Chapter 14

Elements

Elements: Earth, air, fire, and water are the four classical elements. Spiritual beings of these elements are known as Elementals. These, in their singular entity, are very powerful. As combinations, they are almost unstoppable, anyone who has seen a hurricane, a water and air manifestation. A Firestorm as fire and air manifests. Volcanoes as fire and earth all are dangerous and will kill. But the Practitioner who can call them forth and control them will be ranked in the top tier of Adepts.

Since Susan had moved out of state, I had no close friends. As I expected, my high school had been the same. People that knew me to say ‘Hi’ and that would be about all. I actually knew more people, but most of them were adults. The black belt instructors at Genwa Dojo; teachers and coaches at my schools; but no kids my age at all. I was never invited over to another student’s house except where my whole class was invited.

This was my life for the next year or so. From semester to semester, I had no idea what school year I was in. By my second year, I was taking courses at the local community college that would count toward my high school diploma.

Slowly, I had accumulated stocks to hold on to, like buying the next generation of Microsoft or IBM as they got their start.

By the end of my first year in high school, I had over a million dollars worth of long-range stocks and two million worth of speculation stock. The bank accounts had $200,000 in the checking and savings split evenly. The beginning of my second year of high school, I began to buy land on the outskirts of town. It was near the local airfield.

After I started my physics course, I really became interested in some of the far-out theories and exotic branches. I had seen what such knowledge could help me do using magic with my transporter of the excavated material from my expanded lab. My reading of science fiction and fantasy gave me ideas that I then worked on finding a way to make reality. I put a spell on a pair of sunglasses that allowed me to see in the dark like during daytime. Then a belt that allowed me to levitate and fly. That belt also contained a generator of a force field. If I was ever seen by anybody, they would think I was an alien with a super science device.

My studies in biology had helped me personally. I was very much stronger than any girl my age, size, and weight should be. My reflexes were faster than a cat. I now had a storage room full of trophies from track and field as well as martial arts competitions.

My black belt now had a couple of inches of markings on the ends. Sensei Genwa had expanded his instruction extensively. I had won jujitsu tournaments, aikido, karate, single and double stick, plus multiple mixed martial arts. I had a real reputation. Tournaments now advertised the fact that I would be competing. It got them more competitors to sign up as well as more spectators.

I had noticed Mr. Townsend at a couple of the tournaments. Each school day, I would stop at my locker, which was right outside his office door, to leave my cane.

I was now helping instruct at the dojo. I would do 15 minutes out of my hours on weeknights and one hour each Saturday morning. It was easy now to see why the higher belts were given for instructing. My abilities seemed to have skyrocketed within months of me seriously starting instructing. One Saturday morning, a couple of hours after arriving at the dojo, Sensei called me into his office and gave me a package.

When I opened it, I found a black silk gi with a dragon embroidered on the back. It was beautiful and had to have cost a fortune. When I came out of the locker room wearing it, I felt ten feet tall.

Four weeks later, one Saturday morning, a stranger showed up. Master Genwa had an open-door policy for visitors to our dojo. They had to wear a gi; they had to wear the appropriate belt, which they must show written certification. Finally, they would only work out with the instructors, not the students.

I met the stranger, and he introduced himself as Master Joe Cobb from St. Louis, visiting his sister in town. I did not like his attitude. When I mentioned that to Bob Tucker, one of the long-time instructors at the dojo, he laughed.

“Katy, the problem is you’re used to respect from everybody you meet. He sneered at you when he saw you in your gi. He acts like he caught you playing grown-up in your mother’s high heels.”

“Well, unlike him, I have heard of him. He is good; but he is not as good as you. I saw him compete in St. Louis once. I thought at the time he depended too much on his size and strength.”

“Well, maybe. I hope he does not try to tell our students what to do. I will not stand for it.”

“No, that’s a no-no anywhere.”

I continued with a couple of the female students that were learning jujitsu, which is really a much better self-defense art than karate. It’s also why more of the Ultimate Fighters of mixed martial arts were from that style’s schools.

When he came out of the locker room, I saw one of the reasons he had sneered at me. He was wearing the same type of jacket as I was. Only his was like 20 sizes bigger. Out of the corners of my eyes, I saw him looking around for someone to work out with. Now, without any outward explanation, I had become the head assistant instructor when Master Genwa was not there in the dojo. All the other instructors deferred to me.

