Chapter One
Awaken
"Run!"
An order.
"Run!"
A memory. His first memory.
It begins like any other memory, starting with a state of awareness, and gradually evolving from there. He remembers a blue light, and a thick, viscous fluid filling up his lungs, lungs that have never before felt the breathe of life within them; the fluid also surrounds his body, enveloping him, and protecting him. It is warm, and pleasant; he likes it.
A dull pounding fills his ears; a steady, throbbing beat. What is it? Where is it coming from? And then he feels the thumping in his chest. A heart, he realizes, as the steady, monotonous beat continues.
My heart.
The liquid about him shifts, as some force makes impact against something from the outside; a sharp crack fills his ears, though it is muffled by the liquid that fills his ears. There is a second impact, and a louder crack is heard.
What is going on? He doesn't like that sound; he wishes someone would make it go away. And then the liquid shifts again as yet a third impact is made, and the warmth recedes, to be replaced with a biting, chilling cold.
Instinctively, his eyes snap open, watching in amazement as his blurred vision becomes crystal clear, as the liquid that previously enveloped him is dispersed from about his face. At the same time he sits up, hacking, and coughing up more of the viscous liquid; it pours out from his lungs leaving an awful taste in the back of his mouth. A soft pair of hands seizes him, and pulls him from the tank that had previously served as his home.
He stumbles, and collapses to the ground, his legs giving out, having never had to support his weight before. He coughs up more liquid, splashing it onto the arms of his deliverer as they help him to his feet once again.
"Get up," a voice begs of him. It is the first voice his ears have ever heard; it is earnest, pleading, young. It is also frightened. He looks up.
A woman, nearing thirty, stares down at him, her expression grim, and her lips drawn thin and tight. Her face is framed by hair the color of a raven's, and her brow is furrowed with worry, worry that is reflected in her blue eyes. A white robe covers her body, and drapes down to her ankles.
Her eyes dart up and down, surveying him for any sign of injury, or damage. Her hand brushes across his brow, wiping his sticky, clinging hair from his eyes.
"You seem alright," she observes, with a soft sigh of relief. There is a loud, urgent banging on the door behind her. Frantically, she turns toward the noise, and then back to the boy before her. She seizes him by the wrist, and pulls him over to the far wall of the chamber, depressing a switch disguised as a stone as she does so. A section of the wall is pulled back to reveal a doorway, which she urgently shoves him into.
As the door closes on her, she shouts a single, frantic word at him, her first and last order to him, an order which he has no choice but to obey:
"Run!"
And then his world plunges into darkness.
He glared angrily at the sight before him. The homunculus jar had been shattered, spilling the building fluid across the floor, the hammer she had used did not lay far from it; all of her notes and research lay in the fireplace, burning away to ashes, all their precious secrets, all the secrets of her success fading away into nothing. And Number Thirteen was nowhere to be found.
He rounded on her and advanced threateningly.
"Where is the homunculus?" He demanded, snarling at her.
From her place on the floor, the prisoner muttered quietly, "Gone."
"I can see that!" The man snarled at her again, "What I want to know is where!"
"I don't know," the woman answered, "and even if I did, I wouldn't tell you."
"Shalah…That was years of work you've just destroyed! All those years of patience, and planning; calculations and formulas, and painstaking research into the arcane ways…do you realize what you've done!?"
"I couldn't let you go through with it, Zhar," the woman answered defensively, "Do you know what they were planning to do to that poor boy?"
The man, Zhar, raised a finger. Even from beneath the folds of his hood, Shalah could feel his scowl of contempt.
"Firstly, Shalah, I correct your terminology: Number Thirteen was an it, not him. It was a thing born in an alchemy lab, not the mother's womb. Secondly, do I need to remind you that we are a guild of sorcerers and alchemists? We sell our wares to the highest bidder, and don't ask questions. What they do with our merchandise is their business, not ours –"
"Then you don't care? You don't care about the morality of your actions so long as you can line your pockets with gold?" Shalah demanded, unable to keep the disgust out of her voice.
Zhar snorted.
"Since when do you care for things like morals?" He sneered, "You've made a dozen homunculi before this one! Why was he so different? Since when did you grow a heart?"
