summary: The final plan against Arcane had been made.
In the miniscule time that remains, Chapter 29... they attempt to make the final preparations needed... but the sense of foreboding is intense. As the imbalance spreads even to Castla nu Craara... they learn the fire Arcane wields that destroyed one of their own... and perhaps, may destroy Aerobolt?
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The Guardians of Life: Justice (Book I)
Chapter Twenty-Nine-
Foreboding

Aerobolt did not sleep as well that night as he did the first night home. He was exhausted, yes, but his mind refused to leave the topic of Arcane behind. Over and over he recounted everything he’s seen and heard Arcane do. Over and over he thought of how strong Arcane was. Over and over he thought about he strong he was, and had trouble comparing the two of them together. His mind whirled around the thought of training, and that these next two or three days might be his last. Or worse, Shade and Storm’s last. He knew the next few nights he would have to endure would be even worse than tonight. He didn’t have anything to worry about, yet his mind refused to dream. It was like his mind thought he was going to die and was prolonging his life before Arcane would destroy him ultimately.
It was worse when Aerobolt did manage to fall asleep. His dreams were filled with the same thoughts as when his mind didn’t rest. Only this time, they were put into a horrible sequence of images that would haunt Aerobolt until either he or Arcane were dead. He saw Arcane triumphantly rampaging through his new beloved home, killing every poor Guardian that tried to scramble away. He saw Shade and Storm briefly before Arcane buried both of them in Castla nu Craara’s stones. Aerobolt tried to wail in grief, but only heard the rock fall and Arcane’s laughing. Then he saw himself, bruised and battered at the end of the hallway to Commons. He was panting heavily and bleeding from several cuts and wounds all over his body. When dream Aerobolt saw his dream enemy moving towards him, he growled deeply and stood his ground. But real Aerobolt could see the fear in his dream self’s eye more clearly than anything else around him. The fear was so overpowering it threatened to choke him. He saw Arcane raise his paw in the air. Dream Aerobolt refused to move. Arcane spoke something indistinct and cast what looked like the very manifestation of hell itself around them. Dream Aerobolt backed up, as if he didn’t know what was going on. Real Aerobolt didn’t know either. Whatever Arcane was doing, it looked absolutely horrendous to behold. From Arcane it looked like liquid darkness spilled in every direction. When it pooled up at dream Aerobolt’s paws, real Aerobolt saw him open his muzzle in an agonizing scream before he saw the sunlight beaming onto his stomach.
Morning. Arcane would arrive in a couple of day’s time. The first thing Aerobolt thought as he swiveled his body to get up was that he needed to start training right away. Still groggy from sleep, he staggered into Shade’s quarters and found them abandoned. She must have already started preparing for the final battle without him. Aerobolt was annoyed, but he knew had no time to ponder over where she went; he knew exactly where he needed to go. As he passed by the hallway of past Shades, he wondered what all they were like. Were they like Shade in any way? Aerobolt noticed that Shade was not the only Shadow Vulpine to be granted status to Arch Guardian of Darkness. Aerobolt stopped at a portrait of a Shadow Vulpine reynard wearing a blue scarf, whose plate read:
“Shade 14: Vrangar Myukai Arrabalta. Served 34 years. Bane: Water. Aged 56 before death. Was famous for the union of Guardian and the Sharra Cult. Restored the Guardian’s reputation after the Great Storm.”
Aerobolt did not understand what the Great Storm was, nor who the Sharra Cult was supposed to be, but when he saw Arrabalta as his last name, he couldn’t help but gasp. Whoever this fox was, he was one of Aerobolt’s ancestors. Then he remembered that the Vrangar River and whatever this Vrangar Hold he’s heard about were named after him. He wondered if this Vrangar Hold was where these Sharra Cult creatures lived. Whatever this all meant was none of his business now; he remembered he needed to get to training as soon as possible. He practically let the stone slab drop to the ground without any caution in his haste. When the stone slammed into the ground with a bang, it threw Aerobolt to the ground. Paws stinging, Aerobolt tried to find them again. Once rebalanced, he half limped into the Crossroads. At Crossroads he saw Thor and a cub talking with each other using quick voices. He heard the cub shrieking all of the sudden.
