Chapter 1 ~ Reminisce
Is it going to be you?
Are you capable? Willing? Deserving?
It's in your hands.
The end begins with you.
An explosion that could shake the earth spreads through me. "WAKE UP VALIN!"
My eyes dart open as my head flies up, nearly tossing me from my seat due to the momentum. I slowly start to make out faces as my eyes come back into focus. All eyes are on me, each matched with an up turned mouth at the sight of my reaction. I look to the source of the horrendous noise and find myself face to face with the ugliest thing known to man. Her name is Ms. Corallie Burmandee. She is the history teacher at Shoma's most advanced school, Dalimangers. I finally come to the conclusion that I'm in the middle of a lecture and have been rudely waken from a nice nap.
"I don't care if you fail this class, Valin. Do as you must to ignore me, but my only exception is absolutely no sleeping. All I ask of you is to pretend that you're being attentive, give me a little respect here," Ms. Burmandee's foghorn voice shouts still a few inches away from my ear.
"Sure Ms. Burmandee, if you insist" You're so obnoxious, I respond with no emotion, struggling to not say the afterthought. Maybe if the headmaster could hire an instructor I could bear listening to, I could actually have some interest to the subject.
Ms. Burmandee waddles her rotund form back to the front of the room as my classmates slowly focus back to whatever scrabble she wrote on the board. After forcing the last face to turn away with an intimidating glare, I search my pocket for a pair of earpieces I carry everywhere. As soon as they come in contact with my ears, preprogrammed songs play on in my head.
I love you Kariz, I think to myself. It is times like these my cloudy colored, bush of hair benefits by covering my rebellious deed. But now I'm forced to sit and stare at a terrible piece of work for the remainder of the class period. My attention, dreadfully, is always drawn to the unbelievably large mole located under her left eye. I typically imagine different ways to removing the atrocious mound. I picture strapping her down to a table and going to town on it with a pair of scissors or yanking it off with a pair of pliers if it's too hard and somehow breaks said scissors. Or possibly taking a needle and giving it a little stab and drain whatever liquid might be inside it. I swear sometimes the thing will pulsate like it is some living being that has attached itself to her face and is feeding off her fatty body materials. After too much thought, I can't take anymore and shudder in disgust at the pictures still lingering in my head.
Not too long after my imaginations, I notice a few people getting up out of their seats. Class must have been dismissed. I pop the earpieces out and put them back in my pocket. I make my way to the door, but as I reach for the handle, a foghorn alarms behind me.
"I still cannot see why he placed you in here. You absolutely do not belong," Ms. Burmandee exclaims in a piercing tone that makes me want to vomit.
"I couldn't agree more," I coolly say sending back her stab at me. I roughly close the door behind me emphasizing the seriousness to my words. I need to speak with him about this bullsh-
"Valin!" shouts a cheerful voice behind me, belonging to none other than Karisimi Talon. Bursting out from a crowd of finely dressed teenagers, Karisimi comes sprinting directly towards me. She looks as adorable as ever, she must have a natural sense to making herself up like an urban princess. Her long, deep brunette hair is always in different styles with each passing day, surprisingly, today it is all down with a single floral hairpin above her left ear. I've also never seen her in the same outfit more than once; she's got a nice, bright green blouse and pale mini-jeans on. She can look good in anything.
"Jaspin tells me you slept through class again," she scolds with a sour look on her slender, soft face.
"Hi Kariz, how's your day been?" ignoring her statement.
"He's going to be extremely upset when he hears you're failing," she presses the subject farther, sounding worried.
"Just one class, like it hardly matters. When will history ever benefit me?" It's true; this is the only class I'm throwing out. I doubt I'll need it for where I'm intending to go.
"It's very helpful knowing about key events in the past. Anything you can learn will benefit sometime down the road." She takes a pause at the door to our left. "Anyways, here's my classroom. I'll see you after school, right?" she stares at me expectantly.
"Of course, I'm there everyday." Her face brightens and sends me a gorgeous smile in farewell.
"Ok! See you then!" She waves at me as she closes the door behind her. Those looks of hers always get to me; constantly make me blush when I'm not wanting to. I can tell people are entirely confused to why she talks to a loner like me. She is basically friends with everyone in the district, but why she spends so much time with me and shows interest in me blows them all away. There is a reason and my mind drags me back to the day constantly. Meeting Kariz is only one of the major events that occurred.
It was nearly two years ago, soon after my sixteenth birthday. On my way home from training, I heard screaming from the woods I walk through to reach my house. Luckily, master allowed me to bring one of his broadswords home for practice on my own time. I dashed into the thicket towards the direction of the growing scream with my blade drawn. I reached a pint where the trees grew more spacious and I could make out her frame. She was on the ground, gashed in a few places where some blood was trickling. She scurried to her feet, but only made a few steps before the pain sank in and she collapsed near a tree. Not a second later, a much larger frame moved steadily toward Kariz.