I had asked Bob Tucker about it once, and he stated that I had fought and won more competitions than all the rest of them combined. That was news to me. So I guess I had won the position by default.

About that time, Master Genwa came into the front door and went to his office. A few minutes later, he stood in his door watching Cobb. He stood there with his passive look on his face that I came to recognize as his frown.

That’s when I noticed that Cobb had approached the Master and was speaking to him.

“Sempai,” I looked up, and all the black belts were looking at me.

I went to Master Genwa and bowed, “Sensei?”

“Our visitor would like to do some sparring. Be so good as to accommodate him.”

“Yes, Sir Master Genwa.”

I bowed to Cobb.

His return bow was sloppily returned.

“Which style would you like to practice, Sensei Cobb?”

“Which ones are you skilled in?” His sneer was obvious in his voice. Behind him, I could see all the students leaving the practice mats and kneeling on the sidelines. The other instructors were suppressing grins and moving out of the way.

“I hold belts in Karate, Jujitsu, Aikido, single sticks, double sticks. I have won tournaments in my age and belt class in all of them, plus multiple mixed martial arts tournaments. So why don’t we just do all of them?”

I saw his sneer slip for a minute, then his disbelief that a female at almost half his weight could do anything to him came back. We went to the center of the mats and faced each other. I bowed again to him. He bowed, then as soon as he was upright, he attacked.

Like a bull, he charged, leading the way with a flurry of punches. I went down into a horse stance and blocked upward, then did a front kick to his guts. I spun to his left and did a flying crescent kick to his shoulder as he went past. I began my flow. This was something I had not done yet in competition, so even if he had seen me fight previously, he would not have seen this; only here in our dojo had anyone seen me do it.

I thought it was an outgrowth of my magic and my martial arts. It was like an unconscious weaving of the two. The first time I did it in a free-style sparring with the senior Sempai was when all the other instructors conceded the senior position to me. It was as if I was water flowing downhill. I never stopped moving, my head went this way and my feet that way, my hands and arms in a different direction. He never made contact with me and I was all over him. When it was over, he was laid out on the mat, beaten into exhaustion. I waited until he finally got to his feet. He stood there with a look of fright on his face.

I bowed, never taking my eyes off his face. I held it. He slowly returned it. “Another?” I asked.

“No. No, I don’t think so.”

As I turned to the students, he spoke up from behind me,

“You could have killed me at any time, couldn’t you?”

Turning to face him once more, I answered,

“Easily, you are not fast enough to fight me. With true speed, strength is not necessary. If I stopped moving, you are strong enough to kill me. So I never stopped.” I pointed at our trophies wall. “Look at those.”

I never lost my awareness of him. So I knew he had gone to the wall and read the articles and the trophies there. They told of my last couple of years. He had then gone to the locker room and dressed. He left quietly.

It would be years before I would meet him again.

By the time I was 15 and was preparing to graduate, our life was completely different than it had been just two years before. The family was much better off. Dad was being paid a large retainer to represent my company. Jenny was attending freshman classes at East Wood High School.

She had stated that she would not attend Lynchburg High School. “There’s no way I am following Tom and you. I am going to a school where nobody knew either of you. When I leave, they will know that Jennifer Simpson had attended, not the little sister of Thomas Simpson or Katherine Simpson.”

She had a real point there and was smart enough to know it. Oh, and she was planning on being a lawyer. Dad had finally found his protégé. She had been like my shadow for a couple of months and knew about the magic. She had no interest in learning it, just enough to protect herself. She wore charm bracelets, pendants, and even a tennis one on her ankles. Any person who came after her with ill intent was going to be a crispy critter. Then I would get them.

One of the charms let her know when anyone lied to her; a great artifact especially for a lawyer.

Tom was doing very well. I had cast a good luck and health spell on him. In his two years there, he had started to attract some attention from pro scouts, but more important to him, he was an honor student. He had an intern job at a major East Texas electrical engineering firm.

I had found my college. It was not easy. I first used a map of the USA and my object finder. The pointer had settled on an area in east Missouri near but not on the Mississippi River. Then I had used a map of Missouri to find the town, Westerford. Then on the internet, I searched the town information for all the colleges in the area. With that list, the Finder pinpointed the school. East Westerford Institute of Liberal Arts, home of the Muskrats, it showed their audacious nature by naming their mascot after a water rodent.

