The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2 novel Chapter 23

Part 4

The twins progressed incredibly quickly. They both developed very intense and focused personalities, especially Helemia, and this tendency increased over time. Within two weeks they were both walking without support, and at a month they were running gracefully, if carefully. At three months they began asking for a taste of the foods the adults were eating, and had no trouble digesting the small, well-mashed samples they were given. As they were gradually weaned from the breast, they were also gradually weaned from the adults’ constant psionic contact and guidance, and they began to spend some time away from the adults, outside or in their bedroom.

They spent almost no time on playing as other children played, instead they spent their time learning and exercising with almost fanatical discipline. Even when their parents and Alilia played basic games with them like tag, or hide and seek, (which was a challenge in psionic Shielding for all involved) the twins competed with an intensity worthy of finalists in the world’s great tournaments. When they played catch, they always strove to catch the ball and throw it back as quickly as possible, and as hard and as accurately as possible, usually aimed at the other person’s head. They never laughed when they were playing, for there was no room for humor in their almost-grim concentration, but they laughed about it readily enough when a break was taken, and they were gracious in victory and in loss.

The first anniversary of the community’s founding came, was celebrated, and passed.

PART 5

Vanakit Lamitkeze crouched on the branch of a tree, watching those he’d conquered training on the ground beneath him and in the trees around him. As always, his face was hardened with a glowering expression of hatred. Thoughts of revenge consumed him. Since his recovery, his obsession was so powerful that he no longer cared about anything else, not even his own status. Somewhat ironically, his new viciousness and fanaticism had served to raise his status in the eyes of his people quite considerably. But not as much as the conquests he’d made.

It had been a fiendishly difficult task to identify his tormentor without being noticed by her. For many days he had flown a circle around the intruders’ settlement, kilometers away and as high as he was capable, viewing the settlement with his people’s best magnification of vision spell. He knew which direction his tormentor lay at all times, and by looking in that direction as he flew constantly around the settlement, he had eventually triangulated his target to a single dwelling. At first, he was unable to determine which occupant of the dwelling he was seeking, but then his target had finally gone with her brother to the small valley behind their home without their parents. As soon as he knew that it was one of two tiny elves, he knew which one he sought. He had a flashback to the nightmare of her attack, and then he knew her.

He then knew she had still been a baby in her mother’s womb when she had nearly killed him, almost by accident. The knowledge that he had been so thoroughly bested by such a person filled him with a humiliation as great as his hatred. He knew he had best act soon, while she was still physically and magically helpless. She was never apart from her brother, so he knew he would have to take them both. Above all, he must kill her before any of his people could learn that it was she who had attacked him, and that it was she who continued to torment him with her constant, nagging intrusion in his mind.

But he had to deal with her psionic power, and he had to take her without involving the rest of her people, which required a plan of unprecedented stealth. The Lord had warned all of The Sylvan of Stealth that the newcomers possessed great power, perhaps enough between them to destroy every Sylvan on the islands, and that they were not to be interfered with. But the Lord was gone for a score of years, and Vanakit was not capable of waiting.

He had recruited his chosen followers by defeating them with stealth and combat, then beating and torturing them until they thought that doing what he instructed was not such a bad thing. Some of them were far more dangerous than he was, but he’d saved them for last, and by then he had enough of an army to overwhelm them. Some of his people had feared that he meant to conquer them all, but he only needed about five hundred of them for his plan, all carefully chosen, including all of their most skillful and powerful psionicists. Now his conquered trained under his watchful eye, and the rest covertly watched with interest to see what he meant to do.

At four and a half months of age Reggie was already the size of a one-year-old human; ten kilograms and seventy-four centimeters tall. Helemia had more than doubled in weight to three and two-thirds kilos, and was almost sixty centimeters tall. They were sitting motionless on the floor, staring at a pebble on a stool between them one evening, when Yazadril came by for a visit. They didn’t move as their great-grandfather was greeted by their parents and Alilia.