"You know..." Corinth sounded a lot more like an adult than Walker liked. He didn't want Corinth to rush through his childhood so quickly, but the boy's grave tone in just two words proved quite contrary to wide belief of his immaturity. "I had a lot of dreams in the coming days before I was kidnapped. That's why I knew it was my dad even though I didn't see the guy's face."

Walker started to feel worse. His blood pumped through his veins faster and faster. He truly had no idea of how much Corinth knew. Sena. Hendrix didn't inform him of this, but then again, she probably didn't know herself. Walker thought that this would all go over Corinth's head and he could just be a kid again. But he understood now that Corinth wasn't fated to be an ordinary child. Things had progressed far beyond childhood in Corinth's mind long ago. Trying his best not to defy Sena. Hendrix's orders, Walker decided to try to pry open Corinth's thought process in just one sitting.

"You let on very well," he told the transformed child before him.

Corinth perked up. He could sense that they were on the same page now. "It's what's best, I've learned." Corinth's adult demeanor continued to amaze and frighten Walker all the same.

"Well, then," he sat back in his chair and crossed his leg over the other. "What in all the Worlds do you need my help for then? You seem like you've plotted every step of the way already." He challenged Corinth's authoritative handling of the undertone nature of their conversation.

Corinth took a deep breath, and tried his best to shut out the ever seeing eye of the Nexus. He nearly read Walker's mind, but managed to resist the urge, pulling his attentions to more pressing thoughts. "I can't control what's happening inside my head," he started out with.

"None of us really can." Walker folded his arms, settling in defiantly. He didn't believe Corinth was being as open and honest as he could be.

"Yeah, but this is different. There's something inside, something that isn't me."

Bingo! Walker got what he wanted from the boy a little faster than he expected. His trust. "Well, Corinth, you should get to the sweet spot of all this more quickly. Your cla.s.ses start back up soon." He twisted the face of his watch up, and checked the time. But Corinth's last concern was cla.s.s time.

"I don't care about that," Cory said abruptly. He turned toward the lake, while Walker leaned forward in his chair.

"But don't you see. That's precisely the issue you're facing here. If you feed too deeply into the thoughts that randomly pa.s.s through your mind, eventually, you'll lose yourself in them. We all have feelings, child. Sporadic ones that seem to take control. These feelings appear as if they have precedence over our needs. Unquestionably, people follow these urges in their heads." He put a finger to his skull and shook his head. Actively hoping the youth understood his a.s.sertions. "But to control one's thought pattern ... is as simple as plucking fruit from a tree."

His tone took on a new, deeper conviction. Corinth felt the heated pa.s.sion of the Librarian's words on the back of his neck. Like they were attempting to crawl inside his head through his ears.

"But really," Walker continued,"obsessions start with just one idea. Then it spirals into an entire philosophy that may very well redefine the image of a person's soul." He held up the lone remaining apple slice from his fruit bowl. He fixedly stared at it, like it was going to spring to life at a moment's notice. "Pluck it too early, and you'll have to wait till it matures. Pluck it too late, and it will have wilted to die. But to ensure the actual quality of the fruit yielded, you must nurture the tree itself. Her roots more particularly." Walker tossed the slice in mouth, and crunched down on it dramatically. "Stop placing this deep focus upon your individual thoughts. Start taking better care of the tree that is your life. Take care of it whole. Don't just hope for a good harvest, bring it about through cultivation. It starts with the one fleeting thought, brought on by the winds of time. Then you find yourself trapped by the uncertainty. That type of distortion will uproot you. Leading to your ultimate destruction!" His advice got Corinth on the path to new thought, but didn't quite help him see a solution to his problem. Walker spoke on enthusiastically. "You feign interest in your friends. You ignore your ministrants. You half prepare for a Deaves tournament. A tournament you wouldn't have progressed nearly as far in, if your uncle hadn't supplied you with that miraculous deck of his."

Corinth smirked at this. He knew Walker was right, but felt no more sure that he was being helped by the knowledgeable man before him.

