The Origin

Chapter 1

The Necklace

Elixir woke with a jump, staring at the ceiling, her heart beating and her blood pulsing faster than usual. She clenched and unclenched her hands, but nothing would calm her down. 

"What just happened?" She thought to herself, sitting up and running a hand through her golden hair. Had she imagined it? Where was that room? Why were there red dots on the map? Why was there another added? Why was it so life like? And the biggest question...what was the Storm Amulet?

She sat looking pensive for a few minutes, taking in what she had just experienced and almost fell off her bed as her phone vibrated. She studied it sleepily before stretching out her manicured hand to pick her nokia off the polished oak bedside table.

"Happy Birthday Lexi!" along with 5 messages of the same words. She widened her aqua eyes. It was her birthday? How did she forget that she was 15! She flipped through the messages quickly, smiling.

She grinned, before jumping off her bed, walking over to the other side of her room and unhooking her necklace from her wardrobe handle. She loved that necklace. She ran her hand over the silver chain, before placing it around her neck. She always felt safe wearing it. She looked at the silver gem. It glinted as it caught the light from the lamp on the bedside table. 

She received yet another text.

"Where are you???"

Surprised, Elixir checked the time: 12:45.

What????? She panicked.

Elixir quickly changed, running downstairs and throwing herself out of the door, sprinting down the road, to where her friend Clarisse was waiting, hand on hip.

"Happy Birthday and everything...but now, we are going shopping." Her friend sighed, exasperated.

Elixir had spent an hour walking around whilst Clarisse whined on about why her life wasn't fair. She noticed a couple of people taking an interest in her necklace. 

That's odd, she thought, but didn't take any notice to it. Only when she saw the same people watching her during that day, did she come to worry. Clarisse nudged her.

"Stop worrying." She said "It's just a piece of vintage necklace..." She added, before checking her phone. "Oh..." She said, with fake annoyance "It's Chad." She beamed, pointing at the text from her boyfriend.

"I have to go...talk to you later...OK?" She said, giving no time for Elixir to say anything.

She felt a pang of betrayal, knowing that Clarisse only left because her other friend probably to hang out at another party. She turned around, taking slow footsteps back towards her house. 

Suddenly, two shadows loomed over her. She tensed. She knew who they were. The two men who had been stalking her the whole day, standing a metre behind her. And then she did, what her cowardly side told her to do.

She ran. Her heart was pounding, her lungs burning. She darted down an alleyway, threw herself behind a bin, and waited. She heard the two men, but didn't see their sun glassed faces, their dark silhouettes. Nor did she hope to. 

"You IDIOT! She had it! The necklace! The data you stupid stupid person." One of the men yelled at the other. 

Elixir stifled back a laugh. These men want my necklace? She thought. She looked down, and her breath caught in her throat. It was GLOWING.

She clamped a hand firmly over her neck, and held her breath, waiting in agonising silence, for the two men to pass. They did, eventually, but that wasn't the end of it.

Elixir stood up shakily, and walked out from behind the bins, when another pair of people started running at her. Her muscles knotted, eyes wide, and she was about to scream, but one of them had their hand clamped over her mouth. She widened her eyes to see that they were about fifteen, one girl and one boy, both with glowing gems in their hands.

"Don't say a word and come with us." The girl said "Unless you want the others to get you.".

And so Elixir followed them.