Darkness Eternal
By
Xavier Rhal
Thursday, March 31, 2005
3:33 a.m.
Chapter One: The Sword.
Xavier Rhal picked up the ringing phone while brushing his black shoulder-length hair out of his face.
"Hello?" he asked into the phone.
"Guess who?" replied a masculine voice.
"Tony! What are you up to?"
"Just sitting here, by myself," replied Anthony Sarna, Xavier's' best friend. He is shorter then the tall Xavier, light build, short black hair. He has blue eyes. Xavier's' emerald green eyes glittered.
"Want to do something together?" he asked.
"Sure. How about going to dinner?" Tony enquired.
"Excellent idea. Let us go to the Eves down the street from the Lex Apartment building, at ten," Xavier proposed.
"Good, then it's a date," Tony stated.
"Yep, see ya then, bye."
"Bye," said Tony.
Xavier hung the phone up. He went to the door that leads to the street, grabbed his leather jacket and started out the door.
A few minutes later Xavier was walking down the street on his way to the restaurant. He reached the Lex Apartment building. The street in front of the building was crawling with police and covered with do not enter tape. He ran up to a police officer that was talking to a representative from the press. Xavier immediately sensed a psychic distress beacon, emanating from the apartment.
"What happened?" he questioned the officer.
"Someone fell from the roof and landed in the top of that car," he pointed.
Xavier ran over to the car. He looked inside to see the dead body. It was Tony.
"No! It can't be!" Xavier said hysterically.
"What?" asked the officer that followed him over to the car.
"That's my friend! We were going to meet at the restaurant down the road!"
"Were you two dating?" the officer asked warily.
"No, I mean, I'm not like that, but we were getting closer..." Xavier said. By that time Xavier was in tears, tears of pain and sorrow.
"I can fix this," he said.
"Fix what?" queried the officer.
Xavier reached into the car and grasped Tony's hand, and in one quick motion pulled him out of the car and started to run over to the building. He detected Tony's shrunken sword inside his left pocket. Xavier took it. He stopped a few feet from the wall, activated the dormant spell and enlarged the sword. Xavier jumped up the bleak wall of the enormous apartment building.
Xavier flew up the side of the building, passing the first nineteen floors to land on the twentieth balcony. A bullet flew past his face, grazing his left cheek. A single line of blood appeared on his face.
"Stop there," commanded a female voice. He stopped moving. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room, he saw a woman and a man. The woman was of a tall height and slim build, as was the man. She had waist length blond hair; he had dark brown shoulder length hair. The man had a gun.
"You two must be a pair of the legendary witch hunters, but I sense one of you is a witch In fact, to be more exact, you are," Xavier said looking at the woman.
"How very, observant of you," she acknowledged.
"I shall give you both a chance to leave," Xavier stated.
"You'll give us a chance to leave?" laughed the man.
Xavier unsheathed Tony's sword.
"Yes."
"You'll kill us with your sword?" he mocked.
"No, with my friend's sword."
The woman started moving forwards, trying to cover her field circle.
"Nice try, but mine is stronger," Xavier said, "and it's already active."
"How? I see no runes near you," laughed the woman.
"Then you didn't look close enough!" Xavier yelled as he hit the sword hilt and the blade lit up dark purple, highlighting many runes and symbols that make up a field.
"Your sword!" she hissed stepping back away from Xavier.
"My friends' sword! We were together so much that he had engraved my field on one side, a field that would work for both of us together on the other. I know what I must do," Xavier said as he started to walk over to the balcony and motioned for someone to come up. Tony's body floated up and entered the room.
"What are you doing?" she screamed.
"First, I must heal his broken body."
"What you are trying to do will never work, just healing his wounds won't bring him back," she said quietly.
"I know that, that is why I must reveal my ability. I, am a Summoner," Xavier countered.
"How can that be? I killed the last Summoner years ago!" Yelled the man.
"Well, here I am."
Xavier released the sword and set it to hover in the air in front of him. He reached into his inside coat pocket and pulled out a long green metal box.
