Chereads / Heroes Rising / Chapter 8 - A Gory Legacy (1.8)

Chapter 8 - A Gory Legacy (1.8)

Jaxon got to he mansion and realized the power and the water still ran fine, even the heaters worked. The place was still completely empty though, and the top floors were all but burned away. The second floor was still pretty intact other than a coupled of horrifyingly burnt rooms, not a single thing was recognisable in those rooms.

Jaxon walked into one of these rooms and noticed that the only thing left intact was a bright, fire engine red, hoodie. It had three black markings on the back that looked like claw marks, though the colour was fading now. He picked the hoodie up, he wanted to figure out who it belonged to.

Everything went black, until he opened his eyes again and found himself in the same room, except it was during the fire that burned it down in the first place. He felt himself burning alive and spotted a man with green and white hair standing over him as he screamed. It was like the nightmares he'd been having, but this time he knew it was a flashback.

Jaxon woke up, he was laying on the floor in the room. His hair was all full of ash now and he had to shake it out. He went downstairs to figure out the shower and then got himself cleaned off. He assumed the water and power in the house was magic, so that's why it still worked.

Once Jaxon was dressed he heard a noise come from outside the washroom and he locked the door. He listened and heard footsteps stop at the bathroom door.

"Is someone in there..?" A man's voice was heard on the other side and he knocked on the already fragile door before trying to open it. Once he noticed it was locked he knocked again, but more aggressively. "Come out of there right now." His voice was soft, yet rough at the same time, he sounded angry as he knocked again.

Jaxon couldn't find a place to hide so he braced himself for whoever this was to knock the door down. Instead, the door slowly disintegrated and fell on the ground in a pile of dust.

A short man with blue hair, one blue eye, one red eye and a nice tuxedo stood there with arms crossed. His eyes were narrowed as he looked at Jaxon.

"Who the hell are you and why are you here?" He growled. Jaxon took a step back, if this guy did that to the door than he could only assume what he could do to him. "Answer me or you'll be the next object to turn to dust." He hissed. Jaxon could tell now that he had a slight British accent.

"U-umm I was justing looking for shelter, uhh sorry for intruding." He decided to try and bolt past, but the voice in his head decided it would be funnier to shove him instead.

He grabbed Jaxon's arm, flipped on his back and stood with one foot on his chest, for someone so small, he was quite strong. Jaxon continued to struggle and tried to escape but it was no use, the voice in his head was laughing and Jaxon's headache grew worse as he struggled.

Eventually he just lay there waiting for the blue haired man to kill him. "Just put me out of my misery already." He sighed. There was still a lot of blood on his clothes and he thought maybe death would put him to ease, since he murdered his parents.

The blue haired man rolled his eyes, stepped away from him and shook his head. "You remind me of someone.." He narrowed his eyes. "Who are you?"

"M-my names Jaxon.." Jaxon got up and dusted himself off. He looked at the man, he was just a little bit shorter than Jaxon, but Jaxon hadn't hit his growth spurt yet, so he was still pretty short.

"I'm Black Knight." It was an odd name, Jaxon had never met someone with such a dumb name, but he ignored it and nodded.

"Right.." Jaxon looked away. "Well I should get going then.." Jaxon began to walk away.

"How about you stay here, I'll fix the house up so you don't have to live without a roof." Black Knight offered. "It'll only take a few minutes of focusing my magic." His red eye gleamed and the gloves he wore turned black.

Jaxon sighed. "If you insist." He was thankful this stranger decided to help him, but at the same time very suspicious of him. "But don't ask for anything in return." He huffed.

Black Knight took about ten minutes before the house was completely fixed, every floor had been restored to it's normal state and Black Knight even made sure to reinforce the spells used to run the power and water in the house.

"All you need to do now is clean the rooms filled with ash and soot." Black Knight smiled. "Good luck finding yourself again.."

Before Jaxon could ask him what he meant by that, he was gone. He sighed and looked around the house, when all of the sudden a handful of memories filled his mind. They were all negative like usual, but at least he was putting more puzzle pieces together.

He washed his clothes, got dressed again and dyed his hair a beautiful midnight black with red streaks through it. Once he did so, he headed out to buy some more clothes and some paints so he could start out on some art projects.

Jaxon never wanted to do art, but now something inside him told him he should, but also because he found an art room in the mansion while looking around. He felt at home in that room and thought maybe in his past, he liked art.

He got home and looked through the art room, finding old artworks, paints and other supplies. But the most intriguing, was a mask, about the size of his face, that was broken in half. He picked it up and immediately started working on making a replica, even though he could tell the colours were faded, he had an idea of what had looked like before.

He then found an old drawing of the mask, it was still completely intact and showed exactly how it used to look like. So he worked hard on making it until he finally finished building it.

He stood atop the tallest building in town, staring down at pedestrians cars as his wind and hoodie whipped in the wind. His eyes landed on a small child chasing a stray cat across the street, he immediately jumped without hesitation and dragged the child out of the road just before a car could come flying past and hit him.

Jaxon's eyes flew open and he gasped. This was his first memory that wasn't horrifying, he looked down at the mask he was painting and realized he recognized this markings on the design. This mask belonged to the first vigilante, The Blood Hero, known for using his magics to save others and kill villains.

Jaxon painted the mask black with red stripes, instead of the original red with black stripes and set it up to dry. He then went to find the red hoodie and found it had been restored by Black Knight's magic. The colouration was back to it's original self and Jaxon immediately grabbed it.

He decided right there that he was going to continue The Blood Hero's legacy in order to make up for the death of his parents, and also to find his memories, since he seemed to be linked to the long lost hero. A hero who's been dead without any other protectors to take his place in fourteen years.