I found an older home that was dirt cheap. I bought it for its location; it was almost a block off campus. The neighborhood was zoned mixed residential and business. I hired a contractor to remodel the place but saved the appearance as much as possible. They basically removed the outsides and saved it. Then excavated a basement almost as large as the lot; a small part was used for the utilities to enter the building plus washer and dryer connections. There was a laundry drop into this area. An outside entrance with a ramp to be used to bring major items into the basement: furnace, air conditioner, washer, and dryer. A staircase reached up to the main floor. There was a wall with a hidden door to the rest of the basement. All doors to the basement locked from the inside.

The first floor had a modern kitchen and appliances. On one side of the basement door was a large pantry with a freezer in it. Outside the kitchen was a large enclosed porch; the windows could slide back leaving screens. It would be a great place to sit and study.

There was a moderate dining room and living room; the doors were all double wide. These three rooms were shotgun fashion one after the other. On the other side of the house, the floors were double strength supported. There the contractor had brought in a subcontractor that knew about building a dojo. This was what they built with workout equipment and a mat for workout covering the rest of the floor. There was a half bath in the front of the main floor and a full shower room off the dojo.

An interior decorator selected the furniture for the rooms. There was an office, library, and two large bedrooms with full bathrooms in each of the bedrooms. The amount of money I was putting into this building would never be recouped from selling it later. But I posted a sign out front: “KS Enterprises, Missouri Headquarters.” It was on the books as our Missouri division headquarters. I rented a room at $100 a month from the company. The final cost was $120,000; this was in a real estate depression area with low labor costs and high unemployment. In Texas, it would have been worth over $200,000.

It was finished about 4 weeks before I would move there. After I moved, Dad would overnight all the mail he received at his office to me.

That part of summer, I was called to begin to do the job I was destined to do. A young girl had come up missing. Due to the police thinking it was a custodial kidnapping, they did not respond with an Amber Alert. Most of the people in the area did not even know about it.

When they finally located the father, they found he had been in the county jail near where he lived for more than 30 days. So he could not have been the kidnapper. Three days had passed before they started really looking for the girl. Then they started investigating the mother.

I became involved due to reconstruction of a sidewalk. One block of my six-block lap was torn up and was being made ready for the concrete. I had found that out one morning, so the next day I crossed the street in front of my house and ran a six-block loop in the other direction.

As I was coming down the street on the other side, I spotted police cars parked on the road. A cold shiver ran up my spine, and the goddess crescent hanging inside my shirt began to warm up. By the time I reached the house, it was almost burning. I reached into my fanny pack and pulled out a pair of sunglasses. The thing of it was these were not normal sunglasses. With these, I could see in the dark and see things of an otherworld nature; magic, supernatural entities.

The house was glowing red and felt like something evil. I hurried past after finding the address.

After coming home from the dojo that afternoon, I searched the internet with that address. That was when I found the information about the kidnapping. Abby Foster, 9 years old, had spent the afternoon at a friend’s. The friend’s father with her and her brother had brought Abby home. They had watched as she had entered the house. Then they had left to go to the grocery store.

I fixed up my bedroom like I was in bed, then went to my lab. There I got prepared for a little nighttime excursion. I put on a spare black gi I had with no embroidery on it and a plain black belt. I pulled on a black ski mask, my wand scabbard hung from my belt, and I carried my cane. The belt was my flying belt, and on the back hung a fanny pack with my cell phone and sunglasses. I was ready.

Everybody was in bed when I slipped out of the house, making sure the doors were locked behind me. I had made a special Finder for Abby’s using a picture I had cut out of the paper. I walked around the block to her house. Cars that drove past never saw me. I was encased in a spell that caused me to fade into the shadows. Near Abby’s house, I brought out my Finder, and it began to spin, then to slow down. Its pointer was not aimed at the house but beyond it. I began to walk.

What seemed hours later and might have been, I had exited the city and was traveling down a county road. I felt warmth on my chest and reached up to feel the Goddess crescent pendant hanging there. It was warming up. Down the road, I saw a shadow on the side move.

I cussed myself. What good were glasses that let you see in the dark if you are not wearing them? I quickly took them out of my fanny pack and put them on. The view lit up like daylight. But down the road, the shadow persisted.

