Resurrection (23 page)

Meanwhile, Maddie worked diligently with her grandparents to develop her skills and powers. She had attained the level where her grandparents could no longer teach her. Her powers simply surpassed theirs. Her Power of Telekinesis was exceptionally strong. They had taught her to harness it and to only call upon it in extreme emergencies. It was nothing at all for her to move small objects around, and they told her to practice this daily so that her powers would stay sharp.

Her physical strength even amazed Maddie. She could fight! She became an expert in the martial arts and was fast. She could drop her opponents before they knew what hit them. She felt worthless, however, and had a burning to be involved with a cause.

* * * * *

“I want to become a Guardian,” Maddie breathlessly announced. She was slightly winded from her run to the palace.

Rowan glanced at Annalise.

“I should have expected this, but you have taken me by surprise, Maddie. I have heard how adept you have become with your abilities.” Rowan didn’t tell her of the praises he continually heard about. There were too many to recount.

“Maddie, becoming a Guardian is not an easy task.”

“I know that, Annalise, but I want to do it. I have been training, and I am now at the top ranking in my fighting abilities. I am strong, really strong,” she said with a giggle.

“It takes more than physical strength, Maddie,” Rowan added. He was examining her and noticing how much more developed her muscles had become.

“Please, I know all of that. I have done a significant amount of research on it. I want to do it. I want to become skilled. Look, Rayn will want to lock me up in a gilt cage because of his protective instincts. If I can learn to take care of myself, fight back, and defend myself, he will be more likely to allow me to stay with him. I don’t want to live sheltered in a cage.”

“You will be tested to the limit, physically and mentally. Some students break in the process, Maddie. It is difficult, and it takes time.” Rowan worried what could happen to her during this training.

“I know. Look, I have been through some undesirable situations, and I am prepared to face whatever it takes. Please!”

“Your life will change, Maddie. You will be a changed female. You do realize they will torture you as part of your training. You understand this?”

“Yes! I’ve been there and done that. I am willing to do whatever it takes. Please!”

“Rayn is going to have my head for this. They will beat you and test your endurance, and they will want to know how much torture you can endure before they break you. Do you understand what I am saying? Rayn will be out of his head over this.”

“He will want to have your head, but he won’t actually take it. That is why I came to you. Besides, he won’t be out of his head if he doesn’t know.”

“Clever female! I will make the arrangements on one condition. If you get there and decide being a Guardian is not for you, there is no shame in withdrawing. I want your promise that you will do so without it weighing on your conscience.”

Maddie jumped in his arms, nearly knocking him down.

“Thank you! Thank you! I won’t quit Rowan. I’ve never been a quitter.”

“You will not be thanking me for long, dear Maddie.”

“My lord, remember, not a word to Rayn or the rest of the family. I don’t want them to know.”

Maddie’s entrance into the Guardian Academy came with a rigorous training requirement. She would have to become a master at hand-to-hand combat, weaponry, and targeting.

She had already become highly skilled at the Vesturion form of martial arts. Her leg strength was astounding, and her accuracy in her kicks often left her opponents unconscious or disabled at the very least.

After her first month of training, she found herself dragging herself to her quarters, exhausted from the intense work out. She could barely keep her head from sagging, but she did not allow herself to show any kind of weakness to her fellow students.

When she reached her quarters, one of her fellow female students was barring her entrance. This female had dogged Maddie all day, and she was ruthlessly attempting to sabotage everything she did.

“What do you want now, Ondine?” Maddie sighed with aggravation.

“You think you are special, don’t you? You have squirmed your way in with the right people. You have all the right connections through your grandparents, and you think just because you were born on Earth that you deserve special treatment. Well, I just want to warn you that my friends and I are on to you, and we will do everything we can to prevent you from succeeding here. You got that?”

Maddie was exhausted, but she knew she could take Ondine down with an accurately placed kick to the side of her head. She knew if she did that, she would have hell to pay.

Instead, she reached out, grabbed Ondine’s keikogi near her neck, leaned in, and growled, “You can try to threaten me all you want, but let me be clear: I will always win. I will beat you at hand to hand. I will beat you in targeting. I will beat you at weaponry and swording. I will also beat you at telekinesis, and I’ll beat all your friends too. You think you can prevent me from succeeding? Let me be clear again: I will have you removed from the Academy for your inefficiency and lack of ability to become a skilled Guardian. I will be watching everything you do, Ondine, so you better watch your back.” By the time Maddie finished, she had pulled a throwing knife from her sleeve and had it resting against Ondine’s throat. “Do we understand each other, Ondine?”

Ondine was visibly shaken and could barely speak.

“I asked you a question. Do we understand each other?”

Ondine nodded, and when Maddie stepped away from her, she took off running down the hall.

Well, I guess I’ve made enemy number one
, she thought. From that point on, Maddie would have to watch her back. She realized she would have to be tougher than anyone else in her class in order to earn their respect, but she didn’t think she would become a target so quickly.

She barely made it into her quarters before collapsing into an exhausted sleep.

* * * * *

Maddie’s skills continued to expand. The trainees were outfitted with the best and most advanced of all of Vesturon’s weapons. However, they still demanded that the students become proficient at fighting with more primitive weapons, such as throwing knives, stars and swords.

Probably due to her foot skills on the soccer field, Maddie’s finesse at sword fighting was exquisite. Her feet would quickly dance across the floor and confuse her opponent so thoroughly that Maddie would have them on their backs before they even knew what happened. She was so skilled in this that she gained the notice of all the instructors and quickly became the student everyone wanted to compare himself or herself to.

This secretly thrilled Maddie. She couldn’t believe how she excelled at this when there was a time she couldn’t walk across the room without tripping and falling. This truly baffled her.

