Free Wind Warrior by Jon Messenger Page B

turned from a faint breeze to a
gusting hurricane that nearly knocked Xander from his feet. The
wind blew from behind him but never passed his body. It poured into
him like water into a pail, filling him quickly to the brim. The
gusting wind whispered to him as it filled his essence, speaking in
a language he didn’t understand but telling a story he knew all too
well. In that divine moment, Xander reached a point of celestial
clarity.
    With a wave of his hand, the wind crashed
into the wall of flames. The fire swirled madly before burning down
to hot coals on the ground. Xander stepped through, his eyes
glowing a frigid white in the moonless night.
    The Fire Warriors were frozen in a horseshoe
around his grandfather, who knelt on one knee clutching his chest.
Before the first Fire Warrior could turn toward the new threat,
Xander formed a ball of air in his hand and whipped it outward. The
ball crashed into the nearest warrior, lifting him from his feet
and throwing him into the depths of the park. Xander heard him
crash into a tree and heard the splintering of wood from the
impact.
    He easily turned the ball on the next Fire
Warrior, striking him in the back and sending the warrior sprawling
into the mud.
    The rest of the Fire Warriors scattered as
Xander continued his assault. From the corner of his eye, he saw a
ball of flame soaring at him. A flick of his wrist turned the
blowing wind into hurricane strength, which easily deflected the
fireball. He turned the wind on the Fire Warrior that attacked him,
sending him tumbling end over end into the woods.
    “ Stop right now!” a voice
yelled from across the park.
    Xander turned to the sound and found a
warrior holding his grandfather by the throat. In his other hand,
fire roared between his fingertips. Xander could see the anguish on
the old man’s face and knew that even the hand that held him in
place had to be hot enough to burn his flesh.
    “ Turn down the wind or I’ll
burn the old man to the ground.”
    The smoldering white in Xander’s eyes faded
and the wind that whipped his hair about receded into his body.
    “ What do you think you’re
doing here?” Xander asked, holding his arms out wide in a show of
surrender.
    “ We’re claiming what’s
ours,” the Fire Warrior replied.
    “ By killing the Wind Caste?
I may be new to this but I’m pretty sure that’s not how it
works.”
    The warrior laughed derisively. “And you
think we should, wait another sixty years until you finally decided
to have the decency to die? Lord Balor might have waited for this
old man and his crew to pass on but you’re something different. We
won’t wait for any longer before we take what’s rightfully
ours.”
    “ It’s not yours,” Xander
replied. “It’s still mine! I just found out that there’s this whole
world that I never knew existed. I just found out I’m something far
more special than just another slacker college student. I’m not
about to give that up just yet.”
    “ You can’t stop us. Wind
feeds the flame, remember? The best thing you could have done would
have been to die when Sammy tried to kill you. Now you’re going to
die and she’s going to suffer for her failure.”
    The mention of Sammy ignited a flame in
Xander’s chest. There was no reason why he should be so willing to
protect her when she had clearly betrayed him, but the moment the
warrior threatened her, he felt himself grow dangerously
defensive.
    “ Not if I take away your
fuel,” Xander growled.
    A bubble appeared around the Fire Warrior’s
hand. When Xander jerked both his hands backward, the air was
sucked out of the bubble in jets of pressurized air. Without the
oxygen to feed his flames, the fire on the warrior’s hand
disappeared in a puff of smoke.
    “ What did you—?”
    The warrior couldn’t finish his sentence as
another bubble appeared around his head. Sammy had wondered if he
could truly pull the oxygen from the bubble when he had her
trapped. At the time, he