Chapter 1

Prologue

This is a story of another world.

In those days, humans were of diverse kinds. They were faster, stronger, and more capable of exerting physical force. Most of the humans were born with high magnetism in their blood. Also, they were born with different strength, speed, stamina, intelligence et cetera, that could be measured. These different levels of gifted physical capabilities are called aminas. Each amina allowed the humans to be classified into different sectors, which enabled them to utilize their superlative skills in various professions.

There were once many regions and small countries. For peace or supremacies, they fought great battles for many years. The land and all its nature inhabitants suffered along with the humans. They were never at rest. The acrid smell of smoke released by ceaseless explosives became their bedfellow. Children were trained to protect themselves and their families, to fight in order to preserve their lives.

One child, who also like others, suffered the loss of his loved ones. Seeing his people living in destitution and despair, he aspired to put an end to all these destructive living conditions. He wanted everything that has breath to be able to live in love, hope and peace. A radical pluralist, who believed it is possible for different groups of people to live together without conflict and enmity despite their ethnicity and colours. And so, he fought great battles, made allies and truces. It was an inner unquenchable fire of indomitable spirit that made it happened for him. Sir Hans Fawn, the man who unified twelve regions and made them into a great nation. A nation that abolishes slavery and child labour, a new political system based on the notions of liberty and equality. That great nation was called Velvet, named after the Velvet tree which symbolizes healing.

The Gua family had been conquering few other territories. Ivanne Gua disdained at the idea of submitting his power under someone. To retain his sovereignty, he trained his army harder, brainwashing their minds with his exceptional charismatic leadership capabilities. His allegiances were faithful, although some had no choice but to submit themselves to serve the country. Gua fought several battles with Sir Hans Fawn, and managed to salvage ten regions under his sway. He named the country Monad, meaning one, unity, cannot be divided.

The discords between Monad and Velvet had implicated into a long war saga. After Gua’s death, numbers of battles dwindled down, and the citizens began to focus more on rebuilding their cities, and ventured into technologies during the post-war era. Notwithstanding, there were still some minor conflicts between the two countries that led to several unnecessary battles. The armies played a very important part to keep the countries protected. The old men used to say, as long as no one tries to take anyone’s territory, everyone was able to enjoy peace.

Greed makes an impossible fulfillment of peace.

Chapter 1

The undiscovered village

A happy young lady was rafting along the cave. She was all agog and impatient the whole day because she had just turned eighteen. She had been anticipated for months for this special day. She knew that her family was busy preparing for something special tonight – her coming of age celebration. Since her mother told her she could just go and enjoy herself without having to be involved with the kitchen, she gladly excused herself.

Her simple bamboo-made raft was small in size, but it was more than enough to carry her and her lantern. The cave was dark, but it didn’t need any light from her small lantern to give sufficient illumination for her short voyage. The green lights on the walls of the cave looked like little diffused Christmas lights. Not only the lights made it bright and clear enough to see the interior of the cave, it was a spectacular view of nature. The Christmas lights were not really man-made lights, they were called the glowing worms. The worms were fat and green, very much like caterpillars but shorter, and slimier. The rear part of their tails glowed in the dark, making the cave inexpressibly beautiful and engrossing.

Having only a lantern and an oar with her, and no weapon, the young lady planned to leave the village for a short trip, just a spin, and not to go too far from the village. Her village was secluded and secured, never been seen or visited by anyone apart from its own native. It was located in between of Velvet and Monad, unknown, and hidden for many centuries.

A flying insect with a long sparkly tail swished past by her, hovered around her awhile and flew away, disappeared before she could reach out for it.

“Wow…” she gasped. Amazed and astounded by what she had just seen.

It was beautiful, and it was all by itself. It might be the diamond brush, if she was right enough. She had never seen one before, but she had heard it from her mother. Carefully, she manoeuvred and propelled her raft back to the village with her oar.

“Mother! Mother!” She cried as soon as she spotted her mother as she ran over to her house.

“What is so important?” Her mother had just come out of the house to pick some spices for the lunch.

“I saw… a diamond brush… just now,” she puffed heavily from the running.

Her mother was silent for a while, looking a bit doubtful. “Really? You are serious, aren’t you?”

“Yes! It was a flying bug, and it has a long tail. I saw it, really. The tail was sparkly and glowing and it swished past me before I could get hold of it,” she tried to explain in detail but failed to do so because she was still dazed by the thrill of being the luckiest person to see that rare flying creature. People had talked the diamond brush, but nobody in the village had seen one before.

“Well they say if you see a diamond brush, it means it has come to tell you that someone important will come to you very soon,” her mother said, her brows raised in amazement.

Someone important sounded important, but not very exciting when you live in a closed village and know basically everyone in the village.

“We’ll see about that.” Her eyes twinkled with expectation.