Shalah hung her head, unable to respond.
"After you found out what our client planned to with him, you had a crisis of conscience?" Zhar demanded, "You thought that by saving one 'innocent' life you could somehow balance your ledger? How foolish are you, Shalah? One life is not equal to another! It's why I never bothered with things like morals. They're subjective, but gold? Gold is real!"
May the gods have mercy on your soul, old friend. May they have mercy on all the souls who had a hand in this devilry, Shalah thought as she shed silent tears.
She gasped as she felt the knife enter, and looked up at Zhar as a deranged smile crossed his features.
"The price for your moment of weakness, I'm afraid," he said quietly, "If I can't deliver the product to our client, I can at least appease him with your head!"
Her eyes rolled back in her skull, and she collapsed to the ground in a heap.
Run.
That was all that mattered, and nothing else; just keep running. His arms and legs burned from the effort, the wind howled, and clung to him, chilling him to the bone, his lungs seared as if on fire, but still he pressed on, thinking only of what he had been commanded to do:
Run.
And don't stop. Don't ever stop. Keep running; keep breathing. He slowed his pace a bit, as fatigue began to set in and cramp his muscles. The pain was a strange, new sensation, and at first he was unsure what to do with it, unsure how to process it; but he knew immediately that he didn't like it.
It hurts, he thought, as he finally slowed to a walk, and massaged his thigh. He winced as stones poked the soft soles of his feet. He shook his head; no, he did not like pain. He had been too distracted following his order to notice previously.
But now he noticed…he noticed a great deal. And he didn't like it one bit.
"Ilia? I'm home!"
The assistant ranch hand stepped in from the cool summer night, merrily calling for his beautiful wife of three years. The young man carefully closed the door behind him, and placed his sandals by the door, so as not to trail mud into the house from his day spent out in the pasture. He wiped the sweat from his brow, and collapsed into a chair by the fireplace, sighing in contentment. The sound of feet rushing down stairs greeted his ears, as Ilia, his wife and childhood friend, descended, and greeted him warmly.
"It's about time!" She cried, smiling, and bringing him close in a hug. Link, in response, wrapped his arms about her, and drew her close.
"How was the life of a ranch hand today?" She asked, softly, kissing him on his sweaty brow.
"Long," Link responded wearily.
"Oh?"
"Yeah. Fado's about as competent as ever when it comes to wrangling the goats. If I hadn't been there to help out, I think we would have lost four today." He groaned at the thought. The goats were Ordon's livelihood; everything from their meat to their hides was used to provide for the villages needs. To lose any of them was always bad in Link's eyes.
Ilia's laughter tickled his ear, and broke him out of his thoughts.
"The mighty Hero, reduced to a simple goat herder," she said.
Link held her closer.
"Ilia," he whispered, "I'm not a hero. I never was. Everything I did was to keep those I care about safe."
"I know. But you're still my hero," she said.
"Ilia…"
She patted him on the shoulder.
"You do need a bath, however," she observed, sniffing, "I'll see about supper in the meantime." With that, she sent him downstairs to the washroom.
Run…
He collapsed, unable to go any further.
Run…
I'm sorry, he thought, as the woman's frightened face swam before him, but I can't.
His breathing came in ragged gasps, his chest rising and falling with each deep inhalation. Tired…he felt so tired; he just wanted to sleep…
Run…
He pushed himself to his knees. He had to keep going. He had no choice. If he couldn't run, then he would crawl, until he couldn't even do that. Even on his hands and knees, his body could barely support his weight.
He needed rest.
Hand over hand, he crawled onward, looking for a place to recover his strength, a place where he could lie still for just a few moments…
Then he'd continue again. His hand came into contact with something soft…and warm. He looked down at it, and saw a strange yellow plant lay beneath his fingertips.
It was so soft and warm.
His mind only processed one thought:
Here was a place to rest.
He collapsed onto the straw, and felt his eyes begin to close wearily. He'd only rest a few minutes…
Just a few minutes…
The snort of something reached his ears as a creature nudged at him with its soft snout, but the boy didn't care. He was already asleep.