The Mission: Chapter 1

Being up early is something I have always been good at. Today more than ever, I’ve been waiting for this day for weeks. I jump up from my bed and walk to the big windows in my room. It’s like my personal routine, waking up and then walking to that precise place to see my dear Lear; the land that someday will be mine. When I was a little girl, I begged my dad to allow me to move to the highest and farthest place in the castle, somewhere I could admire the Mahalo mountains. In exchange, he, as always, took the opportunity to teach me a lesson, he told me that I could choose the place, yet I had to spruce it up first because this zone of the castle was abandoned.

At that moment, the emotion went through my body, and like that, at just six years old, I started to work with the help of the staff every single afternoon in my own space. I fought for what I wanted as my dad taught me since I can remember. Of course, back then I wanted to admire the Mahalo mountains, however, I also wanted to go as far as possible from the rest of the rooms, especially my parents’. My mom, the queen, was pregnant with my lovely brothers, the quadruplets, and I wasn’t planning to stay up at night because of them.

That memory makes me sigh, I always smile whenever I remember that, happy because my dad made me work for this and now my room has the tag of “The best place in the castle”. My younger siblings, especially the quadruplets, are jealous of it, that’s why I end up kicking them out of here all the time.

I turn my back to the window to change my clothes, I put on my hunter clothes, this is what we are, hunters. In Quheco there are seven kingdoms, we are all hunters, some more lethal than others. In Lear, my land, we specialize in hunting every flying creature, from the fiercest of the dragons to the tiniest and prettiest deathly butterfly.

Once I’m ready, I go back to my bed and with one single tug, I pull the blankets, letting them fall to the floor. Axah lets me know his deep disgust of my way to wake him up through our bond. Only the ones that have pure royal blood with a direct link to royalty, get to have a groj.

My dad once explained to me that when Quheco wasn’t divided yet and King Acir had control over every centimeter of land, he asked the Nature’s Spirits to put a mark in the gens of his wife, sons and daughters, and their respective wives and husbands, a special mark in their blood that will pass through generations. In that way, nobody could cheat saying they have royal blood. The gen didn’t have a way to prove it by itself, hence each time that a royal baby is born, they poke his or her left pinky finger to let a drop of blood fall into the king house’s ring. If the gene is in the blood, a groj will be born, otherwise, they will kill the baby on the grounds of them being an impostor.

Since the groj is born from the person’s blood, it creates a bond, destined to grow up together, their lives tied. If the person dies, the groj dies. If the groj is wounded, it doesn’t matter what kind of wound, they need only that their human lets a drop of blood fall into their wound to heal them.

We are one soul divided into two bodies.

Every groj is different, they are all shapeshifters, however, their powers and skills are connected with the ones from their humans. They rather communicate through the bond although provided their human puts some effort, time, and lots of dedication, they can be taught to talk.

On this occasion, for example, my groj isn’t chatty, nonetheless, through the bond he lets me know what he thinks of my way to wake him up.

“Your disgust can’t compete with my emotions today, Axah.” The bond works the same for both sides, he feels what I feel and the other way around. In general, if one of us is mad, it will affect the other, making him or her mad too, however when both of us feel very different emotions, the strongest one will win. Today, my emotions and anxiety mix wins.

“Let’s go, I want some fresh air before the ceremony starts, our lives will be different after today. I need you with me, Axah, we don’t know when we will be able to go to those woods again, this may be our last chance.”

“Okay, Akane” Finally he decides to answer me verbally. “But today you will take one of the castle horses, I’m not fully awake yet to transform into your loyal horse.”

“I can see that your ego is really high today, Axah” I answer, amused at hearing him refer to himself as a loyal horse. The truth is that Axah’s transformations are incredible. And who doesn’t love a horse with purple, blue, and a bit of yellow in its skin? “I’ll accept to take one of the castle horses with one condition.”

“Which one? Do you realize I can feel your adrenaline growing, right? Don’t you even think of doing something crazy, it’s way too early for that!”

Instead of answering him, I run to the window. When I’m about to jump, I send him a message through our bond.

“Catch me.”

