Shattered Remnants of a Dream

11. The Serendipitous

Vance and Winslow faced each other within the cave, auras aflame. Behind Vance, Eden calmly watched the two, while Cliff readied his broken shotgun.

Slowly, Winslow reached into the pockets of his frock coat and withdrew two small, silver sickles. With a cruel smile, he sent both flying out at an incredible speed.

Vance had never been in a real fight, but from the moment he discovered he could use otherworldly energy, he immediately felt empowered. It felt special, like the heroes in comics and video games he'd grown up with. For the first time since his mother left him, he felt like he mattered. But when the two sickles came flying straight for him, he felt genuinely scared.

The weapons flew right over Vance's head as he ducked in the nick of time. A chilling breeze shot down the back of his neck, and Winslow's smile did not falter.

Vance arched an eyebrow. "That's all you got?"

Winslow's grin widened, and Vance heard Cliff's voice. "Behind you, stupid!"

Vance whipped his head around to face the south end of the cave, just in time to see the two sickles racing back toward him. He jumped to the side, but the right sickle's blade sliced cleanly across his shoulder. Grunting in pain, Vance glared back to Winslow.

"I'm sure you know what a magnet is," Winslow gloated. "Well, I can turn my body into one."

Winslow kept his eyes on Vance as the sickles flew back to him. With trained precision, the Dark Zodiac stuck his arms out and caught the weapons by their chipped wooden handles.

"Look at you...you don't even have a weapon," Winslow laughed. "I guess your genius teacher over there didn't tell you that one's psynergy can be greatly amplified when infused into objects containing volatile elements...such as these metals here."

Cliff could only sigh. "I told you, you aren't ready."

Vance's eyes narrowed, and his determination heightened. "I don't need any of that to beat an asshole like you."

"And you call me cocky?" Winslow mused, twirling the sickles around his hands with psynergy-protected fingers.

With a grunt of rage, Vance dashed forward, concentrating psynergy into his right hand. He swung it at Winslow's face, but Winslow brought the two sickles up sideways to block the blow. Vance pushed, and his opponent pushed harder. Soon, Vance was thrown to the ground, his wounded shoulder burning all the while.

"What a waste of time," Winslow scoffed. "You're pathetic."

Cliff moved to jump in, but Vance held his hand out. "Don't even think about it, cowboy!"

"He's going to kill you, Vance! Don't you see that?!"

Cliff's pleas were stifled as Winslow brought down the sickle fast, aiming it straight at Vance's throat in order to make a clean kill. He had done it so many times before that preying on men such as this had ceased to be any sort of exercise – now, it was simply an act of self-indulgence.

It all began when he was six years old, many years away from his debut at the Psynergy Research Institute. His parents were out often, attending important political meetings and schmoozing with the elites they so wished to be. He'd been eating dinner – roasted chicken, which he was unable to cut with his inferior kiddie fork. As a small child, he found out by accident that he was able to call certain things toward himself just by concentrating hard enough. Where he came from, psynergy was something every man needed to possess in order to live a truly successful life, so his parents had applauded him at his early discovery.