She asked several of her instructors why they thought this to be, but it was Julian who came up with the answer.

He paid Maddie a visit one day to assess her health. It was a follow up exam from her injuries, but he also wanted to start treating her so that her muscles and bones would be better able to adapt to Vesturon.

When he completed his scans, he was surprised at how much her bone and muscle mass had increased in density. After thinking about it a moment, he surmised that it was because her Vesturion genetic background was adapting to the gravitational force of Vesturon on its own accord.

Maddie told Julian of her skill levels. She was proud of how she had excelled in areas she previously thought would have been an impossibility in her former life.

Then she added, “I used to feel clumsy all the time, almost like my feet were too big or something. It was like one part of me wanted to do one thing and the other part wanted to do something different.”

“Maddie, I think what has happened is your Vesturion DNA has finally taken over. It may have been at odds with your human DNA, trying to fight it, which, in turn, may have lead to your clumsiness. Once you came to Vesturon, however, your Vesturion DNA became stronger and is now subduing your human DNA.”

“Do you think I will revert to my former self if I return to Earth?”

“No, because now your bone and muscle density is that of a Vesturion, so it will control your activity now. The only negative is that you may experience some temporary headaches occasionally. In time, those will completely disappear.”

“That is excellent news!” she exclaimed. “I don’t want to feel uncoordinated like that again. I like my new strength much better. One last thing, Julian, you must not say anything to Rayn if you happen to speak with him. He is unaware that I am in the Academy, and he would kill me if he knew.”

“I am sworn to secrecy, Maddie. Good luck with your endeavors!” he said as he left.

* * * * *

While the activity part of her training came easy for her, the educational part was extremely difficult. She had to study twice as hard as she had twice as much to learn. Maddie had always been academically gifted, so it was simply a matter of having to spend more time on this area than the other students.

The Guardians paired her with a telekinesis master who taught her how to concentrate and focus her energy to harness her gift, enabling her to take her powers to the maximum level. She was incredibly strong, and it was nothing for her to move gargantuan objects. Her master even had her move a Star Fighter, which she did with ease.

To some of the other trainees, it seemed that everything came easy to her, but in truth, Maddie was working extremely hard. Every night, she would fall into bed, overcome with fatigue.

Maddie was out on a training mission. She had been assigned to a position in the D quadrant of the Unforgiving Forest. Its official name was The Forest of Hills, but the Guardian trainees had dubbed it The Unforgiving Forest years ago. They named it such because the missions there proved to be difficult and sometimes life threatening, not to mention the place was relatively uninhabitable.

The forest was complicated to navigate, with massively twisted trees, vines, and giant thorny brambles, making navigation extremely tricky and dangerous. It was also the home of brutally unfriendly and vicious wildlife. The forest itself was surrounded by a barrier that made supernatural powers relatively useless. Telepathy worked within the forest itself, but it didn’t work from within it to outside of it. The Power of Telekinesis was greatly diminished within its boundaries. The best you could accomplish was perhaps moving a small rock.

The trainees were expected to live off the land for days on end, yet water and edible food was impossibly difficult to find and nearly nonexistent. The temperatures were extreme, ranging from below freezing at night to well over one hundred degrees during the day. Many trainees found themselves in the medical facility, after they had been evacuated for health reasons from this miserable place.

Maddie had her work cut out for her. Her job was to find and confiscate her enemy’s cache of weapons and communicators. She was working alone. They had given her a primitive navigator, to help her find her way, a container for water, and a purifier to keep her from contracting a deadly waterborne disease. She was not given any modern equipment other than that. She had no weapons, but she had slipped her dagger into her boot before she left. She had no fire stick, so she would be in total darkness at night.

Maddie wasn’t worried about anything, except for getting caught by her enemy. If she was captured, she would receive negative points, and that would set her further away from graduating.

She had acquired excellent survival skills. As long as she had a good water source, she could go for days without eating. She should have no problems locating some
awanhi
, which was a plant that provided basic nourishment by sucking the gel out of the leaves. Most people didn’t realize that the plant was abundant in The Unforgiving Forest. One simply had to know where to look.

Maddie also didn’t fear the creatures that lived here. She knew where to seek shelter safely away from anything that could harm her. She knew to go up, high in a tree, and take shelter above the ground. It afforded the best chance of survival.

Luckily for Maddie, when they came to her quarters before dawn to “grab” her, she was wearing cargo pants and a sensored long sleeved shirt. Normally, the trainers would arrive at your quarters without warning and offer you no chance to prepare yourself. You would be taken in whatever you had on at the time, which is one reason why Maddie never wore her jammies. She had also learned to sleep in rubber-soled boots; she never went anywhere without her boots.

Since she always slept in a sensored shirt—the fabric was woven with hundreds of tiny sensors that kept you in your comfort zone—she wouldn’t have the discomfort of being hot or cold.

Her trainers had told her repeatedly to always be prepared no matter what. She took everything they said to heart. This even extended to her very quick daily showers that lasted two minutes at the most. She had learned to live with dirty hair, and she never washed her hair when she showered. She always did it separately, at different times. It took too long to do both, and she didn’t want to chance being thrown out in the cold with a dripping mass of tangled curls. She carefully timed her shampooing, usually at the expense of a dinner.

For her current mission, she had been forced to bail off a speedster, a type of vehicle that was similar to a motorcycle minus the wheels. The speedster could travel at high speeds, hovering over the ground. The driver had been kind enough to slow down a bit so that when she bailed off, she only ended up with some scrapes and bruises. She was lucky. Sometimes when you leaped off of speedsters in The Unforgiving Forest, you ended up in a tangle of vines and thorns with deep lacerations and a broken limb or two. That could severely affect your chances of having a successful mission.