A kindled fate. What is fate? Where does it come from? Where does it stem from? Is it a power that can be harnessed? Is it a power that can be controlled?
Scholars and religious leaders have pondered these questions for hundreds of years. Yet no one has been able to uncover the answer...
Yet the answer for which has been right in front of our faces the whole time. Fate isn't some boundless entity, it is a power that resides in us all, and is around us at all times. A power stronger than anything God could cast upon this earth. A power that doesn't defy meaning, but becomes meaning.
Fate isn't what a conversation will be, but what the conversation has become. It is already happening and no one can see it, because it is already what they see.
But the only time fate must be questioned is when peering into the past. For the fate that stems in the future can only be seen from before it was present. In my dreams. The sleepless nights. Of hunger and famine. Of pain across my splintered back. The chains rubbing against my ankles and wrists, chained up to the wall, kept as a dog. A dog leashed to its owner, punished to do meaningless tasks purely for an unknown reason that would never protrude itself.
Yet back then fate and destiny never crossed my mind, not once. Looking back and watching how much I struggled for meaningless grasps at straws in a stack of needles, I couldn't help but wonder if it all led to something. That every little moment, the hunger, the pain, the man arriving, my stomach aching. I wonder now if it was all fate. Fate leading me to this city, to these siblings who now allow me to sleep in their spare room.
But again, like with fate's unholy power, I can not see ahead, I can not see what is in store for me. So as I dream I believe in harnessing this power of fate. I dream of turning that small flickering flame and kindling it into a power that will guide me into the perfect life.
As I fall deeper and deeper into sleep that dream fades into a small light by the side of the road. And in that flickering light is but a man. A man in darkness, with under armor as black as his cloak, and a face hidden in the shadows, black on black, dark on dark, but red eyes in all... His red eyes stuck out from the darkness around him. Almost like its his own flame. A flame keeping him going, keeping his fate intact. And my fate. He stood next to it. Its flame growing stronger with every step he took, with every step he took toward me. With-
"Wake up sleepy heads! It's morning!"
The voice of an older woman radiated through my still aching head. The woman paced back and forth across the hallway screaming at the top of her lungs to wake everyone up. My head rang in her siren voice as I got up slowly, rubbing my eyes across my sleeved nightgown. I looked out through the small glass window. It was morning. The shinning sun pressed against my face as I slowly rolled out of bed. I quickly put on my dark cloth shirt and baggy cloth pants. Then I wrapped everything up in strapped leather and pulled up my clean grey cloak to hide everything underneath. I walked over to the foot of the bed, picked up my heavy leather bag, and headed out the door of Ceauli's guest room.
Once out in the main area, I was greeted by the friendly smiles of Ceauli, Lin, a large man, and an older woman in her mid-thirties. I looked around the large table where they all sat, drinking and talking about things I didn't understand. The walls of the room were covered in shelves, with glass bottles and canisters filled lining them with parts of mysterious creatures that I had never seen before trapped inside. And unlike the night prior where I wasn't actually able to see anything in this room, the whole place felt bigger. Way too big for four people to be living in.
Usually in Elisese a family of five gets one room and that's it. I had to work hard just to get a single closet space, and that place had holes in the ceiling and bugs littered across the floor. This place... This entire building was massive in comparison, and the stone floors were immaculately cleaned, along with the walls and ceiling being made out of rich waxed wood. Compared to the villages we passed on our way here, and compared to Elisese's slums, this room in itself was a wonder to even look at, especially for people who weren't Nobels.
But then again, Ceauli did say she was a Nobel. Did she run away to the Kingdom of Forr? But she also said she's been here many times before, and she was just visiting Elisese. Her appearance... She doesn't dress like a Nobel, nor does she act like one. I should ask her-
The older woman in her mid-thirties, who wore a revealing corset, jumped on top of me with open arms.
She said in a sexy smooth voice, "can't believe my little girl Ceauli brought back such a handsome lad. Such a fine young man..." She looked up at Ceauli and Lin as she had her arms tightly wrapped around my neck, "what did you do? Blackmail him? Kidnap him?"
"No no, I just used my womanly charm," bragged Ceauli as she boasted across the room.
I slowly pried myself from this woman's grasp and replied, "I came for a single reason and a single reason only. I don't care about Ceauli or her party or whatever. I'm only after information. Information about the-"
"Wait don't!" Ceauli jumped out of her seat trying to stop me but she was too slow.
"Information about the Shorebringers."
Lin shook his head in disappointment as the large man and the woman looked down at me. Their eyes turning a dark shade of black like I had brought up something taboo.
"What did he just say Ceauli?" the woman asked her.
"I... He... He doesn't know anything about them... He's just... I... I..."
Ceauli couldn't find the words to finish her sentence as the woman looked at me. Her face wrinkling up into a ball of questions.
"Why do you want to know about the Shorebringers?" she asked scarefully.
I obliviously kept speaking, "I want to find the leader Sariel. I want to-"
Slap!
She slapped me across the face.
---
Outside on the street corner. A man in black stood with his sword covered by his cloak of darkness. He looked up and down the streets with caution as merchants and street sellers passed by with carts of food and merchandise. He slowly passed through alleyway after alleyway before coming up on a gate to a large castle-like building in the center of the city. Its walls towered over anything else in the area, with a fence-like gate made of steel that stood twelve feet tall and surrounded the entire stone castle. He looked out at the front entrance as it was blocked by five guards, each holding spears and clad in chainmail and iron helmets.
"I shouldn't kill the guards..."
He looked up at the steel gate. Its long reflective bars, five inches long, held seven inches apart from each other. They were so close together that not even a small dog could fit through its beams, and they were so strong that not even the strongest man with the heavies hammer could bend one. But this mysterious man stood in the shadows, with his sword held to his left side, gripped tight by his right hand. He placed his left foot back and extended out his right foot, entering a stance one would call a one strike attack.
He pressed his thumb against the hilt of the black and gold sword and-
Flash-zap-slice!
A sharp shot of lighting burst out from his sword, cutting the steel bars perfectly horizontal across, leaving not a single sound or spark. He then stepped back as the bars slid from their hold, falling back onto the sandy garden on the other side of the massive fence. He then pulled up his black cloak and stepped through the two feet long opening he made.