My name is Steven Andrew Roberts Jr. my friends call
me Steve but sometimes other people call me Master Warrior. The story behind the name Master Warrior began the day I was born. To fully understand my story it is best if I start at the beginning. I grew up pretty much normally in a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania during the seventies and eighties. My Early childhood was uneventful it was just me, my parents and my younger sister by seven years. I went to school, made friends not having any idea I was any different than them. My best friend through school was Gary Rogers, I guess you could compare Gary to Eddie Haskell on Leave it to Beaver. To my parents he was always to polite and credulous young boy. But when it was just him and me or other guys our own age he always seemed to find a way to get us in trouble. Still to this day I remember the thing that always bothered me about Gary. He always called my Mom the “HOT MOM”. Even once in our late teens he commented on how she never seemed to get any older. But I’m jumping ahead.
I was about twelve when I first began to suspect that I was different from other boys my age. When we began to learn about puberty in school and how our bodies would change, I became all too aware that mine was not changing. For the next year I watched as all the other boys grew hair on their bodies, their muscles got bigger as they grew into young men and I stayed a hairless little boy. One day after gym class when one of the larger boys was picking on me about being little I went home to talk to my dad about it. He tried to be supportive but I could tell he was really worried about me. Back then when I was young I loved soccer. I played every chance I could but as the other boys got bigger, I got picked for team sports closer and closer to last. Through it all when the other boys picked on me, Gary was always by my side as my best friend and defender.
By the time I was thirteen I had taken to spiking my hair up to make myself look taller, but that didn’t stop the school nurse, Mrs. Baker. She had heard the rumors about me and called me to her office. I was totally humiliated when she told me she was going to give me a physical. I had no idea what to do other than to do as she said. I stood there naked in front of her as she shook her head in disbelief. If that wasn’t bad enough she called my parent and insisted that I be taken to a doctor about my condition. That was the first time I ever heard my parents argue. My mother wanted to take me out of school and my father insisted I see a doctor as the nurse instructed. But I felt there was more to what was going on with me than they were telling me.
In the end I didn’t go to a doctor I went to Summer Camp instead, Gary went too. Gary had a different kind of home life than I did. His mother had died when he was young and his father never stayed with one woman for too long. The first day of camp we got our tent assignment, Gary and I are sharing a tent with two other boys, Brad Jurgens and Pete Stapleton. Pete was our age but Brad was older than us. While we are unpacking one of the guys in our the tent, Brad, made fun of me because I was so small. I was really upset by what Brad said and I took a swing at him. Gary and Pete broke up the fight before I got hurt. After that camp that year was great. No one had any idea how old I was or that I was a thirteen year old in an eleven year old’s body. The only drawback was how Gary kept telling me that when he came to Camp the first time is when his Dad dumped his first step-mother. He almost had me believing that when I got home at the end of the summer my parent would be divorced.
The fourth of July was visitor’s day when everyone had family come for the day. After all Gary had told me about my parents divorcing I was relieved to see everything was fine with them on the visit. While I watched the fireworks show with my parents I noticed Brad sneaking off. I felt rather bad for him, his parents canceled at the last minute. Brad really didn’t talk too much about his family. I excused myself from my parents to go check on Brad, even though he had been a jerk to me. Gary slipped away from his Dad and tagged along. As we got closer to the tent we heard some strange noises. “Hey Brad, are you Okay?” I asked opening the flap of the tent to step in. When we walked in Brad was there alone in the middle of the floor nude masturbating, he had just finished all over his belly. Gary started laughing as Brad freaked out jumping up from the floor, trying to cover himself.
“Oh my god that is classic!” Gary laughed. “You were worried he was upset and he was only getting off!” pointing at me dragging his hand down my chest.
“Come on let’s go back to the fireworks show,” I said pulling Gary from the tent by the arm.
“Ya, looks like this show here is over and we missed it,” Gary said still laughing.
Brad really didn’t talk to us much after that, right up to when he left camp early to go home. He supposedly hurt his ankle hiking but, Gary and I knew he left because of what we caught him doing.
Everything was fine when I got home but when I went back to school I learned that it was Mrs. Baker who was gone. It would be years later that I would learn that my father had more pull with the school board than I knew. He had gotten Mrs. Baker fired for overstepping her authority by giving me a physical without parental consent.
The first half of my eighth grade year went about the same as the previous years until my fourteenth birthday. When I awoke on January 1, 1980 everything changed. I woke up five inches taller, my body was hard with muscle and hair sprouted everywhere it should have been. At last I was the teenager I was meant to be! But that was just the beginning. As I stood admiring my new body in the mirror it never crossed my mind how impossible this was only that I was glad it had happened. All of my embarrassment and insecurity was gone. I ran through the house in my underwear calling for my parents. They were both still home from work because of the holiday as a pranced into the kitchen where they ate breakfast with my little sister. “Look at me!” I remember shouting as the three of them, as they stared with shocked looks on their faces. Needless to say they were not as impressed as I was, but I think my Dad breathed a sigh of relief.
