Fathers of Power Chapter 9: Zakashi's Master (Part II)

Kyle and Lyoko entered Loki’s Cave by jumping on the big river stones. The space that was to each side of the flowing river was bigger than Kyle had anticipated. The river was about four meters wide, and about the same width of hard land was there on both sides. The cave was quite long, and bent snakily with the shape of the river. Kyle felt like he was in a different world. He wasn’t sure that it was Loki’s spirit, but the boy felt a definite presence in the place, and it somehow felt welcoming.

“Now while you train here in this cave, your mind and body will be  accelerated far beyond normality. This change has started since you first step foot inside here. Right now, because of Loki’s presence, the speed of your thinking and your muscles have already spiked. In that, time will essentially move slower in here.”

“W—What?”

“For what will appear to be a day in here, an hour will pass outside. You will see for yourself how long it will be before the set of sun. With this apparent slow of time, we will get more training done than it appears possible.”

“That’s incredible,” Kyle mused in a whisper, already seeing just how advantageous this time irregularity could prove.

Lyoko frighteningly slammed his palms against the wall of cave. “First off, I will begin with the first rule of force. In your lessons, I will familiarize you with the laws of nature that Loki has taught me.” Kyle nodded. “When I hit the wall just now, in essence, the wall hit me back with the same amount of power.”

“…Huh?”

“Hence I felt pain. For each action dealt, an equal but opposite reaction is immediately meted out.”

“I think I understand.”

“Now, this is a relevant truth, as it enables this…” The man made a step into the air and ended up running toward Kyle for a few meters, crossing over the river, being a few feet off the ground the whole time. He made a kick at Kyle’s chest as he reached the boy, the force flinging him to crash painfully in the hard wall. By the time Kyle reached to his feet, Lyoko was already on the other side of the river again, leaning against the wall, his staff in his hand.

Kyle stuttered in a struggle to ask what on earth he had just seen. “Yes, child. You just witnessed a man run on air, and such a thing is one of the basic principles that you will learn in your training – manipulation of force and particles.”

“—Whhaaat?!”

“Now the theory of this is much easier than the practical part. If you press your foot down on the air forcefully enough, the air itself will push back up in reaction, but you must quickly make a step with the other foot, as the floor of air particles will not hold for long, and this goes on and on for the entire run. You will also have to master weight distribution techniques and expert balance techniques. Huh?” Kyle jumped off with a wild step onto the river, falling in and struggling to get out, gasping as he clung to a river stone. Lyoko laughed until he fell. Kyle ended up laughing too as he scurried out of the river on Lyoko’s side.

***

There was sudden excitement as the woman in the black dress pattered with skulls appeared in a flurry of purple mana. “A witch!”

“Get her!”

“Notherland is attacking!”

In only seconds, tens were murdered, and those who survived the witch’s appearance ran and locked themselves in their cabins. Hilda could sense the pungently wretched darkness that stretched from Lex’s room easily. It was almost stifling. “Lex, wake up! You hear that?!” Lash alarmed. She too had fallen asleep on Lex’s bed but the screaming and explosions woke her quickly. She shook the dozed boy fiercely, but he wouldn’t wake.

“That darkness…” Hilda whispered to herself, standing before Lex’s cabin door. “I only need to kill the girl so I won’t go in there unless I must,” she decided.“Kazuku Khaton!” she commanded, and slammed her palms together. A pulse of purple mana spread across the ship, and the eyes of those who were not killed by her before took on a purple glow. In bursts of purple mana, swords of red mana appeared in the hands of each of them, and they took off toward Lex’s cabin.

Lash gasped and stood on Lex’s bed as the door was banged open. Standing behind the horde of possessed was Hilda, who looked at Lex with caution, maybe even fear, although he was asleep. She could feel a power oozing from inside him that her magic was no match for. “Lex Leo…” she whispered. Her mind went back to when she had first seen him some years ago, when he had come to her to have a dream of his interpreted. She remembered vividly the four companions that he was travelling with, especially that young witch. That Clover Bengushi… I wonder how strong she has become… and her brother, and his master… and that Ionide kid… Quite an odd and mighty group of kids I met that night. She was snapped out of her daze as she saw what was becoming of her little army.

With all their efforts, none of the purple-eyed fighters could get near to Lash or the sleeping Lex. With precision that was not fitting for her age, Lash, about eight per second, drew needles from her waist and flashed them at her enemies skilfully. Windpipes and hearts and lungs were punctured and severed by the small bits of iron, until a pile of corpses was left in the room.

