A Heart Forged In Ice And Fire
Chapter One
Our story begins at the end of the school year. The exams were finished for the day and the few remaining students that were still hanging about were the ones that didn't have their Early Release passes for the day signed off or they, for whatever reason, actually wanted to stay until the final bell of the day rang.
Our focus goes to a teenage girl who had her head upon the desk sleeping and obviously ignorant of the world around her. For at that moment in time another teenage girl who had her vibrant red hair cropped short into a pixie cut was finishing up on her drawing of the Dark Mark upon the sleeping teen's arm. The red head had rolled up the jacket sleeve of the teen's black leather jacket and rolled down some of the teen's maroon gloves. Why the girl was wearing gloves when it was practically 80° in the classroom was beyond her even more so when it was that hot and maybe more outside. Anyways she had started doodling upon the arm until it had become the infamous Dark Mark from the Harry Potter series. Once she was finished, the red-head put away her markers as a pair of ditzy blondes sniggered away a few aisles over.
It was at that time that the bell tolled signaling the end of the day and consequently the end of the school year. The sleeping teen opened her emerald-green eyes and gazed down at the artwork that adorned her left arm. The corner of her lips twitched upwards slightly. The dark-haired teen adjusted her glove and her jacket sleeve until all of her skin was covered once more and she slung her black messenger bag onto her left shoulder and proceeded to leave the classroom but not without a final farewell of the year. "Thanks for the artwork, Ashleigh. I'll be sure to get it tattooed in over the summer." Seeing as there was no sarcasm within her tone, no one could quite tell if she was joking or not.
The dark-haired teen walked past all of the excitable students from her school. It was official. Summer break had started. The time for pool parties and dances and the like. Anyone would go unless you were a nobody who managed to get by your high school life without any friends like the star of our story here. Then you wouldn't but only if you were her. The weirdo named Nicolette. The weird girl who always wore gloves even in the hottest months of the year like now.
The teen pulled up the collar of her jacket to hide what she could of herself from the sun's harsh rays. She hummed a soft song as she walked home. Nicolette allowed her mind to wander to a simpler time. To a time when she didn't have to worry about much of anything. To a time before she was abducted at the age of 9 years old. To be honest she couldn't quite remember much. Just a little boy who looked like her except that he had a pair of bright blue eyes and black perpetually messy/untameable hair. There was a couple who had appeared to be their parents. The Mom was always singing from what she could remember whereas the Dad wasn't hardly around so Nicolette couldn't gauge an opinion of him. The Mom and the Boy seemed to be nice enough but the Dad...she just got an evil vibe from him.
Then she changed her thoughts to something else. Her dreams. As of late, Nicolette had been having the oddest dreams. She dreams that she's in a cavern of some sort. As she walks along, she sings a song and towards the end she's usually joined in by a powerful male voice. When she looks around all she could find were a pair of glowing red eyes peering at her from the darkness. When she would ask for his name he would never answer her until recently, that is.
~~~Flashback to Dream~~~
"Who are you? And why do you chase me so in the dreams of which I call my own?" The dark-haired teen asked the figure before her. Although he was shrouded in darkness, Nicolette wanted to know. Who was he? Why has he stalked her dreams for so long and for what purpose?
"I am your Lord, Mandarin. I chase you because you are mine. A chase of which you have no chance in a hairsbreadth of winning. For no matter where you go, no matter how far you may run, no matter where you may hide you cannot hide from me for very long. For I will find you. It is only a matter of time until I find you, Dearest Nikki." The figure stepped forward into the light slightly.
Nikki gasped at the short figure whom was wearing a long black cloak. "How do you know that name?"
The figure smirked up at her, "The better question is this: Why wouldn't I know your name? Your preferred name. Why would I not know some deeply personal things about you, My Pet? If you are destined to be mine then why would I not do my best and watch you from afar?"
Nikki's emerald-green eyes widened as she backed away from the figure. But with every step back that she took another step forward he took. "Get away from me, you Creep!"
"I may be a creep but it's only towards you, My Dear." The short figure seemed to levitate himself up to her eyesight.
She stared at him for about a minute. Nikki blinked once. Twice. Then thrice before she finally answered. "Are you coming on to me?"
The figure seemed to glare at her. "I admit of my feelings towards you and you ask me if I'm coming on to you?"