My Mom had to make an uncharacteristic trip out that day to work, but I was still on such a high I called Gary to come over so I could show him the best fourteenth birthday present ever. Oddly Gary seemed even less impressed than my parents. It would be years later that I would learn that the trip out my Mom took that day was to take steps so that my overnight transformation would not raise suspicion. Going back to school after that holidays was like a dream come true to me. Everyone treated me differently, it was like the underdeveloped kid I was never existed. Even girls started to notice me, although I began to feel very uncomfortable with the attention the girls paid me. I began getting headaches whenever any girl came on too strong to me. It was almost like my body was warning me of something I didn’t yet understand.
Gary and I often hung out at a local McDonalds after school with some other boys. The restaurant’s manager, Cynthia Steele took a shine to one of the other boys, Joey Scorsese. Joey was bigger than the rest of us and a little daft. Gary would speculate that Cynthia and Joey were doing it in secret but I never really put any faith in that idea. Cynthia was about thirty back then and there was no reason for me to believe that she would diddle a fourteen year old boy. I was very naive back then.
After my transformation it was with me that Cynthia became fascinated, not Joey any longer. “Over the holiday you’ve grown into such a handsome young man,” She commented the first time we went to McDonalds in January. It was like she was the only one who recognized my transformation. Something I wish I had realized was not possible at the time, but I had no way of knowing what my mother had done. Cynthia became more and more attentive to me, building up to the day she kidnapped me. The headaches I got around girls my own age I didn’t get around Cynthia making it easy for her to trick me into doing what she wanted. She was successful in her plans and held me captive for a week doing things to me I still can’t remember. When my mother rescued me I had no idea what had happened. All I remember of that time was that I slept for a day and half after I returned home. When I came out of it my parents acted as if nothing had happened but I could feel the tension between them. But whatever it was Cynthia did to me, it awakened something deep inside me. Something that made itself known when I ripped the door from my mother’s car by accident.
It was then that my mom at last told me the truth about everything. We talked for hours that day. She began by telling me that the Amazon race of legend were real. The legend were only partly true but the Amazons did come into existence three thousand years ago and she was one of them. I found it very hard to believe that she was an immortal woman warrior, until she showed me what she could do. She also explained to me that Cynthia Steele was a witch. Witches had been known to have a long-standing quest for immortality. For centuries the Amazons’ immortality made them targets. Actually Amazons are more ageless than immortal as they are commonly referred to as being. My Mom tried to avoid some of the questions I asked about her past but she did tell me that there were many Amazon Queens over the centuries, most of them cruel and insane. Early on an oracle predicted that the key to Amazon immortality was Amazon semen. The Amazon race being all female there was not Amazon semen. When the original Amazons began to have children this prediction came into question. The Queen at the time demanded that all male children be killed at birth. This edict did not change for many reigns. Most Queens died in battle or at the hand of a sister that wished to take her place. One such Queen allowed the male children to live if they were castrated before maturity. Orana was the final Queen to rule the Amazon race, her rule was no fraternizing with men. My Mom told me that she was one of the few Amazon who chose not to have children while under the rule of insane queens.
The Amazons feared the Oracles’ prediction and never really tried to understand it. It was then that I thanked my Mom for doing neither to me. We hugged for the longest time I can remember. Changing the subject my Mom explained that if what happened to me at the hands of Cynthia Steele was never to happen again I would need to be trained as a warrior. My training was to begin on the weekend after I returned home from summer camp. Most importantly I was to tell no one our secret or reveal my increased strength.
Summer camp was both difficult keeping my new secret and perhaps the best year Gary and I had at Camp Tandy. After our fourteenth year, things began to change in our lives. When I returned home my training began just as my mother had promised, it was either on Saturday or Sunday rarely both. The strangest thing was the location of my training. She took me to an island in the South Atlantic called Magic Island. My mother said she had spent many centuries on the island hiding from the world. The island had only one inhabitant, a man named Mist. Mist was a sorcerer and fellow immortal making him trustworthy in my mother’s mind. I never saw him do magic except for the trick that brought my mother and I to the island from Pennsylvania and back again.
My mother trained me in all types of combat. At first it was strange fighting with my Mom. But she impressed on me that I needed to put my emotions aside if I was to learn how to fight properly. As we trained she discovers that my superhuman powers were different from that of any other Amazon. My strength and agility were equal to that of a full-blooded Amazon. She chalked that up to the fact that I was male and not a half-human female. In time I began to enjoy learning to fight and defend myself with my Mom. While we trained my Mom and I became closer than most mothers and sons could be. We talked about anything and everything. The subject of my headaches came up. I explained how when I came into contact with girls my own age I would get a throbbing pain at the back of my head. My Mom thought it was my untrained danger sense reacting to possible danger. All Amazons had a danger sense that warns them of impending danger. When I asked how Cynthia could have slipped by this defense. My Mom explained that Cynthia had been slipping me some kind of potions in those free sodas. I had spent much time trying to remember what had happened when I was with Cynthia, but could not. I wondered if Mom had asked Mist to do something to my memories as she had done when I changed overnight. She told me that she had not, that doing such a thing to me would not be of benefit for my warrior training. “That woman was a skilled witch and the potions she used on you were powerful,” she told me.
