Pure Magic [Editing]

My Name

Chapter 1

My Name

"Your mission is to retrieve any useful information from spies at the collection point and to deliver it to the location you are given. I also suggest you train your body and power as an encounter with the enemy is very likely.

Know that this service is greatly appreciated by our government, me and all the people. All of you gathered for this are special. You all have magic.

Stick together, protect each other and survive. I will await your return. Good Luck."

The village MP's speech filled me with hope. Before this, I had only caught brief glimpses of him aiding others with odd jobs like garden projects. When he made the speech directly for us, I felt honoured.

Mr. Ploddman handed over a map to the appointed leader of our group, Mr. Palo Deod- a lieutenant who had been granted leave for this specific mission. All together, there were 6 of us. 6 people who could use magic.

Magic is very rare and for a small village like our Windrow, housing 6 mages is a miracle. Mages have only recently been discovered. Unfortunately, an unlucky few had been carted off to science labs to be experimented on. Not us. Instead the government wants to use us as pawns in this war instead of their own troops. That's what I believe.

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As soon as all of us in our group had finished our farewells, we set off under the cover of the night's darkness. It was to be a long, perilous journey ahead of us. I shivered. The constant breeze was icy. I yanked the hood to my cloak down to shield my face.

How I use my magic is unexplainable. All I really do is imagine and picture an object. I then simply wish it to appear and some strange magical force did exactly that. In other words: an object I visualised simply just appeared.

Wrapping myself tighter into my cloak, I glanced at the other members. My mind began to wonder about their powers and how their lives had been before the war.

2 years ago, my life was as good as it could get. Mages were only just being discovered and after keeping my magic a secret for 16 years, I could finally reveal myself to the world. Before 'magic' was announced as a real scientific possibility, I had thought I was a freak- the odd one out from the human race. Even after I revealed myself as a mage, some still thought of me as 'weird' but more people than I could have ever imagined accepted me as I am.

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Two hours had passed until we finally reached a cool, dry cave; our resting place for the night. The moment we entered, snow began to fall. Lightly at first, then hard. Very hard.

'What else did you expect?' sneered a voice in my head, 'We're in the mountains after all. This trip isn't going to be a sweet countryside with flowers and butterflies.'

"Go and find some firewood!" someone ordered me, impolitely.

I studied him and gave him a stern, hard look from beneath my hood. He looked pretty strong so I decided to stay on his 'good side' .

"Sure," I answered, closing my eyes and picturing a log fire in front of us.

When I opened my eyes, it was directly before me. However, there were no flames like I had pictured. That was the one flaw in my 'Imagination' magic. Nothing 'live' could appear. Nothing that moved or was living; this included plants. On the other side of the spectrum, I could imagine things that had once lived but were currently dead. Instead, I pulled out a lighter and ignited the wood.

Softly, the flames flickered and glowed, filling me with a warm feeling. After a few seconds, I realized no-one was moving. I turned to stare around and laughed at their amazed faces.

"With you, defeating our opponents will be a piece of cake!" sang an old man, wearing an 'ancient wizard hat' like the ones they sell in costumes for halloween.

"I'm not that great," I denied, tugging my clothes.

A cheer echoed in the cave and I smiled, pulling out a few snacks from a previously packed backpack. We had a minute celebration with them and the other food we had. It was a reckless move, as we would need it for the rest of our journey but it was difficult not to give into the warm, campfire feeling in the cave.

When we finished our fill of food, I decided that we should introduce ourselves properly. Organising ourselves, we huddled around the fire and, in turn, we each announced our name, age and dream jobs.

Immediately volunteering, the first to open up was a teenaged boy named Lyell. As he spoke our eyes met and for reason unknown to me, I quickly looked away as my heart fluttered. He told us that he was 19- a year older then me- and had always wanted to be a doctor.

Cyrix was the next one to introduce himself. Between the constant times he ruffled his hair he revealed that he was 21 and before the war had the humble position of a shop manager.

Then the grey-haired man's turn rolled around. He was 52 years old and his dream job was a geography teacher. However, with a disappointed look on his face he declared that he became a cashier instead when he couldn't receive appropriate education necessary for his job.

The man who ordered me to obtain the firewood was exactly 25. Despite his earlier behaviour, he announced in a friendly voice that his name was Palo. For a job, he had always dreamt of becoming an army general but this sudden mission halted his progress to becoming one.

The fifth and final member was a girl, Jade. I breathed in relief when I finally noticed. Without another female member the situation would have become terribly awkward with me being the only girl. She was 22 and her dream job was a nurse.

"What about you?" Lyell turned to ask.

"Well... I would like to be an inventor and as for my age, I'm the youngest here: 18 years old. On the other hand, my name is a bit complicated..." I replied vaguely.

"Complicated?" Palo repeated, "You're only given one name when you're born, you know."

"Well, that's the thing," I mumbled, "My mother died right after giving birth to me but she spoke one word just before she died: Red. That's what I'm officially named but everyone else calls me Fire."

"Fire?" Jade questioned, "Why Fire?"

"Because of my eyes," I smiled, throwing back my hood to reveal my fiery, red eyes.