To my good friend S.,
Your path is your own, and I have no wish to sway you, but sometimes the greatest battle is the darkness within.
Gordon.
Oxo000ooxO
Amity Insatiable took a sip of her burning hot chocolate, and gagged.
"Water," she croaked, as she speedily moved towards the tap in her new penthouse apartment. She reached the water and glugged down the newly installed water-filter water. As the cooling sensation slid down her throat, she gazed around at her new surroundings. It was an expensive penthouse apartment, bought for her safety.
Her cousin had been worried for her, with the new rumours going around about the man who had caused the incident… "Stop that," she told her thoughts. She did not want to think about that now, and ruin a perfectly good unpacking day. Not wanting to procrastinate further, she decided to go ahead and unpack her 'meagre' amount of belongings.
Oxo000ooxO
Three solid hours later, Amity placed the last Gucci spring season shoe on the shelf.
The phone rang.
Amity ignored it.
The phone rang twice.
Amity busied herself with her perfectly manicured nails.
The phone rang for the third time.
Amity thought, "Right, if it rings again-"
The phone rang again.
Amity gave up and walked to the phone, hoping that they would hang up.
She finally reached the phone and slowly reached for it. She sighed, knowing that if the person on the end was not determined to speak to her, they would've hung up a long time ago. She picked up the phone. "Hello, Amity speaking." She spoke in her clear, crisp tone down the phone. It could only be her cousin.
"Hi," said a deep husky tone.
Amity was surprised. It wasn't her cousin at all. It was just a guy with a really hot voice.
"This is Nebulous,"
Nebulous Acquiesce. The enemy of her enemy and a VERY powerful Necromancer, and he was also a
Necromancer that was unlike the anti-social stereotypical one of his magic type.
"I was just wondering, did you hear that Larceny Morphine is back in town?"
Larceny Morphine. Her mortal enemy. She hadn't heard his name in awhile, probably because she didn't like his name. In fact, she HATED his very existence. He was the one who… who…
"Amity? Are you there still?" Nebulous asked.
"Yes." Amity quickly replied, snapping out of her nightmarish daydream.
"As I was saying," he continued, "Larceny is back, and, even after the damage he did, he still hasn't found 'The Rod of the Ancestors'."
She wanted to break that stupid heirloom, she hated it so much.
"He'll probably come after you."
"Oh, after what he did to her family wasn't enough," she thought bitterly.
"Would you like me to be your bodyguard? It is kind of my fault that he hates me."
He wanted to be sure of killing you. I wish you'd never met him.
"Let me talk to my cousin first," Amity replied after a moment or two's silence. "He's kind of my
guardian now."
"Alright," Nebulous said, "You can reach me here." He promptly rattled off a phone number whilst
Amity scribbled it down unto the pad of paper, laid next to the phone, with the striking logo of her
cousin's company.
After she put the phone back on the hook, she was attacked by a frenzy of memories she'd rather forget forever.
About the night that changed everything.
...
It had been a normal night for her family, normal by their terms at least.
After playing one more round of Hide and Shriek, her parents, Erudite and Vernorexia Petrichor, had sent her and her brother to bed. She had kissed them on their cheek, told them she loved them, and promptly marched off to bed, holding her mother's hand.
Her mother had tucked her in, and read her a story of a mortal family. The mortal family's life sounded quite boring. Who would want to always have to live like a thousand people before you, when you could easily be unique, jumping over rooftops, hurling shadows, saving the world, etc, etc?
That had been the last time that Amity had ever thought that. She dimly remembered her mother wishing her goodnight, and blowing her a kiss, leaving the scent of rain behind her.
She had woken up, a few hours later, to hear shrieking and screaming, and the faint smell of smoke coming from downstairs. Amity curiously crept out of bed, and snuck downstairs. A man she would later come to know as Larceny Morphine, with hair orange as the setting sun, had been shouting angrily at her mother,
"WHERE'S THE ROD?"
Her father lay dead, burned in some places, on the cold living room floor.
Her mother was crying through her hands, weeping, "I don't know! I told you!"
Amity ran upstairs to wake her brother, she didn't know how to help her mother, and she had no magic, even though her father and mother said she had the potenial, and she didn't know what to do.
Her memories were garbled and dimly remembered after that.
She shook her brother awake and told him a confusing version of what she had seen. Her brother, roused from dreamland and not really understanding, ran downstairs. She heard a sharp cry of pain downstairs. She had hid on the roof, full well knowing that her family was dead. Her cousin had found her, crying out of shock and sadness.
He took her in, and that was how she lived until now. She found out later that Larceny had never found the Rod, and was partially glad, and partially afraid. She also heard rumours that he had hunted it down to kill his enemy, Nebulous, for it was near impossible to kill him. When she turned 19, she put down her foot and announced she was moving out.
...
Amity sighed and sat down on the soft black couch beside the phone.
Nobody knew where the Rod was, including her. If she did, she wanted to destroy it. After all, its very existence had killed her parents. But, sadly, if the tales were true, it was indestructible.
There was a short, brief knock on the door. She sat up, scared that it might be Larceny, and she had no magic to protect herself. The sane, practical part of her reassured her that he couldn't have possibly found this apartment yet. But she still cautiously looked through the keyhole before opening the door.
She couldn't see anyone. Puzzled, she opened the door. Horrified by what she saw, she thought,
"…I guess my 'peaceful' and 'light-hearted' days are ending…"
It was the Rod, presented on a piece of deep red fabric, lying on the floor before her, a striking mix of red and black and purple contrasted to the white floor.
"Have ended," she corrected herself, as she looked up and saw Nebulous, AND Morphine, entering from opposite sides of the hallway before her. They glared at each other before whipping out their different weapons of metal and shadows.
And the darkness rained upon them.
