Dawn of the Flame (T)

When he opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was that he was not where he had been. Then he noticed the scorching heat. Blazing fire seared his bare skin, and he already felt himself begin to sweat from exposure to the oppressive heat. He moved to sit up and froze.

There was nothing underneath him.

He stared down into the endless expanse below, blinking as he realized he was floating in empty space--horridly hot space, yes, but devoid of anything but him. He closed his eyes and took a couple of deep breaths, fully expecting vertigo to claim him at any moment. When the impending dizziness didn't come, he opened his eyes again and took a look around. Despite how hot it was, he could see nothing around him, with void at even the farthest expanse. He rubbed his eyes once more, but he still didn't see anything.
Deciding that there was only one thing he could do, he attempted to move forward. After a few futile attempts to step forward, he paused and reconsidered.

"What am I going to do?" he asked himself, a slight blush on his cheeks as he imagined how silly he had looked attempting to walk forward with no ground. But if he couldn't move... He didn't want to simply wait here; he wanted to explore, maybe even find a way out.

To do that, he had to move--move forward.

And, to his shock, he did.

His body, as if responding to his unvoiced desires, began to float forward at a steady pace. Quickly figuring that it was his own willpower which kept in motion, he mindlessly continued his path, until he felt something tickle his senses. Turning almost unconsciously toward the feeling, he began to float in that direction, going faster and faster when urgency struck at him. Ahead of him, he thought he could see something... A faint glimmer in the distance? He wasn't sure, but whatever it was, it broke the monotony of the empty space and thus became his goal.

He sped toward the light, which grew in both range and intensity as he drew nearer. The temperature shot to a blistering heat, but, through the light, he thought he could see a way out.

When he burst through the light, it was a sensory overload. After so long with the only sounds being the shifting of his boxers over his legs and his soft breaths, the only thing to see being himself and the light, and the only thing to feel being the heat. Now, he could taste sharper than ever the air which passed onto his tongue--dry and air with a bitter tang which was far sweeter than nothing. He could feel the heat which managed to scorch him, but he could also feel the chilling embrace of the passing night wind. He could hear the roaring of the sands as they churned in the winds' wake, and the song of sealed magma sang to him. Superheated air stung his nose, but with it he could smell the scents of life which the air would always carry unless the world itself was dead.

He felt--everything.

And then it went wrong.

His throat began to constrict in pain as a feeling indescribable swamped his entire body. A beauty akin to the trill of phoenix song shot through him, closely followed by a malicious flash, spreading cursed fire through his veins. The pungent smell of sulfur filled his nose, causing him to gasp desperately for breath, even as the taste of raw coals covered his tongue. Gagging, he closed his eyes against searing hot pinpricks of light as every one of his nerves fired in response to the inferno which burned his skin and ravaged his flesh, boiling even the sweat which attempted to cool him down.

He lost all control of his movements, and his body gravitated toward the semi-dormant volcano. With decreased distance, the pain exponentially increased until he thought he was going to die from the torture he currently experienced. He could barely breathe, and he would have clawed at his throat if not for the fact that he couldn't even move a finger unless it was to spasm uncontrollably.

The pain grew and grew until it seemed to hit a breaking point--and then a soft voice murmured over him, and the phoenix's voice sang once more to let the pain fade away. But he still couldn't move--his body shook from phantom tremors of pain which it still thought he was feeling, paralyzed by the remnants of the intense pain. He mustered the strength to open his eyes--and they remained open wide in response to what he saw once his vision cleared.

Hovering over the mouth of the volcano were thirteen figures, twelve arranged in a perfect circle around the last, who swung at the air alternatively quickly and slowly with a ceremonial knife. Each of the twelve figures acted as vertices to a complicated webbing of lines, all surrounded by two concentric circles with symbols glowing eerily in the space between. Faintly, with half-lidded eyes which shifted in and out of focus, he thought he could see something in the air shimmer, twisting and turning under the will of an expert maestro performing a world-class concert.

His eyes finally snapped into focus when the low murmuring of the figures ascended to a bursting crescendo, and figure in the middle sheathed his knife. For a moment, everything was still--and then he felt the phoenix song again, this time crying out in deep pain. Space warped around the glimmering lines as they bent and twisted around themselves, dragging something out of the hollowed innards of the volcano. Slowly, a sphere of pure red light was forced above the circle until it was trapped in a clear prison. The golden lines formed an icosahedron, a three-dimensional shape with twenty triangular sides, inside which the red light was caged. Despite how it fought, whether by smashing into the sides which released bursts of light when hit or by releasing flashes of light which caused all of the sides to shine violently, it could not escape--and, on a deep, visceral level, he felt that the imprisonment was wrong.

The figure in the center took the caged light into a clothed hand, and, though he could not see the face hidden by a hood, he could tell there was a smirk on those lips. He would have shivered if he could have.