“Go back the way you came; this way is forbidden.” A voice like chalk on a chalkboard spoke.

“Who or what are you to forbid me the right to go where I please?” I asked.

“I am a ruler of the night, the fear that strikes men dead.”

Well, that was a good answer.

“I am not dead; does that mean I am not a man?”

“You would play games with me? Who would dare?”

“I am a simple minion, a hunter for the Huntress, the true ruler of the night; she who hunts the nights. Flee while you can.”

“Flee? Never, I will consume you!”

It quickly moved toward me. I reached under my jacket and pulled the pendant out through my collar opening and let it hang free.

I began to glow with the shine of the moon, and where the light touched the shadow was burned.

A scream echoed through the night as the shadow was eaten by the light.

I stood there shaking for a bit. Then I once more held up the Finder. And it now pointed off the road and up a ridge nearby. I began to walk that way.

At the top of the ridge, I could look down at an old shack. There were a bunch of cars and trucks parked behind the shack. In front were a wood pile and a group of people circling the pile. They were all wearing dark robes with hoods over their heads. I began to walk down the ridge, getting nearer. Soon I could hear chanting as they circled the wood pile.

As I got closer, I could see something tied on top of the wood pile. Nearby, a person stood chanting. As they chanted, the circle of people repeated the chant. This was some kind of ritual. There was some power here, but nothing like what a ritual like this should have generated. If a spurt of power was not released every so often, I would have thought this was just a bunch of posers. The place was lit up by anti-mosquito torches that you can buy from Home Depot for an outdoor barbecue.

I was close enough now to see a young girl tied up and lying on the wood pile. It was Abby Foster.

The leader of these nuts, his voice got louder, and he picked up one of the lit torches and approached the wood pile. When he posed to shove the torch into the wood, my wand came out of its scabbard, and I aimed at the torch.

“Pyro,” a streak of flame reached out and consumed the torch. The leader screamed and stepped back, shaking his hand.

I stepped out of the shadow. “Who are you to profane my Mistress Realm?”

The mob of people clomped together, trying to get behind their leader. “It is you who has profaned the sacred sacrifice of our Great Master. He will destroy you.” He screamed at me.

“Well, he has to be a lot better than your guardian on the road. My very presence destroyed him.”

“Aesma! Destroy this intruder!”

“Aesma!”

“You must not have heard me. I destroyed your guardian on the road.”

“Impossible. It rules the night!”

“Well, that explains your problem. My mistress rules the night, and she is a Goddess; a Goddess outranks simple demons.”

I pointed to the moon. “Oh mistress of the Night, the Night Hunter, the Great Huntress, I call your blessing on me. I request of you a minor hunt to rid your realm of these evil ones.”

The crescent glowed brightly as I turned to face the parking area with my wand pointing. “Pyro and Astra.”

A streak of fire and lightning hit the parking lot, and all the vehicles exploded into flames.

From behind me came growls as a pack of coal-black hounds moved around me to face the people there. A pale white horse stood next to me.

I jumped and mounted on the horse’s back. I felt something bounce on my right hip and, glancing down, saw an old-fashioned hunting horn hanging from my belt.

I bent down to the hounds and said, “Leave the bodies to serve as an example to any other evils.”

I sat back up and looked at the leader. He had backed up from the hounds. “The hunt has been called. Survive until the sun rises, and you will have escaped.” I put the horn to my lips.

“Urgh, urghe, urgeeeeeee.” It screamed out at the night, and the pack of hounds answered it with a bone-chilling howl. The mob broke everyone for themselves, and they ran.

I rode to the wood pile where Abby was fighting with the ropes. I pulled her over the withers of the horse. And then we were away. There was nothing like riding to the hunt. The thrill and fear were equal.

I soon had the rope off of Abby, and she was sitting in front of me astride the horse. She gripped its mane firmly in her hands. As the hounds howled, she answered them with her own scream. It was both pleasure and fright. She rode with me and experienced the wonder and bone-chilling fear of the hunt.

We rode to the hunt. We were death, and we rode a pale horse through the night. She witnessed with me as the hounds pulled one at a time to the ground, then killed that person. I bent to her ear as she saw the first one die. The black mist that was his soul rose, and the hound jumped and consumed it.