Walker sighed dramatically. "My dear boy, we still haven't gotten to the point of all this. Though still, I'm terribly afraid we're out of time."

Corinth threw his hands out to the sides. "I don't have to head straight there. It's just a lecture on Myths. I don't even think it's mandatory."

Walker looked at him with sympathy. He was glad to see him behaving more like a kid again, instead of an ominous adult. "Treasure your life, Corinth. You'll find a lot of joy in your personal experiences. If only you can get out of your own head now and again." He stood up, walked over to the couch Corinth slouched on, and sat beside him. "I'm a very lonesome man. I spend a lot of time alone, just reading or even thinking. But always alone. I've been through some, not all, but some of what you're dealing with. You need to be better balanced, or this thing inside your mind-" he tapped Cory's temple, "it's going to ruin your life. Not because it's evil, but because it's not meant to be controlled. At least not by you."

"So who can control it?" Cory asked with precarious eyes shining from the light streaming through the window.

"Not a question I can answer. And not one you desperately need an answer to."

Corinth got up quickly. After Walker's spell and the fruit dish, he felt stronger, but still he stumbled. Walker caught his wrist, but the boy wavering to a wither pulled it away. "That you're wrong about! I do need to know, and I'm going to find out!"

Walker wasn't surprised by his reaction. The trust he felt he was gaining from Corinth was certainly misplaced if truly present. He asked if Corinth wanted to be teleported back to Olympia. Walker tried convincing Cory how skillfully he could teleport, even when he was incapacitated. But the little boy refused. He said he'd rather walk it off. Walker watched as Corinth struggled a bit, heading across the wood paneled ramps back onto the gra.s.s fields.

He called out to the angry boy leaving his villa. "I can teach you the spell for your stomach, and teleporting can be rather simple if you ease your mind first! I could teach you -these things if you like, Corinth!" he said loudly, adding,"of course, no pressure though!" he knew how desperate he sounded, so he attempted to dial it back. Walker understood that Corinth wanted to know how to use magik without a llave or wand. He was the only person Corinth had ever seen do it before. He was also one of few who could actually do it.

But Corinth had lost interest in Walker when he disregarded his plight. The battle raging on inside Corinth's mind was getting harder to bear on his own. Yet he chose to go it alone. He disappeared from sight as Walker turned back to his home to see Sena. Lilith standing in front of his white screen door. He raised an eyebrow, but didn't seem daunted by her presence.

"I knew you'd show up sooner or later, Camil," Walker said, in a familiar tone.

She pursed her lips and threw her head back laughing. "Apparently you know a lot of things nowadays, old friend."

Walker's facial expression conveyed a broad mix of emotion. The most intriguing one being ... his grin.

Corinth stepped into the auditorium a little late. Sena. Hendrix was standing at the door when he pa.s.sed by. He didn't acknowledge her in any way. "Excuse me, Sen. Gambit, but the a.s.sembly started more than-"

"I don't care!" he threw his hand up to shut her up, and continued walking the descending row of stairs.

"Well, how about that," she whispered to herself. Then disappeared out the double doors her grandson had just come through.

He noticed his team of friends sitting next to one another in the semicircular auditorium that faced the stage below. He walked the steps down the aisle that was just one over from the section his friends were sitting in. Anvard waved out to him, from in-between the rows of seats, and Corinth pretended not to see. Instead, he noticed a more at ease sight.

"Hey, Lindle," Corinth flopped down next to the curly haired boy, into the end seat. "Is this taken?"

"No," Lindle informed politely, "I usually sit like this so no one will sit next to me. Then when things start, I move over so that no one is seated next to me on either side," Lindle realized how lame he sounded when Corinth slightly frowned. So he stopped speaking and turned his face forward, back to the lecturer's podium.

Corinth definitely understood how it felt to prefer to be alone most of the time. "That's a pretty sweet idea. I'll try it sometime. Do you mind if I take this seat, just this one time though?"

"You're fine. In fact, I'm glad you're there." They smiled at each other. Lindle pushed his long curls away from his face. Now that Corinth was there, he didn't feel as much of a need to alienate himself from everyone around him.

