With Victor nominally leashed, James turned his attention to the refinement of his tools. The hound was willing, but its instincts were still wild, unpredictable. It required training. The industrial plans with his "father," John, were a slow-burning fuse, a long-term project of influence that required patience. In the interim, his own abilities demanded further honing. The Metallic Resonance Shield was a versatile instrument, but its true potential lay beyond simple defense.
His training ground in the granite bowl became a laboratory for applied force. He no longer simply deflected rocks; he sculpted with kinetic energy. He learned to shape the shield into a concave dish, catching a hurled stone and, with a sharp, mental push, redirecting it back towards its origin with amplified velocity. The crack of the returning projectile against the cliff face was a satisfying report of progress.
He discovered he could create a sustained, low-frequency vibration within the shield. Pressing this oscillating field against the granite, he could slowly grind away the stone, filling the air with a fine, abrasive dust. It was inefficient as a weapon, but it was proof of concept—the shield could be an active tool, not just a passive wall.
His most lethal innovation was one of brutal simplicity. He practiced forming the shield not as a barrier, but as a blade—a thin, impossibly sharp plane of force extending from his fingertips. He called it a "force scalpel." Slicing a falling leaf in mid-air was trivial. Carving a deep, clean groove into the granite anvil was only marginally more difficult. It was a silent, invisible attack, leaving wounds that would seem to have been made by a monomolecular wire.
It was with this expanded arsenal that he decided to test and further bind Victor.
He found his brother—for that was the biological truth, a fact he now wore as a casual, unimportant label—skulking near the kennels, his yellow eyes watching the penned dogs with a mixture of contempt and kinship.
"Your anger is a compass, Victor," James stated, announcing his presence without preamble. "But it points in every direction at once. It's useless. I will show you how to aim it."
Victor turned, a low growl in his throat, but it was a perfunctory gesture. The fight had been conditioned out of him, replaced by a sullen, curious dependency. "How?"
"By giving you a target even you cannot miss," James replied. "And by showing you the power we can wield together."
He led Victor to the training ground. He pointed to a thick, seasoned pine log, nearly two feet in diameter, set upright in the earth. "Break it."
Victor smirked, a flash of his old arrogance returning. He lunged, his claws—thick, sharp, and composed of a keratin-like substance—extending. He tore into the wood with feral fury, splinters flying. It took him a full minute of relentless hacking and tearing to reduce the log to a shredded stump. He stood back, panting, chest heaving with the effort, a triumphant gleam in his eye.
"Crude," James commented, his voice devoid of praise or criticism. "Inefficient. You are a woodsman with a dull axe."
Before Victor could retort, James gestured to an identical log ten feet away. He didn't move from his spot. He simply raised his hand, palm open. He focused, drawing not just on the latent iron in his blood, but on the mineral content of the very air and soil, the metallic dust motes that hung everywhere.
A shimmering, semi-translucent blade of force, three feet long, materialized in the air before him. With a flick of his wrist, a thought, he sent it humming across the clearing. It passed through the center of the pine log without a sound. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the upper half of the log slid smoothly, cleanly, from the lower half, and thudded to the ground. The cut surface was as smooth as polished glass.
Victor's jaw went slack. The triumphant gleam in his eyes was extinguished, replaced by pure, unadulterated awe. This was not brute force. This was sorcery. This was the power his "brother" commanded.
"I... how..." Victor stammered.
"Your strength is the engine, Victor," James explained, letting the force blade dissipate. "But my mind is the guidance system. Alone, you are a tornado—powerful, but chaotic. With me, you are a scalpel. You will go where I aim, and you will strike what I point to. In return, you will be allowed to unleash the tornado. You will have purpose. You will have... prey."
The word "prey" ignited something deep in Victor's soul. His eyes glazed over with a dark, eager light. "Prey?"
"The world is full of those who would cage or kill us, Victor. The weak, the fearful, the so-called 'normal'," James said, his voice a hypnotic drone. "They are our natural prey. But hunting without a strategy is how the beast ends up in a trap. I will find the prey. I will spring the traps. And you... you will feast."
He had refined the offer. It was no longer just about belonging or power. It was about sanctioning Victor's most base, violent instincts. He was giving him moral—or rather, amoral—permission to be what he truly was, under the umbrella of a "greater purpose."
The leash was no longer just slipped on; it was willingly embraced.
James began his brother's education not in control, but in channeled fury. He would have Victor track deer, not to kill them messily, but to herd them towards a specific point where James could test a new shield configuration. He used Victor's intimidating presence to clear the woods of trappers and wanderers, expanding the secret territory of their domain. Victor, given a direction for his rage and a master who validated his monstrous nature, was becoming terrifyingly efficient. He was the perfect, unthinking blunt instrument, now aimed by a precision-guided intellect.
Meanwhile, in the world of men, James continued to play his part. He provided John Howlett with another "insight," casually mentioning a minor inefficiency in the Bessemer converter design he'd "read about" in a German engineering pamphlet. The suggestion, which would save thousands in production costs, cemented his place as a prodigy in his father's eyes. The Howlett fortune and influence grew, and with it, the fortress around James's future operations.
One evening, a letter arrived for John. James, from his room, heard the sharp intake of breath, the crumple of paper, and a low, furious curse. His enhanced senses picked up the frantic scrawl of his father's pen as he drafted a reply.
Later, over brandy, John's anger was a cold, contained thing. "Logan," he spat the name like a curse. "He's in Montana. Wrote to me. Not a plea, but a threat. Ramblings about demons and stolen birthrights. He's demanding money. Silence money."
James sipped his water. "He is a desperate man, Father. Desperate men make poor decisions."
"He's a madman," John corrected. "And madmen are a liability. I will not be blackmailed by a drunken fool." He looked at James, his gaze firm. "This is what it means to build an empire, son. You must prune away the rotten branches, no matter how close to the trunk they once grew."
James nodded, a perfect picture of somber understanding. "Of course, Father."
Inside, his mind was coldly triumphant. Thomas had taken the bait. The broken, desperate man was following the only script left to him. He was becoming a problem that John Howlett would now feel compelled to solve permanently. James wouldn't have to lift a finger. He had leveraged Thomas's own nature and John's pride to orchestrate the man's final destruction.
He retired to his room, the house quiet around him. He had a loyal, feral weapon in Victor. He had a father building him an empire. He had a mother too broken by guilt to be a threat. And now, a final, loose end was being tied up by the very hands he had played.
He stood before the window, the moon a sliver of bone in the sky. He extended a single finger, and a needle-thin, foot-long spike of shimmering force coalesced at its tip. He held it there, perfectly steady, a manifestation of his absolute control.
The tools were sharpened. The foundation was set. The world thought it was governed by money, steel, and gunpowder. They had no idea that a new power was growing in the Canadian wilderness, a boy who could sculpt force itself, and who was patiently, methodically, preparing to rewrite all their rules. The game was advancing. And he was still several moves ahead of every other piece on the board.
-----//////////::::::::::::::
--------////----------////-----///------//////---///--////---
(What should we do with Elizabeth 🤔🤔)