Embers of Destiny

Introduction

I was born on a cold winter's night, in a flood of fiery embers. My fiery orange eyes and hair alluded to my unique power, but strangely the flames did not start the wood floors on fire nor hurt my mother or the physician. They stood there, holding me in awe, until I began to cry.

My tears lit the room ablaze as my fire suddenly became hot and painful, and the doctor nearly dropped me on the ground as I burned his hands. In a panic, they desperately tried to put out the flames while trying to soothe my crying. All I wanted was my mother's touch, but alas, she could not hold me.

My mother's voice was the thing that calmed my fit and ceased the fires. Her voice was weak, but gentle, and I knew it well. My crying stopped, she held me in her arms, and I slept. But the damage I'd caused to both the doctor and our home had been too great. Never had a power like mine been seen in our kingdom, not for a thousand years. They couldn't leave me in my current state: I was dangerous.

My father knew of an old woman who lived in the woods, someone who could fix my problem and help me live a normal life. She was the village hermit rumored to practice dark magic, and of her people said had lived more than two hundred years. It was dangerous, and my weak mother tried to stop him, but my father left, taking me in a swaddle of cloth out into the ranging winter winds.

As chief of our village he took the best horse from the stable and rode off into the darkness, his only light a lantern and the soft flames glowing from my infant body, wrapped inside the swaddling cloth. He held me tight even when I woke and cried, when my flames burned his flesh despite the measures of protection he had taken. Somehow he made it to the hermit's cottage, where she welcomed him.

She owed an old debt to my father, one she was gladly willing to repay by casting a seal upon my power. He returned me to the village and to my mother. My hair and eyes had turned brown, and I was no longer glowing with flames. But the price I paid for the seal of my powers shadowed over me, and I was sickly my whole childhood.

The seal suppressed my power by weakening my life force. It would slowly drain me until there was nothing left. She urged my father to find a mentor for me before then, one who could help me control my dangerous powers, but she did not know how long the seal would last. ten years, she estimated, ten years at most, but I was now 14 and still alive.

Still alive, but on my deathbed.

"Oh, Aster... if only I had never taken you to that witch..." my father held my frail hand gently in his. His hands were warm, mine ice cold. He had spent the whole of the past 14 years searching for someone who could explain my powers and teach me to use them.

He would have sent people to find her to lift the seal, but they'd scoured the entire mountain without a trace of her for 14 years. "Father, it's alright. It's better if I die," I said weakly. I'd rather die than be a danger to our village. Part of me wondered what it would be like to experience normal life. Yet I knew that I never could. If my life force were restored, I would have no control over myself and had the potential to raze the forest to the ground, including the village and the family I loved. I knew I couldn't live with myself if that happened.

"Just hold on a little longer," his voice was soft and full of sadness. "There is someone coming who can help you."

I smiled, or, tried to, at my father's unending hope. There'd been many people who claimed they could help me if only for the reward money, but when they stumbled upon the humble state of our tiny little village and home, as well as realizing they did not have the ability to lift the seal placed on me, they turned their noses and left.

While chief of our village, my father was not extravagant by any means. But looks aren't everything, and he'd made a fortune as a knight during the war in the central continent, a fortune he was willing to spend as a prize for restoring me to health.