Sen. Huntzmen took to the podium, and shuffled some papers around. "Okay, okay children," the auditorium kept on buzzing and Huntzmen was not okay with that. Settle-down-students! Your attentions, please!" A stocky, dark skin man with the eyes of a Hyperborean. He possessed a masculine commanding voice. Students always strictly adhered to anything he asked of them. He was truly gentle hearted, but his firm side outweighed his capacity for compa.s.sion. Everyone could see it, if they ever managed to get on his bad side. "So, most of you know me, as I've been working here forever. The reason you're here is to learn about the Myths. Why? Because we say so. There's your why. Most of you write the myths off as just common bedtime stories. You're right in many ways, but the myths are a connection to our ancestry. Our common ancestry. We were one people in the very beginning. Now we are eight races strong!"

He lifted his hand up to express emotion, but lost himself in thought. He brought his hand back down, and began to think. Sena. Hendrix made it very clear that any ministrant that made the mixed children feel out of place would be punished. No matter their seniority, she would handle them personally. Most ministrants felt a particular need to be very nice to the little boy with turquoise colored eyes, as they began noticing the specific emphasis she placed on his personal well being at the inst.i.tution. Giving him his own makeshift room hadn't gone unnoticed. But she always included the others as well in her explanations. But rumors traveled quickly at Aurora Boreal. Most of the ministrants and even some students knew he was her grandson at this point.

He found himself again. "Well, what I mean to say ... is that we have come far, and are still growing. For instance, I am married to a young lady from Imperativo. Most of you know her as my a.s.sistant in your Watchers cla.s.ses. She was also brought in to preside over the abruptly reinstated Deaves card game. My daughter, Melanie, and I love Sena. Mira very much. If we have a child, there will be a new race that will spring from us. That is the wonderful progression of life," he elaborated well, trying to avoid Hendrix's wrath.

"Do you like your stepmom?" Emma turned to her new roommate and asked. Melanie had been moved out of her old dorm on her father's request. Sen. Huntzmen didn't like that she was in a coed dorm with her boyfriend Esteban, who's two grade levels higher than she. He knew that Mel must have bribed someone to get a sweet deal like that, because even though dorms were coed, they weren't of differing grade levels.

Mel turned to Emma. Anvard and Emmy were interested to hear her response. After Anvard reluctantly apologized about his spells against her at the Levanta.r.s.e match, he found that she wasn't as ridiculously overbearing as he suspected. They leaned over a bit to eavesdrop, sitting on the other side of their sister.

"She's not a bad person," Mel began. "Like, she's nice to me, and respectful of my mom when they're around each other. But really..." She paused to think before she gave a finite answer. Her yellow eyes shined against the lights hanging high over her father at the podium. The Fielder siblings hung on every word she said. Even though Anvard preached forgiveness, he was still hurt -inside about Sena. Mira's actions against him back in Imperativo. Mel took a breath and spoke on. "Really, I just don't trust her. There's something there. She's not bad, but I'm not saying she's good either." She shrugged when she noticed the others listening in. "Just don't trust her, is all."

The results were inconclusive, but Emmy had her own judgments to bring against Mel's stepmom. "And you shouldn't," she added to Melanie's statement.

Mel leaned in further. "What's that Emmy?"

"Oh nothing, just a cough," she tried to replicate her previous remarks with a cough, but they sounded nothing alike.

Mel pulled away awkwardly. "Okay then."

Anvard nudged Emmy in the side. "Hey! I didn't make any promises," she said with her hands up as if she'd just been busted stealing from a bank vault.

Claudia looked at the whole scenario without a clue to what was happening. With the lacking interest she had in their covert conversations, she opted to turn back to Sen. Huntzmen's speech.

"We all know the stories of the firebirds that keep the far North warm and thawed. We've all seen the pixie dust, but when was the last recorded time someone saw an actual pixie. They've all but disappeared from the lands and from our thoughts. The myths are important, students. They are our past and can lead to new discoveries about our future. This is why you're here. To be informed. So allow me to do that. And please, if you still have questions after this, feel free to join the myths club. We're always accepting new members."