I asked, “When you found me could you tell anything about what had happened to me?” My mother would not discuss how she found me, so I took a different approach. “What became of Cynthia?” I asked. Mom didn’t answer at first so I asked, “Did you killer her?”
“I wanted to, but your father forbad me,” Mom told me after a few minutes. “Instead I threatened her.” “I told her if ever she came near you or showed her face again I would make her death a slow and painful one.”
But it felt like the time I spent with Mom was causing a rift between me and Dad that he filled by spending more time with my sister Christine. The rift between us hurt at first. When I sat down and talked with him about it, he relieved my fears. He explained that he and my mother had spent many lifetimes together. The Amazon race was created by a meteorite that killed all of the men. It also bonded the those men to their soul mates that were Amazons. He held up his right hand where he wore the pinkie ring that I knew my mother gave him on their wedding night. “This ring has a magic that let me remember all of those life times I spent with and loved your mother.” Christine would need more attention now because she was the normal one in the family like him, outside of the bond that Mom and I were forming. It didn’t mean he loved me less or her more it was just she need a different kind of attention now. It took me a little while to figure out exactly what he was saying but in the end it made sense to me.
The training my Mom gave me was the first step in my earning of the name Master Warrior. Mom was happy with the progress I was making with my training but she told me there was more to being an Amazon than knowing how to fight, there was history. It was on spring break that year that our family took an early vacation the Greece and then Rome. I didn’t know who much my parents told Christine about this trip but she seemed very interested in everything we saw and did. Mom threw in bits and pieces about amazon history all through our tour of both places. It was odd but I didn’t speak a word of Greek or Italian when we arrived at these places but within a few days I was speaking it fluently. Mom said it was something that was in my DNA. Funny thing was Christine was doing it too and she was only eight.
From both the shores of Greece and Italy Mom pointed out a small island that could be seen on the horizon. She told me that was the island once called Themyscira that was the birthplace of the amazons. Few modern people knew that information because over time the name was given to another island in the Aegean Sea. The last day of our vacation my mother and I traveled to her birthplace alone, leaving Dad and Christine at the hotel in Rome.
We were taken to the island on a rather large boat by a man named Juri Segreti, who my Mom seemed to know pretty well. As we cruised thru the rather rough waves of the sea I said to our captain, “Segreti is an unusual name.”
“It means Secrets in English,” he told me with a raised eyebrow.
“How long have you known my Mother?” I asked.
“Oh a very long time my boy,” he replied in a gruff voice. “Your mother and I have known each other for what seems like life times.” Juri looked to be about ten years older than my parents but that meant little in my mother’s case. His answer made me want to know more about how old he really was. Was Juri another immortal like my mother and Mist?
“How old are you sir?” I asked as politely as I could.
“Steven Andrew Roberts!” Mom scolded, “Stop being so rude!”
“Oh that’s fine, Dona,” Juri said. “The boy is just curious.” “I’ll be sixty next year,” he answered. “First met your mother when I was about thirty.” He didn’t have to say anymore it was clear to me he was no immortal, but he did know my mother’s secret having known her for thirty years. “First met your Mom back when I was having some business troubles and she helped me out of them.” “In return I helped her become Dona Spiro.”
“Spiro was your maiden name?” I asked. “I never knew that.”
“I guess you could say that, it was just something I made up that Juri helped me get legal,” My Mom told me.
“Your Mom was an incredible woman, still is,” Juri says a lull in his voice. “Nearly broke my heart when she left me to go to America.” I was shocked by his words. Was this old guy my Mom’s ex-boyfriend.
“You are still quite the exaggerator, I see,” Mom said. “We both know, you only had eyes for Angelic back then.” “Come along Steve, let’s go and watch from the deck before Juri, here fills your head with more of his fantasies.”
Mom led me out onto the deck. As we stood by the rail looking out over the sea, I began to have fantasies myself. Thoughts of going to this island and meeting the Queen of the Amazons only to learn that she was my Grandmother and my Mom was a Princess, like something out of a comic book. As we got closer to the island I could see that it was nothing like I imagined. The beach was dirty looking black sand, not the white sands of paradise at all. Most of the trees visible from the water were dead or dying, I guessed from frequent flooding.
“Well here we are,” Juri announced walking out onto the deck with us. “I can’t get any closer, the sand bar and all you know.”
