Belden- (Pre-Beaugro) 1x1 Oriel and Redsparrow

[Oriel]

In the months after her husband's death Tess retreated into her work with a vengeance. The fabrics she dyed took on colors of swirled mauve, shadowed blue, and a saturated crimson as black as blood by moonlight. Raia, her chief seamstress, merely clicked her tongue over the dark tones and settled the matter by embroidering the brightest of patterns over top with the most expensive of their spun-gold and silver threads. Somehow it didn't feel right when their orders tripled, or when more than one alpha breezed through their shop to commission a new set of clothes.

Even Jossan Keystone, chief elemental of Belden, had shown up to be measured by Hekaib, Raia's husband and the nominal shifter sponsor of her business. She had sensed his arrival in the growing pressure in the air and the rasp of her breath. Tess had hardly dared even to glance at him when his presence filled the small room Hekaib used for consulting with the most wealthy and prestigious of their clients. She clutched at the fabric samples that she'd prepared for this meeting, unable to keep her hands from shaking.

"Tess? Did you bring the colors?"

The impatience in Hekaib's voice tugged her out of the hallway and into the room. Raia's husband was a slender man with the surprisingly golden eyes of a serpent shifter, deft hands, and measuring tape of various widths draped over his shoulders. Jossan towered over both of them in the manner of someone used to giving orders rather than being commanded. At first Jossan paid more attention to the cloth squares than he did to her. At least he did until Hekaib finished his introduction.

"... and this is Theresa Stillwater, who creates all of our new dyes."

All at once he was bowing over hand and it was all she could do not to snatch it back from him.

"My condolences, Mistress Stillwater," he said smoothly. "Those responsible for the recent unpleasantness at your warehouse did not go unpunished. I saw to that myself."

Tess dragged her hand from his politely but firmly. "That is much appreciated, Lord Keystone."

Beneath the neutral words she was seething. She hadn't been at the warehouse at the time, but from what witnesses had told her after the fact, Lucas had been protecting some of their more sensitive dyestuffs from the careless riffling of the inspectors when one of them had casually struck him in the head to 'teach him a lesson.' Lucas had dropped like a stone, been carried back to his home over the shoulders of their workers, and then died in his bed three days later. As far as she was concerned, it was no better than murder.

"Now, if you'll please excuse me, I left a sensitive batch brewing," she said with apology. Hekaib cast her a look as she left, but didn't stop her.

Marriage was usually a privilege reserved only for shifters, but the ruling class of Belden had granted that elementals of lesser power and greater financial position might marry so that their heirs would be given full title to the property of their families. It was this very decree that had first drawn her own parents to risk escape from the more oppressive regime of Faypine. They took with them their skills as merchants and craftspeople and little else. Her father still told stories about the menial jobs he'd been forced to take in Belden while her mother took in piecework. It had been Raia's mother Nerim, herself a young and prominent member of a serpent merchant family, who had first noticed the exact stitching that came from one in particular of the temporary seamstresses.

Their parents had gone into business together and Tess and Raia had been raised like sisters among the dye vats and looms of the business, giggling behind the sweep of new-made cloth while it aired in the central courtyard near the dyeing sheds.

Her husband's family, the Whitebark trading clan of elementals, had been Belden natives with long-established connections to the serpents in the south and exclusive access to the finest silks and carded wools she'd ever touched. Together, she and Lucas had planned to build a business with even greater reach than their parents.

Tess paced back along the halls and out to the rear of the building to stand near the dyeing sheds. They were open to the elements on one or more sides, with panels that could be lifted or closed depending on the weather, where the great stench of the works could be dissipated into the free air.

How sadly predictable, she thought, that we should begin to clothe the nobility only now that Lucas isn't here to see it.

He would have laughed to see the greedy look of the alphas as they made their selections of color and pattern. Would have made cutting jokes about the way Jossan Keystone cast thoughtful looks up past her wedding ring. Always needled her not in seriousness, but just to hear her laugh and curse back at him.

Tess sighed into her hand and watched the workers stir the dye vats, letting the rhythmic motion of the paddles seep into her thoughts and sweep away her wondering about anything else. What Keystone didn't know couldn't concern him. And he most certainly did not know that, when next her cousin had asked her to house a few elemental refugees from Faypine, she had agreed.

