With a slight increase of pressure on the trigger, Alkon adjusted his aim a final time, and then collapsed it entirely. The rifle burst with bullets streaming out of it, but the sound of it firing was drowned out as Jaden became hidden behind a wall of fiery light, crackling and sizzling as each bullet struck. Alkon began to move around Jaden, firing from all directions, but no bullet was able to get through.

Suddenly Alkon found himself on his back, the gun thrown far out of his hand by a pulse of energy that had knocked him over. The wall of fire disappeared as Jaden stepped forward.

Alkon looked up at him from the ground. 'How did you know where I was?' he asked.

'I could feel your footsteps,' said Jaden, giving him a hand up.

'How?'

'I don't know.'

Alkon dusted himself off as he got to his feet. 'I have never seen a shield like that before. How did you do it?'

'I'm not sure. I have trained under different masters,' said Jaden. 'They all teach something different. Now I just do what I feel is right.'

'You have become this powerful in a few months since I last saw you?'

Jaden shrugged, 'It's the sickness. I think I've had the power for a long time, I just never knew how to use it.'

'Quite impressive. Could it stop a grenade?'

Jaden looked at both of his hands. 'I don't think anything can get past it.'

'How long can you make it last?'

'Ten minutes, maybe twenty,' said Jaden.

'That should be enough,' said Alkon. 'But how high can it go?'

Jaden stepped back away from Alkon and ignited the shield again, making it reach fifty feet in the air as it burned through the branches and leaves above him to go even higher than the tree.

Alkon smiled widely. 'This might just work,' he said.

'I will not fail,' said Jaden, his conviction absolute.

Alkon nodded. 'We will attack at dusk. The change of guard won't take place for another hour after that.'

'Shouldn't we attack during the change of guard?'

'Not unless you want double the number of soldiers after you,' said Alkon. 'I know you entered the fort during a change of guard, but they had been given orders to be at ease. We do not have the luxury of my incompetence this time. We will strike well before the change.'

'What do we do until then?' asked Jaden.

'We'll see what else you can do,' said Alkon, and he took the pin out of one of the grenades and lobbed it high into the air toward Jaden.

Chapter Twenty-Seven.

What if the choice is wrong?

March 8, 997 R.E.

In the fading light, the Alliance soldiers continued to move the remaining vehicles in behind the Waikorian wall. Alkon and Jaden waited patiently near the edge of the trees and vines, not far from where they had first been spotted. The helicopters were still in place to the right, as Alkon had hoped, but they were well guarded.

'Explode the landmines, then draw them away as far as you can,' he whispered to Jaden. 'Are you sure you can do this?'

'I can run if I need to,' Jaden assured.

'I only need a few minutes,' said Alkon. 'The lights are about to come on. Are you ready?'

Jaden closed his eyes in concentration, and without a word, he stood and walked toward the edge. Alkon held his breath, waiting for Jaden to attack. When nothing happened, he worried Jaden was not up to the task after all, but he recoiled in shock as three of the landmines exploded with flames reaching far above the trees. Seizing the opportunity, Alkon raced down to the right toward the helicopters while Jaden ran out onto the field.

'Sentinel!' came shouts from the soldiers, and instantly guns began to fire.

They swarmed toward him from all directions, some throwing grenades as well as sustaining constant fire on him. Alkon saw his chance as many of the soldiers from the helicopters joined the others. There were only a few that remained standing guard, but he knew their attention would be set firmly on Jaden.

Alkon crept around the back, avoiding detection as he came up behind the first soldier. With a swift hit to the back of the head with his left hand, Alkon made the soldier fall forward and took his pistol with the right. In less than a second he had removed, unlocked and fired the weapon, killing the soldier before badly wounding the next. Being a commander in the Alliance for so long, he knew exactly how to disarm and neutralise his opponents. It was not long before several more soldiers had fallen at his hands and he had secured an aircraft. With all the commotion Jaden was causing, Alkon's feats had gone unnoticed, and he leapt into one of the smaller craft behind the larger ones, hidden from view. He waited a moment, watching for the fiery shield to distance itself away from him before he started the engine. When he judged Jaden far enough away, he took off and headed west to avoid any detection. He had achieved what he had set out to, and now he would need to come back for Jaden, if he survived.

On the ground, Jaden was in a trance, shielding all directions as he made his way north. The explosions blocked all vision of what was around him, but he could sense where they were. Whenever footsteps became too close, he sent extra waves of energy out with his hands to push them away. From the dirt beneath his feet came the most lethal energy as he called it up to him. Raquel had shown him how within the realm of the crystal, so that he did not have to rely on the endobraces entirely. It was with this energy that he was able to protect himself from the Alliance fire.

He was aware of over fifty soldiers attacking him, and he wondered at how easy it would be to take revenge on them. All it would take was a single wave, but it would need to be powerful to reach the soldiers furthest away, and he did not know if he could maintain the shield while releasing that energy.