“That’s fine, we can swim from here,” my Mom replied.
“Swim?” I grumbled. “We’re going ashore?” “No offence Mom but that place looks awful!” I said.
“Oh it is,” Mom replied pulling off her shirt to reveal her bathing suit underneath. “But there is something I have to show you before we can continue with your training.” I just stood there with a look of disgust on my face. “Come on then, why did you think I told you to wear your bathing suit?”
“I thought we were going to a paradise filled with beautiful amazon women who were going to be like family to you.”
“Boy’s got a good imagination too, I would say,” Juri commented. I smirked at the old man as I pulled off my shirt and put it in the Ziploc bag with my mother’s clothes that she tucked in the back pack she slipped on her back.
“Come on I’ll race you,” Mom said as she dove over the rail and into the murky water. I followed suit trying to ignore how dirty and cold the water was when I came up to start swimming. Mom had a pretty good head start on me but I was a strong swimmer, always have been. I caught up to her by the time we reached the beach. Walking up through the shallow water to the beach the island looked even more bleak than it did from the deck of the boat.
“It has been two thousand years since I have been here and it has changed so much,” she said looking up the beach as she pulled seaweed from her hair.
“You mean it wasn’t always a shit hole,” I remarked trying to skim some of the slime from the water off of my chest.
“Steven, language!” Mom scolded. Training with mom these past months sometimes I forgot that she was still my mother. “Come on, this way,” she said walking up the beach toward a group of dead trees.
“Where are we going?” I asked with resistance to seeing anymore of this place than I already had. She never even stopped to give me my shirt back. “Mom wait up,” I called out running after her. “Can I have my shirt?”
We walked for what seemed like forever but was really only about a half and hour. The island really didn’t seem very big from the mainland but now that we were here it seemed huge. As we walked through the forest I noticed that there really wasn’t any large game on the island. There were some small rodents and a few birds, but no deer or boars that might have feed a race of warrior women so long ago. At this point I was thoroughly convinced that my first assessment of the island was being generous.
“Stop, right here,” Mom said putting her hand on my bare chest. “Now where is it, I can’t believe that anyone could have taken it.” She said as she began searching around the ground at the base of the trees for something.
“What are you looking for?” I asked her.
“Don’t move, stand where you are,” she told me. “Ahhh, here it is.” Mom turned around holding her hands like she was lifting something I could not see. “Hold this,” she said holding out her hands.
“Hold what,” I said putting out my hands. Mom placed her hands over mine and lowered them. Suddenly I felt the weight of something I couldn’t see. She removed her hands and I felt the full weight of the invisible object. Mom fumble with whatever it was I was holding. It looked as if she was opening a case. She slid the pack off of her back and sat it on my hands. As the pack entered the invisible object it too became invisible.
“What is going on?” I asked as she closed the invisible case and took it from my hands.
“We are about to enter a hidden city,” Mom said with a straight look on her face.
“You are kidding, right?” I asked.
“Just turn back to back with me,” she told me. I did as she asked without any more questions. It was strange but standing there like that I realized for the first time that we were the same height now. “Slowly step to your left,” Mom said. “Another step,” she said and we continued this back to back crab walk for six more steps until I felt a strong static electric charge move across my body. The sensation was bizarre and a closed my eyes as I finished the step.
When I opened my eyes we were no longer standing in the crappy forest. We were in a strange alien looking city. “Don’t move,” Mom told me.
“Why?” I said suddenly feeling a breeze across my body making me notice that I was nude. “What happened to my suit?” I asked.
“The barrier allows only living things to pass through it.” Everything else is burned away as a security measure,” Mom told me. “Don’t turn around.”
“Oh my god are you naked too?” I asked closing my eyes again.
“Just put this on,” she said tossing my shirt and a pair of my shorts over her shoulder. I put my clothes on faster than I ever had in my life. “Okay, we are good to go now,” Mom told me after she finished dressing from the pack.
When I turned around I could see that the invisible case she had put the backpack in was no longer invisible. I was right it was about the size of a medium sized suitcase. On the pavement at the edge of the barrier other similar cases were stacked. “The only way we can take anything out of here is in one of those cases?” I asked pointing.
“That is right,” Mom said. “Except weapons,” she told me holding up her wrist on which she still wore her shield bracelet.
I took a good look around us for the first time. “Oh my god is this the amazon city were you were born?”
“Far from it,” Mom said. “The amazon left this island for a thousand years when we returned these aliens had built this city, Celeario.” “Our Queen, Orana took offence at the construction of the city on our homeland.” “This was the sight of the Amazon’s final war.”
“When the amazons entered the city did they lose their clothes too?” I asked dubiously.
“Yes, all of our armor and weapons were lost entering the city.” “We fought naked and were forced to steal Celeario weapons to defend ourselves,” Mom explained.
