Blaze

Word Count: 727

Layle tried to pick up the burnt book, but it only proceeded to crumble into a couple more pieces.

Groaning, Layle straightened from his stooping position. Glancing around quickly, he used his power to sweep up the ashes and place it into a bag.

"If I see you do that again, I'll burn the hair off your head."

Layle jumped, nearly dropping the bag of book ash. He turned to look at his mentor, the man who made his life more miserable then before.

"If I can never use my power how exactly are you teaching me?" Layle challenged.

"You've gotten more powerful, haven't you?" Blaze said, walking pass Layle and grabbing a bottle of liquor that was on the shelf.

Layle knew that he had gotten stronger, but he wasn't too sure if it was Blazes' doing, It was more likely age.

"Listen, Layle, you're lucky that I found you as young as you were, before someone else did." Blaze took a large swig of the liquor. Layle scrunched his nose. He could smell it from where he was standing on the other side of the room.

Layle had just turned sixteen; he had been under Blaze's mentorship for two years now. He couldn't leave until he was seventeen. One year left.

Layle knew from experience that Blaze couldn't take strong drinks. He watched as the other Bearer took another long swallow.

"You have it easy, Layle," Blaze's eye was slightly unfocused. "You didn't have to go through the pain that I had to go through!"

Layle snorted, he had gone through his own share of mental pain. Most of it had come from Blaze.

Blaze finished the small bottle and groped for another one. "You see this scar?" He stammered, "You know how I got it?"

Layle did not. He had never dared ask.

"It was just like any other day; I was coming home from another day of wretched school. I had stayed late that day, because my father had come home early and I could never stand watching him beat mother. So I walked slowly home…. It was dark; the only light on the street was from the streetlamps. I made a wrong turn and ran into an old man. The man looked at me once, saw my thin body and decrepit clothes and he said, 'want to be a Bearer, Son?' He was holding something in his hand.

"Having never seen a Crystal Bearer before, I thought they had the life. With their powers, they could do anything. So I said, 'sure I do.' I regret those words to this very day."

Blaze stumbled back into a bookshelf that was behind him, sloshing liquor onto him.

"Then what happened? He ran at me and grabbed my face in his hand. And with his thumb, he gouged my eye out."

Blaze lifted his hand up and shakily touched his right, crystal eye. His voice was a harsh whisper.

"With the crystal he had had in his other hand; he shoved it into my empty eye-socket, and then pushed me back. I fell on onto the street.

"I clawed at my face, trying desperately to take out the thing that from then on was forever a part of me. I fell asleep, certain I would die. Hoping I would die."

Blaze's face had fallen slack, words slightly slurred.

"When I awoke, it was still dark; I crawled away from the cruel, wicked world… In the morning I was in a cave and I had the power that I still have to this day. I never went back to that life with my parents; I trained with my Crystal Power, setting fire, controlling it, making explosions… Ten years later, I ran into the same guy that had changed my life. He was happy to see me alive, excited to see that it had actually worked…Do you know what I did?"

Layle was silent.

"I killed him," Blaze breathed, "I killed him for making me his experiment."

Tears slowly started to fall down Blaze's face. "Get out of here…" He hissed.

Layle was stuck.

"I said get out of here, kid!" Blaze weakly threw the empty bottle at Layle, missing. Slowly, he fell to the ground, weeping.

Layle, like a ghost, slipped out of the room, shutting the door.

One year left.