Chapter 7

         When I woke up I found myself lying on a warm bed in front of a fire. My brothers and Gomez were nowhere to be seen. I sat up and looked around. The bed was on fire or I should say it was a bed of fire. The floor was fire, everything was fire. Strength coursed through my body and I stood up. I wasn't naked, but I wasn't wearing clothes either. I think my body was in flames and I had morphed into my element. I probably should've been concerned about where I was, but I didn't care at the time, I was too busy playing with fire.

         Suddenly a man broke into my room.

         "Zut!" he cried, "Trop chaud, trop chaud!" - too hot, too hot.

         I made the fire calm down until it was just flickering in the fire place. He really spoke to me in French and I replied in French, but I'll translate again so you don't have to.

         "Keep the fire down will you, Number 20?" the man asked.

         "Number 20?" I asked.

         I looked down and found I was wearing a suit and a tie in flames. Pinned to the suit, on the left side of my chest, was the Chinese character for fire and the number 20. Our kind always use the Chinese characters for the elements but we don't always use the rest of them so the numbers looked like an English two and zero.

         "Who are you?" I asked.

         "My name is Jean," he said (the French version of John).

         "What element do you wield?" I asked.

         "I am a mortal, the Elders have trusted me. I am to take you to the meeting room. Do you mind if I treat these burns first?" Jean asked.

         "No, sorry about that," I said and waved my hand.

         His burns disappeared.

         "Merci beaucoup, monsieur," he said.

         We left for the conference room, and he led me through a maze of doors and corridors. It took us ten minutes to get to the conference room and by that time, Jean was winded. We had climbed ten flights of stairs, and the rest of the way was uphill. I insisted that we run so we wouldn't be late, but it seemed as if I had asked for too much from the poor fellow. There was a door at the top of the stairs we'd just climbed, and there was no other place to go that I could see. There was a doorbell right next to the door, and Jean pressed it lightly as he caught his breath.

         "Who's there?" a voice asked in French.

         "I have brought Number 20," Jean said.

         "Send him in, then fetch the other brothers one at a time and bring them to the conference room. Emphasis on 'one at a time.'"

         The door opened in front of me, and Jean gave me a push and I walked inside. The light shocked me as I went inside. The whole roof was glass, and the sun was shining in. The walls were white, and there was a conference table in the center of the room. There were about a hundred seats surrounding the table. I don't think anyone would really understand how big it was unless they saw it themselves. My voice practically echoed around the room when I called, "Où suis je?" - Where am I?

         In front of me were five doors, and behind me was the door I had come in and four other doors. To my right and left were white walls with writing too tiny for me to read. I slowly approached what I thought was writing and found it was a pattern. It was the symbol for fire, then earth, metal, water, wood, and then fire again. The characters circled the room. They had been neatly stenciled, and they looked beautiful.

         A door opened behind me and Demetrio came in. Jean was behind him, panting again.

         "Aden!" he said.

         "Demetrio!"

         "What are you doing here?" we asked in unison.

         We hurried forward and hugged each other.

         "I heard the others were coming too. I think Jean is going to have a pretty rough time. He was winded by the time we got here. I don't know why he's fetching us all individually though," Demetrio said.

         "His superior probably didn't want us to waste time with greetings," I said.

         "That's ridiculous. We would have spent less than half the time greeting one another than he's spending running up and down the stairs collecting us."

         "Okay, I really don't know why, but I'm sure his superiors have a good reason.

         "This is a big table. I wonder who else is going to attend the meeting," Demetrio said.

         Over the next ten minutes, my brothers joined me and we talked about our rooms and made guesses as to where we were. When Jean finally arrived with Hearst, he came in and sank into a chair at the table. We didn't bother to look at Jean, we greeted Hearst instead. I'm not sure how long it took, but eventually, the chairs had been filled up and we sat there waiting for the unknown.

         A few minutes later, the five doors opposite where we had entered boomed open. The top servants of the Elders came into the room and stood in front of us as we watched.

         "Welcome to the meeting the Elders have requested," Metal's servant started.

         "The Elders are too busy at the moment preparing for battle and other necessities, so we are here to inform you," Fire's retainer said.

         "We are recruiting more of our kind, and now we need your help. You have been trained well, but we all need to practice bending the elements to our will. You will learn more while you are training. A big war is about to begin and we need to fight in a place where mortals will not get hurt," said Wood's representative.

         "The Elders have agreed with Vadrak to fight on a battlefield where mortals will not get hurt or even be able to witness the fight," Water's steward said.

         "You will train until you have become fully qualified, and then you will begin to help others train," Earth's servant told us.

         Finally, we were dismissed, and Jean led us to a large platform where we were transported to a campsite on a large mesa.

         Mountains surrounded a large plain. In the center of that plain was a deep canyon. Eight miles from the edge of the canyon, on both sides, a mesa five thousand feet high rose out of the level ground. Our campsite was on one mesa, and Vadrak and his Heinous Knights were on the other. The path to get from the mesa to the plain was about four miles, and from the plain to the bottom of the gorge was another four miles. The gorge was about 75 miles wide and 50 miles long.