As if by instinct, he jumped to his left where the fewest bullets were coming from and sent a powerful burst to the right. A missile had been launched, but like the grenades, it too was exploded on impact of his shield. Several more missiles were fired, and he directed his path toward a group of seven soldiers, hoping that they would not risk killing their own by attacking him with more missiles.

It worked.

No more missiles were launched, but he now felt he was losing his energy. He couldn't maintain his concentration much longer. The fiery shield around him began to turn white, repelling the Alliance fire instead of destroying it. It was then that he noticed a second energy on his shield. It was red and half his size. Jaden lowered the energy in the shield so that it became transparent white, as if it were a dome of water around him. It was enough to protect him from minor strikes, but it allowed him to see what was beyond.

As he looked to where the new energy was coming from, he began to turn pale and his knees started shaking a little. There was a face on the other side of his shield, a familiar face he had not seen for many months. It was a face from Callibra, the face of the man he despised possibly more in this moment than he had ever despised anyone before. The face on the other side was that of Kobin Guyde, his hand raised toward Jaden, directing the red energy.

With anger, Jaden pushed his shield back to full strength and he chanced sending two waves of his own energy out, causing the closest soldiers to scream out in pain and Kobin to shield himself, jumping down and away as he did.

Jaden saw his chance then to rush at Kobin, to kill the traitor, but stopped after only several steps toward him. In the distance, Jaden saw hundreds of soldiers coming toward him, tanks rolling among them. He took another step toward Kobin, but knew he didn't have time. He had to flee. Immediately.

Calling a final shield to rise from the earth, Jaden turned under its cover and raced into the forest behind him. The soldiers were swift in their pursuit, but Jaden used the last of his energy to sprint as fast as he could from them, passing through where he had last seen the beasts. He had felt movement in the ground and hoped that some of the beasts were still alive. If he ran through them, he could use them to slow the soldiers down, potentially even kill them.

The beasts came out as he expected, snarling and swiping at him with their long claws. But he directed them away from him with soft pulses of energy, ensuring that they could not reach him. He would not harm them. He needed them ready to fight for him as he got away. The beasts seemed to think better of following him, and screams soon sounded as guns blazed as the beasts were upon the men of the Alliance once again.

It had worked.

Jaden was out of danger now. The battle between soldier and beast raged on long enough to cause the soldiers to lose track of him, and he made his way to where Alkon said he would meet him. They had organised for Alkon to fly to the first clearing in the forest, which Jaden would mark with a beacon of blue light. Jaden had second-guessed Alkon, wondering how much he could truly trust him. He had been a traitor in the Alliance after all. He would have deceived many that had trusted him. What was to stop him betraying Jaden now? He could have flown away. Jaden would have no hope of catching up with him. But as he ignited the beacon, these fears were quickly put to rest, as it was not long before the helicopter landed in front of him, Alkon waving with a smile from inside.

As Jaden secured himself in the seat, the helicopter lifted and made its way north before Alkon turned east, and both finally sat back in relief.

'We make quite a team,' said Alkon triumphantly.

Jaden said nothing as he breathed heavily, holding his side.

'Is something wrong?' asked Alkon.

'No,' said Jaden, 'just ... I feel weak.'

'You did well to survive.'

'I saw a man from my village,' said Jaden, ignoring the compliment. 'He was not a soldier. Was he the one?'

Alkon looked at him questioningly, unsure what Jaden was talking about. 'What did he do?'

'He tried to kill me with a power like my own.'

Alkon faced ahead again, realising who Jaden referred to. 'He is the one. He is the man responsible for your loss and the man so arrogant he believes he is the most brilliant alive. If anyone almost caused my death, I believe it was him, not you.'

Jaden closed his eyes in thought for a moment.

'I'm sorry,' said Alkon, thinking he had offended Jaden. 'My heart has become cold with the battles I have fought. If I had known you and your family were in Callibra, I would have found another way. I curse myself for this, for the bloodshed, but I do what I must.'

Alkon dared not break the following silence, in fear that Jaden might not accept his apology. He had seen hundreds of homes ruined, thousands of families torn apart, but only now did he remember the tragedy of war. They were innocent people. Good people. People he would have enjoyed having as friends. And they were being slaughtered by the Alliance, whose only aim now was to reign supreme over the entire world. He had helped them willingly at first, as the threat of the aggressive nations was at its peak. But with his father, he had helped make the Alliance into exactly what they were fighting to stop. They now had too much power, and they were obsessed with gaining more. He had to put an end to their growth, and fight them from the lines of his homeland.

It was too late to save Jaden's family and all others like them, but he could still save those that the Alliance was yet to find.

'It's not your fault,' said Jaden, and Alkon breathed a sigh of relief. 'I knew Kobin was evil. I knew he was doing wrong. My father had not seen it, but I did.'