Corinth was sitting next to Lindle and sweating bullets. He was feeling pretty bad again. "Hey, are you all right?" Lindle asked while touching his back. "G.o.d! You're burning up. You should probably go to the nurses' hospital. I've been before, the nurses are really sweet."

Corinth had his head buried in his lap. He looked up, and turned to Lindle. "I'm fine, really. I just probably need a bit of water." He started to get up, but Lindle stopped him.

"I'll get it. Just hang tight." He stood up, and walked past the baking boy.

Corinth felt like his stomach had transformed into a brick oven. He cringed and tightened up, pulling his head back down into his lap. He made a gut wrenching noise that grabbed the attention of a few kids in the row behind him. He didn't want to alarm anyone, so he got up and tried to walk out of the auditorium. Sen. Huntzmen droned on about something that caught Corinth's ear, as he turned to walk up the aisle he had just descended from only a few minutes ago. He wasn't listening before, but now Huntzmen's words came in loud and clear.

"...that temple was renamed after the original soul split into two. Forming the first male and first female ent.i.ties. The mythical Shattered Temple was said to be in the Angora Mt. Ranges, just beyond the North Lake. But no one has ever found it out there. Nor any of the artifacts that were said to have dwelled within. Like the Creative Window. It is said that this window created the planets and stars. A big claim, I know, but it's the only recorded information on the relic. We go with what we have. With such value placed on a temple like that, it was a.s.sumed to be guarded. Heavily guarded! Under the protection of the Vigil Luces. Least that's what they're commonly called among scholars. But they're the Guarding Lights. Powerful, very magnificently powerful creatures that were once human." People in the auditorium gasped. Corinth felt like he recognized Huntzmen's colorful language for reasons that had nothing to do with myth. He believed the Vigil Luces, these Guarding Lights, were more real than ever. "These Luces were destroyed during their lives. Tragically destroyed for malicious reasons. The Vigil Luces rest at the sights at which they were buried. Waiting to be awakened from death if ever needed to protect what was precious during their lifetimes. But Still..."

Corinth's ears started to fade in and out. He could no longer hold himself up. He started hallucinating about killer dragons, and falling skies, and blinding lights shaped in person form. Lindle walked back through the double doors with a cup full of water from the fountains in the hall, just in time to see Corinth collapse on the floor. The students and ministrants rushed to his side. He took yet another blow to head when he fell forward, face first. He was knocked unconscious, bringing the activity in the room to a complete standstill.

Chapter 20:.

For Our Ears Only?

May 23, 1002 ~ Daylight When Corinth opened his eyes, he realized he'd just woken up from the same recurrent dream. To his surprise, no one was there to greet him in the hospital room on the main floor of Olympia. A thick curtain that hung on a curved rod shrouded him inside. This velvety-gray sheet tethered to the rod closed him in on either side, cutting him off to whatever was behind it. Corinth a.s.sumed there were just more hospital beds, with curtains hanging from rods, closing them in too.

Some people walked in. Corinth heard two high pitch female voices. Nurses coming to check on patients, he presumed. He heard them pull back a curtain, but didn't acknowledge a patient. He figured they must be sleeping, in a coma, or just plain not there. But they did keep talking to each other.

"Ya know, that kid a few spots over?"

"Yeah, the mixed one?"

"Yeah. They say his uncle's gone missing! Well, he's not actually his uncle. The Grand Ministrant and her former husband adopted him when he was a boy. But ya know who I'm talking about, right? Ya know, that cutie-pie Squadron guy."

Corinth's ears starting ringing. He couldn't believe how wrong they were getting it. He'd just seen his uncle, and he wasn't adopted. No less by Sena. Hendrix, that's just weird, he kept telling himself.

The other lady seemed confused as well. She questioned her gossiping friend's sources. "How do you know all this? I haven't heard a lick of it before."

