'No,' said Blair. 'We bring warning of an Alliance force heading this way.'

'What?' asked Lendon, stepping back down from the first step and walking back toward them.

As Blair relayed the events of the previous weeks and told of the new threats from the west and the south, a crowd gathered around them, young and old of the city coming to see the Daijuar up close. All stood in disbelief as they heard what Blair had to say, but there was nothing new to Jaden. He already knew of the Alliance movements, so he began to look around what little of the city he could see from where he stood. Separating the city from the crops there was a high wall made of concrete, interrupted at various points by large areas surmounted by strange machines. The machines looked similar to those the Alliance used, instruments of war, but made to protect the city, not to attack others. He wondered if this was the technology his father had hoped to bring back to Callibra but never could, and so had settled on bringing an army instead. The machines did not look as if they could defend the city forever, but they would at least allow its people time to flee.

Jaden came out of his thoughts when he felt a light tug on his vest, which Alyssa had given back to him as she no longer needed it.

'Excuse me, Daijuar,' came a small boy's voice next to him, 'are the Alliance really coming here?'

Jaden stared for a second. He almost thought it was Tommy asking him a question, as the child possessed similar features and the same shadowed blonde hair. Coming to his senses, he answered, 'I think so.'

He then noticed that a lot of the children had come to stand near him. Some were petting Alyssa's horse and asking her questions, while others just stood patiently waiting to hear what he had to say. They were all dressed in similar garments to those Lendon wore, while the younger children dressed in similar clothing to what was worn in Callibra. Jaden realised then that much of the clothing from his village must have come from this city.

'Are you going to protect us?' asked the boy.

'I don't know,' said Jaden earnestly.

'Afraid you're not good enough?'

Jaden looked up in surprise. The tone of voice had been resentful, even menacing, and it had come from a girl no older than thirteen. She was tall and slender, with black hair and eyes that seemed almost just as dark. She was a pretty girl, but there was something more about her that made Jaden feel uneasy.

'I am still training,' he said.

'What about them?' The girl inclined her head toward Adonis and Blair. 'If they're so powerful, why do they wear those funny looking things on their arms?'

Jaden fought the idea to glance at the endobraces on his own arms. What did this girl have against the Daijuar? He couldn't understand why she had barely said a word and then began instantly challenging them. Jaden had hated the Daijuar only briefly when he had passed the blame for the attack on Callibra from the Alliance to them. But now he knew they were not at fault. What reason could this girl have? Her home was still intact, her family most likely still alive.

'They allow the Daijuar to be as powerful as they are,' he answered unsurely.

The girl laughed a little as she looked at Adonis and Blair another time.

'What is your name?' asked Jaden, wanting her to stop her sniggering.

The girl turned back to him. 'Skye,' she said, 'what's yours?'

Before Jaden could answer, Adonis called for him to come forward and speak with Lendon.

'Lendon has agreed to help us,' said Adonis. 'But now the Daijuar must call upon you to aid them.'

Jaden nodded. 'What do I have to do?'

'The terms agreed upon with Lendon are that in exchange for his service, we must ensure that his people are protected from the Alliance.'

'I'm not yet powerful enough,' said Jaden.

'That is why you have been chosen to spread our message while we remain here. There are two more cities that we must warn from here-Waikor and Corsec. They will fly you there, so you need not walk any further.'

'I understand,' said Jaden.

'You will leave at once.'

Jaden nodded and turned, 'Alyssa,' he said, and motioned for her to come forward.

'She will remain here with us,' said Blair.

Jaden spun around quickly to face him. 'What?' he asked.

'There is no need for her to go.'

'I'm not leaving her,' said Jaden sharply.

'It will only be for a matter of days,' assured Adonis. 'She will be safe with us.'

'She needs rest, food and water, and new clothes,' added Blair. 'It is better that you go alone to Corsec and then return to us once the message has been spread.'

'What about the signals to the others? I thought one of you needed to do that.' said Jaden desperately.

'No,' said Blair.