The thought of naked warrior women stirred something inside my teenage body that made me glad I wasn’t still standing naked in front of my mother. At the time I believe that my spontaneous inappropriate erections were a side effect of my body being flooded with hormones that normal kids get over months in one night. Those damned hard-on seemed to happen at the time when I would be most embarrassed. I turned away to try to imagine the ruins of the alien city as they might have been back then without naked women as I adjusted the growth in my shorts.
“When the war ended all of the Celaerio’s were dead and only seven amazons remained,” Mom explained. “Our ever insane Queen Orana being one of them.” “Helena, Artemis, Lana, Hermione, Chastain, and I were the Amazons that survived the war and Orana believed to be her loyal subjects.” “Our numbers were reduced from over one hundred when the war began.” “In secrets we plotted to end Orana’s rule. “Hermione was the first to challenge our insane Queen.” “We watched as she died by Orana’s hand.” “We who remained knew we could not kill Orana so we sought out help to imprison her.” “Medea was a Witch Queen whose husband, Jason, Orana had murdered and she sought revenge on Orana as much as we sought freedom from our Queen.” “The fight to imprison Queen Orana cost two more amazon lives, leaving only Helena, Artemis, and me.”
“If this was the sight of such deadly battle, where are the bodies?” I asked.
Mom smiled, “That battle took place over two thousand years ago, all of the dead have long since turned to dust.”
I started to walk through the street. “Why have you brought me here?” was my next question.
“Because the amazon’s who survived this battle did so with Celaerian weapons,” Mom told me. “The aliens may be long dead but there weapons remain behind.” “I was hoping that we could find one for you.”
“A weapon?” I said sounding a little too excited. “What kind of weapon?” I felt like a kid on Christmas morning.
“I don’t know?” Mom said. “These weapons kind of chose you not the other way around.” “This place may still be dangerous, so take my hand as we walk.”
“What am I, a four year old?” I said jerking away and walking on ahead of Mom. There were still times I felt like she was smothering me. But this time she was right. I hadn’t even taken twenty steps when I was suddenly falling through a trap in the road and down a long tubular slide. “Mom!” I called out, feeling a little panicked as my ride down the slide continued for many more minutes. I was going at a high rate of speed and had no idea how far I was falling. Until I was finally dumped out into an underground basin of water.
I swam back to the surface of the salt water basin to tread water. I looked back up at the cavern ceiling to see several tunnel slide openings. I had no idea which one I fell from, but I figured that my mother would soon be following after me. From some of the holes sunlight shone down, It only makes sense that those tunnels go straight up to the surface, unlike the one I slid down. I waited there treading water for awhile before I discovered I was not alone in the water. I spotted the fin moving on the water’s surface in the shadows. The salt water made me think only one thing, shark. How do I fight a shark in water? I did the only think I could think to do, I swam. I was fast, I was really fast but my predator was faster as it swam around and in front of me. I stopped in the water treading again as the large fin circled me. With each pass the shark came closer, it was preparing to attack. I had no leverage in the water to fight it but I had heard that punching a shark on the nose would drive it away if you didn’t get your hand bitten off. I laced my fingers together and waited for the shark’s next pass. It was close enough now for me to bring both of my interlocked fists down hard in front of its fin hoping I struck its nose. My fast movement also caused a rippling wave that forced us both apart in the water.
Flipping over I swam again reaching the ledge at the side of the cavern before the shark could regain its senses. I stood on the ledge at the edge of the water looking for any sign that the shark was still lurking. I would have to warn Mom when she came down the slide into the basin. It dawned on me that it had been quite awhile since I fell into this cavern. Perhaps she wasn’t coming down the same way I did. I began to look around for another way out of the cavern, because even I could not jump the two hundred feet necessary to get back up to the openings in the ceiling. I couldn’t find anything that gave me hope of an escape.
Then I hear splashing in the water behind me again. I turned to see it and could not believe my eyes. The shark, the thing in the water had crawled onto the ledge. It stood about a foot taller than me on two smooth scaled legs. I appeared to be just that an oversized shark with legs and a front facing head. Out of surprise I said, “What the hell are you?”
“HUNGRY!” was its only reply in a deep garbled voice.
“How can something like you even exist?” I said not really expecting an answer.
“TO EAT!” Its answers were short by precise making it clear to me what its intentions were. But it was on my turf now. It charged at me its large tooth filled mouth wide open. I had no intention of becoming its dinner. I swung out with a right cross to its slippery snout, then a left. It was like hitting a leather bag full of silly putty. I merely stunned it pissing it off more in the possess. It came at me again. It had no arms so it really didn’t have any defense against my punches except for its gnashing teeth, that I had no intention to let get a hold of my flesh. I know sharks have bones but with every punch it seemed as if this creature had none. I continued to beat it giving it, a knee to the midsection seemed to throw it off balance and down to the ground, but not for long. It caught me off guard when it swung its big tail at me. The heavy tail hit me like as ton of bricks throwing me airborne toward an area of stalagmites. At the last minute I managed to twist my body to hit the sharp rock formations with my shoulder breaking them off without impaling myself. I didn’t feel as if I had broken any bones but the collision with the stalagmites sure did hurt. It to me a few moments to regroup. by that time the creatures was lunging at me again.