With as much force I could build, I sprinted directly into the larger being, sending him smashing into a nearby tree. Kariz's gasps and shouts filled the silence, distracting me from my opponent. Adrenaline spread throughout my body, making it hard to focus. The man recovered from the impact, standing himself up and keeping balance with one hand on the tree.
"At least you saved me the trouble in finding you." His voice was extremely rasped and low. I couldn't make out his face due to the oversized hood hanging over it, but I could tell he was much larger and a bit taller than me. He wore a concealing cloak that covered his entire body, except for the yellow pair of teeth grinning at me from under the hood. He also had a long sword drawn and before I could blink, he was running straight at me.
Master's voice swirled through my head, "When approached, keep a strong defense and look for any opening or weakness." Each of his blows was matched with my blade, however, he was leaving no room for error and I couldn't find any opportunity. There was another problem. The force of his swings was causing my sword to tremble. Any second it was going to… CHING
My blade snapped in two, leaving me with no protection. Before I could react, his next swipe had made contact with my body. The excruciating tear of my skin from my left shoulder, across my chest, down to my right pelvis sent a jolt of pain through me. I released a dry shout, but was cut short by a powerful ram into a tree behind me. The wind had been knocked out of me, sending me to the ground, only being held up by the base of the tree. My vision was spinning, I could hardly breathe and the pain spread into numbness while blood slowly flowed from my wound. However, I could hear the man's raspy voice chuckling. He collected himself a moment later.
"Lucky for you, I don't intend to kill you. Not right now at least. But I can't have any witnesses." I could hear his footsteps moving away from me and towards Kariz's terrified, innocent voice.
No…
My vision steadily came back and I could make out the man getting closer to her while she tried to squirm away.
"No…" My voice wasn't more than a whisper.
The man now had her neck in his hand and hoisted her body into the air with his blade ready for the kill. Her chokes and whimpers sent shivers all through me as my eyes started to tear up.
"NO!" My voice erupted and at that moment, what felt like a high voltage shock surged through my entire left arm. The unbearable pain was blinding me, or maybe it was that my arm was illuminating a bright light, I'm still not sure. The pain slowly faded and my sight returned once again. The man was no longer grasping Kariz, but had dropped her and was making his way back to me before he finished her in.
A stunning shout shook my insides, resonating from inside my mind, "Run your hand down your left arm! NOW!"
In instinct, I did as told and as my hand ran over my arm, the scar from the jolt started to glow. When my hand reached the wrist, I felt and awkward rumble occurring in my arm and a sword handle protruded out of my wrist. I stared in shock at what I was seeing, but was quickly refocused by another shout, "Unsheathe it! Hurry!"
Not giving much thought to what I was about to do, I yanked on the handle and sure enough, a blade followed with it. It didn't hurt at all, however, it was the strangest feeling I've ever had. It felt as though I was pulling the bones out of my own arm, but experiencing no pain afterwards or during.
"No way…" the raspy voice muttered in utter disbelief. He was caught in his tracks, eyes fixated on the mystical sword now in my right hand. I had never seen anything like it. It had the proportion of a great sword and held no overcoming weight whatsoever in my one hand. The blade itself was beautiful, its broadsides were pure black and its edges shimmered with silver steelwork. The blade was also much thicker than normal and had multiple markings running down the middle of both sides.
"Impossible!" the man was broken from his paralysis and moved in haste towards me. Instantly, I felt my body moving in motion and back onto my feet. Energy had returned to me, I felt no pain or exhaustion and dashed head first toward my enemy, blade leaned back ready for the strike. And that's all it took, one strike.
I had taken my blade once in range and delivered the same wound I had received, only reversed from pelvis to shoulder. The man fell to the ground in anguish; my blow must have dug deeper into him than his did mine. After a few rough breaths, he spoke in my direction, "So it's started." With that, the entire patch of land we occupied was filled with darkness. I could only make out rapid footsteps fading away and Kariz's heavy breaths steadying. The darkness slowly lifted and I could make out Kariz curled up at the base of a tree a few yards away.
"Are you going to be… okay…" The jolt of energy I had left me and I could no longer support myself. Once I collapsed to the ground an my new weapon slid out of my grip, I noticed it flash and vanish, leaving behind glowing remnants that started collecting back into my arm. Exhaustion finally caught up with me and my eyes shut.
Snapping back into reality, I find myself standing alone in the hallway. I roll the sleeve of my shirt up on my left arm and stare down at the tattoo-like marking now in place of the scar. I don't know what it means, where it came from, or what it has to do with that man, but I'm destined to figure everything out someday.
All of a sudden, I'm startled by a foghorn behind me. "Valin! Don't you belong in a classroom somewhere?!" Angered by Ms. Burmandee's attitude, I realize she is right and take off down the hallway to my next class, where I am no doubt late for.
No wonder she's still a 'Ms.', hideous and damn annoying.