A Child Outside of Fate

Chapter 1: Home Again

The wind blew softly through the sparsely wooded Border Forest. It started up on The Last Mountain with snow still on its cap, rolling down and shooting across Lake Nyr, breaking the otherwise serene and shimmering waterfront. There it would proceed to speed along the Nyr River following each and every twisting curve, enter the forest from the north, go over the small waterfall, and miraculously find its way to Nalitor, just to make him shiver; or so he liked to believe.

Nalitor walked briskly alongside the river with his grey wool cape clutched tightly about his plain olive green robes that the wind pierced right through. Robes were a magician's clothing his parents said, but when it came to holding in heat, he could have been naked for all he cared. The wool cape at least broke the wind as it rushed around him. The sky was still blanketed from last night's storms, casting a gray tint on everything below. Thankfully the rain had stopped pouring down. The evergreen trees were not densely populated throughout the forest, but they were absolutely massive, much wider than he was tall, and stood hundreds of feet into the cold air. The ground crunched and squished under the weight from his leather boots. The nightly chill had left frost on the edges of each needle, but the ground was still muddied from the downpour. Nalitor took in a deep breath through his nose and smiled as the scent of fresh pine filled his nostrils. Patches of snow still covered parts of the ground as winter was finally coming to a close, and his breath fogged the air in front of him when it wasn't carried away by the breeze that chilled his bones.

He pulled out a large yellow crystal that lightly shimmered from his inner pocket and looked it over for a few seconds, "Three damn days just for this." He groaned, "She has others just like it..." He grumbled and put it back in his pocket. Cadence, his mother, had asked him to run back to lake Nyr to retrieve the crystal for her. Apparently she needed to leave it there to gather energy, or so she told him at least. He wouldn't have been surprised if she left it on accident. "She'd better be happy." The breeze whipped his cape about him again, causing his lean body to shiver underneath it and his teeth to clatter under the frigid wind. "Sure was a lot warmer last night..." He mused as a smile crossed his face.

"Because you were having sex," Retarion blatantly pointed as he spoke within Nalitor's mind. His voice held power and knowledge, with a hint of superiority, "And now you are running a 'bit' past late to get home in time."

"Okay first off-," Nalitor started to speak out loud.

"Ahem!" Retarion coughed loudly interrupting him.

"Seriously?" Nalitor asked in an annoyed tone.

"I'm not suppose to exist remember?" Retarion asked him in an equally annoyed tone, "How often have we gone over this? What's going to happen once they found out that I-"

"Alright! I get it!" Nalitor shouted in his mind while stomping along the forest floor. "Fine! Fine..." He sighed exasperated and calmed down. "There's nobody around for fucking miles, but whatever."

Retarion smiled at him, "Anyways..."

Nalitor shook his head as he continued to walk alongside the small, but strong river. Retarion had been in his mind since the moment he woke up and broke free. He was an experiment — a failed one. His parents hadn't told him much about what the experiment was, but enough for him to piece a good amount of it together. Retarion was a magician of ages past, one of the most prominent and powerful ones who instead of dying, destroyed his body and left his soul — and power — to drift within space under the hopes that one day he would be found and revived. Nalitor's parents had somehow learned of this power and believed it to merely be waiting for someone to claim as their own, they knew not of the consciousness attached to it. Why they wanted it, how they heard of it, why they put it into their son, and how they did it were still unanswered questions.