Adonis explained, 'All that remain are in Waikor. You will be taken directly to a man named Multias in the city's centre. Then you will be taken to Corsec city. Inform the leaders of the Resistance of Alliance movements and then return.'

Jaden was silent. There was nothing more he could say, and he knew he had given up his right to freedom when he had accepted the Daijuarn training.

'I'll be all right,' comforted Alyssa. 'Go. I should stay with Elijenda anyway.'

Jaden nodded. 'When do I leave?'

'The sooner you go, the sooner you may return,' said Blair.

'Then I will go now.'

'Come with me,' said Lendon. 'I will take you where you need to go.'

Jaden hugged Alyssa. 'I'll be back soon,' he said.

'I know,' she whispered, holding his hand until he had walked too far from her when they both had to let go, their farewell said with a touch.

Jaden followed Lendon with a sense of urgency. For every second he was away from Alyssa, he felt she was in danger. He tried to ease his thoughts knowing that she was being taken care of by the Daijuar, but he still felt restless. He passed buildings with people staring at him from each, but he didn't notice. All he wanted was to get to Waikor and then to Corsec so he could get back to Alyssa again.

After five minutes' walk, Lendon requested that Jaden jump into the back of a vehicle. They were then driven to an airfield at the other end of the city. There, Jaden was taken out onto the runway. Lendon had used a radio device in the vehicle to have an aircraft waiting for them. Jaden did not recognise the craft. It was unlike anything that the Alliance had used. He thought it resembled the black helicopter he had seen patrolling Callibra before flying east, but this was larger and green, with twin engines on either side as well as a propeller on its top. With Lendon's help, Jaden stepped inside, finding a fairly spacious cabin with three seats on either side, as well as two in the front. Two pilots were in the cockpit, but they paid him no attention.

'Sentinel,' said Lendon, 'from what they have told me, this force coming will be too powerful for us to stop alone. I need you to ask if the people of Ceahlin might ally with those in Waikor so that we can stand a chance. Can you do that for us?'

Jaden nodded to him, and the Kayde seemed to relax a little as his people's future seemed to brighten with the prospect.

'Good fortune to you, Sentinel,' said Lendon, and he closed the cabin's door, locking Jaden inside.

Jaden sat back in his seat as the pilots were given clearance to take off. He would have felt nervous flying for the first time, but his heart was already pounding. All he could think of was Alyssa.

The aircraft lifted high into the air before one of the pilots turned to shout at Jaden. 'Make sure you put on a harness,' he called, and Jaden did his best to do as instructed.

After some fiddling around with the buckles, he was strapped in tightly, and the twin engines on either side of the craft were activated. It moved slowly forward for a while and then began to pick up more speed. Without windows in the cabin Jaden could see nothing, and was forced to look into the cockpit to see anything outside. He knew they were extremely high up when all he could see was cloud and blue sky, but it didn't matter. The anxiety was becoming too strong for him to bear.

'How long until we reach Waikor?' he shouted to the pilots.

'Conditions look good. Two or three hours at most.'

Jaden sat back again. It wasn't too long, but he wasn't going to sit and do nothing. With the free time, he lifted the crystal Raquel had given him from around his neck and was instantly transported to the broken city. He ran quickly into the one door where he found another staircase that hadn't been there before, leading down again but to a room with two separate doors. He stepped through the one on the left and found himself in darkness. This was where he was able to see what he wished to see. Beautiful scenery soon appeared, of Callibra and the places Raquel had shown him. He was trying to settle his thoughts in any way that he could. When that failed, he tried to call out to Raquel, hoping that she might appear next to him as before, but Raquel did not respond. She was not with him. It seemed she was only able to enter the crystal's realm while she was able to hold it herself. He then tried to train a little, getting used to feeling the energy around him and knowing its capabilities, combining what Raquel had taught him with what the Daijuar had, and then finding a balance between the two.