"Well," she pulled in closer looking around, and then she closed the curtain around the two of them. That made it harder for Corinth to listen, but he could still hear them whispering away. "Well, I was reporting to Sena. Hendrix about the mixed boy. She wanted all the info to come to her-and her only. But before I came into her office, she was chatting it up on the phone. I a.s.sumed it to be Sen. Bernard. She called the man Alistair, and that is his first name, as much as I know. And I've heard things about how close they are too!" She winked at her girlfriend.

The other woman nodded. "True," she said with ease. She must have heard the same.

"Well, she said that the mixed boy was her grandchild. She didn't even refer to him by name half the conversation. She just kept on saying; my only grand-baby. She just cried and said how sorry she felt for him."

The listening lady looked to her coworker like she was crazy. "Sena. Hendrix ... tears. You've got to be making this up." Corinth agreed much more with her than her loudmouth friend.

"Now I know it sounds strange, but-" she hastily halted her blathering,"wait, you won't tell anyone I've said all this, right?"

The other lady appeared hurt. "How many times have we swopped stories. I just hope you're not making this one up, 'cause it can come back to you through karma, sweetie. And that's if you're lucky, 'cause if someone did find out, we'd both be on the first train zipping out of here."

"I know, and that's not even the best part. She indicted Sena. Lilith in the missing uncle thing. She said Lilith had gotten to the guy. All for someone named Sebastian. Now here's where I got a little concerned myself. She said that The Well Read Walker librarian guy is the reason why the boy's in here. Why he's in the hospital. I was coming there to give her the final tests. They were conclusive on food poisoning. That's what got the little b.u.g.g.e.r so worked up at the auditorium. But more than likely, he's fighting a common cold too, so he's probably just feeling weak all together. I'm sure that's why he pa.s.sed out yesterday."

Corinth couldn't believe she was saying all this. Then he thought about the way the fruit that Walker gave him tasted. And the way he stared at it like it was alive or something. He couldn't take any more bad news, but he needed to know now, so listened in even more intently.

"Before I even got the chance to tell her any of this food poisoning business, she said over the phone that the boy visited the librarian before the a.s.sembly. That he ate with him. He ate the only thing he'd eaten all that day."

"Oh my!" the other woman gasped and covered her mouth. She too knew that this kind of food poisoning was fast acting. He had to have eaten it within hours of his reaction. "Are you sure, Cynthia?" the startled woman asked her eavesdropping coworker.

Cynthia gave her a telling look as she tucked in the white sheets of the unoccupied bed. "I'm only sure of what the Grand Ministrant said. I don't know if she's right. But if the boy ate with the librarian then-"

"Then she's right," the woman finished her sentence as they both closed the curtain, coming back into the aisles between the beds.

To hear them sound so certain put Corinth on edge. He didn't want them to know he was awake and heard everything. But more so, he wanted to be sure what he heard them say was true. At least from their perspectives.

"What else you hear about the Lilith thing? Why would a girl like her do something like that?"

Cynthia responded quickly. "How? That's a better question. He's a cop. A Squadron cop. He's no sissy. But he's a looker so..."

"Yeah, but so is Lilith. She certainly don't need to go round kidnapping law officers to get a hot date!" The other lady seemed convinced that it was all just trash talk. No matter how the chips fell, there just weren't any hard facts to support Cynthia's gossip.

"I wasn't too sure about that one anyway," she said dismissively,"but Sena Hendrix sure did seem so!" Cynthia giggled as she and her work friend pulled back Corinth's curtain. When they did-they received a very rude welcoming gift.

Corinth tapped into the power he'd been desperately trying to ignore these past weeks. The same power that ended the disaster at the Pavilion. He reached deep into himself and found it. What he pulled out from the depths of his soul was more than he could control.

The blast of energy radiating from his deft perception surfaced all at once. The windows behind each bed in the hospital burst out. The energy that cycled through the room warped its structure. The walls moved like waves of water. The gla.s.s shot out quickly, then stopped abruptly and pulled back into the hospital room slowly. Sending a series of broken shards covering the beds and ripping the velvety curtains closing them in. The two women before him dropped to their knees with eyes the same turquoise shade as Corinth's. He was inside their minds probing deep for a solid surface for which these allegations could stand on. He found it-and a lot more.