-

The first group had arrived on a wet autumn night, five people huddled under a tarp spread over a wagon and one man walking alongside, the rain dripping through his draggled brown hair. When he stepped closer to speak to her on the dim threshold she caught a glimpse of jade in his otherwise dark eyes.

"Theresa Stillwater?"

"I am," she answered.

"Alec," he said, offering his hand with the name. "Thank you for taking us in."

Where she had been able to sense the others in the cart, she had not even known he was an earth elemental until she'd seen his eyes. Poor man, she thought faintly, his hand warm and rough in her own despite the rain. Faypine wouldn't have been a kind place to live with so little power. "There's room for everyone out in back of the main building, near the dye vats," she told him. "It's warm and dry enough as long as you can tolerate the smell."

"I've spent the night in worse places, I assure you," he muttered. "A moment? I need to help the others."

She watched with disbelief as the rest of the elementals, some of them quite strong in their own right, looked to him for direction. Alec and another woman supported a man with an injured leg between them. He found her eyes with an uncanny accuracy and glanced once toward the doorway behind her. Without quite knowing why Tess registered the gesture as more a command than a request. Polite, but still an imperative rather than an entreaty. She struggled not to bridle at that.

Raia had helped her hang curtains in one of the dye rooms earlier that week in preparation for the arrival of their guests. Tess pushed the central hanging out of the way and tied it back with a clever cord to allow the group to file in behind her into the generous space. Spare linens now stained with years of use lay in neat array with low sleeping pallets at the sides of the room. Alec and the woman settled their injured companion onto one of these as she watched, both speaking in low tones before the brown-haired elemental nodded to them and made to return in the direction they'd just traveled.

"You're not staying, Alec?" she asked. "Thomas told me there would be six of you."

"I'll return after I've been to see a few other people," he answered.

"Oh," she hesitated. "I suppose I could stay up a little later to open the door for you, then."

His expression clouded. "That won't be necessary, Mistress Stillwater. I'll be able to find my own way back."

"Just Tess," she told him. "As long as I'm calling you Alec without a surname, you can call me Tess. And I doubt you'll be able to find your way past a locked door."

"Tess," he repeated her name with gentle emphasis. "There's no lock yet made that I can't get past. Thank you for all you've done, but there's no need for you to wait on me."

Oh, Thomas, she thought with horror. You didn't say one of them was a thief!

Her doubts must have shown on her face, for his expression shifted to one of forced patience.

"I haven't stolen a thing in my life," he said. "Though I can find somewhere else to stay if it worries you."

"Well now that you're here, you may as well stay," she shot back at him. "Though you will knock, thank you kindly. I won't have you breaking any of our locks."

For a moment she thought he might have argued but then, relaxing, he gave her a curt nod and retreated toward the hallway. Where once the rest of the group had been in murmured conversation, silence now reigned in the wake of her argument with Alec. Tess refused to pay attention to any of the amused glances directed her way. It was still her business and her building, and she'd be thrice-cursed if she allowed some vagrant elemental to think otherwise.

-

True to her word, she'd dragged a chair into the hallway and dozed off to one side of the locked door. It was one thing for him to say he could get back in, and another for him to try. And she wanted to be there to see the look on his face when he had to ask her to open the door rather than walking through it, as he seemed to think he could.

One moment she'd been thinking about resting her eyes and then, blinking, he had materialized in front of her like some eldritch vision. She stared at the lock in his hand at the same moment he realized she was awake.

"This was not my fault," he protested. "The pins were near rusted through."

She yawned. "Impossible. I had new locks installed just last year."

"Then you were cheated," he said, turning the lock over in his palm, probing at the splintered edges with his fingers. "I'll make you a new one."

"That's a nice-"

Tess flinched away from the abrupt unfurling of elemental power in the hallway. He crushed the old lock in his palm as she watched, stripping away the rusted pieces and reworking both it and the battered housing into a simpler shot bolt. It happened so fast that she was still blinking spots out of her eyes while he bent to attach the crudely shaped object to the old face plates. She supposed she had to admire the speed of the solution, even if it left her head spinning to realize exactly who it was crouched on her doorstep.

"You're Alec Greenheart," she said, unnerved. "And don't try to tell me I'm mistaken."

Alec finished his work, tested the lock once, and then turned to regard her with a skeptical eye. "Having an affinity for metal isn't that uncommon. That doesn't make me one of the greater powers."