He began to wonder at how Raquel knew so much when she was not of their kind. She did not have endobraces or Daijuarn garments. She was still a mystery to him and knew similar things to what the Daijuar spoke about. She was an enigma, and one he would attempt to understand someday, if he were ever to see her again. He would confront her somehow, in a way that would not cause her to simply ignore him. He knew there must have been a reason for why she neglected his questions or walked away every time he tried to gather his thoughts, but still he couldn't understand.

He then tried to imagine something in his future that he could test, to see if his reactions to problems would be right or wrong as Raquel had seemed to show him, to help him speed up his path. Minutes past as he thought hard, but as nothing more than wanting to be with Alyssa again filled his mind, he exited the crystal's realm with a sigh. It was hopeless. He just had to get this over with.

He put his head back in the seat for the remainder of the flight, drifting in and out of an uncomfortable sleep before being woken entirely by the same pilot shouting back to him.

'We'll be landing in ten minutes.'

Jaden quickly made sure that he was alert and awake, running over all the things he would have to say to the heads of the city to make his visit as quick as possible.

The aircraft gave a small jolt as it landed and Jaden was allowed out.

'Welcome to Waikor, Sentinel,' said a man standing outside. 'I am Regustus, I will be your guide.'

Jaden nodded and then looked around him. It was dusk, and he was on the side of a black rocky mountain, its tip illuminated in white light. The runway he had expected to be standing on was actually a landing pad that had been carved into the mountain's jagged surface, high above the city. All around him he could see the many ring sections of Waikor. The city was one of the most renowned in the entire continent. Between each ring was a canal that glistened with blue lights, and the city's structures increased gradually in height from the outer reaches to the centre, so that the entire city seemed part of the mountain in all directions. The buildings were white like those in Ceahlin in the outer layers, but slowly became black and dark gray closer toward the mountain's base.

Behind him, there were four polished gray marble columns, rising thirty feet up into the mountain and marking the entrance to a great hall. Inside, a black carpet laced with golden thread stretched from one end of the hall to the other, and was lined on either side by the same gray marble columns as from outside. Hundreds of people moved about the various rooms behind the columns, and although they shared many similar features, they seemed almost entirely different to the people of Ceahlin. The Waikorian clothing was gray and perfectly fitted, on both men and women, and the way in which they carried themselves seemed to reveal a sense of greatness about them. They were an accomplished people, with technology that both awed and confused Jaden. He didn't even begin to guess what use the black devices they carried with them had.

Regustus led Jaden to the end of the hall where he found the strangest technology yet. Along the wall were half-cylinders made of black metal that rose higher than even the ceiling. The bottom of the cylinders was lit with blue and strange dials and lights were placed all the way up. Regustus motioned for Jaden to continue following him down a flight of stairs to reach the platform below. They then approached one of the half-cylinders and stood on another platform, which was shaped to fit perfectly into the half-cylinder and hovered just above the ground below. There was a railing at the back of the platform that Regustus told Jaden to hold onto, and after he had keyed in the right code on the wall, the platform rose up almost as if by magic high into the air. Jaden held on tightly as he was sent up into the mountain.

'What is this?' he asked.

'Electromagnetic elevator,' answered Regustus, who walked off the platform as soon as it had stopped. 'This way.' He led Jaden down another hall.

This hall was a lot smaller than the great hall out front, but still possessed a ceiling twelve feet above and columns to mark its doorways. At the end were two silver doors guarded by a man on either side.

'The sentinel wishes to see Multias Waidusk,' said Regustus, and the men on either side opened the doors for them.

Inside were seven men, most twice Jaden's size in shoulder width, seated comfortably around a black oval table, pointed toward the door. As Jaden entered, he saw that the walls had been left intact and were of the actual mountain's rock still, rather than the polished marble he had seen in the other rooms, and the lights were similar to those he had seen in the Daijuarn Monastery. He quickly scanned all of the faces staring at him, looking to find if any of them were Daijuarn. Nearest to him was a dark-haired man dressed in maroon garb. The next was a man with short sun-bleached hair wearing brown. Neither seemed to possess any Daijuarn-like features, and the same was true for those on the opposite side of the table.

