The Last of the Sages (Sage Trilogy, Book 1) (4 page)

“All these pixies running around trying ta get a bum to clean up after. I’m in no rush. Trying ta make something o myself first. All love brings you is heartache and headaches.”

“Says the girl who’s never been in love,” Jennings snickered. “You just wait. You’ll meet Mr. Right and then all of a sudden you’ll be in the hair salon getting bathed in…strawberry autumn blossom or whatever they call those fragrances.”

“I know ma priorities.”

“Sure you do.”

“Anyways,” Leidy said, putting an arm around James’s neck. “Now that James had his first hair kiss, we’re practically engaged. Surely he has ta come wit me on a castle expedition now. Our first date.”

“Wish I could,” James muttered, thinking of tomorrow. This was it. Now or never.

“What,” Korey replied. “You going on vacation for a few days?”

“I love how Korey’s acting like he’s going all of a sudden,” Jennings replied.

“You look glum, James,” Leidy ignored Korey and leaned into James’s face. “Not gettin enough sleep?”

Korey giggled and Jennings punched him in the arm.

“Let the man talk.”

“I’ll be leaving tomorrow,” James sighed, feeling a little embarrassed. “For the Academy.”

He let the information sink in as his friends looked at one another in horror.

“
The Academ
y
,” Jennings said in all seriousness, leaning towards him. “The Sentinel Academy?”

“Yeah. One and the same.”

“What’d you fill out an application while you were sleep walking?”

“My father,” he said. That was all that needed to be said. Jennings shook his head in disbelief.

“Oh,” Korey said quietly, looking out towards the castle.

“Oh!” Leidy cried as she wrapped her arms around James’s neck. She began to sob into his cheek as he thrust her off violently.

“Geez, Leidy. I’m not dead yet.”

“But…no one comes back. No one, James.”

“I know,” he said firmly. If she didn’t shut up soon, he was going to start crying himself.

“I know he wants to motivate you,” Jennings said through a clenched jaw, “even make a man out of you. All that garbage. But this is ridiculous. He knows the statistics, the life expectancy. Does he want to get you killed?”

“You’re making me think he does.”

“There’s still some hope, isn’t there?” Korey asked.

“When yeh go to tha Academy,” Leidy sobbed. “It’s like a death sentence. Yeh know we’re a small Kingdom, and no one in r village knows basic combat. We’ve been in a bubble. The Academy trains lost souls, citizens of Allay that have nothin left ta lose. They train them ta die. Ta become sacrifices for whatever Kingdoms r out there so they’ll leave us alone.”

“Tell me something I don’t know!” James shouted at her.

“You don’t really think there are other Kingdoms out there, do you?” Korey inquired.

“We’ve all seen tha strange markin’s and scars o battle along tha Kingdom walls,” Leidy said assuredly. “Somethin went down around here. Coulda been a hundred years ago but there’s evidence of otters out there.”

“So you don’t actually know?” Jennings asked.

“No.”

“Then why are you scaring him with stories of sacrificial offerings and death? All we know is that anyone who goes to the Academy never comes back, and is usually reported dead within a few months. We don’t actually know if they die. They may become ambassadors of Allay, negotiating for our safety instead of dying for it.”

“Regardless,” Leidy sobbed. “It’s a sacrifice.”

“Can his father just sign him up like that?’ Korey asked.

“Yeah,” Jennings said. “Unless he’s proven that he has a stable occupation that benefits the community, he can be drafted, so to speak.”

“Guess you should’ve gotten a job, James,” Korey said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jennings smirked. “We all know James. First chance he gets, he’ll make his escape. He might be leaving us, but he’s not going to the Academy.”

James hated Jennings sometimes.

“Why would you say that?” James snapped at him. “You’re making me sound like a coward.”

Jennings got up and stared directly into his face, their noses nearly touching. Jennings knew to call his bluff.

“Because you are,” he whispered. James clenched his jaw, imagining scenarios in which he might be able to win against the athlete, but nothing came to mind. So, he did what he was best at, regardless of what his friends thought of him.

He was going to leave…

“You never gave me a chance to say what I thought of the whole thing,” James said as he began backing away.

“Don’t have to,” Jennings said, his eyebrows lifting at seeing his friend start backing off towards the village. “Your face says it all. The only reason you’d consider otherwise is because I’m making you think of an alternative right now.”

James kept walking backwards.

“Well, it’s been fun,” he called. “But I gotta go. Have to become a soldier tomorrow.”

“Are you seriously going to the Academy? Don’t go just because I called you a wuss.”

“Guess you’ll find out.”

“We’ll be seein yeh, James,” Leidy cried, running forward and giving him a kiss on the cheek. She began crying loudly again so he turned away from her, in case he started getting emotional too. Korey gave him a lazy goodbye with a wave of the hand, and Jennings contributed with a head nod, his competitive spirit finally subsiding.

“See you, Jennings,” James said as he nodded back, turning to start back home. Quite frankly, he was pissed. What right did Jennings have calling him out like that? Was he saying that if he was in the same situation, he would just go through with it like a mindless idiot? As much as James’s pride was wounded though, he couldn’t deny that Jennings was right.

He would have to make his escape.

But he didn’t think running made him a coward. He just saw nothing positive about going through the Academy’s program. Even if he tried his best and ascended through the ranks, it would only cause his death to come quicker - in the shape of his graduation to the battlefield. The only ones who never had to worry about anything were the King and Queen. All they had to do was survive their own birth. What else did they ever have to work for?