"I always sense elementals," she said, with surety. "And the last one I met who near blinded me was Jossan Keystone."

He winced at the name, but seemed more interested in the rest of what she'd said. "Sense elementals," he repeated. "Sense how?"

Tess flicked her fingertips at him with a gesture of dismissal. "Like seeing, the way that you'd still know the sun is shining even if you only saw it reflected in water." Her impression of Alec dimmed rapidly until he again appeared powerless to her other sight. She sat up straighter in her chair and stared openly at him. "How did you do that?"

"I practiced with a water elemental who had a talent much like yours," he said. "If you had training, you could see past that trick. Or stop sensing elementals when you didn't want to see them."

"I'm too weak for training," she answered automatically.

"If you're too weak then I'm not a Greenheart," he said, favoring her with a faint smile. ""No matter what they may have told you, anyone with that gift is strong enough to be taught. Usually capable enough to fight, too. Belden has never been good at accepting talents outside their traditional hierarchy."

If the stories were to be believed, then this was the same man who had been so effective at training and fielding groups of weaker elementals that the expansion of the territory controlled by Esterbrush hadn't stopped until his defeat in the Arena.

"Show me your arms," she said. Whether she was looking for more evidence or daring him, she couldn't say.

And all warmth drained from his eyes.

"Alec, I'm sorry," Tess breathed, knowing it was far too late for an apology.

He tugged at the laces that fastened one leather brace over his left forearm, the hem of the long sleeve billowing over his wrist. Having asked to see, she could hardly look away now. The skin crinkled in raw curves and rough lumps where, if the rumors were to be believed, he'd saved his life at the cost of near crushing those bones. That only serpent medicine had saved him from being crippled by Jossan Keystone.

When she'd first heard the story she'd imagined the scars as something clean. Certainly jagged, but no worse than what she'd seen in a broken eggshell, with tiny mosaicked lines that somehow fit all together even when the rest of the shape splintered. The reality beggared imagination, his flesh marked in nonsensical starbursts of raw tissue, and she could feel the heat of a flush creeping over her skin.

"I'll be satisfied if Joss looks half as green as you do seeing these," he said, lifting the sleeve back over his wrist and refastening the guard.

"I'm still going to turf you out if you don't properly fix that lock," she stammered into the silence. "Greater power or no, Alec. You were told to knock."

"I was," he admitted, uncoiling in a way that made him flicker at the edge of her sight.

"You didn't have to, to--" Tess swore. "I shouldn't have asked you that."

"No," he said. "You shouldn't have. But maybe I would find it easier if more people just asked. If they were brave enough to satisfy their curiosity rather than staring and wondering."

"What happened to you, in the Arena, it was..." she began, took a breath, stopped. "The rest wouldn't tell stories, if they knew. They'd let you alone."

"Maybe," he said, thawing. "But I'm afraid the truth just doesn't make as good of a tale."

-

Tess found that when it came to the lock he was as good as his word. Better, in fact. Although she was never sure when he was due back from his trips around Belden, she knew he'd returned whenever she saw a gleaming new mechanism on one of her doors. Each of Alec's locks had tiny geometric designs etched into the facing and, if she cared to look closer, the elegant 'LG' that she was beginning to recognize as his maker' hallmark. The keys that fit them materialized on the ring she kept outside the main office, marked with paper labels in his cramped but neat script.

"Why an 'LG'?" she'd asked him once.

"For my given name," he'd said. "It runs in the family, but it's also an absurd mouthful."

She'd tried pressing him since without success and had gotten no further on that front by the time a letter called him back to Faypine. He'd spent the rest of that day storming about the dye works until she'd promised, unasked, to keep training in her element during his absence.

-

Alec, who had found his thoughts straying often to the group of elementals and the locks he'd left in Belden, whistled at Luke's black eye. "Someone beat you up good and proper. And since you're still here, that means you must have resisted the very real temptation to turn them into a pile of ash," he said. "No surprise that the falcons would notice me."

His voice lowered dangerously.

"I haven't forgotten that it was one of their bands that nearly killed me in the Arena. Whatever business you had here that you needed to call me back from Belden, I hope it was worth the trip."

[Redsparrow]

"All good things in time." He watched Alec's expressions change from amusement to deadly serious at the memory of that unfortunate event being brought up. "Funny day that was, do you want to know where I was while you were being betrayed?"

