The Sankari Legends Book One: The Scars We Hide

Her footsteps echoed as she made her way down the hallway. She was exhausted after a long day of trying to manipulate the two elementests into siding with them. Honestly, was getting into Einoth even worth this?

With a sigh, she pushed open the door to her office, making sure to firmly close it behind her. No need for disturbances right now.

Sinking down into the chair behind her desk, she pushed her hands through her hair. It had been a tiring and nerve wracking day, and the month had been even more so. Honestly, if she didn’t have the superiors breathing down her neck to invade Einoth within the year, she would have just called off the elementest interrogations. As it was, those stubborn kids weren’t any closer to breaking than they had been a month ago when they had first been taken.

She shook her head, pushing those thoughts away. She really didn’t want to think about looming deadlines, not when she had other things to occupy her thoughts. For the past month, every chance she had her mind had drifted back to the attack on Edil Academy. It had been years since she had seen the two of them together, and she hadn’t expected either of them to be that powerful.

When they had been younger, she had never thought that any of it would be possible. She had never once imagined she would be where she was now, or that the events that had led her to where she was and them to where they were would have happened the way that they had.

She looked back over the reports of that day. Everyone had reported similar things… things that shouldn’t have been possible.

“Power sedation that has little to no effect on targets,” she murmured, looking at the paper. That wasn’t really her concern. Adjustments had already been made to the power sedative, after the Parker twins had so easily burned through it. Of course, she had told them to begin with that the twins needed a higher dose, but that suggestion had been ignored on the account that higher doses made the targets not as alert, and the Parker twins had needed to be fully alert for their torture.

Muttering about that stupidity under her breath, she moved onto the next topic, the one that was of more interest to her. “Steel boxes that appeared out of nowhere and individually trapped three fighters…”

Just as she had done an uncountable number of times before, she reached for her remote and clicked a button. Two profiles appeared on the monitor attached to her office wall. Zachary and Megan O’Carroll. Brother and sister separated by three years. Children of Rylin and Sirena O’Carroll. All the basic facts pulled from their military service records, both of which were practically spotless. Of course, the most interesting fact about these two wouldn’t be included in their military records. No, that fact was far too valuable a secret to the siblings for them to reveal it, even to the military they claimed loyalty to. That fact was that they were kalahati - their father was konna and their mother was sankrin. This made them susceptible to both dark and light energy. Zachary and Megan had both chosen to follow the path of the sankrin, using light energy to fuel their powers. But for them, this was a dangerous game. While some kalahati were capable of easily choosing one energy over the other, thanks to having powers that worked the same no matter the energy, the O’Carroll siblings did not have that kind of luck. Both had inherited of the Curse of the O’Carrolls from their father. The Curse was a volatile power that gave them the ability to not only sense what others think, feel, or fear, but also the ability to manipulate a person’s perceptions. The catch was that the Curse was fueled primarily by dark energy, as it was passed down through a primarily konna family.

If Zachary or Megan had chosen to follow the konna path instead of the sankrin path, their powers would have become infinitely stronger. As it was, the Curse developed in weaker forms for them.

“It’s so useless,” she muttered, glaring at the matching pairs of light blue eyes in the profile pictures. Her own dark blue eyes flashed dangerously. “To think of what they are giving up. Do they not understand that this is their birthright?”

The prophecy had been clear enough. Someone with the blood of both sankrin and konna would become a deciding factor in the outcome of the final days. She had always assumed it would be her, but now… Megan and Zachary were both incredibly powerful, even without making use of the dark energy. She imagined their potential if they would open up to the konna part of themselves.

“I suppose we'll just have to see then, won’t we? This should be fun.”

Saying that, Brittany O’Carroll grinned, imagining the day when her siblings would decide to join with her.