Jade threw one final scarf around his neck and headed out the door of his house, stepping into the cold air of Keterburg and shutting the door behind him. He marked his pace at a placid stroll, quietly anticipating to be tackled at any moment.
"Jaaaaaaaaade!" The familiar voice of his friend, Saphir, was accompanied by the foreseen pounce. Jade held his footing, slyly edging his ankle under the other boy's foot and causing him to stumble and fall to the snowy ground. "Jade, why'd you trip me?" Saphir whined, daintily brushing the powder from his outermost coat as he stood.
"You're the one who ran at me," Jade shrugged. "It's not my fault if you can't keep track of your own feet and kill yourself tripping like that."
"Wait, Jade!" Saphir bounded after Jade, who had resumed his steady trot.
Jade, however, kept walking, leaving his pale-haired companion behind. He pulled a copy of The Complete Guide to Advanced Fonic Artes from one of the deep pockets of his coat without breaking step and picked up on page 327, where he had left off last night.
"Jade!" Saphir panted again, finally catching up. "Why can't we walk together?"
Jade halted, causing Saphir to slip on the snow slightly as he tried to mimic Jade's abrupt action.
"You don't know when to give up, do you, Saphir?" Jade remarked punctually. "Fine, we can walk together, but if you do anything stupid..."
"Oh, good!" Saphir made as if to wrap his arms around Jade, but a sharp rap on the cheek with a hardcover volume told him otherwise. Saphir stopped, and decided not to complain and risk trying Jade's temper. That was the trouble with Jade, he never knew how much more he could push him before he would feel the wrath of the demented boy's cruel sense of humor.
Jade fell back in time, Saphir jogging beside him giddily.
"Yo! Jade!"
Jade let the book fall once more with a heavy sigh. Honestly, couldn't they ever give him any peace?
Another boy ambled up, his blond hair tangled in an indescribable mess, matching the condition of his light jacket and shorts.
"Good morning," Jade smiled pleasantly, hiding his frustration. "You know, Peony, you really should be wearing a bit more than that or you'll get deathly ill."
Peony glanced down at his attire, then back at Jade, who was wearing an excess of three jackets and two scarves, not to mention a pair of gloves and snow boots.
"Eh, I'm fine," he shrugged offhandedly. "What are you two up to?"
"Awww, come on, Peony, you know where we're going!" Saphir scuffed his shoe into the hard-packed snow and almost unbalanced himself yet again. He cursed mentally, wishing for a fleeting moment that he had something so he didn't have to walk. If he didn't have to walk, he wouldn't seem so clumsy, and maybe then Jade would think more highly of him.
"I'm going to be late," Jade returned to his book and started off once again.
"Oh, Jade," Peony was beside him, having a great deal less trouble than Saphir at holding such a pace. "Did you ever finish that thing you were working on last night?"
"You mean the fomicry?"Jade gave up reading for the morning and stuffed the book back into his pocket. "Yes, in theory it should work. I've finalized the theory and processes."
"I wanna see! I wanna see!" Saphir bounced excitedly.
"Stop bouncing around like an idiot," Jade looked at him strangely. "You'll end up slipping again."
"So, what does it do again?" Peony asked Jade. "You haven't told me much about it."
"Theoretically, it should be possible to create a perfect copy of any object within the size limit—a replica."
"So," Peony gazed off thoughtfully. "It's a copy machine?"
"In simplest terms, yes," Jade slowed as they approached a well-kept brick building. "Speak nothing of it in public."
"Okay, got it!"
Saphir held the door for his friends, graciously allowing them out of the cold before him, but Jade seemed unimpressed, much to Saphir's disappointment.
"Why, hello, Jade, you're here early."
"Morning, Professor," Jade greeted the woman that hailed them from the back of the room.
"I thought you said you were late!" Saphir groaned.
Jade ignored him and went to the Professor.
"I had a few questions I'd like to ask," he grinned fondly at her. She was the only one to whom he could genuinely smile. To Saphir he only gave his most sarcastic of affection.