I had been holding back up until now. Something my Mom always warned me about doing in a real fight. Not anymore! I grabbed a broken off stalagmite and swung it at the shark beast as it bared down on me. I hit it across its open mouth and jaw breaking off many teeth that flew into the water basin. The creature staggered back howling an eardrum popping squeal as I got to my feet. I stood there as it still stared at me like a juicy slab of meat to feed its hunger. I watched as its broken teeth were replaced by new ones pushing up from the back of its mouth. It charged at me again and it was batter up. I gave it a one two hit with the stony bat. I could believe it this thing seemed to be immune to all injury. The harder I hit it the more angry it became and more determined it was to eat me. I managed to put some distance between it and me. I had to go all in if I was going to not become this impossible beast’s dinner.
I turned the Stalagmite around holding the point in front. I charged forward aiming for the shark’s chest. My aim was right on, hitting my target the deep red blood sprayed from its torso coating my hands and arms. I released the stony shaft and the impaled creature stumbled splashing back into the basin. Its blood quickly spread out in the water.
I have to admit the fight was exhausting as I tried to get my bearings again, I realized my shirt was torn and my back was bleeding. I had little worry over my injury because the few times I have been cut I was never much of a bleeder. My healing is much faster than the average person too so, I had no fear if bleeding out. That shark beast was the first thing I had ever killed. I had a deep feeling of dread for a moment, almost afraid to look at it.
Looking into the murky water as the shark-thing sank I witnessed something I could have never imagined. Much smaller shark-things swarmed the dead creature. The little legged sharks began to eat the larger at a phenomenal speed. Where these some kind of cannibalistic babies? As they ate the babies grew as quickly the corpse was consumed. It was clear to me that I had to find a way out of here before they finished their meal and came for me. But nothing had changed except for the broken stalagmites. I looked back up to the ceiling again, it had been awhile since I fell into this cavern, it was clear that my mother was not following after me. At least not that way.
“Steven,” I heard someone call my name. I looked around to see Juri standing over by the back wall behind the broken stalactites. “This way boy, this wall was weakened by the fight you should be able to break through it,” he told me.
“Juri what are you doing here?” I asked in disbelief of this appearance.
“What, you think you and your mother are the only ones with secrets?” he replied grinning. “Hurry up you have to get out and reseal the wall before that thing comes after you.”
“But there is more than one now,” I told him walking over to where he said I could break through the wall.
“There won’t be for long,” Juri said as I pushed on the stone wall. “Those babies were spawned from the teeth that fell in the water.” They will eat until there is only one left.” “Those things only live to eat.”
Juri was right the wall was weaker here. I could feel it move when I pushed on it by I wasn’t strong enough to break through. I needed some momentum to break through but had no idea how hurt I would be afterward. I looked back at the feeding frenzy in the water and I feared Juri was right about that too. Then It struck me, I grabbed the largest of the stalactites and snapped it off at its base. It wasn’t easy but I did it. I backed up to the farthest side of the ledge, holding the stalagmite point out I ran at top speed across the ledge. The point collided with the thin stone wall punching a hole right through it. The hard part was pulling the plug back out. The Stalagmite had made a hole just big enough for Juri and me to climb through. Once I was through I called back to Juri, “Come on, I need to seal the hole from this side.”
“Then do it,” Juri said from behind me.
“What?” “How did you get there?” I said with surprise.
“Just seal the hole and follow this tunnel back to the city, I will go tell your mother I found you,” Juri said and then he vanished before my eyes. If he could do that why didn’t he take me with him?
I plugged the hole with the largest rock I could find and began to walk up the tunnel as Juri had instructed. The tunnel as he described it was more like an air shaft. Sharp jagged rocks poked from all sides of the shaft as I climbed. By some twist of luck the shaft was not straight up but on a forty-five degree angle. As I climbed I couldn’t help to laugh as I though how much Gary would have loved this underground adventure. But that was one of the biggest drawbacks to my secret. I could never tell Gary about this adventure even with leaving out the part about the shark with legs. Gary and I had always told each other everything until I gained my secret. Now I had so much I wanted to tell him but couldn’t.
Even back then I figured that Gary would probably be pissed at me if I had told him anyway. The walls of the air shaft dripped water from all sides and the rocks I climbed up on were slippery with slime. I’d like to say I have forgotten the smell but I can’t, it was like sulfur and rotten fish. I could see the light at the top opening but it seemed like I was never going to reach it as I climbed for what seemed like a mile. Then I suddenly got a pain at the back of my skull and I knew that was not a good thing. I stopped climbing to listen for a moment. I heard the rushing of water. I looked up and it was not coming from above. then I looked back down the shaft to see the water quickly filling up below me. I began to climb faster, trying to leap upward from one stone footing to another. I slipped a few times skinning my legs up a little on the sharp rocks but I still wasn’t fast enough as the water closed the gap behind me.