"At last," came the quiet whisper which echoed in the near silence of the dim night, "I have it. The four lights," with the opening of a hand, the icosahedron was surrounded by three more cages, a tetrahedron with four triangles holding a blue light, a cube holding a green light, and an octahedron with eight triangles containing a yellow light, "are mine after all these years. I can finally complete my task. Let the Old Ones walk the Earth once more!"

The cages, now in close proximity, seemed to flash brighter and brighter as the prisoners redoubled their attempts to escape. The central figure began to laugh loudly at the futile attempts to flee, but, as he watched, he knew that it was not over yet--that nothing would stop the lights, and then he realized that it was just about to end. When the center moved to do something, an almighty flash erupted from his hands, and he looked into the distance as the four lights spiraled away.

A snarl came as the twelve figures began to chant again, falling through an empty disc in space with the thirteenth following. When the disc closed, he righted himself and looked around.

Taking a deep breath to calm his aching lungs, he asked himself, "What am I supposed to do now?"

Before he could contemplate what he should do with what he had seen--as well as how to leave--something, an unknown force, crashed into him, and he was pushed away from the sea of sands. As he spiraled away, he thought he could see the edges of the desert waver and fragment, leaving only black in its wake as shards of reality fell into black. Before the destruction could reach him, he was again inside the nothingness, this time without control of his own motion. Spinning around and around with no means to right himself, he was pushed toward another shining light, just like the one from before. Despite the spinning world around him, however, he could see that he was not alone. There were also three other people with him, two female and one male. He couldn't make out their features, but their vivid eyes were something he would always remember--one, a piercingly cold set of blue with warmth hidden deep, another, a soft pair of brown covering a core of steel, and, the final, a familiar olive shade shining from within with purity. As he began to muster an attempt to speak, or, quite frankly, shout, to them, the light engulfed them, and all went to white and then faded to black before he was even able to utter a scream.

One last word went through his head before he lost everything.

Tetheia.

Part 2

The day went by in a blur for him. He'd had to change buildings several times as his classes passed, but there was ample time to do so. Along the way, he had Adriana to guide him and show him the shortcuts she'd discovered as a freshman. Akira was extremely thankful for the help—without her, he would have been late to each of his classes. She also helped him with catching up to the others—though it was only the fourth day of the school year, he'd already missed things which had been explained in the previous days and which he wouldn't have known otherwise.

He now stood in line with Adriana in one of the two lunch rooms in the school. Both were large, easily able to serve the school's high population, not even counting those who brought lunch from home. He learned that students were invited to either eat in one of the cafeterias, some of the designated classrooms, or even in the courtyard, provided that students cleaned up all trash. It came with dire threats that they'd lose the courtyard privileges otherwise, and Akira could easily see that no one wanted that. As he grabbed his food and paid the requisite price, he stood off to the side while waiting for Adriana.

Although he had made some quick friends in his classes, he found that he enjoyed Adriana's company the most so far. Though she often put up a cold front and had a sharp tongue, she also had a quick wit which Akira appreciated. There was a true confidence in her body language, not the cocky swagger of teenagers who thought they were better, but the stride of someone who knew she was.

And the fact that she was pretty was a bonus as well.

"I'm meeting my friends outside." Adriana looked at him. "Do you...?"

"Yeah, sure." He smiled. While he'd had offers from some, he felt more comfortable just hanging out with Adriana. She jerked her head toward the exit and began paving the way through the milling students. He followed her dutifully as she headed toward the courtyard, and he followed her to a small gathering of students under a tree, which he recognized as the same one he spent the morning under.

He noted a couple people from his classes, one boy who was Adriana's height though younger than them, and the last...

"It's you!" he unwittingly shouted, and then the eyes of all gathered looked at him. His face flushed brightly under the scrutiny, and then the eyes, the familiar brown, gained the light of comprehension.

"It's the lost boy!" he shouted, and soon Akira's face wasn't the only one colored brightly.

Adriana cleared her throat and looked between the two. "You two know each other?"

After a beat of silence, Akira was the first to speak up. "He helped me find homeroom after I got my schedule." Schooling his expression, he turned toward the boy and offered a smile. "You ran off before I could thank you, so, yeah, thanks."

The blush didn't recede as he said, "No problem." He held one slightly pale hand out with thin, wiry arms. "The name's Jace." Those same brilliant brown eyes gazed from behind cropped bangs of black with a smile on the lips. "It's nice to meet you."

"Akira." He clasped hands and was surprised at the firm grip he found which belied the small, almost delicate body—though he realized that Jace was only a few inches shorter than him. Settling down, he turned toward the only person he didn't know and asked, "And you're...?"