"Now I shall reveal my weapon. Behold!" Xavier exclaimed as he opened the case and extracted two green paper cards.
"These shall be used for a barrier to safeguard against any intrusion into my concentration," Xavier said as he flung them out to hover to the north and south of his circle. He quickly assigned two more cards for the west and east points.
The woman smiled.
"The bad thing about paper," she said," is that it burns." She released a wave of blistering flame that hit Xavier's barrier. The connection of flame on barrier created a wall of smoke. The woman smiled triumphantly. Then the smoke dissipated. Xavier still stood within the barrier, unscathed.
"My cards may be paper, but they are mine. I have given them vast amounts of power, inscribed upon them runes of destruction and power. This is my everyday deck, now you shall see my combat deck!" Xavier pulled a black box out of his coat pocket. It was encrusted with runes.
"This is my field maker," Xavier gestured at the box, "the insides of my deck box are engraved with runes of power and enhancement." He excavated four cards out of the box. Each card was not paper, but a very strong alloy. Each card was black, and glowed with a dark emerald green color, highlighting its runes, just like the sword. He placed each one between each paper card, reinforcing his barrier.
"You will never break it now!"
"I just need to take control of the field for just a second and I'll have you!" the woman replied.
"As soon as she gets your barrier down, you're as good as dead," stated the other witch hunter, brandishing his gun at Xavier.
"As soon as she does," mocked Xavier. He reached into his combat box and removed a single card. He placed the card above his friends' body to hover. Xavier stood back and started saying a summoning spell. A summoning field appeared under his feet. He was concentrating too much to notice. The spirit of his friend appeared and floated down into his individual body.
"I'm...alive?" asked his friend as he sat up, "How?"
"I brought you back," Xavier answered.
"I was hopping you would," Tony said.
A gigantic shock shook the building. The barrier dissipated with an explosion that caused everything float or standing within itself to collapse. Heat rolled through the barrier. A beam of fire, nearly invisible in it's' entirety, flew across the room and hit Tony, vaporizing him.
"Looks like your friend had somewhere else to be," said the man. He raised his gun and fired it at Xavier.
"You will pay with your pathetic life!" Xavier screamed in rage. He gestured to his black cards that were the barrier and one raised up to intercept the bullet.
"Damn!" shouted the witch hunter.
Fire surrounded Xavier in a fiery circle of doom. He grabbed the sword from where it had fallen, and his cards. The fire engulfed him.
"His barrier was not hard to destroy while he was concentrating on summoning his friend," the woman said.
"I'm not finished yet!" A wind swept through the room, blowing the fire out the window.
Xavier still stood. He had erected a barrier.
"I've got you now!" yelled the man as he unloaded the rest of his clip at Xavier's head. Xavier deftly brought up the sword to block each bullet. After all the bullets were safely dispatched, he threw a card at the man and slit his throat.
"At the risk of sounding clichéd, now who has who?"
A whip of fire flung out and cauterized the man's throat wound, probably saving his life.
"We won't be so easily stopped. We came to just kill your friend, but we will kill you now."
"Who sent you?" Xavier asked.
"Our Dark Master, and you are not worthy of his name."
"I vow to defeat and destroy your master, whoever he may be," Xavier swore.
"And, for that, I now shall end your life," she simply stated. She raised her hand, index finger extended, and pointed at Xavier. A burst of white flame was released from her finger and flew at Xavier, surrounding him again in a pillar of flame. The pillar of white flame stood, a roaring blaze, for a few minutes then abruptly flashed black. A towering inferno of black flame spun silently in its' place.
Out of the flame steps Xavier, his clothes burned off, holding a long black Katana. The Katana had been beautifully inscribed with many runes and Lunarem. Lunarem is the Guardian of the Moon, a great source of Lunar Magick, that Xavier's' powers spring from. The blade, like its' predecessor, highlights its' runes and Lunaerem in dark purple, only glowing dark emerald green like the cards that helped make it when great power is needed. At the time, the blade glowed purple.
"No! You survived! How...," started the man. Xavier ran across the room, a blurred figure from speed, and decapitated the man. He swiftly turned around.
The woman was gone.