"Oh, is it the contamination effect again?" she leaned over her desk, disregarding the paperwork to converse with her student. "Though you are a wonderful fonist for your age, I could never allow you to do such a thing to yourself."
"Oh, fine, then," Jade toyed with the gold-plated block propped up on her desk that bore her full name: Professor Gelda Nebilim. She raised an eyebrow curiously, taken aback that Jade had given in so easily. He'd only been pestering her for the past two months about it, and it was not like him to succumb so readily. "I won't tell you how it went."
"I can't believe you!" Gelda stood sharply, the rolling chair bumping the wall behind her.
"Hey, what's going on?" Peony and Saphir advanced, favoring the irate teacher to their own mindless chatter.
Jade took a pen from the cup on her desk and pulled a corner of a paper closer, doodling a rough circle and other sketchy patterns around it.
"Jade!" Gelda scolded again, doing her level best not to be heard outside the building. She eyed the picture Jade was drawing, and she shook her head in amazement, taking her seat again. "You'll never cease to amaze me. There's no point in my getting upset, because you've nailed it once again."
"Huh? What is that?" Saphir struggled to peek over Jade's shoulder, but his height was not equal to the other boy's.
"It's a rather complex arte," Professor Nebilim explained. "A controlled contamination effect."
"A what?" Peony and Saphir parroted in unison.
"This," Jade mumbled. Although he didn't want to go showing off, he despised petty explanations even more. He summoned glowing fonons into his hand and arranged them into the form of a short spear. "It takes too long," he complained as Peony and Saphir gasped in awe. "I need to practice more."
"That's so cool!" Saphir squealed. "I wanna do it, too!"
"Oh, stick with your robots," Jade snapped his wrist and the weapon popped out of existence. "You can barely do a decent Energy Blast,"
"Grr! You!" Saphir sniffed loudly, pounding his small fist on the desk. "I'll build a robot bigger than your house one day!"
"Good luck with that," Jade sneered. "You do realize you have to mooch my workshop and my equipment to build anything, don't you?"
"Ha, he got you good, Saphir," Peony laughed. "Be careful, or he'll make you too mad and have your nose running like the waterfalls in Grand Chokmah!"
"Peony! Don't be so graphic," Gelda corrected the boy.
A young girl walked in, and Gelda acknowledged her with a wave.
"Take your seats, you three," she addressed the three boys in front of her. "Or, Peony, you wait and see which one's left over. I guess I can let you sit in one more time..."
"Thanks, I owe ya one," Peony winked at her. She said "one more time" every day, and he was grateful she didn't report him for sneaking out of his manor every day. The Professor had taken a liking to them, and she let them get away with an awful lot of things no one else could.
Class had long since let out before Jade even thought of heading home. He'd stayed long after the others were dismissed, just so he could talk to Gelda more.
"It's so wonderful that you're so interested in learning, Jade," The Professor straightened out a sizable stack of papers. "But I certainly can't allow that."
"Just one little First Aid!" Jade begged. He only acted so unusually when he was alone, as the only side of him everyone else knew was the unwavering smile of wicked purpose he always wore. "You have to show me!"
"No," Nebilim set the papers down firmly. "If I do that, you'll memorize every last motion and try to do it yourself. No one knows what could happen! You're not a Seventh Fonist!"
Jade grumbled darkly, then he inhaled deeply, regaining his composure. He turned back to Gelda, his ever-present smirk now evident.
"I'll see you tomorrow, then,"
"Tomorrow is Loreleiday," Gelda muttered absently. For Jade to make such a simple mistake, something much more important must have been on his mind. She dismissed it as just his burning desire to use the Seventh Fonon, but she hoped the small part of her mind that said he was up to something was wrong.
By the time Jade reached his home, Saphir was all ready there on his doorstep, itching to be let into the workshop.
"Oh, dear, are you lost?" Jade questioned him. "I'll show you the way home if you want."