Then I saw it an offshoot to this shaft. I scrambled faster barely reaching the branch tunnel a the water rushed by me. This branch tunnel was different than the other. It was smooth and narrower, but just as slippery. I tried to crawl up the smooth tunnel but found it almost impossible. I kept sliding back almost half as far as I proceeded forward. I quickly became frustrated with this new climb that looked to me even more endless than the last. My danger sense had faded as I stopped to lay in the tunnel gripping the slick sides with my fingertips. I had to dig my fingers into the scum on the walls to reach the rock to secure myself from sliding, making me think my hands would never come clean of the stench. Laying there trying to breathe in the awful smell of the tunnel I felt very relaxed that soon became sleepy. I knew it was the gas created by the slug on the wall in the shaft that was concentrated in the small area making it so strong that was affecting me. I didn’t think it would kill me but I was sure that I wouldn’t be able to stay awake long enough to finish the climb.
Groggy and lost in thought I hadn’t even notice the sound of the new flow of water. It was coming from below me and moving as fast as the last flood. Taking a deep breath of the rancid air as I released my fingers from the sludge. The water washed up over me carrying my semi-conscious body up the slippery shaft. I road the water to the surface and beyond. It was like being fired out of a cannon as I burst free of the Earth. I must have flew three hundred feet in the air before I finally fully regained my wits. I pulled free of the water spout and began to fall back to Earth. As I fell I could see that I was not longer on the mainland side of the island but the ocean side. Below me I fell toward buildings with tall pointed towers that seemed less damaged by the war that had taken place here so long ago. I wasn’t sure if I could survive a fall from this height but I was sure if I did I would not be walking away from the impact sight. I needed to slow my speed! Thinking fast I tried to maneuver myself toward one of the taller buildings with a steeple like structure. When I first moved to try and change the direction of my descent I felt a tightening in my gut. I thought I was going to throw up then it quickly passed. It was almost like swimming through the air as I moved and it seemed to work for me. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest in the instances that it took me to collide with the cone shaped structure. I went feet and ass first hitting hard as I rolled onto my right hip to slide down the side of the tower. I tried to keep my contact with the building centered on my shoes but it really didn’t matter. It all happened so fast and I was sliding off the edge of the roof and free falling again. The impact burned away most of the rubber on my sneakers and tore the side of my pants open. It was still a long way down to the ground but I had managed to slow my speed without hurting myself too badly. I spotted a balcony rail and I grabbed for it nearly pulling my arm out of the socket. My fall continued as I held my pain throbbing arm to my chest. I was pretty sure I was done for when I saw what looked like and open topped water tank. It didn’t matter if it was water or not in the collection barrel, I was dead anyway as I twisted to hit the surface of the liquid.
Obviously I didn’t die, but I felt like I should have. I don’t know how long I was unconscious but every inch of my body hurt. I was laying on the floor looking up through a hole in the roof. I must have smashed through the tank and the roof. My right shoulder throbbed with pain as I clutched it to my chest. The pain made me want to cry but I held back my tears trying to be the man I wanted to be, not a child who needed his mommy. The right side of my pants was torn open, exposing the scrap I got on the way down. The wound was from my hip to my knee and it had already scabbed over but it still stung. Somehow the waistband of my pants remained intact. I rolled my head from side to side to look around the room. It was like nothing I had seen before. I couldn’t even begin to figure out where I was. All around me stood tall crystalline pillars that blinked with small beads of light. At the top of one of the pillars I could see smears of blood, my blood. I must have slid down that thing on my way to the floor.
It didn’t really matter how I got here or where here was all I knew for sure was I had to get up and keep moving. I struggled to pull myself up on the side of one of the crystalline pillars. I found it hard to stand, looking back now I know I had two very badly sprained ankles that would take over a day to heal. I finally got to my feet, every step was painful, the fact that the soles of my sneakers were worn so thin I could feel every pebble on the floor. I suppressed the pain to make my way to the door. I tried to focus on something other than my pain. I couldn’t believe I ruined my favorite sneakers.
