I’m not embarrassed to admit that I’ve always wanted to have superpowers. I’d love to have magical abilities. Perhaps the ability to conjure, or go back in time, or fix my mistakes. Ah, yes, all very self-centered endeavors, which correlates to being a teenager at the time I wanted these things. Yes, I would still love to have superpowers, but as we all know from movies and comic books, superpowers come with a price. Or at least a heavy responsibility.
In the Guardians of Eden series I spent quite a bit of time considering the list of superpowers. A race of people with unique sets of powers for each generation. A race of people who live to coexist with mankind, not race out in …eh, hem…sculpted spandex and save the world. A race of people who quietly impact our existence on the fringes of our awareness.
And how does a writer deliver superpowers without making them seem hokey? Well that is the ultimate challenge. So here’s a few examples from some of the characters in the Warrior Reborn story:
Ansgar, our heroine’s brother has the ability to control water – Excerpt 1
Ansgar unfolded into the deep grasses at the top of the ridgeline along the cliff’s highest edge. An ocean-borne breeze blew across his face while he watched gray foam crest on the dark, chopped waves.
He lifted his hand and a peak of water danced in a column, rising from the wave caps, ten, twenty, then thirty feet into the air. It swirled and glistened with the sun’s last rays. The water sparkled, answering his call, until, with a sigh, he waved it back to the bowl of the sea.
Ansgar – Excerpt 2
The brother moved to stand at Briet’s head and brushed a hand over his sister’s face.
Jason looked from Grimm to Ansgar in confusion. Confusion morphed to wonder. Tiny mists of water sprayed along Briet’s skin from her brother’s fingertips, cleansing away the blood and dissipating into nothing. Jason waited as Ansgar gently, patiently cleaned Briet’s face, then cupped her hair in his hand, cleaning that as well.
Jason looked away from the tight expression of pain on the man’s face and focused on toweling Briet’s skin. Whatever issues he might have with her brother, their mutual love for her wasn’t one of them.
Tsu, the weapon’s master and confidant to many of the Guardians: Excerpt 1
Home.
From the stone pavers at the top of the gardens she watched Tsu. His blue-black hair, held back with a leather tie, gleamed against the pearl white of his cotton shirt. His fingers gently manipulated limbs of tomato plants along a bamboo teepee.
“Ansgar’s not here today,” said Tsu. He didn’t turn from his work as she sat on the wooden bench behind him.
“I know. He’s working with his salvage team today.”
Tsu’s hand held the tomato stalk in place, then knelt to the ground and laid his hand on the soil. Green shoots pushed through the dark loam and unfurled in thin vines. Weaving their way around the tomato’s base and up, they spread and multiplied in fronds and leaves until they reached the bamboo’s top.
Grace and beauty. His power revealed itself in every flower and blooming patch of vegetation across the Sanctum’s grounds.
**
I’ll leave Briet’s power and Jason’s to the story for those of you who choose to read, along with the few other Guardians headlined in this tale. The intent with the Guardians’ powers, and with my story, is for superpowers to exist to fulfill a need, both large and small. They are interwoven in the story like characters, adding texture and definition to each character, as much a part of them as their hair color and their mannerisms. Briet’s and Jason’s powers display in a more significant and hopefully more brilliant light as the main characters, but I hope all the Guardians inspire a little smidge of envy for the powers they control and a desire to expand each reader’s imagination.
~KH LeMoyne
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