The two that caught his attention most were the only ones dressed in white. Jaden thought he had seen the markings of the endobraces on one, but both kept their hands hidden. The one on the left had short dark hair in what seemed to be the typical Waikorian fashion, and the other in the centre had long black hair that was now heavily streaked with gray. Despite his hair, he seemed sixty to seventy years old, but with very few wrinkles and he held himself upright as if he were no older than thirty. He was the first to speak, but Jaden was now looking at the one man that had refused to acknowledge his arrival. The man sat on the right-hand side next to the man in the centre and had black hair hanging in front of his eyes. His clothing was dark gray and his eyes were sunken from what appeared to be poor health. His posture was slumped and he continually fidgeted with a small black rectangle in his hands.

'Allow me to introduce my associates,' said the man in the middle, and he pointed with an open hand to each, moving up to himself and starting with the man in maroon garb on Jaden's left. 'This is Anthon, caretaker of the west.' He then pointed to the man across from Anthon. 'Tony, caretaker of the south.' His hand wandered back to the other side of the table to the man sitting next to Anthon. 'Hayden, caretaker of the north.' He then pointed to the man opposite Hayden, the smallest and thinnest of the group. 'Yahtai, caretaker of the east. They look after the major districts of our great city. This is Owen, our leading technology master and overseer,' he said, pointing to the man who allowed his black hair to hang loosely in front of his eyes. 'And finally, this is my right hand man, Quian, and I am Multias. What brings you here, Sentinel?'

Jaden acknowledged all who were bowing slightly to him in the same manner, took a breath and began his message.

'My name is Jaden Daiyus. I have been sent to bring you warning. The Alliance has entered these lands. They're on their way here. The village of Callibra has been destroyed and used as a base for the past weeks, but they will soon be on their way.'

'The Alliance,' repeated Hayden, the second man on Jaden's left, though he did not sound convincingly surprised. 'In Aurialis?'

'It is not impossible,' said Yahtai, the man opposite Hayden.

Hayden rolled his eyes. 'I know it's not impossible, but is hardly expected at this time. How did they get here without going through Corsec?'

'It is not yet known,' said Jaden. 'We believe they have allied with the nations of the west.'

'Lassah?' asked Hayden.

Jaden nodded, 'And maybe Hawan.'

'Shame. I thought they were good people.'

'They have never been good people, you just love wine,' said Yahtai, who received a fierce glare from Hayden.

'What does this mean to us?' asked Anthon. 'Surely we are able to defend against whatever they are able to bring here.'

'Do not doubt their cunning,' said Multias. 'They have taken more than half of the world. That may not necessarily be worthy of our fear, perhaps, but surely it is worthy of some respect.'

'Half the world doesn't have our capabilities,' said Anthon.

'I believe we should fight,' said Tony.

'As do I,' said Hayden.

'There was never a question in my mind about it,' said Multias. 'We will defend this great city so long as it can protect us.'

'I have also been given word that the Kayde of Ceahlin wishes to ally with you,' Jaden continued. 'They seek protection in exchange for their services.'

'They are a good people,' said Multias. 'Take word back to them that we accept and will be gladdened by their being here.'

Jaden bowed and turned to exit.

'One moment, Sentinel,' said Multias, and then he turned to the men around the table. 'That is all for tonight. Go home to your families.'

All of the men except the two dressed in white stood up from the table and left, moving past Jaden with brief nods as they did.

'Now, what else have you been sent to tell us?' asked Multias, revealing the endobraces on his arms.

'We are to meet in Corsec,' said Jaden. 'Gather all that you can. We will make a stand against the Alliance there.'

Multias was thoughtful. 'Then they have already abandoned the idea of saving Waikor?'

'I do not know,' said Jaden.

'If we are to meet in Corsec, then I would assume so, but I refuse to allow my city to be harmed in my absence.'

Jaden stood waiting, unsure of what to say.

Multias continued. 'Tell them that I will not be joining them in Corsec. My duties lie with my city and my people for now. If the Alliance manages to defeat us here, we will come to Corsec. Until then, we will do our part by holding them back from here.'