Autumn And Earth - Chapter 1 -

This is a very rough draft. I might tweak the fighting scene to give it more life. I am also in the middle of writing Chapter 2 - Her Name Was Autumn Easthill (Aug. 24)



Chapter 1 - The Girl and the Exit





         Xavier could not feel the cold. Or more accurately, he did not feel it. He did not feel the weak wind waving his hair in his face. He did not sense the snowflakes grazing his cheeks. Looking on at the train leaving the station, he was only just realizing that the girl he had sought after for 6 months was finally leaving, never to see him again. He slowly turned away from the platform, and made for the stairway.

         As his fingers grazed the metal railing, it all came back to him. He had the impression he was freezing. The stairs took him underground, in a small square tunnel, under the train tracks. A small flickering light showed him the way. The tunnel was silent. Xavier reached in his pocket and turned his music player on. This should help, he thought. He walked on, singing under his breath, until he reached the end of the tunnel. He walked out into the night, under the light snowfall, and looked up. The sky was dark, but the lights of the neighborhood prevented it from being pitch black.

         Tears slowly came to his eyes. It was stupid, he thought. Nothing had actually happened between them. Why was he getting so worked up about it? The flickering neons were completely blurred to him. He continued aimlessly down the empty street, going slowly back towards his apartment. With the song on repeat, he was walking mechanically. Muttering the lyrics under his breath, with tears in his eyes, he was a sorry sight.

         He had really believed something good could have happened with Sonya. It wasn’t just her long blonde hair and round freckled face that had drawn him towards her. She was beautiful, no doubt about that, but she was also mysterious. She seemed completely normal and even boring when he had first met her, but he came to notice that she was very secretive. There was an odd air about her, something he could not quite pinpoint. He wouldn’t have the chance to anyway.

         Their date had gone well. She was light hearted and seemed to enjoy it, but before he could make a move on her, she decided to tell him that they would not see each other again.

         “Why does she have to leave?” Xavier muttered. “Why now?”

         Sonya was taking the train and going someplace this evening. She would not say where, but he knew it was to some far away exotic place, or at least out of the country. One thing kept him from breaking down completely though. She also said that she was interested in him, and had things been different, she would have given him a chance. This had slightly lifted Xavier’s spirits at the time, but he was now back to an all time low.

         He continued to walk along the avenue, gazing at the closed shops. This was Christmas evening, everything was closed. Most people were out enjoying their special day with their family, while he was all alone, under the snow, in the streets of the city. As he walked along, he suddenly heard a muffled scream to his left. He turned slowly and found himself in front of a dark alley. He wiped the tears from his eyes and could barely make out two dark figures, huddled against the wall. They had not noticed him, but something was definitely wrong. He summoned all his courage and walked into the narrow alley, trying not to make any noise.

         He was about 10 meters from the figures when the taller one turned around and shouted, “You! Get down! I have a gun!”

         The man then took the gun from the other figure’s head and pointed it straight at him. Xavier was terrified. He couldn’t move, he could barely speak.

         A female voice called out, slightly muffled, but still audible, “What are you doing you idiot? Get away, I have this under control!”

         The man pointed the gun back to her head: “Oh, you like taking control? I like that. Too bad horrible things will happen to a young girl tonight, right?”

         He beckoned Xavier towards the wall: “You. Put your hands over your head, and against the wall, just like her. Now!”

         Xavier obliged, but mumbled: “Let her go.”

         “Or what? What are you gonna do? You’re almost pissing your pants in fear. Maybe after I’m through with her she’ll think twice about wandering in dark alleys around midnight.”

         The man kept the gun to the girl’s head and started touching her breasts with his left hand, freeing her mouth.

         “Big mistake,” she said in a low voice. “Emergency Spell: Hazel Staff.”

         A bright orange light shone under her right hand and a staff materialized straight into it. It was glowing faintly in the dark as Xavier watched in disbelief. The assailant stood there dumbstruck, and he could not believe what was happening either. Sensing the hesitation, the girl turned around swiftly and spun the staff into the man’s right wrist. Xavier winced as he heard the crack, and the man roared in pain, dropping the gun to the ground. The girl then brought back the staff in an upwards swipe, trying to connect with his jaw. He regained his senses and dodged the wooden weapon, taking out a large knife from his pocket with his left hand.

         “Bitch, tonight, you die,” he spat.

