A nice, breezy day in the midst of the Water Park. People were playing, the sun was shining. The people were happy, calm; it was a peaceful time. Even the Fire Mages couldn't resist a couple of splashes here and there. A couple of friends in particular were having a great day, as well.

"Guys, I swear God, quit throwing sand at me," half-laughed Zeke, a muscular red-eyed, dark-skinned male, with a half-open black coat, complete with chains, who never found the need to keep his long, wild ponytail in check.

"Oh, come on Zeke! It's all in good fun!" replied Blah, with a hearty chuckle. He was the one with the brownish, unkempt hair. His glasses barely hid the playful attitude behind them.

"Yeah, it's like nothing bad can happen today!" SFM added, gleefully. He was the joker of the group, and had a perpetual smirk to show it. Though his shades had been off at the moment, he is rarely far away from them.

If only irony were that easy...

"Damnit, guys..." Zeke whispered to himself, staring at the empty Water Park. The moon hung over the park almost eerily, as Zeke recalled the events that had transpired.

We're all friends. We have been. Longer than I can remember. But this war... these factions... They're doing too much to everyone. There have been kidnappings. Murders. Not just the Order... not just the Legion... Everyone is in peril, whether they know it or not. People are being killed, left and right, and no one is even bothering to change anything about it. At this rate, the world itself is going to... I'm only one guy. I can't do much to stop the scarring of this world, but...

Zeke drew his Fireseal, his weapon at the moment, nicknamed Ragnarok. He drove it angrily into the ground and looked ahead at the cold, unforgiving waves, and sighed.

A slender woman appeared next to Zeke, in a flash of light and heat. Her plain, chestnut hair added to her description of herself: normal. Her and Ezekial were the only two light sources in the entire area, save for the moon. Zeke's Fireseal gave off quite the glow, just as the woman's Flame staff did the same. Zeke eyed the woman, almost ready to attack, his hand hovering over his blade. The flames flickered just enough to let Zeke see the tattoo below her left amethyst eye.

"Zeke...?" she questioned.

"Yeah." he paused for a moment, and sighed, noting the roughness in his own voice. "Sorry I've been out for so long..."

"Well, I knew you'd be here," she started, without as much sympathy in her voice as she could. Though she had found Zeke merely for business purposes at the moment, she was one of Zeke's close friends. Not only that, but Diamond knew almost all of the other guild members, and she had been a very close companion to the ones that were taken. No other words slipped between the two, as a moment of silence passed by on the wind. Zeke's fist tightened, and Diamond picked up on his anger, but she knew, as well as him, that neither of the two could do anything to get them back, as they were now. As she put her magician's hat back on, she turned to Zeke, who looked utterly terrible.

"Well... Something came up at the castle. I'm on my way there now, and they will probably need you too. I'll be waiting for you there, okay?" she said, almost in a whisper. After a couple of seconds of silence from Zeke, she decided it was best to leave. Closing her eyes and focusing, a red aura surrounded the fire mage, and after a few moments, she zipped into the sky, in the same fashion of her arrival.

As Zeke readied himself to go, he heard a familiar slow clapping. "Not now..." he said, his voice quickly filling to the brim with scorn.

"Oh, Ezekial... You never cease, do you?" said a Reaper, stepping out of the shadows. Unlike most Reapers, his classy royal purple suit matched his small ponytail, as well as his scythe, which cast a glow just enough to catch the intensity of his aquamarine eyes. A devilish smirk crept across his face as he strolled toward Zeke, their eyes catching each other's almost instantly.
Zeke, however, wasn't as thrilled, and responded quickly with a sharp, "Get lost."

"Is that anyway to treat your elder?" he said, the sarcastic sorrow in his voice burning a hole through Zeke's patience.

"I'll say it again, get the hell out of my face before I-"

"Before you what? Kill me?" the Reaper silenced Zeke. "You know as well as I do that you can't do that. You can't kill your dear sweet brother..."

