Sulphur & Lightning Chapter 17: 016 - Live!

Read chapter 17 of Sulphur & Lightning by anaugustauthor on NovelPedia.

Outcast indeed, he thought resentfully. He had always been, now that he thought about it. His mind drifted to older memories, ignoring the horned beast that was thrashing violently in the throes of another mutation. This was years ago, back in his time with his guardian, Atafa. The young boy lay on the ground covered in wounds. It was a regular day of training. “Your kind are meant to heal faster.” Elijah didn’t reply to his taunt and instead focused on looking for an opening. He knew that any lip he gave would be returned with brutal punishment. A kick to the skull sent him rolling across the dirt, his momentum only arrested by contact with one of the training dummies erected like as many trees in a forest. Then again, whether or not he spoke, the punishment was always brutal. “Why not attack?” “I can’t win.” His master gave a sound of surprised amusement. “And you think I’ll let you off just because you don’t fight back.” The young Lycan didn’t dare answer, but that was indeed in expectation; even a sadist bastard like him had to relent, no? The training session ended up with the man’s sword buried in his student’s leg, straight into the bone. “You seem to not understand what exactly it is you are.” The man spoke while he leaned on his weapon’s hilt, caring not that the added weight was excruciating to his impaled charge. “Life doesn’t care that you can’t win. Life will not give you a break because you do not fight back.” Smack! Atafa felt the blood drip down from his brow as the enraged yellow eyes of the young child burned a hole into him. His own vision turned to the small rock that had struck him. “You must marvel at the gifts of your body,” he said with a grin, “the ability to turn a small stone into a missile without relying on chants or spells. The ability to heal from deadly wounds at rates that defy mortal limits. Authority over all Earth Metals. What power you must revel in.” Due to the separation caused by the surprise attack, he was now crouched a little distance away from his master, the wounds healing rapidly like he had said. “Don’t be fooled; your powers aren’t some blessing. Mistress Ani didn’t give you these abilities to make you rulers or to make you special. The Earth has made your kind outcasts. You were given these special abilities so that you would tower over trembling creation like a giant and so that your fall by the hands of the august Elves would be all the more glorious. You were abhorred by Mother Earth from the moment she spat you out, and even now she, and all her creation with her, desire your destruction. Do you understand now what you are? Not just an osu, not just an outcast. You’re an abomination.” Elijah’s fury had cooled as he listened to his master’s diatribe. He looked at his hands with complex emotions. Moments ago, they had been covered with wounds; there wasn’t even evidence of scarring now. This was… unnatural. He was a monster. Unwanted. The gods reviled him. The earth abhorred him. Even his own parents… wasn’t it evidence of how much they cared that they had left him in the charge of this tyrant and had only seen him once since then? What was he? Why was he here? Why should he struggle against aggression and pain for an existence undesired? “What should I do?” His voice was barely audible and carried with it a brokenness that could barely be imagined, let alone described. What could be done? What answer would satisfy such a question? Atafa turned away from him and began walking back to his quarters. “There’s only one thing you can do,” he said almost carelessly over his shoulder. “Live!” Back in the present, the words of his father came to him. That exact same wish: live! Yellow eyes glistened with energy as, moved by some power he couldn’t understand, Elijah’s body moved with its usual alacrity, evading what should have been the death knell from the mutant’s charge. No wonder it took so long to finish me off. Before him, the creature once recognisable as a wildebeest had crosse