Scattered Fragments

Chapter 13- Anomalies (Part One)

(Thirty Minutes before the events of The Fall of Light)

            I want to tell you a story. No, it isn't a happy one. It's a story that- I think- should be told before it's too late...He won't listen to me, he's busy right now, fighting someone a whole lot bigger than him- typical... but I'm going to tell it anyway. So I hope you hear me.

He took a steady step towards Albion, who had yet to draw his sword. The man grinned at him with crossed arms and a posture only fit for a great warrior on a battlefield. Off his body sizzled sparks of fire, heating the air around them. He was an Ignitor, and a damn powerful one at that.

    James, went into his breast pocket and took out a vial, inside a small white sphere danced inside the blue liquid. He swallowed the contents and felt a chill running through his veins. There was a silent struggle between their powers, the heat radiating off of Albion and the bitter cold coming from James seemed to push at each other, trying to claim dominance over the space between.

  Albion took a step forward, and James did the same.

    Long ago, before we were one, we were prisoners. Not prisoners of war and certainly not prisoners of our choosing, but prisoners in an experiment. It wasn't just the two of us, it was many of us...thousands of us.

James launched forward, frost concentrated into his fists, and swung towards Albion.

Do you remember them?

Albion stepped to the side and called upon his flames into his own fists, and countered James' own attack. The fist came at him with tremendous power. James threw up a wall of ice between them, a wall that was easily shattered by Albion's attack. Shards of ice danced in the air.

    Anyway, you and I became good friends. I mean, why wouldn't we? In a place like that the only thing you can hold onto is someone else... Someone living, right?

            James jumped into the air as a carpet of flame spread through the ground. With the help of Corpus he was able to get a good ten feet in the air. He concentrated the ice in his body onto his right hand and with it created a spear of ice. James launched it with a mighty thrust, his momentum causing him to spin in the air.

          Albion barely dodged the spear as it buried itself into the earth- bringing up a few tiles of concrete with it. He laughed as he forged a flaming spear into his own hand. James flared Corpus, just enough to absorb the shock of his landing. Albion fired the spear as soon as he hit the ground, the air that followed seemed to whine with the incredible speed it traveled.

            There were mere seconds that he had to react as the spear approached. James angled his head to the left as it grazed his neck, leaving a bloody clean cut in its wake. He could feel the intense heat of the spear as it passed. James looked up to Albion, but suddenly the world turned sideways as a hand palmed the side of his head and shot him through the plaza and crashing into a store.

When we were there you told me to keep hope, and I did, more than anyone I kept hope; maybe even more than you. That hope was what kept me going and it eventually saved us... Saved you.

Blood, he could feel blood dripping off his neck and back. It leaked slowly onto the broke shelves he landed on.

   I remember when I was little, in that huge ungodly city we grew up in, my father told me that two people-no matter who, or what they are- were always connected. His exact words were, 'A soulmate isn't always a girl to a boy, or a boy to a girl, or even a person at all. A soulmate can be an animal like a wolf or a bird; it could be a field; or it could be the moon; it could even be a sea of stars.'