Making my way into the next room I was greeted by a strange looking man or woman I couldn’t be sure. Mom said that everyone in the city was dead yet this man, person stood looking straight at me. He began to speak in a language that I couldn’t even begin to understand. Suddenly the man vanished and the scene in the room changed becoming a reenactment of the Amazon invasion of Celeario. I realized that this was not a living person at all but a projection. I must have triggered some kind of replay without knowing it. I watched as the people of Celeario fought against the amazons. The war appeared hopeless for every Amazon that was killed several to the Celaerian fell. The Celaerian people used all kinds of different weapons. I saw shields similar to the one my Mom wore, weapons that fired energy beams from flashlight sized batons and bracelets that seemed to absorb this those beams. The story continued showing how the Amazons dwindled as they strove toward victory. The scene reverted back to the person who began the tale. As the strange person spoke as if directly to me again as another enter from behind. It was clearly and amazon who wore a crown. Her speech I did understand. It was an ancient Greek dialect that my mother spoke. The amazon grabbed the speaker from behind, holding a large sword to his throat saying, “Your history is at an end Historian!” I turned away as the amazon slit his throat, not stopping there the barbarian severed the Celaerian’s head dropping it to the floor.
I was completely grossed out by the brutality I witness and was grateful when the playback ended. I limped farther into the room seeing that the only thing that remained of the Historian was the energy absorbing bracelets on the floor. As I approached the doorway to the next room my danger sense triggered again warning me to back up. Cautiously this time I peeked around the corner into the room. The second my head entered the room a bright red beam fired at me. I ducked back only seconds before it struck the wall. It was a beam like a saw the weapons in the in the historical reenactment. I looked back to the bracelets on the floor that were left behind by the Historian. They were far from the weapon I hope to leave here with but they would have to do. It was easier for me to get down on the floor and just crawl to them, taking my weight off my ankles. I picked one of them up. I was made of an odd pliable brass colored metal. A darker thin line of a florae pattern swirled on them. The bracelets looked very girly to me but they appeared to be my only way past those beams it I still had the speed to use them. In my mind I was going to go home from here with a massive broadsword that would slice through steel, not jewelry. The metal stretched as I pulled the band over my hand and onto my forearm of which it covered most. The metal contracted back and fit tightly after it was in position. I did the same with the second band. I rotated my shoulder to make sure the injury was healing. It was no longer painful, only stiff. I crawled on my knees across the room back to the doorway helped me to realize that it was my best chance of ignoring the pain in my feet as I defended myself. I stopped inside the threshold of the door and the beams began to fire at me. It was the most amazing thing I had experienced up until that point. That pain at the back of my skull that was my danger sense was now a hum that spiked just prior to a beam firing at me. That danger warning and my instincts took over as I raised my arm to absorb the first beam with my left wrist band, then another with my right, then left, and left again. I quickly got the hang of this game as I began to continue my crawl across the floor of the room. I could feel the warmth of each blast as it was absorbed into the wrist bands. It didn’t hurt but I was aware of the strength of each blast as I stopped it. When I finally made it across the room and out the door on the other side I laid back down on my chest on the floor. I was exhausted and my body still ached with pain from my fall.
“Steven!” I hear my mother’s voice call to me as she ran into the room. She scooped me up in her arms and gave me that big over protective mom hug that mothers love to do in front of other people. Fortunately there was no one else here to see it. She quickly looked me over before I could say anything. “You’re hurt!” she said looking at my scabbed hit and swollen ankles.
“I’ll be fine,” I replied not really feeling like I would be fine.
“I see you found you weapon,” Mom commented lifting my left wrist to look at the bracelet. “Energy Gauntlets, a good choice I would say.” Gauntlets, I liked that word much better than bracelets, gauntlets it would stay from then on. I could help but to notice that the swirling design on the gauntlets had become thicker. Over time each time I used the gauntlets to absorb energy those lines would thicken until the metal was all a dark brass color.
Before I could ask for her to help me up she lifted me ups in her arms like I was a baby and not a 154 pound fifteen year old. “Mom really, put me down, I can walk,” I pleaded. “Well, I can walk a little, I’m not a baby.”
“Think of this as your punishment for not holding my hand when I asked you to,” Mom said as she carried me out of the room. In fact she carried me all the way through the city avoiding each ancient trap. It wasn’t until we got back to the water that she set me down. I managed to swim back to the boat without the use of my feet. I was anxious for Juri to explain why he left me in that cavern. As it turned out Juri was never in the cavern, he had the ability he called astral projection. When Mom and I got separated he used this power to project his mind and an astral duplicate of himself to search the entire island. But it turned out that my cannon blast into the sky is what helped Mom the most to find me.
After going home it took a few days for all of my injuries to heal completely. The Energy Gauntlets would become my second step in earning the name Master Warrior. When it came time to go back to school Mom said, “You can’t wear the Gauntlets to school, in fact you can not show them to anyone, not even Gary.” “They are to be part of you training and that is it!” She was very clear about that but she really didn’t have to be. I still felt like the gauntlets looked a little girly with the swirled pattern on them. By the time my fifteenth summer rolled around I was well on my way to becoming the warrior my mother hoped and I feared that meant I was done with Camp Tandy. It was a relief to me when my Mom told me I could take the summer off of training to go to camp. It was a good thing too because it was that summer that I fell in love if I knew it at the time or not.