Hilda hissed, seeing the girl was not quite the simpleton at combat. “I should finish this quickly,” the woman said. She shifted up to Lash, summoning a purple sword instantly, already having it reach up to the girl’s throat. As she gasped to scream, a clock of darkness formed around Lex and from it sprung two massive, shadowy hands that went around Lash and grabbed both the witch and her swords, extending quickly to push her up through the cabin roof.

Lex jumped off quickly, grabbing Lash who hugged him shiveringly. The darkness disappeared from his eyes. He looked around at the many bodies there. “I had to kill them! They came to kill us!” she cried.

“It’s okay,” he hushed her. *POOF!* Hilda appeared before them. It was raining, and the pouring water made the rubble of bleeding bodies an even more horrible sight. “You…” Lex said, recognizing Hilda instantly by her black dress. “What are you about?! You know well who I am!”

“Do you know her, Lex?” Lash asked, feeling safe in Lex’s arms.

“I never imagined having to cross paths with you like this,” Hilda said, “but it is God who sent me here.”

“You are working with Kizer and Oga?!” So they are active again! Lex feared.

“Only Oga is God,” Hilda said. “He has ordered me to kill the girl and transport you to Iceland to hasten your becoming.”

“What? How does the girl relate to any of this?” Lex asked, confused.

“You should have known, Lex, that being who you are, picking up companions like this is a bad idea. Hand me the girl quietly so we won’t have to fight.”

“Are you mad?! You actually think you are a match for me?!” Lex blasted proudly.

In a split second, he reached down to the woman, making a strike at her with icicles that he had materialized to grip amongst his knuckles. Hilda shifted back quickly, gripping in her hands two purple swords. Lex stretched a hand back at Lash, still looking out at the enemy. In an instant, a thick black sphere encased the girl. “You will be safe here,” she heard Lex’s voice come through the shield. Invisible, intangible chords of darkness connected the sphere to Lex.

Indeed, I was foolish to have involved Lash in all this. Now so many have been killed on my hands, Lex thought. “Woman, you have been a stepping stone for me; you consoled and encouraged me when I was confused. Do not force me to kill you.”

“I must carry out the will of God,” Hilda answered, then rushed off toward Lex.

***

Kyle tried the air-run again for about the fiftieth time, but he only managed to look ridiculous again. Lyoko sat on the cave floor, looking to be bored of him. “Look, Kyle, this simple technique is the foundation for many moves I want to teach you, so--”

“It’s impossible, old man!” Kyle yielded. “The force the air pushes up on my foot is cancelled out by the force my foot pushes down, so where the hell should that extra force come from to push me up?!” Lyoko looked like he himself was giving thought to what Kyle was saying.

“Ah, I missed something, didn’t I?” Kyle sighed in frustration and relief. “You must trick the air.”

“What?!”

“You see, you must see nature not as an automatic occurrence that is controlled, but as a being that is as alive as you and me, a being that is the swiftest, most accurate, and wisest creature.” Lyoko saw how frustrated those words were making him. Blade was always well intrigued when Lyoko told him such things, but Kyle couldn’t stand hearing it.

“Would you just get to the practical part?” Kyle asked beggingly.

“Very well,” Lyoko conceded. “In order to be apparently instantaneous with the neutralization of force, Nature predicts and acts.”

“I see,” Kyle said with a smirk, “so as the air anticipates the landing of my foot, I should rescind that force and act with my other foot, using the air’s force as a footstool that I must use in a jiffy before it disappears!”

“Heh! You could put it that way. You might not be so dim after all, young Kyle.”

“Heh!” Kyle made a leap to run over the river, but crashed in quickly; he had so much faith in his run that the fall was actually unexpected by him and his head hit a rock hard.

Lyoko laughed as the boy struggled out of the river. “All that now remains is for you to practice.” Kyle immediately made another attempt. Lyoko gasped as he noticed that Kyle made a full step on the air before falling. The boy landed properly on one of the river stones. I see, he is running over the river because he knows that failure will have an immediate consequence, and that pushes him to success even faster. Lyoko laughed.

“I did it! Did you see that, old man?!” Kyle went hysterical.

“Just barely!” Lyoko said, though quite impressed with the boy.

***

With speed and agility earned through harsh training with the Zagans, Lex evaded all of Hilda’s attacks with ease, but he was pulling his punches. “My last warning before you annoy me enough to kill you,” Lex said. “Go home. The black shield is impenetrable, and defeating me is not a possibility.”

“What’s going on here?” Hilda asked herself nervously, breathing hard and facing Lex. He hasn’t tapped into the spirits’ power except to maintain the shield around the girl, and he is barely using any ice. Why can’t I defeat him then?! “Anam--” Lex reached up to her with great speed before she could finish her spell, touching her with his palm; ice began to crawl unto her immediately.