It wasn't the kind of question that needed an answerer, Alec was getting one whether he wanted it or not. "I was bound, energy drained and due for execution by command of the council. Turns out my usefulness had run out after I stopped wanting to play by their rules. Strangely as I lie there waiting for death the call came in and I was set free. Apparently whoever was meant to die in that arena failed to get the message."

Luke leaned back and looked at the ceiling. "It wasn't until today that I learned who the council feared more. They were willing to pull me out of "retirement" upon seeing you in the area. So thank you for not dyeing, I bet its the only reason I am still alive."

[Oriel]

"They were right to be afraid," Alec answered simply. "You know as well as I do that you make a career out of being underestimated, Luke. You can hardly argue with the results when you succeed. I suspect I was meant to die in that arena one way or another, but none of the serpents realized that until near too late."

"I'm guessing you needed me here to draw that kind of attention again," he said. "What I don't know is why. Or why now. Our groups in Belden still need me to train them. Spirits forbid that Jossan starts getting suspicious and discovers that we're stashing our people nearby."

It was easy enough to hide elementals sympathetic to their cause among Belden's native populace. The wolves ignored the weaker powers and underestimated the usefulness of the crafting talents, much to Alec's delight. Their casual neglect and occasional brutality also made it far easier to recruit than Faypine's tendency to exercise iron control.

He eyed Luke with appraisal. "Keep me in the dark if you must, but it'd be easier for me to be useful if you just told me what needed doing. I haven't your head for plots."

[Redsparrow]

Jossan, Luke's mind flicked to that man and the careful way he had to handle him. Nothing like Alec, who was motivated by changing lives for the better.

"Richard and Lucius were two extremely skilled fire elementals that the falcons found in the small village of Ashmore. Brothers to be exact, the village had gained its name from the family ability to process large scale lumber." Luke gingerly rubbed at the blacked eye that was starting to close and produce blurred vision.

"The Falcons 'hired' the brothers in an attempt to tame the swamps and the swan trees. You see the falcons had long ago started living in the swan trees, but when one died it was an extreme hazard to leave standing around and when they did fall they could raise the swamp water level leading to floods of precious farm land." Luke meet Alec's gaze for a minute.

"It was the brothers who created the process that is still used today to safely take down a swan tree. It consists of a slow heating and drying process were the tress are taken down part by part and turned into the lumber that is sent well everywhere."

"But we are not getting into a lumber industry are we?" Luke said with a half smile. "It also turns out that if you sent a blast of concentrated fire or electricity down the middle of the tree, the water will expand so quickly within it that it will explode. Now imagine the death that would occur if that happened, and this isn't about causing death, its about making a statement."

"However if the ground under the tree was to be adjusted at just the right time, the lightening blast could be safely given to the tree, causing it to come down in larger parts, more of a controlled explosion." Luke watched Alec carefully for sings of distaste. It was a gamble, but wasn't everything at this point?

[Oriel]

The origin story of the Ashmore fire elementals was known to him, but he knew better than to interrupt Luke and try to hasten the point. Often the answer revealed itself in the context, or some other fragment of the overall plan crept into the rest of the tale. If nothing else it had taught him to be more patient.

"I ask and the earth answers," Alec said. "I just need to know what you want me to ask. And when. If you want me to be here when it's coming down, I could also direct the fall -- but the cuts would have to be quick. Or I'd need to have weakened the right sections well in advance."

Felling trees wasn't a common skill in Esterbrush, but he'd been involved more than once in clearing frontier camps and establishing distant garrisons alongside those who knew how it should be done. The swan trees where the falcons made their homes were also the largest of their kind. What worked in downing the average pine forests might very well not apply to the greatest of Faypine's forest giants. That alone was enough to make him nervous, despite his control of his element.

Alec eyed Luke with growing suspicion. "You said something about 'making a statement.' Dare I ask which swan tree we'll be removing? Or how much scouting you've already done?"

[Redsparrow]

"Oh nothing to bad, just the one holding the Falcon's castle." Luke said closing his eyes for a moment pulling the tree up in his mind trying to ball park its size. "As for when.. I honestly don't know. Two things must be achieved that night, the falcons must think the tree was taken down by Belden and key people be remove."He paused opening his eyes to look back at Alec. "By injury, not death."