         The tall man lunged for the girl, with the sharp blade going straight towards her throat, only to see his left hand be cracked by another expert swing of the staff. The knife dropped to the ground with a metallic clatter. Xavier watched in terror, and was paralyzed. He still could not believe that the girl in front of him could make a staff appear and use it to disarm her tormentor. The man understood he was no match and started to run down the alley. The girl whispered a few words Xavier could not catch, and suddenly, a crossbow appeared in blue light in her left hand.  It appeared already loaded, and after taking aim quickly, she sent the quarrel straight to the man’s neck, piercing his throat. There was a faint choking sound, and he crumpled with a dull thud. She whispered again and her weapons disappeared in a wisp of smoke.

         Xavier could not believe what he had just witnessed. A girl who could summon weapons out of thin air, and a murder. He thought he was getting delirious until the girl slapped him across the face.

         “You could have been killed, what the hell were you doing?!” she said while clearly restraining most of her anger.

         “I... I wanted to help,” stuttered Xavier. He was shuffling his hands, clearly intimidated by the power that the girl seemed to emit.

         “So much help you were,” she replied, slowly regaining her calm. “Now stand still.”

         The girl raised her hand to his forehead. Xavier could feel the blood pumping through her palms, as well as in his throat. He sensed an unnatural warmth in them, but also some strange comfort.

         He was also very much in the dark about the events that he had just witnessed.

         “What are you doing?” he inquired. “And how did that happen? All of that?”

         “No matter now,” she said. She was gazing harshly at him, with clear anger, but Xavier could make out a little uncertainty in her expression. She hesitated, then continued, “I will make you forget everything. Non-mages cannot know about us.”

         Xavier couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Non-mages? What are you talking about?”

         “Shut up,” the girl snapped. “This will be over soon and your life will go back to normal.”

         She took her hand off of his forehead and whispered: “Emergency Spell: Amnesia”.

         A yellow ray flashed from her eyes, but it disintegrated in front of Xavier. She looked puzzled.

         “Repeat,” she said with a hint of panic in her voice. “Repeat!”

         The same flashes disintegrated close to Xavier’s face. Then anger flooded her face for the second time. For a moment, he thought he saw sparks in her eyes.

         Clenching her fists, on the verge of punching him, she exploded, “Why didn’t you tell me you are one of us? And why didn’t you attack him when he was stifling my mouth? You’re a mage, you have emergency spells, use them, you idiot!”

         Xavier was completely baffled, and replied with disbelief, “What do you mean I’m a mage?”

         The girl could barely contain herself, and shouted, “The Amnesia spell doesn’t work on mages! It disintegrated! Which means you are a mage! You should have attacked him in the beginning!”

         Xavier held his hand to his forehead and felt the lingering warmth, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m no mage, I can’t use magic or whatever you did. Or even if I could, I never learned how.”

         He said this in order to calm her down, but he had seriously no idea what she was talking about. Had he been able to conjure sticks out of midair, surely he would have known about it by now.

         The girl stepped closer to him, with a look of disbelief on her face: “What do you mean you don’t know? You’re a mage, of course you know about magic!”

         Xavier kept shaking his head, “I’m telling you, I don’t know anything. What’s going on? And are you aware that you just killed a man?”

         The girl roared again, “A mage who never heard about magic? What the hell is wrong with...”

         Suddenly, her expression changed. Xavier couldn’t quite figure it out, but it seemed like a mix of uneasiness, fear, and understanding.

         She finished her sentence in a much more quiet voice, “You...”

         Xavier opened his mouth to say something but she cut him off immediately.

         “The rift is open, let’s go home,” she added slowly.

         He could see something had dawned on her, as if she had understood something about him that he ignored. Even though he was glad that she had stopped shouting in her menacing stance, he was worried about what this understanding would mean. Why had she said “Let’s go home”? What was this rift? And of course, why was there a mage in the middle of a dark alley, telling him he was one of them? Surely this was not real. He became much more relaxed, and just decided to play along.

         The girl grabbed his hand and took out a small blue prism from her pocket and placed it down on the ground. Its light was illuminating the alley, and Xavier could still see the man lying in a pool of blood. He turned towards the girl holding his hand, having lost all sense of reality, and merely thinking he was in a dream. Now that he could see her in the light, he was thinking that she was beautiful enough to be in any dream. He was contemplating the contrast between her black curls and the white snowflakes drifting on them when she whispered a word in a language unknown to him, and he felt a sudden jerk. The prism absorbed them both, then simply disappeared, leaving the alley as dark as it always was.