A tall, slender man walked down a dark dusty road in a small, abandoned town far from his home city of Ahlyntees. It was a warm summer night, and the wind blew in a cool breeze from the east, producing a broken, desolate lullaby as it softly rattled broken windows and wooden shacks, and occasionally picking up a loose cloth canopy from one of the broken vendor stalls, chiming in with soft rippling, and flapping as the cloth lifted and fell with the push of the wind. The man wore dark colored clothing, that fit snugly and had heavy leather boots on his feet, which surprisingly, hardly made a sound as he walked. There was an aura of confidence and calm about this man as he worked his way down towards the town centre.
One could have never guessed that just 3 months ago, this was a thriving town, much like all the others in Ahlyntees. But now the buildings were dilapidated and looked as if they had been abandoned for years. The fields were barren and had withered away to large patches of dirt with only an occasional patch of yellowish colored plants, that the man could not decide if they were starting to thrive, or in the process of dying off. “So, this is what happens when you steal the life from the land.” He thought as he continued walking through the abandoned outpost.
It had only been that 3 months since the fake Alchemists had come and loosed their devilish spells and machinery, robbing the land of the magic, the very essence this world needed for life. Not only was Alchemy almost impossible to perform here in this town, but the very land itself was dying off. That is what made him more upset with these damn fake Alchemists. People were adaptable and there were still many places they could go. But the land, once the life had been taken from it, there seemed to be no way known to renew or replace. Once it was gone, it was gone forever it seemed.
Most of the towns and even the small farming villages like this had balls of light, about 1’ wide and about 3’ to 4’ apart lining the streets and entrances of the shops and inns. Each light by itself seemed faint, but all together they seem as though the stars were pulled down from the sky and barely left you with a shadow under your feet. But the only lights left here were a few flickering lights from the old days when wired electricity was still used. And the ones that did work properly, did not actually light much at all. Those tall, rustic streetlights just cast a cone of light downward and spread out to an 8’ circle of light on the ground but didn’t illuminate any of the area outside of that cone of light shooting down from the bulb.
But this man did not mind the dark, sometimes he preferred it over brightly lit streets. His eyes were sharp and could see much, and his hearing was also keen. This was part of the reason why he was given the Panther sigil when he stepped into his role of Alchemist. Sigils were given to every Alchemist once they come into their own, an animal or in a few cases, mythological creature, whose traits and abilities aligned with their Alchemist owners. The Panther sigil was one of the rarest sigils that could be given to one at the end of their training, only going to Alchemists who possessed a unique knowledge and skill in Alchemy and Magic.
Taking slow methodical steps, he worked his way down the street towards the trade center at the end of the road, avoiding the lights and letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. He stopped about 10’ shy of the trade center, which was more or less just a dead-end street with a bunch of tents and tables that vendors would set up shop in and on. All abandoned now, the citizens dead, or run-off to the nearest farmstead. The farms surrounding this outpost, left to wither away to nothing without the land’s life essence.
Standing near the center of the abandoned street, he just waited and listened. He could hear the soft hum of machinery coming from the lights, as well as a loud buzzing sound that would turn on and off randomly. “Damned old lights, never did work a damn, probably won’t last much longer” he thought to himself as he slowly looked around the deserted town.
Then he heard it, the soft crinkle of gravel underfoot, sounding particularly like someone, or someone’s adjusting their footing to jump or run. In the blink of an eye they were out and lunging at him with crude spears, Luckily he had heard them that half second before or he might not of had the time to save himself, in an instant, he had pressed his hands to his chest then threw them outward and around him. From his chest and following his hands came a red goopy looking substance that quickly fell as it spread around creating the image of red stained glass surrounding the man in a half cylinder shape. The spear tips hit this glass and snapped the spear just below the tip, the glass then fell away quickly, leaving just a small pool of blood in a crescent shape as he drew his revolver out in that same instance the glass fell away and shot one of his assailants dead, and hitting the other mid chest. Both crumpling to the ground in dark heaps.
The man looks at the hooded figure, gun drawn and cocked back. “Reveal your face coward, I would like to see your face before you die.” The hooded figure slowly raises their hands up, then gently pulled back the hood revealing a light skinned woman with ice cold blue eyes, that seemed to look past the man, or through him.
“What are you doing here? You bastards already took the magic from this land, what more do you need?” he growled at her, not holding his anger back.
She said nothing at first just blankly stared back at the man. “Answer me!” He barked at her.
“Gathering information.” She said calmly.
“On what”
She smiled faintly “Mykel Edwin.”
The man laughed hard. It was a hearty laugh that came from the back of his throat, not too hoarse but not a high-pitched cackle either. “Too bad you won’t be able able to tell your friends anything you may have learned. Why me?”
“My boss is very intrigued about you, where you came from, your parents, upbringing, how quickly you mastered Alchemy.”
“Sounds like he’s already got quite a bit of my life story, what else?”
“We’ve been watching you, tracking you. In some ways pulling you to where we want you to be”
“What do you mean ‘pulling me’?” Mykel spit out, his anger flaring back up with the thought of being someone’s pawn. He placed a small amount of weight on the trigger of his revolver, almost eager to take this strange woman’s life.
The woman just laughs and continues staring at, or through him.
“What do you mean by pulling me? And why me?”
“I can’t say, he’d kill me.”
“I’m going to kill you; do you understand that? You don’t have to worry about him, you’ll be long dead and forgotten.”
“You don’t know him.” She says coyly, still seeming to stare right through Mykel. “And death is only temporary” Her smile widened, “at least for us.”
Mykel chuckled “Seems that spider has you caught pretty tight, in his web of lies. No matter, you’ll experience it firsthand here pretty quick.” Keeping his gun trained on the woman he looks around, feeling as if another person just showed up and was watching them. Turning his attention back to the woman, raised his gun and drew aim at her head. “Any last words?”
“Praise to the destroyer, the all-consuming, the equalizer, and Praise all his children” Says the rebel woman with a wicked smile across her face.
“Getting real tired of that, you charlatans have any other pleas?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but as soon as he started putting pressure on the trigger to end her miserable life, a quick and sudden light headedness appeared in his head along with a brief stint of vertigo, making him almost lose balance and fall. “What trick is this?” He spit out as he managed to fire a shot from his revolver as he fell forward, barely catching his balance before he toppled to the ground.
The light headedness faded just as quickly as it came on, he comes to and realized that the woman he had been talking to was gone.
“How long was I out? Surely it couldn’t have been more than half a second or so” He thought as he scanned the abandoned shopping center. “How could she have disappeared in that short amount of time? And I am damn positive that shot should of hit her.”
He stood in that same spot for another 10 minutes, watching and listening for any sign of movement before finally searching through the center for any sign, or anyone. After a good hour of searching and feeling confident there was only him and the two dead fake Alchemists in this street, he decided he should head back to report his findings to the council. Working his way out of the small town and back to a secluded valley above the town where he had left his copter.
