The majority of the recruits had left the meadow, having rid themselves of the portal sickness, they’d travelled through the trees and stood marvelling at the planet before them. Like Wren, most of them had never left Earth and a sight like this was something that most of them never thought they would ever see. There were about two hundred recruits lined up along the cliff, all from different parts of Earth, all having done their testing ceremony at the same time so everyone would arrive in tandem. Wren only recognised about twenty people from his own testing ceremony, having been one of the last recruits to be tested, he had a good measure of everyone that went up on the stage.

He was sat with Liam, the boy he had sat next to for the testing ceremony. Being an orphan, Wren had never made fast friends, never quite trusting anyone and never in one place long enough to build that trust. He’d be lying to himself if he didn’t say that the blonde boy was growing on him though.

“So not a fire elemental then ay?” Liam said nudging Wren with his elbow. He had a lopsided grin plastered to his face that strangely made Wren want to knock it off and return it at the same time.

“No lightning for you either. Your dad a wind elemental then?”

In the couple hundred years that elemental powers had been about, scientists had discovered that they were hereditary. A mutation in the genes caused the powers to show up and generally speaking they were then passed down from parent to child. Of course there were exceptions, in some cases the powers skipped a generation, or just completely faded from the families gene structure. However, the fight with the Enoi meant that the research going into the origins of elemental powers was severely underfunded and so a wide majority of the information surrounding elemental research remained largely unknown.

“Yeah, I was kind of hoping my mum would have some hidden recessive lightning gene, but I suppose not.”

“Sucks for you I guess.” Wren teased.

“Oh yeah, guess I’ll just have to make do with magical wind powers that only five percent of the earth’s population can get.” Liam chuckled.

The two boys settled into a silence, their legs dangling over the cliff, swaying in the breeze. The suns were starting to go down, casting a warm orange hue over the area and lighting up the floating islands before them in a glistening sparkle. Wren wasn’t sure how the day cycles worked on this planet, he assumed that with two suns the days would be longer, he was hoping he wouldn’t miss out on too much sleep.

~

“What’s that over there?” Wren said, pointing out past the islands.

A small dot appeared on the horizon, growing larger by the second. It seemed to be headed for the recruits location.

“I think that’s our ride.” Liam replied.

The rest of the recruits also noticed the dot in the distance, many of them rising from their little groups and standing on the edge of the cliff face, looking out into the sky and trying to get a better view. The silhouette disappeared behind one of the islands, its large land mass hiding it from view. When it appeared again it was much bigger, it resembled a large ship, reminding Wren of a very old movie he had once watched about pirates that sailed around the Caribbean. He wondered how it was flying, was it someone’s ability? Or was it just plain old engineering? Either way all of the recruits were impressed, oohing and ahhing, as the ship drew closer.

A few of the recruits were less amused, obviously being Legacies and having seen such vehicles before.

“What you making that face for? Never seen an Ark before?” Liam asked Wren, laughing at the boys obvious amazement.

The Ark wasn’t too far away now and Wren could see it a lot clearer, his questions on how such a large vehicle managed to stay afloat were answered. Attached to the ship by strong metal cables, was a large balloon, a deep rich blue in colour. He was unsure if it was just a stylistic choice or whether it was meant to blend in with the sky for camouflage purposes.

From the deck of the ship a man appeared, standing on the railings, holding himself up right by the metal cable rigging. He dropped off the side of the Ark. The recruits all exclaimed in surprise, they’d never seen a man fall off a flying ship before.

He disappeared into the clouds below, falling to his death for all they knew. The recruits searched the cloud banks for any sign of the man. When they had all resigned themselves to the fact that this man was definitely dead, having fallen hundreds of miles down to the unknown surface beneath them, he appeared form the clouds.

The man was flying.

Twisting and turning in the sky, the man performed manoeuvres the likes of which Wren or the other recruits had never seen before. He had his arms stretched out like wings, catching the wind and shooting high into the sky above the recruits. After a series of barrel roles and flips, the man hovered in the sky, a few metres above the recruits.

“He always did like to show off.” Liam said.

Wren looked at him in confusion.

“You know him?”

The man floated down to the ground in a small clearing that the recruits had made for him. He stood tall, towering over the children with piercing eyes that somehow looked both friendly and menacing. He was dressed in white robes, with a green trim around the sleeves and collar, similarly to the soldiers at the awakening centre, the sleeves of his robe were cut short to show off the glowing green band wrapped around the man’s forearm. He surveyed the group, looking at each and every one of them until finally his eyes came to a stop on Liam, a small smirk appearing on his face.

“Unfortunately I do. That’s my dad.” He said, face palming.