Order Of The Shadows

Chapter 1 Zytrax Akuma

It's nice outside today. The temperature is nice and warm with a slight breeze, the flowers are in bloom, and the sky is clear, yet here I am in my old log cabin a little ways away from a mage village. I decide to go out back and practice my sword skills with a one handed long sword givin to me by someone when I was a young boy. Someone that I don't remember, yet someone important. I can't remember much about me. All I can remember is that I was abandoned in this cabin about seven years ago, that I'm a mage, and that I'm fifteen...I don't even know my name. As I practice my skills I can hear laughter and music coming from the village. A spring festival perhaps. I've never enjoyed being at the village but I feel somehow lured to the music and the laughter. Laughter something I've yet to do.

A few hours pass, the festival ends, and the sun sets. I decide to throw on my cloak and head out for the village. I like the night. It's cool outside and my black hair and cloak blend in with the shadows. I feel different when under the dark night sky. I feel free almost. I enter the village and head strait for a particular diner. Hideki and Hodaka owned a diner and were like family to me in a way. We talked, they laughed, and we helped each other out. They did the cooking, I did the hunting. It takes me a while before I get to the diner. I walk in and I'm immediately greeted.

"How's it been bud? We were startin' to miss ya," greeted Hodaka.

I walk up to the counter and take a seat. "Where's Hedeki?," I ask.

"He's out with his wife tonight for their anniversary."

I close both of my eyes and rest my head upon my fist. "Tell him I said congrats."

"You know I'm surprised that you don't have a girlfriend yet."

I open my left eye and cock my eyebrow. "How so?"

"Well do I have to explain?"

I close my eye and reply, "Yes."

"Well it's pretty obvious," he answers while hopping over the counter and taking a seat. "Take me for example. I'm a common fire mage, you said a while back that you're a unique type of mage."

"So?," I reply. "Magic skills have nothing to do with one's personality."

Hodaka gives himself a face palm. "Don't tell me you got that out of a book."

A sharp pain flows through my head. An image of a middle aged woman appears and says, "Magic skills have nothing to do with one's personality."

Then a slightly older man appears and says, "Don't tell me you got that out of a book Alice."

The image disappears. "Alice," I mutter.

"Who?," Hodaka questions.

I look at Hodaka and reply, "Someone once told me that."

"Interesting," he replys. He then hops over the counter and asks, "So what you want to eat?"

"Got any dumplings?"

"Ah so the usual." Hodaka immediately runs into the kitchen and starts cooking.

I try to recall the name I mentioned earlier...Alice. It sounds so familiar. I feel like that woman was an important person to me, but who. And the man in the image he feels just as familiar. Why do I smell slightly burned flesh?