Forgotten Shadows

Chapter 1
 
Part One
 
What is left behind and forgotten
 
/-/-/

“He isn’t the man you once knew, if you see him you should kill him because he won’t think twice about it if he were to kill you. That man you once knew, the one you were friends with, the one you once loved, he is gone now, swept away in the waste of this land. This horribly shattered world. The one that now stands there as cold and silent as death. He is the one you must fear. The one you should kill. He will show you no kindness, no mercy. That has left him. He seeks nothing but power and destruction. Unbalanced as he is. He will only bring this world into more destruction.”

/-/-/

A smile, a laugh. 

Happiness.

A promise, forgotten memories of a happier time.

All shattered. 

A fight. 

Blood. 

Someone has left. Shattered, broken.

Someone has stayed. Cold, cruel.

Nothing will ever be the same, nothing.

/-/-/

She remembered him when he was young. Black hair, gold eyes, pale skin, kindness. He had always been kind to everything. He had been so gentle, he had balanced the elements of earth and wind. She remembered him. Kept that image to her but she knew that wasn’t how he was anymore. Not after what happened, not after he had taken an apprenticeship with a chaos wielder, an unbalanced. After that he had slowly changed. First it was small things, things only she would notice but soon it got bigger, soon others begin to take notice. And then her world cracked. Shattered into a million pieces and each piece slowly disappeared until they were all gone and the boy she once knew was gone, too.

/-/-/

Magic could be a curse or a gift. Aria always considered it a curse. She was born a chaos wielder, an unbalanced, too powerful for her own good, to deadly. Her mind not all there or so they say. Like most of the unbalanced, mentally unstable. 

It didn’t matter where she come from or who she was, she still bore the star of the unbalanced, an eight pointed star, black against the back of her right hand. It stood out against her pale skin and as much as she hated it, she was forbidden from hiding it; it was illegal. The chaos wielders couldn’t go unnoticed so the black mark was born and as soon as their magic manifested and they were deemed unbalanced they got the tattoo. It could be anywhere on the body as long as it stood out and people could see it.

It told the people what she was and people who saw her on the street scurried to get away. She pretended not to notice, pretended that the people didn’t look at her with such hatred and distaste, pretended they didn’t avoid her because of what she was. But she saw everything. The fear in their eyes, the wenches as they involuntarily flinched as she passed. A life time of warnings and being taught that the unbalanced were bad, horrible, unnatural passing though there mind. She ignored the questions in their minds, the ones she could see in their eyes.

Was she here for them? To kill them? Was she one of the shadow kings men here to wreak destruction on their town? And with each new question the atmosphere grew darker, she could smell the fear on the people as she passed. But she never stopped walking, never faltered in her step. She kept the hood of her cloak over her head, letting it cast dark shadows over her face. She was used to this, it happened in every city, every town, and every village she had ever passed. 

She found that it was best just to keep walking, so that’s what she did. No emotion on her face or in her eyes. She had banished her thoughs things, afraid that she would get hurt again.

Aria stopped for a second as chill passed over her despite the dry desert heat and the sun being as high as possible.

You can’t be here.

She quickly looked around. First up the street, then down it. Everything was normal despite the people being in fear of her. The market on either side was crowed, shop owners shouting there specials or for you to come buy from them. Women chattered, dressed in colorful cloth which was barley covering their body, thin fabric covered over by lace. Gems sparkling in their hair, gold glinting from their ears, necks or arms. Well, vender’s soiled food and merchants had there prizes out trying to sell jewelry, silk, and other exotic things. This was the town of Nemzu it was a merchants town half the size of the capital. Clay and stone houses lined the streets, a common material used for building houses since this part of the land was all desert. It wasn’t one of Aria’s favorite places though she may have grown up in the deserts but she hated the summer heat. Shaking her head she continued on her way.

I’m getting to paranoid, 

But after a few step it happened again. Without stopping, she cast her magic out, scanning for something. Anything to prove that she wasn’t losing her mind. At least not yet, not now. She still had things to do before the insanity come to her like it came to all her kind.

A flicker.

A shadow.

A whisper.

Cold.

She felt it pull at her, catching hold of her mind and soul. 

A tug. 

A laugh.

She felt herself fall, crumple to the ground. Shivering, cold, her breath came out in wisps of frozen air. Yet she could still feel the sun, the heat on her back, she knew it was supposed to be hot but she couldn’t quite feel it. She felt someone probe at her mind but they found that was useless. She had a barrier up too strong for them to break, so instead they sent her images and that’s when she realize who It was. 

No! She screamed in her mind trying to push against the images, frantic.

It took her a moment to figure out who was screaming. It tore from her throat and out of her mouth without warning. 

Please no, she cried desperately in her mind to him.

Another smile.

Another cruel laugh. 

Darkness.

/-/-/

“Aria let’s make a promise.” A young boy beamed, gold eyes sparkling with happiness a smile on his face.

“A promise?” a Young aria asked, her black hair cut to her shoulders, large purple eyes holding curiosity.

“Yes,” the boy nodded, as he leaned forward, closer to her.

“What type of promise?” She asked.

“Let’s make a promise to always be friends,” he replied.

“Always?”

“Always.”

She smiled then, it was a small sweet smile so filled with happiness that she had a friend, that he was her friend.

“Okay.”

/-/-/

Aria woke up screaming. She was still lying in the middle of the street. No one would dare to touch a chaos wielder.

No, no, no! Her mind reeled in panic, her eyes filled with frustrated tear. That was a time she had tried to forget, a happier time. She had been thirteen then, he had also been thirteen. That had been seven years ago, she was now twenty and a fully realized chaos wielder. He was no longer a part of her life, hadn’t been since she was fifteen. He was a part of her past she wished she could forget. A part she had forgotten until now.

Aria laid there staring up at the stars as they twinkled above her, the moon a waning crescent. The cold so intense in sent goose bumps up her arm and threatened to freeze her. That was the problem with the desert, too hot during the day, too cold at night. Never in the middle, two extremes living side by side without a warm. She wasn’t sure if she had the energy to get up yet so she just laid there and laughed quietly to herself.

Maybe I am going insane.

She knew no one would bother her though and she was comfortable laying in the warm sand, which had taken up some of the heat of the sun. She ran a hand over it lifting some of the earth in her hands.

“Oh why did you become what you are, Sheut?” She whispered to the night, the words were snatched away by a frozen gust of wind. 

We were happy together and then you changed, but she didn’t say that out loud, she would never say that out loud. It hinted at something else, a forgotten emotion she may have once felt for him. She let out one more sigh, watching her breath catch in the night air and let herself drift off to sleep again. She would move herself when morning came, be back on her way to the meeting she was supposed to go to in the capital.