"Jade!" Saphir flew from his post and would have bowled Jade over had he not stepped aside in time.
"Stop doing that, Saphir, it scares me," Jade eyed the prone boy in front of him.
"Jade!" Saphir sat up quickly. "I wanna see the fomicry! Have you tried it out on anything yet?"
"Shh," Jade nudged the boy back down as he pushed himself up to stand. "I told you not to be so loud about that."
"Okay!" Saphir whispered loudly.
Jade fished the key out of his pocket and let himself in. His foster parents were never home; they worked for the government and had to leave to attend meetings in cities around the world quite often, and that gave Saphir and him more than enough of an opportunity to perform their devious experiments in the basement.
A short walk down the hall, another locked door, and a flight of stairs later, they had arrived. Jade automatically sent fonons into the glyph that controlled the heater, which in turn powered the fonstone lights that were placed along the rows of tools and machinery on the benches against the wall. Saphir spotted the most recent addition immediately, as Jade kept everything neatly organized.
A knock from the direction of the front door caught Jade's attention
"Go let her in, Saphir," he dismissed him with a wave of his hand over his shoulder as he readied the procedures for the fomicry.
"Fiiiiiiiine," Saphir plodded back up the stairs, wondering how Jade knew who it was.
"Oh, Saphir, it's you," the girl said nervously when he opened the door. "Is Jade here?"
"Yeah," Saphir bade her in and shut the door again. "But why are you here, Nephry?"
"Jade was going to use fomicry to make a new doll for me," Nephry held out the broken toy she'd been hiding behind her back.
"Okay, he's in the basement. It's this way."
"Come on," Jade poked his head out of the door to the basement in front of them. "What's taking so long?"
Nephry gave Jade a timid hello, but he gave no response other than a simple nod in her direction. She looked away as he disappeared back down the stairs before following Saphir.
"Okay, I'll have to set it up," Jade pointed to the circle he'd painted on the floor years ago, when he'd first discovered the basement and made it his personal workshop. No one had any clue as to why he wanted the pattern on the floor, but his request had been filled with little questioning from the adults of the house.
Saphir recognized its purpose, as he had used them many times in conjunction with fontech. I was the basic guideline of all fonic glyphs. He recalled seeing Jade with a book on fonic glyphs only a few weeks ago, but it was nothing special at the time. Saphir decided to pay more attention as to what Jade was reading; what was it he had this morning? Advanced Fonic Artes? He made a mental note to be more careful around the young fonist, or he may very well find himself at the business end of a Thunder Blade soon.
"Put it in the middle," Jade nodded to Nephry, and she placed the doll at the indicated point.
Jade concentrated, gathering fonons much faster than any nine year old should be able to. He traced out a pattern of light on the floor below him and around the circle with his eyes closed, seeing in mind's eye. Saphir watched intently, the light growing more and more until it engulfed the room and he was temporarily blinded.
Then, the light suddenly faded, and Jade slumped to the floor, exhausted.
"Jade!" they called in unison, rushing to his side.
"Jade, you shouldn't do that to yourself!" Nephry reprimanded her brother. "What I want isn't as important as your health!"
"...'s nothing.." Jade struggled back to his feet.
"Here," Saphir offered him two gold-colored gel candies.
"Where'd you get these?" Jade grinned, taking the medicine. "You haven't been stealing again, have you?"
"N-no..." Saphir lied.
"Ah, well," Jade sighed. "Did it work?"
The other two directed their attention to the center of the ring drawn on the floor. Nephry picked up the doll and examined it carefully.
"You've done it, Jade!" Nephry hugged her brother.
"Indeed," Jade gazed on, not even worried about the doll. He had created a replica, the first replica ever created. But that was nothing; he'd proved it in theory, so of course it worked in practice. "What about bigger things?"
Nephry released him and frowned slightly, brushing Jade's hair back in place.
