Chapter 18 Guts of steel
“Excuse me?” Elder Bainard wasn’t sure he had heard correctly.
Vandal’s faint smile did not waver. “I said I don’t want to join your clan,” he replied plainly, his voice carrying across the clearing like a quiet blade. “And I have no interest in your trial.”
A ripple of shock passed through the Green Tempest youths. Fenwick’s face split into a vicious grin while the others exchanged eager glances, sensing blood in the water.
Elder Bainard’s eyes narrowed, and his faint testing smile froze into something colder. Perfect.
The boy’s refusal gave him the excuse he had been waiting for. That ridiculous bow was clearly a high-grade resonance weapon that no gutter rat could ever afford. It gleamed with suppressed power.
The boy’s calm, quiet aura, despite his ragged clothes and white-streaked hair, screamed of a hidden fortune. No ordinary hobo walked around radiating such confidence after slaughtering a Wind Echo Leopard. He suspected the boy possessed valuable treasures. If his inner vision was correct, the faint spatial fluctuation around the boy’s finger suggested a silver-grade space ring.
A silver-grade ring on a beggar? The boy had stumbled into something extraordinary, and Bainard would not let it slip away.
“An outsider who refuses to explain himself properly, interferes with a clan trial, and now spits on our mercy?” Elder Bainard’s voice boomed, laced with feigned outrage. “You are no lost wanderer. You are an intruder trespassing on restricted grounds. Seize him!”
“Bring it.” Vandal seethed with fighting intent. A dangerous glint flashed in his pale blue eyes. The berserker core in his chest pulsed with excitement. He was itching for a fight.
The two adult warriors surged forward as earth-brown resonance flared around their fists. Elder Bainard raised his own hand and channeled a dense Earth Echo strike. A coiling serpent of stone and crushing force shot toward Vandal’s chest.
Sabine’s eyes widened in horror. She tore free from the older woman’s arms and lunged in front of Vandal with her arms spread wide.
“You won’t touch him!” she shouted, her voice trembling but fierce. “He saved my life! If you want to hurt him, you will have to go through me first!”
Vandal’s heart jolted. Idiot girl! Move! He reached out to pull her back, but it was too late.
The elder’s attack did not slow. The earthen serpent roared straight toward them both.
In a blur of motion, the older woman stepped forward with unnatural speed. Her body shimmered as a translucent silver guard field snapped into existence around her and Sabine. The Earth Echo serpent slammed into the barrier and shattered like glass against diamond. Not a single ripple disturbed the woman’s stance.
Her skin took on a faint metallic sheen, and her veins glowed with active recovery energy that instantly knit away the minor backlash.
Vandal’s eyes narrowed.
Elder Bainard stumbled back a step, his eyes widening. “Guard Echo…?”
The woman’s gentle expression melted into something colder and more authoritative. She gently pulled Sabine behind her and fixed the elder with a piercing stare.
“You dare raise a hand against my daughter after she has already suffered enough today?” Her voice was soft, yet it carried the weight of scripture. “I am Matron Clara Voss of the Unseeing Faith. We do not interfere in clan squabbles lightly, but I will not allow you to bully children under the guise of authority.”
A heavy silence fell over the clearing.
Vandal’s mind raced. Her mother? The revelation stunned him. If Sabine had such a powerful mother, why had she been kidnapped and sold into slavery?
The name “Unseeing Faith” hit the Green Tempest group like a thunderclap. Even Elder Bainard paled. The heretic organization was infamous for its fanatical opposition to ocular and hybrid resonances, and its influence stretched far beyond any single clan.
Elder Bainard’s warriors froze mid-step. He quickly masked his shock with a strained smile.
“You… you are one of them?” he asked carefully.
Clara’s smile was thin and dangerous. “Indeed. If you value the continued existence of your little recruitment trial and your clan’s survival, you will let us leave now. Harm this boy again, and the Faith will consider it an act of war. We have toppled stronger powers for less.”
“I thought your organization only hunted and destroyed people who possess ocular resonance,” Elder Bainard said, his tone sharp. “So why are you fixated on standing against us for a homeless child? Your daughter is clearly misguided, but I expected you to be more astute.”
She must never find out I have this eye.
“Don’t make me repeat myself,” Clara said in a deliberately low tone, each word laced with threat. “You won’t like what happens next if I do.”
The elder’s fists clenched at his sides. For a long moment, murderous intent warred with cold calculation behind his eyes. Then his shoulders relaxed in a show of reluctant deference.
“Very well,” he said through gritted teeth. “Take your stray and go. The Green Tempest Clan has no intention of going to war with the Unseeing Faith today.”
He waved a hand, and the warriors stepped back. The youths muttered in disbelief, but none dared speak.
As Sabine grabbed Vandal’s arm and began pulling him away, Elder Bainard turned slightly, pretending to stroke his beard. In that brief motion, a nearly invisible thread of resonance energy, thin as spider silk, slipped from his sleeve and latched onto the back of Vandal’s collar.
Run while you can, boy.
Vandal felt nothing. He simply walked beside Sabine and Clara, his pale blue eyes carefully monitoring his surroundings. The group vanished into the treeline, leaving the stunned trial participants and a quietly seething Elder Bainard behind.
Only when they were well out of sight did Clara glance sideways at Vandal, her voice low. “You had best always be careful, child. The Faith does not involve itself with outsiders lightly, but my daughter owes you her life. For now, that is enough. Walk with us. The forest grows dangerous after dark.”