Parallax

Chapter 5- Explaination

  Darren stood in the middle of a lavishly furnished house. Wait... Darren thought, this... I remember this place.. All of a sudden, he felt the presence of people. Slowly, he turned around. As he turned, he caught a fleeting glimpse of two people in his peripheral vision. A man and a woman. The parents he never had.  Darren frantically turned his head, trying in vain to see their faces, but even as he turned, they vanished, and the beautiful mansion was reduced to a pile of burning rubble, fire fiercely eating away at what was left of the wreckage. Darren ran out of the burning house, and stumbled upon two burnt corpses, faces turned unrecognisable by the burns that covered their facial features...

  Darren awoke, gasping for air. His forehead was beaded with perspiration, and his hands trembled with fright. It wasn't the first time he had that vivid, lucid dream. He touched his pendant, a simple but beautiful green gem that hung from his neck, for comfort. It was the only thing that he had from his past, the years that which he had no memory of.

  "Are you okay?"

  Kylie was squatting beside him, holding a wet cloth in her hand. She mopped the sweat off his forehead. 

  "Ever since you fainted, you've been burning up with fever," Kylie told Darren, "You can explain to me how you killed a daemon later. Right now..." She got up. "You rest."

  "Wait." Darren got up after her, leaving a slight impression of his body shape on the grass he slept on, "I've rested enough. Let's move on to your destination." Seeing the shock that was displayed on Kylie's face when he got up, he frowned. "What? I must've been out for at least an hour, right? That should be enough rest!"

  Kylie stared at him. She could'nt make an energy ball half as powerful as the one he shot at the daemon, and that effort would've taken out her entire reserve of mana, effectively knocking her out for at least a day. Even though he woke up, he should not be able to even move his head. Which meant....

  She remembered the very first time she tapped into her mana, when she was six. The mana that had been flowing peacefully through her body for six years was disrupted, causing her body to overheat, knocking her out for several minutes. It happens to every person who used their mana for the first time. But it couldn't be. She'd known that Darren was powerful, but not this powerful!

  "Darren, you were only out for fifteen minutes."

--

  Clark watched them from behind a tree, hands nervously gripping his sword. He knew that he should have gotten back to his duty, and reported the incident to his higher-ups, but he was curious. More than that, he felt responsible for the two teenagers. The forest outside of the castle walls was a dangerous place, and he, a capable warrior, should lead then out. As his eyes darted to the girl, her long hair falling over her shoulders as she tended to the unconscious boy, his analytical brain already dissecting their personalities and the possibilities of where they were from, from the scenes that he had observed.

  Though Clark was not the best warrior in the Euromian Union, he was certainly one of the most intelligent ones there, and would have been made a general, until... an incident happened. Ever since that incident, he'd vowed to help everyone in need, regardless of whether it was his allies, or the enemy.

  From her fair skin and the blue streak in her hair, Clark deduced that she must be from the Salvatore Leagues, who, though controlling only a tenth of Euphemia's population, had some of Euphemia's top blacksmiths, mages and warriors- a great ally to have, but a formidable enemy. She hasn't found her true potential, Clark thought, she would make a great mage someday.

  His thoughts wandered to the sleeping boy, who had just regained consciousness. That boy... did something that no one had ever did in the entire history of Euphemia- he killed a daemon. Although he did that, Clark suspected that he was new to Euphemia, and his victory was due to his sheer untapped raw mana.