"What do you mean?" Saphir took the doll from Nephry. "You'd kill yourself if you did anything bigger than this!"
"No," Jade shook his head. "I just need more practice. A higher tolerance to the recoil."
Saphir watched him edgily as he paced the length of the room.
"What about..." Jade paused. "...living things?"
Jade squinted against the wind and breasted the rolling hill of snow. Saphir lagged along behind him, the only thing between Jade and Saphir's nonstop whining was a threat involving a particularly nasty fonic arte for which Jade needed a target on which to practice.
They were a ways off from the city, and it was snowing today. Jade ducked under a limb that was confined to a cast of icicles and hissed a warning to Saphir to avoid it rather than break through and make a huge racket. Saphir, awkward as he was, managed to miss the branch, but he tripped over a log that was half-invisible, coated in snow against snow. He fell flat on his face, and Jade ran back to him. He pressed his boot to the back of Saphir's head, jamming his face into the ice and muffling the scream of protest.
"Lemme go!" Saphir rolled over, kicking at Jade meekly and hefting himself upright.
"Shut up," Jade scowled. "I would have left you if I didn't need you to come!"
"Right..."
"Come on, if it was possible to trap a monster with only one person, you know I would spare my best friend the pain of cold."
"Best friend..." Saphir said dreamily, though Jade only used the term to shut him up.
"Here's one!"
Jade stood alert and ready to cast as the beast shuffled out of the woods. Luckily, it was the species they were after, the smallest kind that wandered near the town. Normally, Jade would take walks daily and kill them for fun or anger relief if Saphir had done something extremely stupid that day. The round purple monster resembled a cheagle with two long leaves for ears.
"Distract it while I get around back," Jade ordered. Saphir obeyed, keeping one eye on Jade and one on the monster and occasionally tossing a snowball to make sure it payed attention to him.
Jade sneaked behind it successfully, and he paused for a moment to cast an immobilization arte on the creature. He bound it in bands of fonons, leaving it open to Saphir..
Saphir saw his cue and knelt by the straining creature.
"Tie it up, now!" Jade called.
"It's... it's helpless, Jade! How can you do this?!"
"Pathetic," Jade spat, coming to do it himself. He strapped the rope Saphir had been carrying around the monster's body, making sure it couldn't wiggle free and attack them. Glancing around, he soon found a good-sized rock and stoned it soundly.
"Jade!" Saphir's shriek was so high-pitched it became a shrill whistle.
"If it's conscious, it'll get free," Jade replied, face devoid of emotion. "Let's head back now."
Saphir had no choice but to agree, and he was silent the whole way back, even carrying the bag that held the monster at Jade's request. Jade was heartless, he'd heard people say it before, but seeing it was entirely different, and he hadn't even killed it this time.
Jade barged into the basement and snatched the bag from Saphir's hand.
"Jade! No, not just yet!" he objected. "You almost passed out yesterday!"
"Saphir," Jade said firmly. Saphir blanched at the sight of him, his usual grin nowhere to be found. He'd always thought how scary Jade's smile was, but now that he was serious, he was even scarier. "I have to do this, for the sake of technological advancement, if not just for my own satisfaction."
Saphir could think of nothing to say. He just stared dumbly at the body Jade had placed in the circle. He couldn't imagine how terrifying Jade could be until now.
"Don't get in my way," Jade roughly grabbed the dumbstruck boy by the collar, glaring savagely. He let him fall to the stone ground and turned back to the glyph.
"Jade, why can't you just--"
Fonons roared past him, being sucked into the glyph and reforming in the pattern Jade had illustrated himself, one unique to fomicry. Saphir was stunned by the sight, and the process was over in an instant. He expected Jade to fall, but he remained standing.
Saphir braced himself against Jade, ready to support all of his weight should his legs buckle again, but Jade seemed to be in better condition than last time.
"Are you okay?"
"Fine," Jade snorted gruffly, not in the best of moods. "Just a simple fonic barrier at the same time..." He left the rest of the sentence unsaid, as he had gotten his point across sufficiently.