“What!? You want me to be mentored by him!?” she cried with a voice so high-pitched, Aerobolt’s ears flattened themselves involuntarily.
Thor was trying to calm her. “Sh! Not so loud! And yes I want you to be trained by him someday. I just know he will help you find out what your true power will be!” he hissed quietly enough to where Aerobolt barely heard.
The vixen cub still did not quiet down. “But what if my Bane is not Fire, then? What will we do then?”
‘Fire? Oh no, they aren’t talking about me are they?’ Aerobolt thought wearily as Thor responded.
“Then we will get around Fierla somehow. It is almost time for your inauguration into the Guardians. Once the final battle with the Unknown Enemy is over, that is when we will discuss this more with both him and Fielra, okay?”
The vixen cub looked away from Thor to think, but saw Aerobolt standing there wondering what was going on. “Hey! There he is now!” she said.
Thor turned around and saw Aerobolt approaching them slowly. “Master Aerobolt? How much of that did you hear?”
“I heard her say something about being mentored by someone and that what if her Bane was not Fire. And something about a true power?” Aerobolt responded casually.
Thor’s expression was well hidden. “Indeed. This cub here is Eira Farus Tharo. Storm’s sister, and the one we had said had the strange power.”
Aerobolt was stunned. Storm’s sister!? Storm did not mention he had a sister! Neither did Shade! How many secrets are being kept from him!? Aerobolt decided now was not the right time to address this, so he just turned to Eira and greeted her. He hoped he didn’t sound too frustrated. Eira returned his greeting, but did not hide her irritability with Thor. Despite that, Aerobolt was glad he wasn’t the only one feeling irritable at that moment.
“Now that we have everyone’s acquaintance, shall we start training now?” Thor looked between Aerobolt and Eira. Eira and Aerobolt glanced at each other. Then they nodded. “Yes sir!” They both said at the same time. Instantly they glared at each other.
“Alright then. Follow me if you would,” Thor said before turning around into his Spire. Aerobolt and Eira followed, both of them a few yards behind him. Aerobolt wanted to ask Eira exactly what Thor had said to her, but he knew she wouldn’t tell him. He wondered if it was because of Thor, or simply because she didn’t want to tell him. Somehow he just knew it involved him.
At the end of the hallway to his Spire, Thor addressed them. “Okay you two, we go straight through those doors to find the training ground for the Force of Thunder. That is what we shall work on first, if you do not mind.” Thor wanted to get his Dominant Force out of the way it seemed to Aerobolt’s observations. He knew if he noted that, Thor would get flustered, so muzzle shut, he and Eira followed Thor through the doors on the other end of the circular base of the Spire.
The first thing that happened was static; it made Aerobolt’s fur stand completely on end. He looked over and saw Eira suffering the same fate. Only Thor was unfazed. He laughed heartily. “Once you master the Force of Thunder enough, you shall be able to control the static much better,” he said. They were in a room filled with equipment that had some correlation with Thunder, from lightning rods to Thunder Gems and targets and dummies with a symbol of lightning painted onto them. It didn’t seem like much, but Aerobolt remembered being told that Thunder is not used or seen nearly as often as any other Force in the Guardian’s arsenal. Therefore he was told not to expect much training in that particular field.
Thor clapped his paws together. “So! Any questions before we begin?”
Aerobolt couldn’t think of any; he stayed silent, while Eira shook her head.
“Very well. I want you two to work together with this. I want each of you to create a small concentrated area of Thunder and pass each other yours at the same time. Sustain each other’s power each time until I ask you to stop. This will help you build concentration, dexterity, control, and maintenance of the Force of Thunder of which we could build better exercises onto, understood?”
Aerobolt nodded tight-lipped. Eira stayed silent, but did not seem immediately despondent to the order.