I love to do this, Axah says I love danger. My room is at the highest point of the castle, which gives him more than enough time to transform and catch me before I touch the floor. He has the ability to teleport into short distances with a simple puff anyway.

I just pass my parents’ window, which means I’m halfway when Axah appears next to me. I can’t look at him because I’m falling, but I can see two big dark blue wings over me, catching me, covering me with his extremities in a way, the inertia won’t push me away. Seconds later, Axah is leaving me gently on the floor. He is still in his usual form, just added the giant wings and a bigger body.

Usually, he uses the size of a small fox with a small tail and a small dragon head. He took that shape when we were young.

Axah can transform into whatever he wants, but this one is his favorite. When I was just a kid and cried he always came close to me and wrapped his tail around me until I calmed down.

“I hate when you do that. If you die, I will die Akane. It’s enough for me to go with you on this mission, it’s like you are trying to die to be free of me or something like that.”

The last part of his comment provokes a quick laugh from me, we always annoy each other, although we feel the purest and loyal love for each other that can exist.

“Oh, come on, we don’t even know what the mission is about” I start to walk toward my own stable, where my horses and other animals are. One of my favorite parts of being a royal is that I have enough resources to take care of them in the best way. Even though I don’t like to have them in captivity, hence the ones living here are the ones that I rescued and are still healing, others I freed but like living here.

Once in the stable I look for my black horse, it’s the fastest one I have besides Axah. I get on him to go to the armory to look for my bow and spear, but as soon as I get out of the stables, I find my lovely groj with them.

Most of the time I prefer to use my spear, it’s made from a dragon tooth, its tip is covered in poison from the mysterious Grim Butterfly. Each time that my spear makes physical contact with the blood for a couple of minutes, the blood of that person or animal will be contaminated and will have a really painful death. If the spear only makes a fast contact for just a couple of seconds, the creature won’t die, just feel a terrible pain like it is in flames and be paralyzed for enough time for me to get close and kill it.

But its lethality is not the main reason why I love it as much as I do, it’s because of its uniqueness, passed through generations. My great-grandmother gave it to me before she died. And of course, everyone in Quheco hears about the famous Verlam at least once.

I take my spear from Axah’s mouth, put it on my side, then place my quiver on my back with my bow. In Lear, everyone knows how to use a bow. When we need to go after a dragon, a bow and arrows are the best choices to give them a fast death.

We start moving toward the waterfall’s direction since it’s only twenty minutes away from the castle. I don’t have enough time today to go further, and I need to be back and ready in two hours. Axah sits between the horse’s neck and my body, since it is still early, it’s more than clear that he is using this short trip to nap. As soon as we start going faster, I take my bow and arrow and ready them just in case something shows up.

We are almost there when I notice something moving really fast in our direction. Without thinking, I raise my bow and aim. When I’m close enough I see it’s a Giant red dragonfly, one sting of that won’t kill me but it won’t be nice either, so I let go of the arrow going through the center of the animal nailing it to a tree in front of me. I know the dragonfly is dead before touching the tree, so I keep moving without worries until I reach the waterfall.

Once there, I tied the horse to a close tree, leaving enough rope for him to move around. When I turned, Axah already transformed himself into some weird fish with some red and yellow colors. Taking off my shoes and leaving them in my bag with the horse, I leave my weapons right next to the water to dive in with my hunter clothes knowing that the sun and wind will dry them before I get back to the castle.

This is one of my favorite places. The waterfall is not that high but abundant, creating a small lake at the base and then going through a small river. We are mainly surrounded by trees and small plants, so we are hidden, also since we are so close to the castle there is no one living around.

After a while of playing with Axah and refreshing ourselves, I decide it’s time to go back, but when I’m about to reach for my weapons I notice with the corner of my eye a small movement. Immediately I sent a message to my groj.

“Be alert, I think I saw something, stay hidden until I tell you otherwise”

I trust my skills as a fighter, I always trained at least a little time a day. Axah is pretty good at fighting too, his reflexes are unique, though when we are in situations like this one where we aren’t sure what’s going on, I’d rather he stays hidden. Groj aren’t common and people don’t know the extension of their skills or how strong the bond is between us. I love to use my groj as a surprise factor; if the situation is looking bad, Axah just needs to show up and the person will get distracted, scared, or stare in astonishment, so I’ll just have to strike and that’s it.

