Regius (34 page)

"What the hell was that?" I
looked over at Cali and then frowned deeply when I couldn't see him
anymore.

"Oh." He said airily. "I
just acquired this ability. It's no big deal." He appeared out of
nowhere.

"Seer barriers?!" I growled
as I stood. "While I was being chased by dogs, blades and fire, you
were tapping into powers Vervaine gave you?"

"If it makes you feel
better, I'm rather sure she didn't mean to give me them." He ducked
a rock I threw at him, laughing.

"And you used them on
me?!"

"If I'd meant to hurt you,
the Seer part in me wouldn't have allowed it, remember?" He stepped
closer, plucking leaves out of my jacket and patting my hair to
straighten it.

Shaking my head in
amusement, I looped my arm through his. "We should bout more
often."

"Agreed." He nodded. "How
long do you think we'll have to stay here?" He asked as we
continued on our way.

I shrugged. "No clue. But
I'm thinking long enough for us to have time to figure out how to
catch, kill and grill a bunny."

* * * *

While people I'd once been
close to saw Brass as a bad influence, I couldn't help but
disagree. And not because I was just that stubborn. Was Brass the
most righteous guy on Zinc? Far from, but I knew he wasn't the
worst guy. There were sides to him that not everybody was allowed
to see, but those he chose to show, were different because of it.
Brass was the type of person that once you knew him, he had such an
effect about the way you viewed everything you used to
know.

I'd never been a wuss, but
he was the one that told me it was okay to voice my wants I hadn't
dared speak aloud. One of had been to get out of LV. If I'd told
Helix, he wouldn't have understood. Brass though, he didn't close
off. He listened without judging, gave me objective and positive
opinions without letting his personal feelings meddle into it. I
didn't know a lot of people like that and it’s what made it easy to
forget all the fights we'd once had.

He thirsted for adventure
as I did, willing to see a side of Zinc that seemed frightening
when you'd lived your entire life in this remote and secluded
village. Brass’ motives weren’t completely pure or good. It needed
to be pointed out that his main reason for wanting to get out of LV
was because he'd 'nailed all the pretty girls in this hell hole, so
it was time to get out and see what other fish he could land'. Not
exactly close to my motives for wanting to get out, but I chose to
ignore Brass' high level of hormones and figured that all I needed
to focus on was that I wasn't alone anymore. Turns out it's sorta
important not to be alone when moving to the big city.

Cobalt City was definitely
very different from Lithium Village. One of the main key
differences was this thing called 'rent'.

"Stuff doesn't work the
same here as it did in LV." Brass agreed with my thoughts. We were
trying to make our way through Cobalt City's busy main street,
which was proving to be difficult. Whereas both of us had earned a
level of respect in LV, we really did not have the reputation here.
Basically, this meant the streets didn't clear to let us pass. It
would take some getting used to.

"For crying out loud!"
Brass shoved a boy of about our age to the side, clearly frustrated
with the fact that it was impossible to walk without getting
stopped every five seconds. Sighing, I grabbed his arm and gave him
a stern look. His now longish, brown curly hair bounced as his head
swiveled my way and the look he gave me was one that said 'no,
don't make me.'

"Brass." I
warned.

"Ugh, fine." Shrugging out
of my hold, he muttered an apology at the dude, turned back to look
at me and when my expression told him he was good, he smiled and
grabbed my wrist as we continued onwards. He still had some issues
grasping the whole 'non bully' behavior thing, but he was getting
much better.

"Anyway, as I was saying."
Brass continued, trying not to lash out at the people who bumped
into us. "Cobalt is so much bigger than LV, it's logical the living
system doesn’t work the same, you know?" Yes, I knew. We'd been
sleeping in an alley for the past three nights. It wasn't pleasant.
"Thinking about it, I think I figured it out." He announced
proudly, tugging me to the side of the busy street so we could take
a small break from the whole worming our way through.

"So you
can
use your
brain?"

"Don't be ass, Delph.
Here's the result." Smothering a smirk, I waved a hand in his
direction, gesturing for him to go on. "LV's population has always
been regularly the same, give or take a couple every year or so.
Point being, houses and jobs are passed on from one generation to
the next."

"I still can't believe
things are so different here though." I muttered, my gaze trying to
take in the hugeness that was this place. Sounds were different,
the weather was different, clothes people wore were different.
Although we'd had a garage in LV, there had never been a proper
road for cars to drive on. Here though? They were everywhere.
Shops, schools, offices, supermarkets, hairdressers. Everything was
in such large numbers.

"The only reason people in
LV work is to keep the town running and make sure the population
doesn't get bored. But in the end, gold isn't something they depend
on as everything is about fair trade there. If the baker doesn't
make the bread, it's not like the people can go anywhere else to
get it. And of course, say the baker decided not to make his buns,
the hairdresser would refuse to cut his hair." Brass looked over
our surroundings, shrugging his shoulders. "That system wouldn't
work here."

Clearly. On our second
night in that alley we'd been robbed of the little gold we did
have. That was something that would never have happened in LV.
There weren't even any proper alleys in that town to begin
with.

"Brilliant deduction, but
that still doesn't tell us what we need to do to sleep in a proper
bed tonight. The air gets humid at night here." I
whined.

"We need to find
jobs."

I snorted. "Oh, good plan,
Brass. Do I have to point out we have no skills
whatsoever?"

"So we lie."

"That won't be helping my
current hobby of trying to turn you into someone nice."

"Would you stop trying to
make me awesome? You're not my mother." I laughed at the way his
face contorted with annoyance.