“Alright, then spread apart and face each other. If you need to, you could use the surrounding Thunder Gems to create your Thunder, if you cannot on your own,” he added. Aerobolt noticed he was glancing at Eira when he said that.
Aerobolt and Eira each took ten steps in opposite directions and faced each other. They focused their gazes on each other. Neither said a word. Thor did though.
“Okay! You two ready? Be careful. We don’t want anyone getting too shocked, so make the energy put into these lightning fields are small. Okay! Fire when ready!”
Instantly, Aerobolt focused the static around him into a weak electric field in his paws. It crackled and buzzed quietly. He glanced over at Eira briefly, who was trying to create her own field, but was failing. Was her Bane Thunder? Aerobolt hoped the Guardians were careful enough to not overdo it with the cubs that don’t know their Bane yet. His mind wandering on that made him lose his electric field momentarily, but once he saw Eira paws were flashing with lines of lighting, he re-summoned his back and faced her again.
“Nicely done you two! Now pass each other’s energy and do not let it break. It will hurt you if you do!” Thor called.
What a great thing to say! Aerobolt wanted to say, but knew he couldn’t. Turning back to Eira again, he began to move to pitch his lightning at her. At that same instant, Eira moved forward to throw hers right at him. Aerobolt threw his first, and Eira’s was a second too far behind his, for when his lightning reached her, she was still trying to regain balance form throwing hers out. Aerobolt caught hers gracelessly and nearly broke it. But he saw Eira suddenly engulfed in a weak field of lighting. She screeched out in alarm and dropped to the ground to cover her head.
“Eira! You okay?” Thor called. Aerobolt felt a little guilty as he let hers break. Eira stood up and nodded when the electric field faded. “You two need to be as in sync with each other as possible, otherwise it isn’t going to work! Aerobolt, you did okay, but try not to focus too much on what is going on around you. And like I said, try to stay in sync with each other!” Thor said.
They nodded and faced each other again. Again they summoned their fields of lightning in their paws and they, more carefully this time, watched each other’s movements. Aerobolt slowly began to move his arm out. When he saw Eira doing the same, he began to toss his lightning out again. Eira followed suit in near perfect timing. Aerobolt caught her lightning with a little more grace. He saw Eira out of the corner of his eye unsteadily capture his with a loud crackling sound. She almost lost it, but in the end, she sustained it.
“Very good! It isn’t every day that I see two Guardians get so much control so quickly! You two should have no problem harnessing the true power of the Seven Forces of Life this way! Now I want you two to try to continuously toss each other’s lightning around, like you were juggling it!” Thor said.
Aerobolt saw Eira’s face fall. Aerobolt wondered himself how they were going to do that. Nervously he created his field again. At first he didn’t see Eira doing the same, but after a few seconds he saw the crackling light in her paws. Aerobolt nodded to Eira briefly before moving forward. Eira back away a little bit, she seemed too unsure of herself to try. Was it too early to even be trying this? Too early or not, they had no time. Aerobolt began his pitch just like last time. Their timing was perfect again, but as they followed through to return their Forces to their senders, he saw Eira’s paws flail out too fast and the lightning hit Aerobolt clean in the shoulder before Eira’s lightning even left his paws again. Both of them exploded onto him, and he felt the sharp voltage traveling in his body painfully. He gasped and crumpled to the ground.
Thor was running towards him. “Aerobolt! A-are you alright!?” Aerobolt barely heard him. If that was a weak electric field, he never wants to feel a stronger one. He groaned and tried to find his paws.
“Yeah… I’ll be alright… eventually.”
“You may be thinking right now, that it is too soon to be training like this, right? Well, it is. But with a threat so great on the horizon, we need all the training we can get!” Thor explained.
Aerobolt nodded. “I get it,” he said stiffly. “Man that hurt,” he gasped when his shoulder complained in pain.
Thor shook his head. “I told you it would. Don’t worry, it should pass any second now. I want you two to keep at it until you’ve got something, okay?”
