Call to Mission: Heart of the Splicer 1

By Elena Snowfield

POWERS SPLICED TOGETHER LIKE SCIONS TO STOCK
THIS IS THE FIRST MISSION

After years of training among splicers—a secluded community of people able to make auras of energy surround their bodies and burst into concussive blasts—Sophie is ready to run away.
She has failed to become a successful splicer at every attempt while it comes so naturally to other students. Their power comes from their communion with one another, which troubles Sophie who is an outsider among a close-knit population and is prone to be alone.

But on the eve of her escape, her instructor pairs her with Logan, the best splicer among her peers, in a mission to escort a group of visitors back to their village. They have made a recent pilgrimage to the tower where the splicers live and they are coming back home through a countryside riddled with bandits and an unforgiving wilderness.

With the perfect opportunity to escape, Sophie must decide between her responsibilities and her true desires. Can she bring herself to risk Logan’s life and the lives of innocent visitors in order to escape?

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EXCERPT
The sun was beginning to set and they wouldn’t be able to see the trail for much longer, especially once they reached the nearby woods.

“We should stop for the night,” she said.

Immediately, Logan removed his rucksack from his shoulder and set it amid the grass along the road. He extended an arm behind himself and plopped down on his haunches.

Sophie tilted her head towards him. “Wow. That was easier than I expected,” she said.

“What?” Logan asked, looking curious.

“I just thought you would want to push onward, you know? I mean, you’re the gold standard of splicer students, right? So, I just expected more determination — not that I’m complaining. That’s all.”

Logan rested his arms on his knees with a blade of grass in his fingers. He ripped it apart and then doubled the segments over and did it again until he had to grab more grass and restart the cycle.

“It’s the smart decision,” he said, distracted by the grass.

“Okay. Well, I’m going to go gather some firewood.”

Sophie walked away, considering the option of just running away now and saving herself the effort of actually going through with the mission.

“Whatever. Don’t let me stop you,” Logan said. And Sophie was glad that he could not see her growing so angry with his rude attitude again that she imagined herself with a fierce red aura.

Soon, she disappeared into the woods, mumbling to herself; deciding that, yes, she would leave now and find a new home.

Preferably somewhere far from the splicers, please.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Sandra Ross
• Release date: Apr 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310254499

Book preview

Call To Mission

By Elena Snowfield

Published by Publications Circulations LLC.

SmashWords Edition

All contents copyright (C) 2014 by Publications Circulations LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this document or the related files may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, companies and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

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One

SWEAT POURED from Sophie's forehead as the threadbare sack slipped from her loose grip to glide away from the balcony like a dark sail over the oblivious performers below. Her young fingers reached for it momentarily, but she lost her balance and had to cling to the talons of the gargoyle to keep from toppling over the stonework balustrade, straight to the center of the action!

As she nervously pressed her messy dark hair back, she watched the sack descend upon the performers with the violent speed of the wind. These strong gusts have been assailing her at that height, atop the ancient architecture of the bell tower for the past hour. She held her breath and tightly seized the gargoyle's rugged wing.

In a perimeter around the eastern face of the building, a crowd had gathered to watch the performers from her trade school display their feats of power. Soon, the sack would either collide with one of her fellow students or with an innocent bystander. She begged for the wind to carry it away from the people and to save her from the embarrassment that was sure to follow. But of course, the wind refused her pleas. A rogue gust had to twist the cloth that emptied some of the damp leaves from inside until its contents cascaded down upon the onlookers. A volley of debris was unleashed.

Sophie cringed. Why her? Or better yet, why her again?

Sophie Audler had not come to her trade school, the Ether Edifice, for the same reason that attracted the rest of the crowd today. The spectacle planned for the tourists below would truly be a magnificent display of her peoples' culture-a way of life that taught its community to graft energies together through their spirits and minds, just like scion and stock.

But she was here to work, not to entertain or to show people the beauty of her field of study because of the simple reason that she sucked at it. She had failed./div>

Illoso, her mentor in splicing mystical energies, had given her this task of collecting leaves from the highest points on the gargantuan building and packing them away into the sack. She was surprised at how many leaves had managed to scale to that height, but the strength and unpredictability of the wind around the Ether Edifice explained how much work she still had to do.

Illoso had told her that the landmark had to be so pristine that it would never fail to impress the visitors with the same staggering glory that they must have heard about from other splicers, who had traveled to find these outsiders and bring them to this wondrous site.

Nonetheless, it was a thankless job, and as she watched the sack drifting headlong toward the audience with the weight of the few soaked leaves still in its bowels. She knew then that she had failed even this simple duty. Failure in her classwork had gotten her this job, and now her punishment would probably escalate to something much worse.

She held her breath as the sack she had accidentally dropped veered away from the crowd. But then it finally found a target among the performers. Sophie's eyes widened at its imminent impact.

But just as the leaves were about to burst on the head of one of the performers, an emerald light appeared around the man, and the cloth shattered like an explosion of brittle pottery, each shred illuminated with the same greenish glow until they dispersed into the air and safely arced away from the audience.

The crowd clapped and cheered at this unexpected display of mystical pageantry. She saw Illoso looked up at her through the green aura surrounding his body and she couldn't help but smile in sheer relief! He shook his head and returned to his performance.

So Sophie groaned as she sagged around the gargoyle.

Illoso would never let her become a real splicer now!

WITHIN THE shelf of the tower that Illoso called home, he wiped the sweat from the corners of his eyes and glanced at his watch.

Hours had passed since the performance, and now the different families