         It was a very large battlefield. The Elders had quickly created it to serve our purposes, and Vadrak agreed to fight there so long as it passed his inspection for any booby traps or other dangers that would bring his army down before the main fight.

         My brothers and I were able to have a tent to ourselves and we set up camp. The tent was large enough for all of us, but I was afraid I would set it on fire if I was in it. Our camping area was big enough for us to each have our own small house to sleep in, so we created them using our elements. Our little cabins had a cot inside and a small chest of drawers.

         Over the next few days, we helped new recruits practice controlling their elements to their wills. We made excellent progress, and we thought that we would be prepared for the fight. Everyone was in high spirits because the training was going so well. We had plenty of supplies, and everything else was going smoothly. We didn't realize that we would eat all of those words back by the time the battle was over.

         Two days before our planned attack, Vadrak's army took us by surprise. The new, inexperienced recruits hadn't learned the most crucial step in controlling their powers so they were mostly defenseless. The leaders and trainers (including my brothers and myself) stood our ground and fought back. The new recruits fled in fear of Vadrak's Heinous Knights. The Heinous Knights outnumbered us by about 10 to 1. We fought for several hours, and I was starting to get pretty tired.

         I told you that there was a device that teleported our limo to places, but our kind can teleport ourselves individually. I assumed that that was what the other recruits had done to get out of the fight.

         Anyway, the battle was going well for us even though we were outnumbered. We had defeated Vadrak's first round of Heinous Knights, but he sent another fleet at us. We called for help, but there was no one to come to our aid.

         I'll tell you about the last bit of the battle that I remember. The other Heinous Knights were much bigger and stronger than the first round Vadrak had sent at us, and we had our hands full. Actually, the whole place was swarming with Heinous Knights. We were surrounded.

         There's always a language that the Heinous Knights can't understand, and in this case, the language was Spanish. There were a few who could speak English, most spoke only French, and there were a couple who could speak Russian. That's the other thing about our kind. We can sense what languages people can or can't speak.

         "iRetirad!" (Retreat) I cried to my fellow fighters who had not fallen. "Quedamos vencido," (We are defeated) I told them.

         I was just about to rally all of them back to the very top of the mesa, which the Heinous Knights had not yet taken, when one of my brothers yelled, "iAtención!" (Watch out!).

         I looked to my left a little too late. A huge wave of water was descending upon me too fast for me to get out of the way. I couldn't teleport myself fast enough. The wave crashed down on me and I blacked out.

         I got the rest of the story from Jessica.

         You fell from the ceiling and crashed onto the couch.

         "Aden!" I cried.

         I ran from the room and grabbed the box of matches to revive you. I lit you on fire and said, "Aden, what happened to you?"

         "Nothing," you said, though it was barely audible.

         "Aden, something definitely happened to you," I said.

         I told you that you were as weak as when I pulled you out of the stream last year.

         I think you mumbled "Uh-huh," but I couldn't really understand.

         You were in flames, but for some reason the couch was unaffected. Your arms didn't have flames on them, so I dragged you to the fireplace. You couldn't have weighed more than 45 pounds. I don't know why you weighed so little, but I won't question it now. I took a piece of firewood and lit it on fire too. I threw it in the fireplace with you and your temperature began to rise back to normal, well, normal for humans at any rate.

         "I'm sorry I look like this," you told me.

         "Don't worry about that, you actually look pretty cute in battle armor," I said and I still stand by those words.

         You started to get out of the fireplace, but you collapsed as soon as your legs tried to support you. I managed to catch you.

         "Don't try to stand yet," I said in the most soothing voice I could muster.

         "Okay," you replied, but you winced in pain.

         After that, I remember everything else. My body was still aching all over, and I felt pretty rotten. I guess I wasn't ready to support myself yet. After another fifteen minutes or so, I was able to stand; though my legs were still kind of wobbly. Jessica helped me to the couch so that I could lie down all the way. She played classical music on our piano and I drifted off. When I awoke, Jessica was sitting in the chair opposite me reading Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

         "You're awake," she said.

         "Yeah. How long have I been out?" I asked.

         Jessica looked at her watch and said, "About twelve hours or so."

         Jeez. That long? Okay then. I remembered everything perfectly, and I stood up ready to go and find my brothers.

         "Where are you going?" Jessica asked, leaping to her feet.

         "To find my brothers," I answered.

         "You don't need to worry, your brothers are in the house. Terra, Cari, Rhonda, and Portia are all attending to them. We're all going to take care of all of you. Don't worry."

         "I'm not worried about myself, I'm worried about my brothers and what will happen to them," I said, trying to get up, but Jessica pushed me back onto the couch.

         "Don't, you're not strong enough."

         "Jessica, don't make me mad."

         "I'm not scared, Aden."

         "Look, I still remember the enemy crying 'Arrêtez les! Tuez les!'-- Stop them, kill them. That wasn't how they said it though. They said it like they would pursue us until we were dead. They . . ." I trailed off as I heard a twig snap outside.

         A moment later and I would have been too late. I grabbed Jessica around the waist and used my powers to get us out of the house as fast as I could. The house blew up below our feet as we shot into the air with help from my flames.