The World's Secret Balance

Prologue

Fate can be rather strange at times. One second she can be killing a rather beloved person, the next granting eternal love and happiness to a new couple. Fate has been described as beautiful and hideous, terrifying and serene and so many more contradictory statements that there would not be time enough to list them all. Yet a long, long time ago the souls of eight spirits about to depart captured her heart. The way they loved each other was endearing to Fate, so she came up with the idea to set their souls on a permanent loop.

However, by doing this there were unintended consequences. The eight had a strange magic to them when they were reborn, as though they were blessed by divine forces. When they each turned fifteen however, things changed. One set a castle on fire by touching a single candle flame, another accidentally healed a life threatening wound by dabbing water on his forehead. Such events occurred around the eight that soon the surrounding citizens became convinced of witchcraft. The eight went into hiding, but were soon bored out of their minds. So Fate, being as kind as she could be to these eight people, gave them a job.

Focusing on the general population of the planet at the time she granted a third of them with similar powers to the original eight. Sending half of the third to the o.e. where they were trained to defend themselves. The other half however banded together and began to attack the general public with their supernatural powers. Now Fate didn't like this. Sending a warning the o.e. about the event that was slowly heading their way, she realized that they too would have to learn to attack. The o.e. must have realized this fact as well because they to learned the more offensive fighting styles in order to rid the world of the ones who abused their power.

There was a war. Even Fate was aggrieved by the events. Many men and women lost their lives trying to protect what they thought was right, while others oblivious to the war lost lives to what they called plagues, famines and natural disasters. The war lasted centuries, neither side backing down nor giving up hope. In the period of this war the eight have died over a hundred times... sometimes through battle, sometimes naturally. Yet every time there was a waiting period of fifteen years that have almost left the side they led in devastating shambles.

Thirty years ago, ten years after the most recent death at that time, a young man by the name of Zane Morgan was the most promising student at the tribe founded by the o.e. He was not only an amazing warrior with skills needed in the battlefield, but he had also mastered the wielding of plants but also a strange dark purple substance that could corrode any substance known to man. So for five years the boy matured into a man as he developed his skills with talent thought to only belong to the eight.

Then they arrive. Four girls and four boys, as always had been. One of them caught the eye of Zane, and for him it was like Cupid himself shot an arrow through his heart at the first sight of this young person.

Yet it was not meant to be. If you recall, it was the o.e.'s original love for each other that endeared Fate into their strange version of immortality and that was the reason they always managed to find each other before they even reached their tribe. Their love for each other was a dull throb that started at the age of four and slowly progressed to the blinding pain they felt on their fifteenth birthday, then they went on a blind search that normally lasted a month to find each other. This was the very thing that kept Zane from what he figured was his one true love.

For weeks Zane pained himself trying to find the right moment to talk to and pronounce his love for this person he had become so obsessed with. He never knew the reason Fate originally kept them nor did he care at the moment. He was so lustful that a coherent thought was near impossible for him. He felt the time was right after a particularly large victory in capturing one of higher ups from the other tribe. He managed to corner the person and proclaimed his love - or lust, he couldn't tell the difference at the time - for this member of the eight.

To his dismay he was shot down the second he got it out in the open, and before he could even recompose himself that person had left. Zane no longer felt the lustful feeling that he originally felt for this being, in its place was a burning desire to harm them. All of them, he realized later when he heard what he thought was mocking from the group. A hatred for them and the entire tribe festered at him for a long week before he took the actions he thought were necessary to keep his dignity.

The next morning was supposed to be the day they sworn themselves to keep the tribe safe by any means possible, so when the planners found the eight covered in their own blood they were in shock.

The scene they came across was truly a gruesome one. Each one of them were killed the same way, their throat slit with a suspicious amount of a strange dark purple substance in the bloodstream. It took only a few minutes for them to realize that this was the doing of one of their most trusted warriors, but by then it was already much too late. Zane Morgan was already long gone.

Over the next year many of the o.e.'s tribe hoped Zane had been killed. Others wanted him to suffer for what he did and a select few hoped he would realize what he'd done was horribly wrong and that he'd beg for forgiveness and come back to them, that was if he was still alive.

At the end of the year that Zane Morgan had been missing, the o.e.'s tribes' team of specially trained warrior akin to the Japanese's ninja had come back from a recon/spy mission. What they had discovered and hence reported to their tribe was disturbing. The person many of them considered a friend and hero had not only betrayed them by killing their leaders, but now directly opposed them and was now the leader of the tribe that opposed them in war for so very long.

Zane Morgan had his own agenda. The man had decided that in order to win the war, he needed to separate the opposing tribe from its leaders for as long as he possibly could while attacking them unmercifully. This war had become so much more than a rush of adrenaline to the dark haired man, it was now extremely personal. Too personal for comfort.

Over the next fourteen years Fate watched on in sorrow as Zane Morgan killed her prized eight every time they were reborn. She had almost given up all hope on them when a stroke of luck came her way and Zane killed the wrong children. She almost jumped for joy as she weaved bubbles of protection around each newborn to hide them until a week before their fifteenth birthday.

Zane felt a surge of pride when he could no longer find the auras of the eight. He'd honestly thought he'd killed them once and for all to. And just in time for him to raise his three year old heir, a rather plain, colorless looking girl known as Thistle.

But just ten minutes ago, Zane had screeched a sounds that reverberated pure horror and anger. Because just ten minutes ago he felt the strengthened auras of the eight return. And Fate, being the madwoman she is, only giggled at his distress.