"Uh...yes?" Nikki replied meekly with an anime sweatdrop forming at the top of her head. She may be a bit of a ditz who's absolutely clueless when it comes to things of the heart but how was she supposed to know that this guy who's been stalking her in her dreams was supposed to love her? "But in my defense how was I supposed to know when you're being nothing short of a psychopath to me?"
"I'm more of a highly functioning sociopath, if you ask me." The floating creep muttered.
"Now that's referencing Sherlock and you know it, Mandarin!" Nikki narrowed her eyes at the floating figure.
He rolled his eyes at her. "Wake up, Nikki. You'll meet me soon enough. I'll explain everything once we're able to meet in person."
"What do you mean? What is there to explain? Are you a creep or aren't you?" It was at that point that Nikki awoke from her...informative dream and went about her day as she usually does all the while wondering about what it meant.
~~End Flashback to Dream~~
Now that Nikki has his name, she can do her own research on who this creepy stalker of hers might be. To be completely honest, she has no idea where to start but Google would be her best bet. But it's not like she could exactly Google 'creepy dream stalkers who won't leave you alone' or 'how to get creepy killers to leave you alone'...unless you were a writer. That's where you get the majority of the creeper ideas from. Writers who are trying to come up with awesome plot twists for their creeper characters who may or may not be in lust with the heroine.
Nikki shook her head at the thought. She needed to get her thoughts away from him. It was now that she came across her house. It was a one story home that had hardly any color to it. It was a bland house that held a limited amount of color in its rooms because her parents didn't believe in such a thing like imagination. They believed that color was the gateway to imagination and so they refused to have any color other than stark white or any of the palest colors imaginable in their home. Of course Nikki thought that they were being ridiculous but hey, when would her parents ever actually listen to her?
The dark-haired teen took out her silver house key that hung on a simple gold key chain and unlocked the door to her house. She dropped her black messenger bag off by the island in the middle of the kitchen, opened the fridge and grabbed a small granny smith apple to munch on. By the time that the fridge door had closed, she had noticed that a light-yellow post-it note on the freezer door.
Nicolette,
Your Father and I have a business meeting to attend out of town and will not be back until the middle of next week. You know the rules. No parties. No wild science projects. No painting the walls any obscene color. NO BOYS!
With Love from,
Your Mother
Nikki glared at the note before she angrily set the apple on the grey marble counter and stormed up to her room. She was seventeen years old now! How dare they say that she couldn't handle any measly science projects...granted hers ended up with blowing up a portion of the house some of the time but still! And who gave a damn about boys? Who really wanted to date anyways?! That's it.. She's going out to the lake for a couple of days. If they weren't going to be there to demand that she stay at the house then she wasn't going to bother staying in a dreary place where she couldn't be herself.
Nikki glared at the stark white walls of her bedroom that were covered with posters of various music groups, musicals, or films that she enjoyed. One wall held several shelves that held either books or Cd's. She found her navy blue hiking bag and started loading it with clothes, her black mp3 player with charger and red headphones, her grey IPhone 5 and charger, some of her sharp weapons, toiletries, a black choker, a couple of books, a lighter, a flashlight, and few other things. Then Nikki slung the bag over her left shoulder and left her bedroom but not without taking a moment to gaze at her bedroom from the doorway, somehow feeling as if this was going to be the last time that she saw her bedroom for a good long time.
'Why do I feel..like this is goodbye? Like a real goodbye?' Nikki thought as she walked slowly down the white wooden stairs. Because even though she went out to the lake once a month or every couple of months she always came back to the house. Not because her parents demanded it of her, but because she couldn't stay at the lakeside forever. As long as the house was there to go back to, she would always go back home no matter how lonely and upsetting it may make her. The house was her home.
As she locked the door to her house and pocketed the key, she heard screams. The dark-haired teenager whirled around and saw people in the street running and screaming theirs heads off at seemingly nothing. Nothing that is until she looked up into the sky and saw this giant worm-like thing floating overhead and headed down towards the Earth. It was a pinkish-whitish color and it had its mouth open. Instead of it being pink in the mouth, the mouth was flashing all the colors of the rainbow. Then a light, a glowing purple light came from on top of the giant worm's head and it hit Nikki. She started to scream as she seemed to lift up into the air and one by one her limbs started to disappear until she was gone.