"Leon." Browned skin on a strong face nodded once, strong eyes the color of the earth sizing him up. With an almost imperceptible nod, Leon turned away from him to Jace, his long ponytail shifting wildly as he did so. Akira returned to his food but found that he was drawn into the group's easygoing conversation just the same. For the first time since his move, Akira felt the faint stirrings of content. He thought that it'd be difficult to make friends in the new surroundings, but he found that those around him were welcoming.

It brought a smile to his face.

Part 3

The bell rang throughout his final class, and Akira breathed a small sigh of relief as his English teacher ended the discussion and dismissed them. Stuffing his bag with the last of his things, he looked at Adriana, who was speaking with a classmate. When he caught her eye, she briefly broke conversation to tell him to go on without her, and he did so. He left the Cor building, characterized by its pristine, white doors, and returned to the Animus building where his homeroom was, nodding at familiar faces. Reaching his locker, Akira spun the dial, the combination already memorized, and went about deciding which books he could leave at school and which ones needed to be brought home. A small grimace crossed his face as he realized he needed a good majority of them, but the heaviest of them all, his history textbook, could be left alone—it was a small favor.

He sucked in a breath and pulled his bag up—and found that it didn't strain his back too badly. When he readjusted the straps, the weight distribution on his arms became that much more bearable, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Math textbook in hand, he walked to the courtyard, where he had been designated to meet Adriana after school. As he moved toward the same tree he'd eaten lunch under, Akira felt something tickle at the back of his head, and he stopped in place just as someone latched onto his back.

For a moment, he felt panic well up inside of him, but then brown tresses fell across his nose, and he smelled the scent of nature. He closed his eyes and simply breathed in the familiar scent, and, when he opened them, there was familiarity in his eyes.

"Kimberly," he laughed and latched onto her, spinning so that he could crush her in a hug. His hand brushed across the long-sleeved t-shirt he remembered her buying only a week before his move, the soft reassuringly real material beneath his fingers. He drew back and looked at the olive eyes which had always sparkled for him—they were one of the few memories he had of toddlerhood, Kimberly's shining green eyes. Now framed by long brown hair tied into an arching ponytail at the back of her head, Akira again smiled and hugged her. "You didn't tell me that you were going to move!"

"It was supposed to be a surprise." She latched onto him, one hand snaking around his waist as the other grasped his shoulder. "Since I knew the general area you would be in, I thought I could just drop in and surprise you. But—I didn't realize that we'd be attending the same school. There's so many here!" Kimberly laughed and smiled through her tears, and she never broke contact with him. "You're stuck with me for life, Akira. I don't think I could've lasted without you."

"Friends forever and ever," he whispered as he caught her hand in a pinky swear. They shared matching grins, and Akira's heart lightened.

One of the biggest concerns he'd had when coming to Boston was the fact that he was leaving his entire world behind. There were friends—close friends—whom he knew he'd inevitably drift away from, and it was a loss he thought he wouldn't be able to bear, especially Kimberly's. But being next to Kimberly, whom he had known since they were in diapers, lit a fire inside of him to burn away his fears.

He always felt his safest next to her.

They broke apart, though the tips of their fingers remained connected. Akira grinned at Kimberly. "What are you doing today?"

"I was going to finish unpacking." Kimberly rolled her shoulders back, loosening tension as well as shifting her own backpack. "Want to come help out?"

Akira made to agree, but then his mind flashed back toward Adriana and her promise of showing him around town. When he opened his mouth to respond, he was interrupted by a voice coming from behind him.

"Akira?"

He turned and found Adriana, whose lips were pressed in a thin line, with a cell phone clutched in her right hand. The sharpness in her gaze, though characteristic of her, was unlike anything he was used to with other teenagers. "Yeah, Adriana?"

"Something's come up, and I think I'm going to have to take a rain check on that tour. I think Jace can—" The curt urgency in her voice was softened by genuine apology.

"—it's fine," he broke in, his spirits lifting at the change of events. "It's fine. I actually just met a friend again. Kimberly, Adriana. Adriana, Kimberly." The two girls nodded at each other, with Kimberly offering a small, tentative smile. "Is something the matter?"

Adriana slowly shook her head. "Nothing much, it's just I have to do something at home." Giving him a questioning look, she asked, "Is another day all right?"

"It'll be fine." He offered as reassuring a smile as he could. "I'll see you tomorrow then?"

"Tomorrow," she reaffirmed. With a quick farewell, she departed, her steps quick and pace hurried though not frantic. As she left, Akira turned back to Kimberly, and gave his answer.

"Sure, I'll come over."

He took a step away from her, Kimberly's fingers lingering on his for a moment longer before she smiled and said, "Follow me."

When the sun began to set and Akira went home, he was finally at peace. Having Kimberly around made the transition that much easier; she had always remained a constant to those around her, and her soothingly warm presence was something he always enjoyed. He was happy; warmth seeped into him with every second he spent with her.

He went to sleep as soon as his eyes closed.

It was the first time he'd done so since he came to Boston.