"Kay, look." I sighed,
running a hand through my hair. "How about we find a way to get a
job the right way? I'm sure they've got some kind of program here
for those who don't know how to do squat, but do have the
motivation to learn something."

"That's another thing. I
think LV's college is only there so that there are enough teaching
positions for all the teachers there." Well, that was just creepy
on so many levels. About to grab Brass' wrist to tug him back into
the busy main street to try and make our way through, he stepped
out of my reach, his eyes wide with curiosity all of a
sudden.

"Brass...?"

"I'd so tap that." Great,
he'd locked onto a target. Sighing heavily, I came to stand beside
him and tried to see what he was seeing.

"Did you notice that the
blonds here aren't the same kind of blonds we have in LV?" Brass
murmured absently, his eyes still locked onto...of course it was a
girl. Pursing my lips at the woman, I nodded at his words. Because
Cobalt was bigger, it was as though the population offered a bigger
variety of skin and hair colors. The girl Brass had seen being one
of them. I'd thought Helix and Holly to be the lightest people in
Zinc, but I'd been wrong. There was a lighter shade, closer to
ivory. The curious thing here was that instead of the blue eyes
Helix and Holly and all other blonds in LV had, here they had black
eyes. They're skin was paler too, and they generally were extremely
tall. As though a race of their own.

Aside from those blonds,
there were also a lot of dark skinned people walking around here
wearing many layers of colorful fabrics wrapped around their heads.
They seemed to hide their hair and sometimes they wore veils to
mask their mouths. But I think the most surprising type of people
Brass and I had seen, were a group of tall, broad men wearing what
looked to be a type of uniform. While that had been strange in
itself, the funnier part had been their hair. It had been
blue.

Brass and I weren't idiots,
we recognized their physical traits to come from who used to be
known as the terrifying Regius. What with LV being oh so limited in
many ways, never had it occurred to us that there were still people
in Zinc who sported these traits. It made sense though. Although
the war had ended, it had only been a few centuries so it's not
like enough time had passed for the race to become extinct. Then
again, what did I know? I didn't really care in the end.

"Can you stop what you're
planning and return to our current situation?" I shoved Brass'
shoulder, hoping to get him moving. "Think of it this way. You
don't even have a home to invite her back to."

"Must you always face me
with the harsh truth of things?" Brass whined, but finally let me
push him out of his staring trance.

"I must. I'm the only one
who doesn't let hormones rule me."

Brass chuckled. "That's
just a polite way of saying you think with your brain while I think
with my penis."

"Well, you do." I pointed
out, now becoming irritated with the many people in the street
myself. "What kind of place would you like to work at?"

"You're letting me
pick?"

Nodding, we finally got the
flow of the walking pace set in this mass. "Let's try a garage
first. I think I like the idea of that. I'll learn, make money and
work out all at once."

"High freaking
maintenance." I muttered, locating the garage we'd passed by
yesterday.

"Oh, cause that bang of
hair blocking your right eye sprung up out of nowhere by itself? I
sleep in the same alley, Delph. I see you spend ten to twenty
minutes on it every morning to have it hang before your face the
way you think is right."

Laughing, I pushed him
towards the garage. "Shut up, Brass."

* * * *

A long time ago, a boy of
Regius blood was born the same year as a wolf that would strive to
become the pack master in his future. While the boy didn’t hold a
grand dream such as the beast, there was a similarity between them
that would one day lead the boy to pause in one of his dark
deeds.

It is one thing to be
different from all others around you, but something else entirely
when you are different from those that are already to begin with.
The boy was just that.

Born Regius, you were
ultimately categorized as 'other' in the land called Zinc. The
people that didn't have blue blood running through their veins
instantly viewed the Regius as evil. It had not happened often for
an Altor to think twice about this. Palliums even less. Of course,
nowadays, there were some exceptions. But compassion and humanity
towards the Regius had been lacking back when the boy had been
growing up.

While he looked like any
other Blue Blood, it was what took place in his mind that made even
the Regius believe him to be strange. Being the one person who is
twice the amount of different, it was safe to say that this boy
understood loneliness like no other.

As he grew, the wolf did
as well. Unlike the boy, the wolf was very much appreciated in his
pack. The other males respected him for his stability, strength,
devotion and courage. The females saw him as a very likely mate,
someone they knew would offer them beautiful, smart and strong
pups. As the boy grew up to be a very strange, secluded and quiet
man, the wolf grew to become his opposite.

Then how was it the
strange man would pause in his dark deeds to notice a similarity
between himself and the beast?

One night, as the wolf and
his pack traveled through Immortalis Silva, they were faced with
danger. The youngest of the pack had accidentally walked too far
from the others and so when the white lion roaming that particular
territory saw this, the great forest king went after the
pup.

Seeing this, the wolf
sprung to action, running as fast as he ever had to make it there
in time. And he did, the young remained untouched. The great white
lion crouched down with its shoulders moving slowly up and down,
preparing for an attack. The forest king did not anticipate that
the wolf would jump in the way. Canines clenched down onto its back
leg, a cry could be heard as pain rushed through the beast. The
young had run off by then, and the others wolves, hearing their
pack leader's frightened scream, ran and believing their leader
wouldn't survive.

They were not wrong. Had
the strange man not been up in the trees to witness the entire
scene, the great forest king would have surely finished the job.
But this Regius wouldn't allow it. The wolf had protected what was
dear to him and those he loved ran away, leaving him to fend for
himself. Alone and lonely. The strange man could relate to
that.