Chereads / Hearken Unto This / Chapter 5 - What Kind of Kine!?

Chapter 5 - What Kind of Kine!?

The wind as it touched the bricks... The flames licking the night air from the torches... the bugs wings which sliced the air rapidly as they carried their hosts around... the bats' little pings that helped them catch their prey... the whispers of guards as they stand watch through their shifts... the light snore of a guard sleeping in the barracks... the skittering of a rat in the room down below...

The beating of my heart... the air moving in my lungs... the beating of her heart and the air moving in her lungs... her hair fluttering on her face...

Then her words...

All these sounds crashed on me like a tidal wave and I couldn't make sense of anything until I screamed 'Shut Up'...

Immediately, as if it was all a dream, everything nearby went mute. Then, suddenly, it came back but unsettled as I tried to focus on her words after her gasp of surprise that everything went silent.

"Conner! What is going on!? I don't remember this happening to me when I was awakened... what should I do? I should get some help!" Lina rambled in terror and concern before standing up and sweeping her arms in the air.

I was taken by surprise as I was lifted off the roof and slowly hovered to the ground. That sound of the rushing wind that Lina used to move me was so deafening, I lost my breath. Then as soon as I thought it had ended, Lina smoothly hovered down to me, bringing with her another round of intense rushing air. Again my breath was stolen, but this one ended quicker than before.

"Help! Anyone!" she called into the night air as she stood over me on the cobbled pathway in the market area of the estate.

Two guards rushed up to her side, excited but concerned. They were excited for the reason that nothing hardly ever happened on night watch, but concerned because of the state they saw me in as I was curled up in a ball trembling and twitching. Each sound, new or constant, hammered into my skull like the axes of the Gatherers in the Pinelake Woods.

"Right... Follow us!" one of the two guards stated. If I was coherent I would have known it was Sir Gibrey, an earth Kinetic, but I was too distraught to know.

He immediately picked me up in one swoop and started running towards the Great Hall's outer doors. With every step a new sound was produced and some faded while new ones began. My sense was like a raging circus. Nothing really made sense. Until, I heard his voice...

It was my father's voice... confused and disappointed...

"The torches never reacted did they?" was one of the sentences I could make out that he said before my mother arrived which I knew due to the scent of her perfume.

"I've never seen this before... What has he been awakened too?!" She exclaimed to Lina who I had forgotten was there...

"The only peculiar thing is that he yelled 'shut up' and every thing around went silent. My words were silent even though I felt myself speaking." She stated but even she didn't believe her own words.

"Is he...?" my father asked grimly because he knew the answer.

My mother shook her head but was sincerely intrigued.

"It's a sub kine that the theorists have been awaiting to show up..." My professor's voice resounded intensely as he examined me. I could hear the jingle of his monocle chain.

"Give it to me straight..." My father stated sternly

"He's going to either be cursed too weak to live, or he could become more powerful than us all..."

"What kind of Kine is this?"

"Judging by the facts presented and the imbalanced volumes of sounds around us right now... Acoustiknetic."

"GAHHH!!!!" I exclaimed which came out as the most deafening sound perhaps anyone present had ever heard. Everyone covered their ears, but I?

Every thing faded to black as I passed out...