"It's gone," Saphir noted the lack of any other creature in the room. "Did you kill it?"
"Seems like it," Jade swallowed the lump of anger building in his throat, cursing himself for breaking face like that. "What exactly happened, though?"
"The replica... replaces the original, right?" Saphir wondered.
"It shouldn't," Jade began to search the room in case their captive had run off. "It makes another."
"But there was only one doll," Saphir piped up.
"Perhaps the strain is too much for living flesh," Jade mused, leaving off the search. "Could it be fonon separation?"
Saphir wasn't quite sure what to say. Was he supposed to be inferring something from all this?
"Fonon separation..." Jade paced uneasily. "Did the replica replace the original? Then its fonons separated? But wait..." He halted in front of Saphir. "We're using the wrong fonons. There are too many of the first six kinds and they draw the replica apart."
He held Saphir's eyes with his own.
"We need another fonon, one a bit rarer, perhaps,"
"Like the Seventh Fonon?" Saphir finally spoke up.
"Yes... But what makes a Seventh Fonist?" he glanced down the columns of machinery, looking for inspiration. "Why can't I use the Seventh Fonon?"
"I don't know..."
"So," Jade circled the oblivious child, grinning like a madman. "There's no reason I can't, is there?"
"Oh, what's wrong, Saphir?" Gelda crouched beside the boy, who was sobbing his head off in a most obnoxious manner.
"A monster attacked me," he choked out between spastic gasps of air. "It got my arm." He held out his left arm, which was sliced open, blood dripping onto his clothes.
"Now, there, I'll fix it for you..." she hushed him gently. "First Aid."
Jade peered through the window of the schoolhouse at the two, observing every detail of the arte. It was a thing of beauty to him. He crept off to the basement of his manor before they discovered his presence.
Jade made it there quickly. He went to the far end of the room, where he stored cages of all shapes and sizes for when his experiments required a live test subject. One of the cages held a wolflike monster, the back of its skull encrusted with dried blood. Jade opened the door after he made sure it was still out cold. He lifted it from the metal cage and dropped it to the floor.
It was much smaller than it appeared to be in the cage, and looked as if it were under a year old. Jade prodded the creature until it woke up. The wolf tried to run from him, but he caught one of its hind legs and pulled it back to him. He'd gone through much trouble to catch it from the wild without Saphir's help because he couldn't let on to Saphir that this was his doing. It had served its purpose: to attack Saphir defensively and force the Professor to heal him, and Jade wasn't going to waste his efforts by neglecting to have his own fun.
He gathered fonons and reformed them into a spear in a flash of green light.
"Oh? Jade? What are you doing here?"
Jade snapped the door to Gelda's living room shut.
"I just had a question"
"What is it?" Gelda asked, slightly offset by the lack of a characteristic grin of Jade's face.
"I wanted to know if it's possible to create a glyph to gather fonons."
"Oh, I'm sure it is. You can do almost anything with glyphs."
"Right..." Jade let his shoulders drop, and Gelda misinterpreted it as his giving in to whatever crazy experiment he'd been concocting. "Even the Seventh Fonon?"
"Ah..." She was sure it was possible, but telling Jade that wasn't the best of ideas. "I don't think so."
Jade, insightful as he was, saw straight through her lie.
"But what about this?"
He extended a folded paper, on which a detailed blueprint for a glyph was drawn. Gelda took it, and recognized a few words written in Ancient Ispanian, the meaning of which denoted its purpose.
"You drew all this, didn't you?"
"Well, yes, I've searched through every book in the library on fonic glyphs and haven't found one to gather Seventh Fonons yet."
"You're not planning on trying this yourself, are you, Jade?"
"But of course not," Jade met her eyes, his smirk now visible. "I only wanted to make sure it works before I publish it, and only a Seventh Fonist can confirm that."
"Oh, I'm sorry I doubted you, Jade. I'll help you."