*POOF!* Lex spun quickly, seeing that Hilda had just appeared at Lash’s shield. Mana flooded her hands. “Edanerg Elit!” she commanded – it was Catherina who had taught her that spell. There was a great brightness and in a moment, the shield was gone from Lash.

“A light spell,” Lex realized. “I won’t bother to draw this out if this is the case.” The boy’s eyes flashed black and a thick coat of darkness encloaked him. With great rapidity, long streaks of shadow, forming rugged hands, jetted out from his cloak toward Hilda. Hilda jumped back quickly, using her just-then materialized swords to slice and destroy the incoming hands, but they were coming without limit from Lex’s cloak. The boy coolly stood before Lash with his arms folded while the black attackers bent themselves around the frightened Lash and pressured Hilda into a hasty retreat, pushing her back to the edge of the deck. The shadowy hands burst though the ship floor and crashed meters down into the ocean.

Hilda made a desperate shift, reaching a few meters in the air. “Anam Resal Repus!” she commanded, sending a beam of high-level mana down at Lex and Lash. Lash screamed and shivered, but Lex just stood without moving a muscle. A massive black shield covered the two. As the mana hit it, there was a blinding explosion, ripping apart the entire ship and turning to nothing whoever might have been left on it.

Lex looked up at Hilda, who was standing on a small dragonite. So she made that summoning to keep herself in the air amidst the blast, Lex read. A big part of his training with Maximo and his brothers was reading into the enemies’ strategies and anticipating their moves. With the knowledge that the Zagans had of magic, nothing that Hilda could come with could possible frighten Lex. Lash ran up to Lex on a piece of loose board that was sinking with the rest of the ship’s rubble. Lex grabbed her up in his arms, looking about at the open ocean around them. They boy snickered a little.

“I could go into flight as well, but let me make this interesting.” As the board sunk and his feet touched the water, he released great portions of ice energy from his feet, making a thick floor of ice stretch far along the water.

Lex flung Lash around on his back. She grabbed on tightly. “Azanathian thread!” Hilda commanded, stretching a hand down at Lex. Lash could already feel the heat of the approaching beam of fire. Lex held out a hand toward the beam and an equally fast beam of ice shot up to meet it.

A distraction, Lex heard Maximo say.

“Niamer!” Hilda’s voice came from behind and Lex felt himself become enveloped in a burst of purple mana. “It’s over!” Hilda said, running up to them on the ice with two purple swords. Lex turned toward her quickly, fending off Hilda’s strikes with black swords he had just summoned. “What?! Shouldn’t you be paralyzed?!”

“With that sad level of magic?” Lex asked. Even though he was using Zagan power, his eyes were not black, as he was using a negligible amount of their power, and he was in full control of what he was doing. “Let me see how good your sword skills are,” Lex said, stepping to Hilda and making skilful swings at her with a swiftness that Hilda had never before seen. Lash grabbed on to him tightly. The witch was being pushed back by the swing, constantly on the defensive. As her magic swords clashed Lex’s dark blades, splinters of purple mana littered the place, and she had to be regenerating her swords each time they were struck.

“Summoning!”

“Too slow!” Lex spat, and ran with ice-cracking speed with toward Hilda, two thin black wings stretched out behind him. *SLAM!* A pulse of air flashed from where Lex’s fist hit the woman’s chest, further cracking the ice along a few meters. Hilda’s body zoomed across the ice at about half the speed of sound. *SPLASH! SPLASH! SPLOOSH!* She had flown over the mile of ice below her and hit the water surface twice, much like the river stone of an experienced stone-skipper. She finally landed hard in the chilly water, adept healing techniques already trying to undo the swiftly taken damage. Lex watched as he saw the woman emerge from the water a mile and a half away on the back of a red dragonite. Lash couldn’t see what Hilda was doing from there but Lex’s vision showed him perfectly. In all this, the girl was too shaken up to speak.

“Summoning! Dragonite nest!” Hilda commanded, and a black portal appeared in front of her. Out of it flew dozens of fierce-looking baby dragons. As the portal disappeared, she flew off toward Lex with the flight of dragonites.