James made it home quickly, ready to go to bed early and face the next day as it arrived. But unfortunately, his father was already waiting, in the same position he had left him in, cooking on the stove. Probably ready to “share his wisdom” with his son.

Sure, James had his own beliefs and opinions, but he decided there was no point in relaying them to others. They’d either laugh and think that either he was joking, or he was really dumb. And it did sound ridiculous when it was said out loud.

Laziness as a way of life?

It made no sense to the logical mind. But James figured that it was better to stay still and wait for conflict to come to him than to go looking for it. People were too quick to act on impulse, to get themselves into messes they could’ve easily avoided
.
If only I had had the foresight to avoid this on
e,
he thought.

“Hello,” James’s father said, with no hint of ulterior motive in his voice. James wasn’t fooled.

“Hey, dad,” he said flatly, taking a seat next to him as his father began eating a couple of fried eggs.

“Long day?” his father asked through bites.

“You know it…Jennings and the gang – we all had lunch in the meadow.”

“That’s good. Last moments together, huh?”

“More like last memories.”

“You’ll see them again someday.”

“Says who?” he raised his voice, wavering on the brink of disrespect.

“There’s no reason you can’t. When vacation break comes next summer, you can visit.”

“Nobody comes back over summer vacation, Dad. No one’s lived that long.”

“Just because no one comes back home doesn’t mean they all die. Maybe they go to the Academy and find something worth staying for. A sense of purpose.”

“Yeah, right,” James snapped. His dad gave him a glare.

“You believe what people say too much,” he said casually, keeping his gaze steady. “And you’re too lazy to see if it’s true. You fail to understand that anything worth knowing requires hard work. Not half stepping. I’m talking blood-coming-from-your-hands, sweat-blurring-your-vision kind of work.”

“Dad, Leidy cried today because I told them I’m leaving. She never cries. Never.”

“Crying when someone’s leaving is only natural.”

“Dad, but my friends-”

“-are overrated.”

“What?” James yelled back at him. He got up from the table and looked at his father angrily. His father barely moved.

“Friends come and go. When you go to the next grade in school. When you move. When you have a change in interests. There’s nothing wrong with friends. But you place too much value in them. When you leave, their lives will go on and slowly but surely, you will take up less and less of their thoughts. Someday you’ll understand, James. You have to be a man of principle, and live for yourself first. Get your act together. Then you can enjoy the pleasures of this life.”

“Just because you lost all your friends, doesn’t mean I will.”

“I know…but like I said. Lives go on. Even if you’re still committed to them, they may grow well accustomed to life without you.”

“There’s no point in talking about this right now. We’ll see when the time comes.”

“Fine, but there is one more thing I wanted to talk to you about.”

“What is it?” James sighed through restraints.

“I know you’re not happy about this whole Academy thing, but I really do think it’s in your best interests to give it a shot. Don’t run away from this. This is an opportunity to make something of yourself.”

“Who says I want to be a soldier?”

“No one. But you may find the discipline and resolve necessary to carry you into what you actually want in life. You can be whatever you want to be, James. But you need to grow up.”

“That’s a lie all parents say, but it doesn’t line up with the conditions around us. It’s not reality.”

“It’s true.”

“What if I wanted to fly? That’s impossible.”

“Not necessarily. You might have to study the physics. Maybe understand how birds fly in the first place. After all, a lot of our inventions and infrastructures are based off of ideas that were taken from examining nature.”

“What if I wanted to be king?”

“Might have to become devoted to that goal completely. Pursue and devote your very life to a princess or queen. Show you’re the best man for the job and that you’re not in it for the wrong reasons.”

“What about the Maker?”

“…James.”

“What? I can be anything, right?”

“You might be able to convince some that you’re him,” his father sighed. “People tend to be gullible. But don’t be surprised if the consequences of such an act aren’t what you intended.”

“One more question then. If I can be anything…why are you nothing?”

His father laughed heartily. Not at all what James was expecting. But before he could recover from the surprise, his father leapt out of his chair and shot directly towards him. In a second, James was backed up against the wall. The force of the slam caused several spices, pots, and pans from the counter to fall to their feet as his father made him realize that under his grip, he was still just a child.

“A sniveling, pompous little brat to the end,” he breathed heavily in his son’s face. James didn’t dare move. “You drone on and on about what you believe in but at the first sign of trouble I know you’ll run. Just like your mother. You stand there and say I’m nothing, but then what does that make you? So what if your father’s not what you want him to be? So what if your momma ran out on you? So what? You’re the problem. Just you. At the end of the day, we choose what we are, and what you are is a coward.”

James gulped down his fear and balled up a fist. His father looked down at it and then back into his son’s eyes, chuckling from within and giving him a smirk of superiority.

“Am I making you mad? Am I finally getting a rise out of you? Or are you too lazy to take action?”

He chuckled and let his son loose from his grip. Brushing himself off, James continued to stare at his father in disdain as he walked away, confident and silently reveling in the fact that he was still the alpha male. James sneered and spat out the words he had been holding back for years. It was the only attack that could hit its mark with deadly, painful accuracy.

“She left because of you!”

His father stopped in his tracks, sighed heavily and turned his head, his lips barely visible as he spoke. 

“Get out of my house…tonight. You have ten minutes to gather your things.”

“Where am I supposed to go?”

“The Academy. You wanted to get there early, didn’t you?”

“I need more than ten minutes.”

“Any longer and your stuff goes in the burn barrel.”