Jade memorized every aspect of the arte. His eyes glittered evilly right up until she had finished, and he didn't even hear her praise before he was trying it himself. This couldn't wait, there was so much to remember, and he didn't want to risk forgetting even one step.
The Seventh Fonons Gelda had gathered refused to obey him. He could sense them, fleeing, but why couldn't he control them? He was so used to the fonons coming so easily, and it almost startled him when they dispersed so quickly.
"Jade!"
Gelda had no more time to say anything, and the air exploded with fonons. Jade felt the heat of the Fifth Fonon spring up around him. For a brief moment, he could have sworn he'd caused a hyperresonance, but nothing had been utterly destroyed as would have happened during full hyperresonance, and he was still in Keterburg, so it wasn't partial, either. Therefore, he could find no answer other than that he'd done something wrong.
"Jade?!" Saphir came running from behind, shouting to Jade. "What happened?!"
He didn't respond, only glared down at Gelda's mangled body in front of him.
"Jade... What did you do?"
"Carry her to the edge of town," Jade knelt to her grimly, checking for a pulse. "She's still alive."
Saphir said nothing in his dismay, helping Jade by lifting Gelda's left shoulder over his own while Jade took the other.
Jade ignored the stench of charred flesh and pressed through the snow, hoping they wouldn't be caught near the house by the time the Military Police got word of what had happened.
"No more," Saphir heaved, letting her slip down. "I can't go any more..."
"Fine," Jade obliged only because he needed Saphir right now, in case the Military Police found them. Saphir did few things well, and his role as Jade's scapegoat for punishment was one of them.
"What do we do, Jade?" Saphir was nearly in tears, his hands shaking.
"Fomicry," Jade breathed. "The concentration of fonons at the house will prevent the ones in the air from pulling the replica apart. It may work this time."
"But...but..." Saphir chewed his fingernails nervously. "You'll hurt yourself!"
Jade focused on Gelda, tuning out the paranoid fool at his side. He couldn't quite place how he was feeling. Maybe it was just mental exhaustion from using two powerful artes in succession, maybe it was his frustration toward Saphir, shock at the amount of power he had, or perhaps all three.
An immense amount of power, if still untapped and uncontrollable, would save him. If people knew he was the one who had caused such turmoil, he would be feared across the land. Governments would be far too concerned about their own safety to keep him confined to a jail cell.
Gelda rose from her awkward position on the ground.
"Jade...You did it!" Saphir exclaimed.
"What's going on here?" a guard approached them from the direction of the scene of the crime.
Gelda turned on him, swiftly breaking his neck between her palms and giving it not another thought.
Such power...
Saphir's eyes widened and he registered what she'd done. He screamed his terror into the night sky, but Jade made no indication that he felt sorry for the man or afraid of Nebilim. He merely noted the results of the experiment, wondering if there were any other way to create replicas.
Jade turned his back to the scene.
"Where are you going, Jade?" Saphir sighed raggedly.
"I'm going home to pack. The next ship for Grand Chokmah leaves early tomorrow morning."
Saphir didn't know what to make of his statement and just stared after him dumbly.
Jade had to leave. He couldn't come back to Keterburg, not at least until his past was forgotten, if that ever happened. He would go to Grand Chokmah, leave behind the people he knew, and do his best to forget himself. Though he knew it was impossible, he attempted to force his mind elsewhere.
Upon reaching the capital, he would sign up for military training as a fonist. He had no interest in serving the country; he only wished to better his own skills, and if he had to join the army to do so, then so be it. Nothing would stand between him and the power he sought.
The shouts of the townspeople reached his ears, and he picked out Saphir's voice among them. Smiling to himself, Jade entered his house, leaving him to take the blame for now. He would only get in trouble, but if Jade were to be present, all would know of his exploits and fear him. They would know him as what most of the adults in the town had often called him when gossiping at the bar, thinking they were out of sight or hearing of--
The Necromancer.