Cynthia's mind yielding many more revelations than the other woman's. She was not lying about what she heard. When he watched her, watching Sena. Hendrix from a cracked office door, he felt like he was living the moment out with her. This deep immersion in her thoughts pulled him in, like the ocean's current. Before he knew it, he'd connected to another mind. His subconscious knew the truest of truths laid with Sena. Hendrix. He didn't want to consume her mind, but it had already happened before he thought to stop himself. And he saw, everything!

From the twelfth floor of the very same building, Hendrix gripped her friend's hand much tighter than she had been holding it.

"What's wrong, Silvia?"

"No, nothing. I'm sorry for that," she paused, eyes darting around. "I don't know exactly what that was. I just felt a sharp surge of awareness." She flagged her hand toward him casually. "It's probably nothing. Just rest yourself, Alastair."

Corinth sat up in his hospital bed with teary, brightly glowing eyes. He looked like a very pet.i.te, but absolutely absurd madman. The two nurses lay unconscious on the checkered tiled floors in front of the bed. He was inundated with information that was long kept from him. And from this new knowledge, he mostly felt anger. An intense anger toward his dad and mom. He couldn't believe they'd do such a thing, even if the woman was as vile as Hendrix. She's changed a lot, he thought. Not enough, but she's his grandmother for heaven's sake. Twelve years is just too long to shut someone so close to you out. He felt her pain over missing his childhood. It was the biggest regret of her life. Her hateful affectations that pushed her own son away to the point that Criston no longer viewed Silvia Hendrix as family.

Corinth wanted to sit there forever, but he figured someone would have heard the wreckage. He hopped out of the bed and started covering his tracks. He didn't want any of it to be traceable to him. He tried focusing the power this time around. He used it to alter records, so that they reflected him being discharged late last night. He rearranged wording on sheets of paper without tainting the integrity of ink. He lifted letter after letter, number after number from the pages, and they floated through the air to where he preferred them to be on the papers. On some sheets, he erased entire sections of information with the flick of his mind. He wiped the ladies memories of the past few hours up to when the forms now stated his release. He didn't know if he did any of it right, but it was all he had.

He walked urgently out of the room, utterly forgetting he was in a hospital robe. He ducked back in and looked around for his clothes. They were folded up right next to the bed in a lone chair oddly close to where his head would have been laying all night. His school uniform neatly stacked layer by layer on this black chair with stainless steel legs. He faced the shattered windows while putting them on, and then looked to his right. He noticed a computer behind a Plexiglas window. He'd just walked over there, the entrance being adjacent to the Plexiglas, but he was blinded by his rush. Now that he slowed down, forcing his little feet to slip into his loafers, he could think more clearly.

He made his way over to the office. Walking out the hospital into the hallway, where the swinging office door was just one door down from the hospital section entrance they placed him in. Corinth figured the gla.s.s window was there so the nurses could check on patients without leaving the office. Unless, of course, patients actually needed help of some kind. Then those gossiping hags would be forced to their calloused toes to do their jobs, instead of lollygagging the day away about little mixed boys and their abstractly warped lives.

An annoyed Corinth noticed several computers instead of one once he pa.s.sed through the doorway. He knew that's where the information was actually stored. Those papers he erased and altered were just printouts from these computers. He tried focusing his power again, but was tapped out already. Completely overdosed by the initial surge when he read too many minds to count. He pushed anyhow, attempting to rid the school of any record that he was here during this crazy, freak-out event.

Without warning, the first computer exploded, like fireworks and gunfire at the Pavilion, setting off the sprinkler systems. The alarm sounded as the red and white sirens mounted high on the walls lit up. Water poured down from the ceilings. And Corinth could definitely hear people coming now. He couldn't imagine what took them so long, but he was hyper-aware after using all that mental strength, so he knew it wouldn't matter, because this fire and subsequent drenching of the touch screen computers ought to do the job of erasing things for him.