"Alec I trust your skill with earth, but how much have you worked with electricity? Let alone the swampy foundation that you find under all these trees." Injuring or even killing Alec was completely out of the question, so much so that if Alec was unable to safely bring the tree down, Luke would have to risk the chance of bystander death.

"If its all the same to you Id like to practice before you head back to Belden." Luke had began as the door to a bed room flew open with a loud bang. In the entry way stood a young girl with snow white hair that was so long it touched the ground as she walked and bright blue eyes that shown with a mix of fear and curiosity. She couldn't be older then six. She was adorn in a shirt to fit for an adult, clutched in her left hand was a white rabbit toy.

"Lilly!" a boy's voice called. "Luke is busy, you can't just go running into rooms." A young flame haired fifteen year old attempted to take the young girl by the hand and lead her away. To which she responded by running to were Luke sat.

"OH man look at your eye." The voice chimed in from yet another child, this one had straw yellow hair that seemed untamable. He stood taller then the flame haired child but looked younger, perhaps twelve or thirteen.

Luke had risen from his chair at the interruption of the children, his hand now fully in the grasp of the young girl who now peered at Alec from behind his legs. "Alec this is Lilly, James and Peter." He said pointing from the girl to flame haired boy then lastly the yellow haired one.

"So THIS is Alec." Peter said sliding past James who desperately attempted to pull Lilly's grasp from Luke's leg. "He doesn't look so tuff, I bet you could take him out easy."

Luke who had picked up Lilly was now struggling to breath under her death grip on his neck. "Don't judge someone's abilities by the way they look. Alec, please excuse me while I put Lilly to bed again."

"I still don't think your all that tuff." Peter challenged Alec.

"Peter! Bed NOW!" Luke called from down the hall.

Peter made a lewd gesture towards Luke's voice before glaring at Alec one last time. James who stood stock still looked like he may pass out from embarrassment over Peter's behavior. "So sorry sir, he doesn't mean it." James added glancing at Alec as if afraid of keeping eye contact for to long. "Can I get you anything?"

[Oriel]

Only Luke could make outright war sound so casual. If the other shifter nations discovered that it was an elemental attack, alone, and not a daring political maneuver on the part of a rival nation, it could kill their fledgling rebellion long before he'd trained their army. The only reassuring aspect of the plan was that it intended to injure and confound rather than kill.

"Faypine guards their electric-affinity fire elementals jealously," Alec said, eyeing Luke with an air of knowing. "If you explain what it is you need from me and how I can be useful, then I will do it. Practice, provided we can manage to stay hidden and aren't followed, would not go amiss if you want this to happen without getting killed or caught."

He flinched at the bang of the door in the room, the dust along the floor skittering into geometric patterns as he drew power. If anyone had found out that he and Luke were meeting, they'd both be summarily banded and executed. He'd drain himself of power and tear down the city around him before he let that happen.

Alec blinked at the small white-haired girl and dropped his hands from where they'd clenched at his sides.

A child?

He nodded mutely at Luke's introductions, unable to help a skeptical look as Lilly latched on near the other man's shoulders. Although he'd stopped gathering power the moment he'd realized they had not been discovered, the patterns were still visible in the faint tracery of dust that covered the floor.

Peter's challenge rolled off of him in the way that all childish insults tended to do and he listened with amusement as Luke attempted to discipline the boy. Clearly the children were not a recent development and he'd spent time with them. They were too at ease with him to think of him as a stranger, too ready to treat him as a parent who could be nettled rather than an unknown to be feared.

Alec almost laughed in response to James' question, but limited himself to a smile in order to keep the boy from sinking any lower into the floorboards. "No, but thank you, James. Your manners do you credit. Certainly more than mine did when I was your age."

Which was nothing less than the truth. He'd terrorized his teachers until they'd found elementals near his own strength to take him in hand.

[Redsparrow]

"Thank you sir, please let me know if you change your mind." James said standing awkwardly in the room for a few minutes before hesitating to add "If I may sir, your quite the living legend." He boy eyes lowered to intently watch the floor. "I would be so fortunate to be half the elemental you are."

Luke re entered the room in time to catch most of James's flattery to Alec and couldn't help but smile in a teasing way. He thought about commenting but decided against it, James had low self esteem as is and Luke knew he would not take jokes lightly. Instead he waited to see Alec's reaction to James and the questions that may arise from his obviously illegal possession of three elemental youth.

