Shadows Embrace

-Chapter 1-

"Liara, I swear if you don't come down here right now!" Shoes slapped on the floor below me before I heard them clomping up the steps. "Shit." I hissed as I grabbed the scattered papers off my cot and started shoving them under my singular pillow. Alita came storming into my room, her face red with anger. "What are you doing?! Difa Slade has been waiting for you in training for thirty minutes." She crossed her skinny arms across her chest and glared down upon me.

She stood so eerily still she could be mistaken as a statue. Her long, pin-straight silver hair hung stagnant, making her golden eyes pop. Crazy how someone who was only twenty-two could be so terrifying. I sat frozen on my bed, too scared to move and somehow reveal the papers I'm hiding. Annoyed with my incompetence, she stepped forward and grabbed my arm, yanking me off the hard surface of my "bed", and dragged me back downstairs.

"Slade is already so upset, Li. What were you doing? How could you possibly miss training?" My caregiver suddenly turned and grabbed me by the shoulders. "It's so unlike you, what's up?" My shoulders sagged and I took a deep breath. I didn't know Alita that well yet. I had only moved in with her last month after I graduated from my birth parents. She only had to watch me for four more years, until I turned twenty. Then like her, I would get a trainee to watch. It was a complicated system, but it's all I knew.

"I'm fine." Alita's bronzy eyes bore into my soul. She didn't believe me. But she seemed too annoyed to care, spinning back around and guiding me out to the car. The cars here were built funny because shadow-people didn't use them. They only built them for mortal use. They were very box like, only big enough to fit two people at once. They didn't touch the road, but rather hovered in a way, and moved through some sort of connection between the material it's made of and what's built into the roads. Kind of like a magnet.

I hoisted myself up into the stiff seats. My long, chestnut hair swished against my chin, tickling my cheeks. I tucked the unruly hair behind my ear and huffed as I settled into the seat. Alita got in next to me and started the vehicle through voice command. "To the East training centers, please." She commanded and the car lurched forward. 

Alita immediately opened her shadow device, desperate as always to keep up with any new information. The small device floated in the air above her wristband, appearing like a dark cloud, yet a small graphic shown through it where you can read any updates on the Shadow Kingdom. I turned my attention away, leaning against the small window. The glass cooled the warm skin of my forehead, and I took a few deep breaths, the condensation appearing on the window. It was always cloudy here, I guess sun only existed on Earth, where we mortals came from.

My Grandparents were children when mortals moved here from Earth. They would tell me how sad Earth had become. It became cloudy, polluted, destroyed by us. But they would tell me stories of how a long time before they were born, the lands were covered in a warm light, and the oceans shone blue. Unfortunately, mortals became too greedy, and we had to flee the planet before we all went extinct. Many mortals and all other species got left behind to die. A lump of guilt formed in my throat, and I closed my eyes.

Once we got to the shadow planet, the kingdom took mortals hostage. Once they realized we were merely weak vessels, they let us go. We are no match for their power. So, they shunned us to the outskirts of the kingdom, and as our payment for their hospitality we are given a job from birth. We are to assassinate and kill the Shadow Whisperers.

There was a moment of peace between us and the shadow-people, but as I said before, humans were greedy. So, mortals started to kill shadow-people, catch them unexpectedly. When a mortal kills a shadow-person, they inherit the shadows that person carried. They then become what we call Shadow Whisperers. Right now, I'm on my way to train, my first real training.