The fire in the hearth keeps crackling. The shadows on the wooden walls keep dancing.
The old hut we're in keeps rotting away, and the asteroid the hut was built on keeps floating in space.
Our bodies are still, and deceptively relaxed, sitting on the floor at opposite ends of the hearth. The bittersweet smell of cinders and old wood has me drowsy.
I keep a confident façade and try to win the staring contest I'm engaged in.
The weary man before me looks like the customary post-apocalyptic lone warrior I'd read about–brown leather boots and threadbare black coat and everything else–albeit very tired, very on edge, and very dangerously miffed. Mismatched black and grey eyes keep trying to melt my face off, boring into my own dark ones with a calm, cold animosity.
I roll my shoulder a bit, feeling the stiffness, and he tracks all of my movements. Dreadful.
«Tell me about Mayhem,» I murmur, in what I hope is a light tone that betrays no tension whatsoever.
I'm tired too, and decidedly less skilled with an Icesteel blade than this crazy guy is, or a dagger, or a stick, you name it.
«No.»
Right. Well I should've expected it–no is the main answer I've gotten during a standard-month of mutual company.
«Shame. Would've loved to better understand why killing a toddler is off limits, but killing an adolescent is alright-»
«No.»
«No? For what other reason have I been dragged around on half dead planets and questionably stable portals if not because you're looking for a suitable place to dispose of something like m-»
«Be quiet.» His tone is just a tad colder, and the fire just a tad lower, and I'm tired.
«See, I'm sorry, I was still focused on that part that was all about how you're actually the one who dumped me in an orphanage-institute in the System slums as a kid, then erased all my memories with your powers that you also refuse to explain.»
He's not budging, just staring and waiting.
So I try a different tactic.
«You... hungry?» I wave my hand vaguely toward the fire. It flickers back up a bit.
His eyes narrow as they drop to the flames–and I count this as me winning the staring contest–and I could swear he pales a little. Quite the feat seeing it under all those scars. I mentally pat myself on the back for the consecutive victories.
«You've already learned how to pull things from the flames?» he growls.
«I can do that? Why-»
«Cursed filthy star-spawn, I should-»
I leap to my feet and he does the same.
There is a cold, blue metal blade under my chin.
And there are sparks dancing around my hands.
The man is taller and broader, and looms over me like an angry pillar, but my fury, I know, is equally fearsome.
«Stop calling me that,» I hiss.
He sneers and I sneer right back.
«You're delusional, you crazy knife sharpener! I hope when the System Corps catch you, you'll get thrown into one of the Sun Cells and I get to melt the key!» And after him, perhaps, all of the System Corps.
«Yes, you like melting things, don't you?» he throws back at me.
I feel the fire in my veins, behind my eyes, burning with anger. And I know he sees it too, and it makes him angry in turn. Well, angrier. He always looks annoyed, but now he looks as angry as when he first snatched me from the institute's courtyard and threw me through a blinding portal.
YOU ARE READING
Legacy of Mayhem
FantasyStar-children aren't an oddity, but Ember, volatile like fire, born of death and new light, sure is-a very troublesome, talkative one, who has been kidnapped (twice) by a very miffed warrior, survivor of an apocalypse yet to come. Duly named Miff, s...