'Your father?'

'Yes, Tyral Daiyus.'

'Ah, the companion,' said Alkon.

'You knew him?' asked Jaden. 'Where is he?'

Alkon turned to Jaden, his mouth slightly ajar as if he had not known what to say for a moment.

'He fell into one of the crevices; no one has seen him since...'

Jaden stared for a moment, and then turned his gaze to his hands. He was not sure if it was the stress of war, being away from home so long and losing so much, or using so much energy to defend himself, but he felt nothing at learning his father's fate, drained of any emotion that may have come.

'I need to heal,' said Jaden. 'Wake me when we land.'

Alkon nodded as Jaden lifted the crystal around his neck to his eyes, entering its realm.

Alkon continued flying. They would find the travelling band of the Waikorian people, who would be waiting on the crossroad between Corsec and Yugovera for their arrival. The flight was six hours long, and Alkon used the time to think of what he would need to do to get back to Arinta, his home. He thought to take Jaden with him, introduce him to his own family and perhaps adopt him. Jaden would be given a new life in place of the one that was destroyed, and he would find those that would love and help him in the eastern nations. He would soon be a man, but for now, he was little more than a child, still finding his way in an unforgiving world.

Alkon knew what it was like to lose his childhood. He had been apprenticed in the wars as soon as they began almost three decades earlier. He had gone wherever his father took him, and while other children played with toys, he learned of battle strategies and methods of killing other men. These were sad times, and with each year that passed, his longing to know his home again grew stronger. But like all the others, he would have to wait until the Alliance was disbanded or destroyed, and then he would be free once more.

Spotting lights up ahead spanning a full mile in one big line, Alkon roused Jaden. 'They're here,' he said, readying to land.

Jaden had let the crystal fall as he slept against the window. He opened his eyes slowly and rubbed them to help him wake up faster. Save for the lights on the ground, it was completely dark now, and his eyes took a moment to adjust.

As they landed, Jaden seemed to become full of life, and he raced out of the helicopter toward a group of men gathered on a small circle of five vehicles, each sitting on top and conversing with one another. Jaden ran to the one he recognised first.

'Lendon,' he said, picking out the Kayde of Ceahlin from the group of eight. He then looked to Lendon's right, where he realised the two Daijuar, Adonis and Blair were sitting quietly, as if oblivious to his arrival. 'Where is Alyssa?'

'About six trucks down,' said Lendon, 'but I don't think-'

Before Lendon could finish, Jaden ran from him.

'Let him go,' said Blair, seeing that Lendon was about to run after Jaden. 'There are more pressing matters at hand.'

A smile surfacing on his lips, Jaden continued to race past the many trucks and other vehicles, stopping for none, no matter how loudly they cried to speak with a sentinel. He wanted to see her, wanted to make sure she was safe. He had been away from her for what seemed an eternity, and he refused to wait another moment that he did not have to.

He found Alyssa seated in the back of a jeep, a coat wrapped around her shoulders as she sat behind an old couple. Jaden jumped up on top, causing the old couple to look at him in disgust, and he embraced Alyssa.

'Alyssa, I made it back!' he said, releasing her from his embrace but still holding onto her shoulders.

The two stared into each other's eyes, searching, but Jaden's expression soon lost its vibrant glow. Something was wrong. Something was missing. The embrace had felt empty, as if there was no feeling being returned, making it seem that she was made of stone.

'Lyss?' he asked, but she just stared back at him, unknowing and confused.

'How do you know my name?' she asked in a faraway voice.

Jaden continued searching her eyes, trying to find the answers somewhere within to the questions building inside. So lost in the moment of reunion, he hadn't noticed another young man coming up from behind Alyssa and handing her a cup. She took it from the dark-haired youth and kissed him gently as he took a seat next to her, putting his arm around her shoulder as if to protect her from the cold and the stranger in front of them.

The youth looked up at Jaden. 'Can I help you?' he asked, his voice smooth, confident and strong.

Jaden was lost for words. This was Alyssa before him, the one he had given his heart to, but the girl he knew was no longer there. She was with someone else. She had kissed another man right in front of him.

The dark-haired youth looked uncomfortable. 'Move along, friend, there is no reason for you to be here.'

Before Jaden could respond, he was dragged backward and off the vehicle. Strong hands took him away from Alyssa, and the endobraces began to warm with energy.

'Let go of me!' he demanded.

'I'm sorry,' said Lendon. 'I tried to tell you.'

'Tried to tell me what?'

'There was an accident. Stop struggling and I'll explain.'

Lendon pushed him away as he relaxed, and he repositioned the Daijuarn vest. 'What happened?'

'We left Waikor in a hurry,' Lendon began. 'There was a lot of confusion. We knew we didn't have much time before the Alliance returned.'