Eira and Aerobolt volleyed, or rather tried to, the lightning back and forth several times. They managed to complete a volley four times before either of them messed up their timing and fell in a crackling light. Thor told them he wanted to see a volley of ten round trips before he thinks they are ready for the next step in training. They had made a volley of nine before Aerobolt ended up on his tail once again, fried.
“All right! That’s time!” Thor called. “We need you to train in the other five or six Forces before Arcane gets here, especially Light, probably. Let’s move on to the Gnome Spire and practice with the Force of Earth!”
Aerobolt could swear Eira’s fur was smoking. He suddenly panicked. What if his fur was smoking? He shook his head as he followed Thor out of the Thunder training grounds. It can’t be; he has a Scarf to prevent that. But what about Eira…?
Into Crossroads, Thor stopped and glanced towards the main doors of Castla nu Craara. A very dark look crossed his face.
Aerobolt was concerned. “Wh-what is it Thor?”
“Foreboding, my friend, foreboding…” he said. “Arcane is coming so quickly. I can sense the imbalance from here. We have very little time left; we must hurry. You know what? No. We must only train the Forces absolutely necessary. Aerobolt. What Forces have you already been practicing with?” he said with a slight panic.
Aerobolt couldn’t respond at first. “I uh- Water, Darkness, and just a little bit of everything else, except Fire of course,” he said uncertainly.
“…That makes things a little too tight for my liking. Change of plan! We are going into Seraphic Spire to train in Light! Many of the Shadow Vulpine weaknesses have to be Light, I presume?” Thor said.
“My Bane is Fire. Shade’s is Wind. Maybe many, but definitely not all of them,” Aerobolt answered.
“We are going into Seraphic Spire anyway. I warn you though. Light is the hardest Force to train by. I do not expect you to wield something so pure and holy right away,” he added as he passed into the Spire entrance decorated in beautiful white crystals. Aerobolt followed, thinking. ‘Light? The hardest to train? According to Shade I already may have used it before, to shield myself from Isrir’s hatred.’ Then he thought of the times it was so dark, he tried to generate light to see, but found it exceedingly difficult. ‘It makes too much sense for Arcane’s Bane to be Light. And that is why I doubt that is his Bane.’
“Aerobolt? Are you coming or not?” he heard Thor’s voice. Aerobolt shook his head back to reality and found he had walked much more slowly while thinking about Light, and had drifted behind Eira and Thor.
“Yeah!” he called back and caught up.
Thor resumed walking. “I wonder what Seraph is up to right now…” he said.
“The Arch Guardian of Light?” Aerobolt asked. When Thor nodded, he continued, “She is probably training Guardians up for Arcane’s onslaught.”
“Indeed,” Thor responded. A sudden scream up ahead rang about. “What the?” Thor reacted.
“Let’s go,” Aerobolt said instinctively. Thor nodded, and the three of them dashed the rest of Seraph’s hallway and into where the training grounds would be. Upon entering the training hall, Aerobolt saw first the giant crystals and mirrors that lined the walls. Then he noticed something was wrong. There was very little light in this so-called Light training hall. He looked up, confused, and saw the open sky. It was dark as night, purple clouds above blocked out the sun and cast an ominous shadow over them. “What the hell!?” he exclaimed.
The Guardian whom Aerobolt assumed screamed responded. “It must be his doing!” she cried hysterically.
‘Arcane.’ “Damn!” Aerobolt cursed. “How close is he!?” he was freaking out now. Arcane’s shadows are reaching even them in Castla nu Craara. What could it mean? Could it mean that Arcane is very close now?
Thunder crashed in the sky. Even the thunder was riddled with darkness; there was nothing normal about its low and eerie booms. A loud noise began to wail out in the stronghold. So loud, Aerobolt’s ears flattened themselves. “What now!?” he yelled.
