Soul linked

Chapter 2

Taking refuge

He sits up with a jolt and takes in his surroundings. He's in a small room with mouldy walls covered in peeling green wallpaper and a rotting wood floor. Sunlight is beaming through the holes in the wrecked ceiling. Squinting his eyes, he looks back down to see that he is lying on a dirty mattress in the middle of the barren room. As he looks to his right, he sees a door fly open and a tall, toned man with tanned skin and messy hair, wearing tattered clothes and torn jeans walks in.

"Who are you!" he shouts as he stands up, ready to fight off whoever's at the door

"Eve, Shaun, Tyler, he's awake!" The mysterious person calls to whoever's behind him.

"You didn't answer my question." he says, trying to sound as intimidating as possible.

"I'll explain later, but for now just know we're not here to hurt you, we're here to help you." the man says reassuringly.

"Can you at least tell me your name?" he says, not expecting an answer. The man opens his mouth to answer but is interrupted by three more people charging through the door. The first one to come in is a young girl who looks no older than twenty-three. She's light skinned with blue and purple dyed hair and nose piercing. A tattoo of a wolf is etched onto her right bicep, which is only visible because the sleeves of her denim jacket are torn off. Underneath the jacket she was wearing a black shirt with a white skull on it. Her leather boots went almost up to her knee over her ripped jeans. The second to come in is a young boy who looks around the same age as him. He has dark skin and short black hair. He's wearing grey tracksuit with the hood down so that his face is barely visible. When he lifts his face to look at Alex, he can see a scar on his cheek. The third and final person to walk in has white skin and blonde hair. He looks about twenty and is wearing a baseball cap, short sleeve shirt and cargo shorts. When he enters, he pushes past everyone.

"Finally, he's up." Says the blonde man.

"What the hell Tyler?" the girl shouts at the blonde man, who ignores her.

"Tyler," the tanned man says softly, "manners."

The confidence that he once showed instantly fades and the blonde man immediately turns around and through gritted teeth says

"Sorry, Eve"

"Well now that that's over with," the tanned man says "How about we explain to Alex why he's here and what he's here for." He glares at the blonde man "And make him feel welcome." The blonde man huffs and leaves the room. "Right then, let's start with names, I'm Frank"

Then the girl speaks. "I'm Eve."

The boy seems hesitant to speak, but an encouraging look from Frank gives him a boost in confidence. "I'm Shawn." he says quietly.

"And that was Tyler." Frank says looking over at the open door.

"Alright," Frank says "Let's get to the office then and do some explaining." Frank, Eve and Shawn all leave the room and he follows behind them. As he leaves, he sees to his left, a long corridor with 4 other rotting wood doors located on the same wall as the room he woke up in. He assumes they lead to similar bedrooms. It ends in a left turn and the walls are covered in the same wallpaper as the room he was just in but little more intact. To his right he sees another, shorter, corridor that looks exactly the same as to the left but with only one rotted door at the end that frank carefully opens and walks through. Eve, Shawn and finally Alex follow him through. The room is completely different to the rest of the building he's seen so far. It's a bit bigger than the room before and has a giant, fancy dining table with twelve chairs surrounding it. The roof and walls look like they have been reinforced with sheets of scrap metal. Eve and Shawn sit at the table and Frank gestures for him to sit before he sits down himself. He sits across the table from everyone else.

"You can sit closer if you like." Frank asks him.

"I don't trust you enough yet." He says coldly.

"Alright, suit yourself," Frank says "Now, let me tell you why your here." 

Alex, Shawn and Eve sit quietly as Frank begins.

"You are one of few people affected by a soul link" 

"A what?" He questions.

"A soul link," Frank goes on "is what we use to describe the 'magic' you possess." 

"How do you know about that?" He asks 

"We could feel your presence," Frank tells him "its like a 6th sense, we can tell when someone like us is nearby, which is how we found each other. Anyway, we call it a soul link because that's, well, what it is. Your soul has been connected to someone of the past."

"Wait, souls are real!" He says, surprised.

"Yeah, and the rest of us are affected by it," Eve cuts in "We were connected to mages- people of magic, which was hard to believe."

"Wait, so your all like me?" He says, curious now.

"Not exactly," Frank responds "The mages realised how to harness the power of the elements, which I'm sure you know of how they work. The mage who discovered this power found it completely by accident, he was a farmer, tending to his land when the ground opened up beneath him. He found himself in a cave, with the skeletal remains of twelve people around a table, and a book in front of the one in the middle. He opened the book and recited the first thing he saw, as soon as he did the walls began to leak all sorts of flora and plant life. He realised that this was an object long forgotten, only heard of in legends, a spell book. He used the spells to escape the cave and return home, and when he slept that night a vision came to him in his dream. The vision told him about the dangers of the book and how to use it correctly, it told him that he needed to find eleven others to reform the order of magic, as there was a future threat that could mean the end for humanity. When he woke he got straight to work, he abandoned his farm and did as the vision asked. The following decade we know nothing of, as he rarely wrote in his diary, but we do know that he was successful and the order of magic was reunited. We assume that in that decade they trained their powers, each only focusing on one of the elements as they could not handle that much power. However the man that found the book, who we will be calling the head mage, was different, he could control all 11 elements. We don't know how but he just could. The order were aware of the threat in the future and new what the had to do. The head mage preformed a ritual that sent their souls out of their mortal bodies into rest, waiting for the right time to inhabit the right person." 

"Wow," He says in amazement "that's a lot to take in, also how do you know this?"

"Shawn discovered his diary, that had all the information we needed to piece together this puzzle." He notices Shawn for the first time, still with his grey hood half-covering his face and stayed silent the whole time.

 That's not all though," Frank says "As you've probably guessed you are linked to the head mage, and will be the one we need to stop him."

"Stop who?"

"Later," Frank says "But for now we should probably show you around, if you trust us now, that is" He hesitates for a bit but finally nods his head. 

"Good, follow me then" The rest all stand and walk towards the door. He takes a deep breath and follows them out of the room.