Chapter One
A warm wind blows across my face, doing little to repress the summer heat. I look behind me at the house. I've gotten used to it, it'll be sad when we move again. In front of me, the wind makes the long green grass sway. The grass is greener in our region compared to some others.
I head back inside for a glass of water, letting the screen door bang shut behind me. Cason is on his laptop, like always.
"Get me a glass too, please" he says, not even looking up. I fill up two glasses of water and walk over to him, holding the glass out to him. He takes it and I freeze. Noticing, Cason looks up. I stare at my hand. There, held up by my fingers, is the glass of water that I gave to Cason. The glass that he now sets down.
"I only got two glasses, not three" I say.
Cason jumps up and races out of the room; I can hear him rumaging around. I begin to feel an excitement. Another legacy.
"Three, come help me!" I hear from the other room. I set the glasses of water on the table and hurry to where he's at.
He's sitting on the floor, my Chest at his knees. His hand is already around the lock and I wrap my around it as well. I hear the small click almost instantly. Cason throws it open and slips his hand inside. A second later his hand reapears and he closes the Chest. He holds his hand out to me, a smooth black stone resting in his palm. I take it, feeling it's rounded edge as I turn it over in my hands. It's not very big, a bit smaller than my palm, and it seems to radiate with cold.
"What is it?" I ask.
"It's a Counter Stone. It will counter everything that you do. Legacy-wise anyway. And only if you're holding it at the time." he explains.
"You mean that it'll stop everything I do?"
"Yes, you could say that."
"Then what's the point? I don't think I'll want to stop using my legacies all of a sudden."
"You don't use it for all of you legacies, just Duplication."
That would explain why he only now gave it to me.
Duplication. The word runs itself through my mind. My legacy is Duplication. I feel like jumping with all of my excitement.
"Duplicating can be dangerous, and this stone will help you from using that."
"How will it be dangerous?" I ask.
"Well, it all depends on what you doubling. You see, when you duplicate an object, you take half of that object's being and give it to the copy-this way they are the exact same. If you do that with a living thing, you take half of its life for the duplicate. This leaves the object more fragile and weak."
"Is there a way to combine both copies?"
Cason nodds, "Yes, but only a duplicator-like you, can do it."
"What if one copy is dead, will the other die too?"
"No, both beings are their own now, its just that the copy will have no way of reuniting with its other half," Cason must see the questing forming on my lips because he continues, "A being can live with only half of its soul, but if the other half is filled with death then the thing will die immediatly; the death would suck the remaining life until there is none left."
Cason stands, "I'm going to get you somethings so you can start practicing." Then he leaves me, the stone spreading a numbing chill in my hand.