Jade Onyx

Ordinary school days didn’t feel so ordinary today, for it was the last day of school for Jade Onyx. Finally, she was going to graduate and leave school, inevitably, having a little trouble suppressing the feeling of complication surging within her. She loved her times as a student in the military school, but still looking forward for a new chapter of life - to step into the threshold into the adult’s world.

Working for Velvet Military had been her dream. It is never going to be anything like the summer jobs she had, although she did enjoy being a relief teaching assistant at the summer camps full of adorable children, which happened to be the best one.

Jade always thought that the coolest thing working for the Velvet Military is that they provide really nice garbs with different voguish designs for every department. They also had the best cafeteria (or the mess hall) filled with scrumptious nutritious food everyday - extremely nutritious because they were very stringent when it comes to their military personnel health. They also had a hospital of their very own situated in the camp. And of course, the most important thing: great pay.

It’s no doubt that Velvet’s military personnel get paid pretty well, because they have the best people working in the camp, and they were not just the best people, they were people born with outstanding abilities (best aminas). That was what made Velvet military special. Not everyone could get into the military school, only those who meet the standard requirements of the fundamental physical and intellectual tests.

Amina is the important yardstick of a school’s performance, more like an entry requirement. Jade was lucky enough to have the strength amina of 153/200, and a middling intellect test result she had taken at the age of ten. She blamed the language subject for pulling down the average mark, partly blaming the language teacher for being awfully boring. Strength amina of at least 160 for men and 130 for women are standard requirements to be eligible as battlefield soldier. Highest anima of strength is 200, only a few very special people could reach that anima. That also means, Jade is also eligible to become a battlefield soldier with that amina level. Nevertheless, she could choose to work for Velvet Military base too, with qualified intellectual tests.

The third floor took endless walking than usual, probably because it was where all staff room and boring labs were located. Jade caught herself in the reflection of the glass windows as she walked passed through the corridor. I actually look good in this uniform, she thought, and then let out a doleful sigh when she realized she was going to miss that so-darn-good-looking student uniform. The purple and gold seams of the sleeves made it looked ostensibly smart and attractive, nothing near what you would call lurid. Even until now, she still finds it a little unreal to have to accept the fact that today will be the last day, after all the years spent in the Military School of Green Sand. Good years without a single regret.

Talking about good years, Jade considered school was a great place to grow besides having enjoyable time there. She loved everything about the school - friends, teachers, sports, and the amenities. To be honest, she was kind of hoping she could be back here again.

Unless you want to apply for the position of psychology lecturer, a voice in her head tells her.

Nah. She shrugged. The whole thing about being an educator did not intrigue her. Well, not for a long term career. Being an educator is such a highly respectful profession, she wasn’t sure if she was great enough to be one. Besides, what happens if your students give you hard time with mind cracking questions? She daunted at the thoughts of that. Slowly, she wandered down the stairs, running her fingers down the banister, pensively. The perpetual reminiscent of the good old times she had in school sluicing in and out her mind like a stream of water.

Jade was a final year student in Land, Major in Psychology. It was compulsory for students to choose one of the fields of study in Land, Air Force or Navy. The students usually graduate at the age of sixteen if they do not take any major courses, thus, they will be serving in the combat troops for Land, Air Force or Navy. As for Jade, her course in Psychology took her another fourteen months. She had to admit the fact that she was not the studious type, a rather mediocre student, but really into psychology.

Other than cramming for exams, the students were given training class with various choices of weapons. Jade took up martial arts and archery class. She was extra alert for not being cavalier in her studies either, especially in the final year. It was an intense course and she wanted to make sure she wouldn’t have to retake any of the module tests (if she fails), and graduate before her eighteenth birthday.

Besides Psychology, Jade had chosen the Aqua Bow as her main weapon for her Fighting and Defense Class. It was compulsory for every student to master in at least one weapon. Now that was something she had never been tired of. Anything to do with physical exercise and sport is so much preferable than sitting in the auditorium, straining eyes to keep them opened throughout the class.

The Aqua Bow is a newer evolution of crossbow pistol. It has a V shaped limb with a shorter bowstring, affixed to the wrist along with the quiver case just underneath the bow. All the procedures of selecting and loosening arrows into certain directions with different velocity are controlled by using a sensory glove, with a connected transmission to the bow. The luminescence of Aqua light at the limb will become distinctively brighter, and a bow sight window will be projected to show that an arrow is about to be dispensed. The best part of the Aqua Bow is that there were many cool arrows with different functions respectively, and the user could shoot three continuous arrows at a time without having to pull the string. Just in case the Aqua Bow runs out of power, then only you will need to use the string. The arrows come in miniature sizes, about the length of an index finger, like darts, to allow more storage. They don’t stay in these miniature sizes for all the time. They developed into lethal 70 centimeters (max) bolt through air friction as they were being dispensed out of the bow. Her brothers, however, thought that Aqua Bows are too feminine for combat battles. They had a tang with heavier weapons, like massive blades and swords.

“The bigger, the cooler,” Judah once said.