“The emergency alarms! Something’s up! Come on! We need to get to Commons! Fielra will elaborate there!” Thor called. Without waiting for a response, he ran back down the Seraph Spire, with Aerobolt, Eira, and the other Guardians who were training chasing him, all ears pressed tightly against their heads to block the awful siren. The thunder roared again and Aerobolt almost didn’t hear it. What was going on, he wondered. Upon reaching Crossroads again, they saw the massive number of orange, white, and black pelted Guardians filing into the Commons hallway. Some were panicking and screaming. Others were calm, but held intense fear in their eyes. There were all shades of fear in this sea of Guardians. In the crowd, Aerobolt thought he caught a glimpse of Shade, but he lost it almost immediately. He knew he needed to follow. Without a word to anyone else, he joined the crowd. The Commons hallway seemed a lot smaller with hundreds of Guardians in it at once. Aerobolt almost didn’t realize that the emergency siren had died out while he was in there, for all he could hear then was the panicked voices of the other Guardians.
Once in the Commons, Fielra was already standing in the center, in the garden, looking at the Guardians around her in fear. Something must have been truly wrong if Fielra was fearful. Aerobolt thought Thor said that, but was uncertain due to all the Guardians around him. Above them, the deep purple clouds swirled ominously, giving off amethyst colored lightning flashes every now and then.
It took a few more minutes before all the Guardians around to have gathered in the Commons. With two thousand Guardians here, the entire commons seemed so much smaller, but Aerobolt did not care.
“Silence!” Fielra called out. The cacophony of many foxes died down slowly. Many were whimpering silently in fear still. Some were even crying silently. “I know the news we have gotten is very grim! But we must stand strong even though this tragedy has struck!” she shouted.
Tragedy? What could have happened? Aerobolt was suddenly worried. Was Arcane here already? No. It can’t be that. It was something much worse, he knew.
“We sincerely give our condolences to the town of Thalda, which was just sacked and burned earlier this afternoon by Arcane’s forces!”
Some Guardians who didn’t know that news until just now began to weep harder. Aerobolt felt the stone shift under his paws. The massive trading and commercial town of Thalda, Castla nu Craara’s backbone, it was gone? It couldn’t be! Aerobolt couldn’t believe it!
“More than three quarters of the city was burned down. We regret to inform you that supplies are henceforth sharply reduced until Thlada can get back on their paws. We turn to Emprans now to aid us in our struggle against Arcane. They and the neighboring Kobold Warriors that stayed in Ieron agreed. Arcane is now crossing Myunae nu Eira… with his imbalance spreading even further,” she glanced up in the sky with a saddened voice. “We predict Arcane will be here tomorrow, and I ask each and every one of you… are you ready to die for our cause?” There was a sudden outburst from the crowd at the harsh question. Fielra tried to remain calm, but Aerobolt could tell she was struggling to keep her sanity. The thunder and lightning reappeared again as she took a hesitant breath. It was as if she knew that harsh reality, but did not want to speak of it. The melancholy in her voice was nearly overpowering. “There is no doubt some of us will never see the sunlight again; this morning being the very last time. Knowing that you might be among the fallen ones in the future if you fight, will you… fight? For everything Iridescence bestowed upon us so many years ago? For everything that our new God of Justice promised to deliver us?” Aerobolt had chills sent into his spine when she mentioned him. Was she asking… the Guardians to die…? For him…? There was murmuring in the crowd. Some were hushed and serious and others were loud and forlorn. In the end it seemed… the Guardians wanted to fight. This was what their job was. This is what they were meant to do. This was what Aerobolt was meant to do. Fielra finished. “Arcane shall pay for what he has done to the lives of all the innocent Nyethrans. Burning Thalda as he did shall not go unpunished. Guardians of Life! This will be the last time Arcane will ever set paw at our beloved home. We shall quell him. We shall always be the Guardians to what he wants to destroy…” silence followed. No one in the Commons spoke another word for several minutes. The purple sky roared in anger again and turned even darker. The clouds themselves seemed to reverberate their own unique, harsh sound. Aerobolt glared and clenched his fists.
‘Come here Arcane… I am right here waiting for you. This time… this time I am ready…’
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Wanna start from the beginning? Here is Chapter One! http://www.furaffinity.net/view/11187661/
Here is my series index! http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/5340298/