Chasing Sparks

Chapter 1.1

"Won't this man ever give up?" Tiel said to no-one in particular.

He'd been away from the comforts of home for nearly two years and was still yet to catch the Runner known as Sar. Whenever he seemed to be getting close, Sar just ghosted away, almost like he was toying with him. And Tiel didn't enjoy being toyed with.

Medhi pointed west, "Maybe a couple of days," he said, squinting through the rain.

Pushing down his frustration, Tiel nodded. Sar was messing with him, he knew it.

He gestured for Medhi to continue his scouting and watched as the man pulled up his hood and stalked off into the trees.

With his face hidden, Tiel couldn't help but notice how much Medhi looked like a Forester. His slight build, the cat like stance, the bow slung over his back, the oversized dark hood. All classic Forester traits.

But Medhi was much more than just a Forester lookalike, he was a sparked accuracy affine. The accuracy affinity made him almost always lethal with his bow and when the power of the spark was added, Medhi was unmatched as an Archer across the whole of Faria.

Tiel followed his tracker's movements through the trees but it wasn't long before the man completely disappeared from sight. Tiel often wondered if Medhi had some level of stealth affinity along with his accuracy affinity. But that was impossible, a person could only have one affinity. Medhi was just a sneaky son of a gun, that was all.

Tiel, like Medhi, was a Terron, which was by far the most prevalent race on Faria. But unlike Medhi he looked Terron through and through. Average height, average weight, with average good looks. His average skin tone was somewhere between light and dark and his average looking eyes were averagely spaced apart above a somewhat averagely shaped nose.

His chin however was slightly weaker than average which meant that he kept a well groomed goatee on his face. He looked about thirty years of age, someone in the prime of life and had looked that way for about a century and a half now. One of the benefits of carrying a spark.

After watching Medhi go, Tiel returned to trudging onwards in the direction he'd been going. He kind of knew where he was and where he was heading but if he was honest, he didn't really care. One dreary wet landscape was pretty much the same as the next. He even wondered if Sar was deliberately going to the dreariest places in Faria just to wind him up. Probably, he thought, he really hated Sar.

He pulled a piece of dried meat from his pocket. The snack should have been hard, firm and above all else dry but it had lost all of those positive qualities in his soaked pocket. Tiel sniffed the greasy swollen sliver tentatively. It smelt awful. Nothing it seemed was immune to the relentless damp of the wilderness. He threw the meat into a bush.

The only positive he could think of, was at least he wasn't cold. As an ice affine he had a natural immunity to the cold and didn't have to suffer this particular discomfort.

Tiel had been only four years old when his ice affinity manifested itself. He was playing in the bath, when he inadvertently turned the bathwater to ice. He had needed to be broken free by the household servants using axes and hammers, much to everyone's amusement at the time. Tiel could still remember the day, a hundred and eighty years on. Some things could scar a man for life.

He was bonded with the ice spark fairly soon afterwards. Only, the second affine ever in the history of Faria to be bonded. This was a very big deal at the time, with the ceremony said to be the single greatest event for a generation. Tiel, however, couldn't remember any of it. It appeared only traumatic bathtime experiences stayed with four year olds throughout their life.