Sitting down Luke pointed to a chair after making eye contact with James, the child sat quietly in response. His cheeks flushed red and he looked afraid of his own shadow once more. Luke seemed mildly concerned about James's behavior, it was obvious that no amount of comforting him would help. Whatever was upsetting James was deeply rooted in his mind, and only time could heal that damage.

[Oriel]

"You don't need to be one of the greater powers to be a good man, or a fine elemental, James," Alec answered, his voice roughening. "I've said as much to my own boys. The worth of a person isn't measured in the power they wield. Luke and I have similar thoughts on that, or we wouldn't be working together."

The twice he'd allowed himself to hope for a few ties outside his work in Esterbrush, he'd discovered that the chance for a child to inherit his elemental ability was far more draw than any of his other qualities. One of the ladies he'd genuinely liked, a fire elemental and a weaver of no small skill, but Breda's affections had cooled in time and they'd broken it off early enough to maintain a wary sort of friendship.

And then there was Isilde. Amiran had suggested, kindly, that she might welcome the opportunity after her family had fallen on difficult times. That none of them would accept charity but that they would kindly raise any child, if child there was. Itch as he did at the prospect of blundering into something or being trotted about like a prize stallion, he'd still walked with her and -- yes, he would admit it -- loved her, in the end. Isilde had a wit and quiet charm about her, always finding new stories to share about the people in Esterbrush, and he could have listened for hours. But the shadow of the arrangement between them had tainted whatever relationship might have grown. So he left her and Roran alone, had Amiran allow them to draw as freely on his accounts as Breda did, and gone into the arena knowing that his children would be well supported.

Alec did not miss the glimpse of fear in James' eyes, or the look that Luke sent the boy. "Something the matter, lad?" Perhaps it was none of his business. He supposed he'd know soon enough. Either there'd be some explanation or Luke would glare at him and end the discussion.

[Redsparrow]

James looked to Luke for reassurance and guidance. "Its your story to tell James, that is if you want to tell it." His voice was calm and reassuring in tone. James looked like he might cry for a moment before taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly.

"I..." He stopped his eyes brimming with fear. He tried to start again but seemed to be at a loss for words. His pleading look at Luke gave him no choice, with a look of pure distaste Luke began to explain "Culling. Faypine is looking to breed something, I just don't know what. If they don't get what they want, then they won't waste there time and resources on it. Kids that don't show potential quickly or are from lines that only throw what you want rarely are at higher risk." Luke paused, it wasn't an area he like talking about much and knew Alec hated it as well. "James is a hero."

"I am not a hero." James spat out angry. "If I was a hero I would have saved all of them. I just couldn't, I didn't know what was going to happen when they lead us into that room. That smell.... by the time I realized what was going on, I could only shield the people who were standing closest to me." His expression had changed from one of sorrow to pure hatred. "The flames were so hot, but Droconos wouldn't let me stop fighting. He told me I had to keep trying, I had to keep holding the flames off. I felt a weakening in the heat and was able to lead Lilly and Peter to safety. The others died Luke, they died because I wasn't good enough, because I couldn't stop the flames."

"This isn't your fault." Luke responded, his tone was that of a parent trying to calm a child.

James's gaze met Alec for a moment "You say that I don't need to be powerful to be good, and I know power isn't everything, but if I had just a little more power that night.. I could have saved the others> I should have died in those flames, not them!!" Tears began to flow down the boy's face, his hands shook with frustration and pain. Luke walked to were the boy sat and knelt down next to him.

"If you had died, Peter and Lilly wouldn't have made it. It was you who lead them from the building and it was you who found me. You saved them James and that is no small feat." Luke looked kindly at the boy, he had a surpassingly calming ability over James even when he was at his worst.

James sat there quietly for a moment he stopped crying and instead looked distant before adding in a dry emotionless tone "I didn't save them, Droconos saved them. He was the one who knew how to escape and were to find you. He knew about your plan and connections. He said if I could make it to you, we would be safe. What choice did I really have in any of that? I did what he said, so if anyone is the hero its him.. not me. Besides what kind of hero would I be? All I have ever done is be afraid."

"Everyone is afraid sometimes James, even the most powerful elementals are afraid from time to time. Heck just tonight Alec was afraid when Lilly threw open that door." Luke pointed out the patterns of dust on the floor. "What makes you a hero is that you acted in the face of fear, and you did what was needed to be done despite it."