“All yours, Maxie,” Lex said. The black cloak thickened around Lex and tens of shadowy hands flew forward from it, busting though the beasts before they could reach upon him. Lex grabbed on to one of the black streaks that was heading straight for Hilda. Ice sped along it almost at the speed of the shadowy streak itself. As Lex had expected, Hilda made a skilfully swift swing with the dragon, holding on to its neck and controlling it like some legendary dragon rider. The ice that was catching up to the full length of the shadowy hand detoured from the black streak and itself formed a grabbing hand that had reached up to the woman and her beast before any reaction could be conceived. As the hand of ice grabbed Hilda, ice covered her and the young dragon in an instant, and in a heavy block, they splashed deep into the water. Lash watched in shivers as the bodies and pieces of the flying beasts rained down even onto the ice close by to them. Each was as big as a fully-grown horse. “Is… is it over?” Lash asked, still trying to process the reality of an entire ship of people being destroyed just a while ago.

*POOF!* Lash gasped as Hilda appeared a few meters before them, panting and shivering with wild-looking eyes. She roused her mana again, but Lex would give her no chance to make another attacks. A thick black streak sped out toward her, but an instant shift had it only cut though ice and water. Hilda appeared a few meters in the air behind Lex. Her eyes widened as she realized that she was already wrapped up in another of the streaks. When?! She wondered. *CRASH!* Like the whip of a slave master, the shadowy streak flung the woman to crash heavily onto the ice floor, bashing through it. The hand of shadow gripped her throat and pushed her deep beneath the floor of ice. “Quite a troublesome witch you’ve proven to be,” Lex said to himself as he turned and walked toward the hole in the ice where Hilda was being held.

“Lex! Stop!” Lash screamed, hitting him. “She’s done already! What the hell are you?!” she cried. Lex sent a few more streaks down into the hole and the water reddened. *SLOSH!* Lex pulled her out through another section of the icy floor, making another hole.

Strung up by the snake-like Zagan hands, Hilda was held a foot above the ground. Lex pulled her closer to him. Lash jumped off his back and stepped back, stumbling over a dragonite head. Lex sent another of the steaks toward Hilda, but it passed her narrowly instead, and twisted back. Her chest jerked forward and her eyes bulged as she felt a nasty pain. The hand bored through her back and gripped her heart, forcing it through her chest. Hilda looked down at her heart, which was beating steadily in the demonic hand, sharp black fingernails curling over it. Thin blood vessels were still connecting her heart to the rest of her. Blood flooded down from her. “Are you now satisfied?” Lex asked in a cold voice.

*POOF!* There was an appearance of bright white mana that cleared quickly, leaving behind a man with the face of death. As Lex stared into the sinister eyes of a man older than history, he felt the demons inside him shiver with a fear they had learnt well. The shadowy streaks disappeared, and Lex was left with a pale feeling that felt deeper and darker than fear or hatred. “You are not the one who will kill this woman,” Oga said. He held his hand down toward the fallen heart of Hilda and it rose to him. Oga then turned and grabbed the woman, then shoved the heart back into her chest, and a white glow encased her. She made a terrible cry as undoable damage was undone. He then slowly removed his hand and the massive opening in the woman was mended.

Oga then turned toward Lex and walked up to him. The aura that came from this man was stifling even to Lex. “You have changed, young Lex,” Oga said, raising his hand to touch the boy’s shoulder. Lex grabbed Oga’s wrist firmly. The man looked a little surprised, maybe a bit confused even. Lex’s hand fidgeted as he struggled to maintain the strength in his muscles.

What’s happening to me? Why do I feel this weak and powerless?! Finally, he lost all strength and Oga rested his hand on Lex’s shoulder.

“You see, Lex, the human souls itself can recognize power.”

“Are you saying… that my very soul is afraid of you?” Lex asked, still shaking.

“Not to mention those mongrels inside you.” The tone of condescension was heavy in his voice. *POOF!* Oga imposed a shift upon Lash, making her appear in Lex’s sight. Lex looked over at the fretting girl.

“No… You monster… Leave her alone…” But Lex could not move.

“As you have fought impressively today, I will not slaughter her before you as I had intended before. I will give her a graceful death.”

“What the--” Lex and Hilda watched as silently as a white body of mana appeared behind Lash and slowly forged itself to form what looked to be Oga. Both Lex and the expert witch were too frightened and confused to speak.

“I trust at least you, my dear witch, are familiar with the mana clone technique,” Oga said, still holding on to Lex. The ice beneath Lex’s and Oga’s feet began to crack fiercely.

What is this vile pressure I’m feeling?! Lex wondered in a panic. He looked into Lash’s frightful eyes as the Ogal clone behind her stooped and reached his hand down to her neck. As the hand touched the back of her neck, though gently, her life fled her body in panic, in fear of Oga. She fell dead on the ice and the clone dispersed into a flurry of white mana. “Now off to Iceland, child of Kizer,” Oga said, and Lex disappeared in a cloud of white mana.