It’s really easy and Axah loves to be the surprise factor, he always uses the occasion to show off with some extravagant colors.

Carefully I take my spear and move towards where I saw movement. With Verlam in my hand I move until I find some last-minute hiding spot, someone was here for sure.

I’m trying to follow any clue when someone attacks me from behind, “coward”, I think, and instantly Axah complains believing I was talking about him.

We fall in a mess of arms and legs, making me lose my spear on our way down. After some struggle and using a lot of my strength, I sit over the person, immobilizing them. It’s a guy I have never seen before. I notice my spear just a few feet from me but isn’t close enough for me to grab it, so I punch the guy in order to run and grab Verlam. When he finally stands up, I already have my spear just inches away from his throat.

“Who are you and how dare you attack me from behind? I can kill you right now.” I say with a threatening voice, the same one my dad uses all the time.

“I didn’t want to attack you.” Says the guy, raising his hand, surrendering. “I was close by and I heard something so I came closer… I was… uh… watching you.” As soon as I hear this, I move my spear closer to his skin. “Wait! Hold on, I was watching you because I thought you were talking with someone. When I came closer, I saw you were alone, I was curious, I thought...”

“What did you think?” I question using the same tone since he has stopped talking. He looks worried like scared that his thoughts will make me mad.

“I thought you needed help, then you came out of the water, hence I was about to move so you couldn’t see me and leave after you were gone. But you moved all stealthy with your spear so I thought I might need to take your weapon away before you attacked me with that.” As soon as he finishes talking, malicious smirk forms on his face. Before I have a chance to ask why he is smiling, something of an intense red hit the tip of Verlam really fast, taking it away from my hand.

Immediately his smirk changes into a horrified expression. “Nyssa!” he yells, running after the red ball that hit my spear. The guy is already kneeling, holding Nyssa when I come closer from behind after I grab Verlam. A few seconds later, my gaze focuses on the red creature, realizing it’s a groj, its body is similar to a bird but the head gives it away, the form is like a really small bear.

“You are a prince,” I say softly.

“What did you do to her?” Asks the guy. “What did the spear do to her?”

“Hold on, I didn’t do anything. Your groj flew right to the tip of my spear and she cut herself. It was just a couple of seconds, it will hurt like hell, still in a couple of minutes, she will be fine. Why didn’t you tell me you are a prince? Where are you from?”

“Otzo.” He answers dryly. “How do you know she’s a groj?”

I don’t want to reveal my identity, and so far he didn’t recognize me, so I decided to tell a small lie.

“Here we learn everything about flying creatures, we hunt everything that flies and in all my life I never heard about a bird with a bear’s head, so there’s only one option, groj. It wasn’t that hard.” I say feeling slightly bad for Nyssa. Once, when Axah was young, he cut himself with my spear, and the pain I felt through the bond was so intense, I wanted to cry.

The prince tries to take my spear but I don’t allow it. Instead, I give him one of my arrows. I can see Axah’s head coming out of the water, asking if he can come out but I shake my head slowly.

“You can cut yourself with this so you can heal her, but the pain won’t disappear right away. If you use my spear, what happened to Nyssa will happen to you.”

Looks like he didn’t recognize my spear either. I guess that, after all, everyone hears about the mortal Verlam, but does not know what it looks like. While the prince heals his groj with his blood I use the time to go to my horse and jump to the saddle. I noticed Axah, who became a small lizard.

“Ugly but fast.” He says through the bond. When he’s next to me, he changes into a little bluebird, and then we get away from there.

I imagine the prince realized I’m leaving since I hear him yelling “hey you! Don’t run away!” but it’s too late. With Nyssa hurt, I doubt he would come after me. When I finally put some distance between us, Axah asks out loud.

“Why didn’t you let him see me?”

“Oh, well, dear Axah, because otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to see his foolish face in the ceremony when he realizes I’m the Princess of Lear and the queen to be. And if he saw you, he would know immediately that I’m royalty.

“Good point, wicked girl. Let’s go, it’s getting late.”