Fire's Last Descendant

Chapter 6

          ••• Chapter 6 •••

      All three of them jump in surprise. Sam, for some reason, has immediately jumped to a cabinet. Her hands are on the handles of the cabinet when she sees that it is me.

       "Uh… uh… hi guys," I stammer.

       Callan is the person that jumps to it. "Were you listening in on the conversation?"

       I bite my lip and blush. I sit up and press my backbone against the wall. "Kinda.

       Sam presses her palm to her face. She slides her hand down her face slowly. She returns my nervous gaze with a stone-cold one. "How much did you hear?"

       "Did someone die?" I ask, still biting my lip. One hand fixes my glasses while the other pulls the hair away from my face.

       "Yeah, he exploded. It was an accident, though," Callan says.

       Before any of them can continue, I ask them, "Who are you?"

       They all have a silent conversation again. There is silence. When Callan answers, she must think I'm an idiot. "Like we said, I'm Callan, that's Chase—"

       "I know your flipping names! But you haven't told me a thing about yourselves, you've brought me to a strange place, and you're talking about me behind me back!" I say, almost yelling. They don't seemed threatened or nervous. I don't detect a hint of worry in their eyes.

       Chase takes a deep breath and folds his arms, like he is at ease. "Okay, we aren't normal teenagers, as you've probably realized."

       "Yeah, I kinda guessed that when you showed up behind a gashadokuro with swords."

       "Anyway, so me and Cal here are related, brother/sister deal. We're orphans. And while living on the streets, we ran into Sam. We saved her life from a cyclopes. She just sorta left her home to come stay with us, and we found the safe house. It'd seemed like an ancient weapon house, with places to hide weapons everywhere. We cleaned it out, made it more homey. We've trained ourselves to use the weapons we found. We've found that the ancient mythological creatures are real."

       "The gashadokuro," I find myself murmuring.

       "Exactly. For a reason unknown until Sam and I rescued you, the monsters attacked human beings. We ended up resucing all of them. One guy was especially special, and we brought him here. He stayed with us for almost a year, until an unfortunate little… accident."

       "I've heard that he exploded."

       "Don't bring it up!" Sam says sharply.

        Well, I think. Callan takes over. "I bet you're wondering about the Fire, yes? It's the Keepers of the Elements. In the ancient times, Death destroyed all of the Keepers, though the Keeper of Fire kept slipping out of his grasp. Finally, he caught him. Fire gave his own essence, the element itself, to a young woman he'd fallen in love with. Death destroyed the Keeper in the end. I have no idea what happened to the Fire, but I suspect it moved from body to body in the family, supposedly through the girls."

       We're all silent once again. This time, there are no silent conversations. I break the quiet circle. "And you think that… I…"

       "Uh-huh," Callan answers. "It's possible, actually. You could be Fire's last descendant."

          So sorry it's so short!