As the Reaper reached Zeke, who had stood, not moving, gripping Fireseal with an intense, and still growing need to cut or impale someone, he simply kept walking past Zeke, but whispered a few words when he reached earshot, not even bothering to look at him.

"...because I'm already dead."

And with that, in a fury, Zeke whipped around, throwing a fist out to his enemy's location, aimed to break bones. As he Zeke turned, only the wind whistled; there was no satisfying wham, no connection. Zeke was the only one there.

It had been like that almost every day. Zeke's focus, his mindset entirely, was being plagued by his brother, Xavier. Four years ago, the real Xavier had actually looked quite like Zeke; a smaller, black ponytail, yes, but with just a slightly older face. Zeke's red eyes had been passed through the bloodline, as Xavier had them too. His weapon of choice was a grey scythe, and he was nicknamed "The Black Death" because of it. Due to the camaraderie of the two, they tended to sweep competitions, fights, and anything of the sort. They were famous in their little group, and it had finally became time for Zeke to don his new "Reaper Robe", as they called it. However, with fame comes risk, and that risk hit the both of them hard.

They barely had time to react, with the icicles dropping from the sky by the hundreds. It seemed that the Mage Guild had formed an alliance with the Bomb Squad, and it did not end anywhere near a good note. Their quiet hometown, lying near the shore of a beach, had been raided. The sirens went off to alert the warriors to protect the children, and elderly... but surprise attacks tend to get the better of that. In the middle of the chaos and confusion, a squad of crazy Sappers had decided to call an airstrike... right in the heart of the small village. With nothing to do but to watch the oncoming horror, hear the echoing laughter of the psychotic bombers, and the screams of most of the remaining town villagers, Zeke and Xavier had no choice but to run.

The two attempted to get as far away as they could in those seconds before the bombs hit, that would ultimately wipe the beach-side town off the map. As fate would have it, however, Zeke's leg had just barely been hit by an ice shard, which quickly spread throughout his entire body. Xavier looked up, seeing yet another bomb falling, and down at his brother, who would surely die if he had left.

He accepted his fate right then and there. Xavier pulled his scythe back, shutting his eyes, and gritting his teeth in determination. With a swing, Zeke was freed, and send flying just far enough, and out of the blast radius, just as the explosion resounded. With no time to grieve, Zeke continued running, his head filled with too many thoughts to believe. After running for, to him, what felt like forever, he collapsed in a small forest. The scraps of light through the treetops gave Zeke just enough light to see himself, understand, and reflect on what had just occurred.

All of it, all that had happened in the past couple of hours, was just too much for the kid to bear. His mentality began to crumble. He started seeing images, illusions, of his family, his brother especially. The forced adaptation, under normal circumstances, would have given Zeke a twisted outlook on his own, and others' lives, but instead, for some strange reason, manifested as visions of his family members, the most prominent being his brother. Needless to say, this bothered Zeke for years on end, the hallucinations only getting worse. Even a few of the best medics couldn't prescribe enough medication for Zeke's reality to hold together. But his will, his drive to live for the both of them, both him and his brother, kept him alive. Though his subconscious, manifested into corporeal form as a corrupted Xavier, wanted nothing but to see Zeke quit, he would not allow himself to go down, and outwardly refuses to let anyone put him that way either.

"Colonel Wildfire, I'm glad you've returned," stated an Iron Knight posted at the entrance to the Sky Castle. With a nod, Zeke was let in to his missing friend's floating castle, and began his ascent to the throne room. With the leader, the self-proclaimed Random King, Blah, out of commission, Diamond had attained control, due to their same ranking. With a few others out of the picture as well, Diamond had upped Zeke's guild ranking as well, making him a Colonel. The closer he got to the throne room, however, the more it seemed to him as though something was wrong. He could hear clanging, fire magic... and screaming. Zeke's speed picked up dramatically, just as the intensity of the fighting did, as he ran toward the center of the castle.