Sorcerer Hunters Fan Fiction ❯ Fall into Darkness ❯ First Fall ( Chapter 1 )

Fall into Darkness

The slam of a screen door and the excited cries of a small child rent the warm summer morning. The young, black-haired boy waved away the cautions of his gentle mother and sent her smile. The woman sighed happily as she watched her son play in the backyard, yet she couldn't shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen. She shook her head to dispel the irrational worry nagging her mind and decided to simply enjoy watching her son play in youthful innocence. Besides the seven foot high fence about the backyard would prevent both her son from wandering off and anyone from coming in unannounced. He would be alright. With a satisfied nod she turned and went back inside.

The boy hardly noticed his mother's absence as he raced towards the sandbox. As soon has he had plopped himself into the damp sand, he began to construct a grand city, at least to him, of sand and anything else he could grab. When the grainy city filled one corner of the sandbox he stood up and promptly set about demolishing his hard work. He repeated the process several times, each time laughing with uncomplicated joy.

"Why do you destroy your cities?" a quiet voice asked. The boy paused with one foot raised in preparation to flatten another sand city. He craned his head around as far as it would go in order to look over his shoulder. He found a tall stranger dressed entirely in black waiting patiently for his answer. A warm summer wind ruffled the man's jet hair and caused his coat to billow out like black wings.

"Because," the boy answered in the same manner as his parents. Most of his questioning of the reason why he had to brush his teeth, take a bath and things like that met with the answer of 'because'. He found it fun to be able to say that to an adult for the first time in his six and a half years of life.

"That's not an answer, young one." The boy shrugged impishly and brought his foot down upon the hapless sand city. Actually he tried to, but some force beyond his ken prevented the encounter. He frowned in childish puzzlement and pulled his foot away. He awkwardly inspected the sole of his shoe for the cause of his inability to crush the city. The man chuckled softly and the boy turned to face him.

"Did you do that?" The man nodded briefly, smiling all the while. "How?"

"Magic."

"Magic's not real. My friend told me so."

"Are you sure?" The young boy nodded confidently. His friend was a whole year older and so he knew, or so the boy thought, a lot more about the world and about things that parents were disinclined to tell their children.

The man snapped his fingers and the sand city, mercifully spared from the tyrannical whims of a small child, exploded. The boy gasped and backpedaled frantically to escape the clods of damp sand flying at him. He ended up landing on his rear in a rather undignified manner. He turned frightened and awed eyes to the man dressed in black.

"That's...magic?"

"Yes," the man replied with a knowledgeable smile. "Would you like to learn?"

"Learn magic?" the boy asked eagerly.

"Yes."

"Now?"

"You are still impatient in this lifetime," the man observed.

"What?"

"Nothing." The boy cocked his head to one side and regarded the man quizzically. "Now, tell me why you destroy your cities." The boy opened his mouth to issue another flippant remark, but a strange, compelling power in the man's violet eyes stilled the lies.

"I wanted to make new cities, better ones too."

"Then I shall teach you magic and you shall learn how to destroy whole worlds and build them anew, until you find your perfect world." The man held out one black-gloved hand to the mesmerized child.

"Okay," the boy answered with wide, trusting brown eyes. He put one small hand in the man's larger one without a second thought. "But I have to be back for lunch. Mom's making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches."

"Do not worry, young one. Everything will fall into place according to its fate."

* * *

"Dammit. I'm too late." The purple-haired man watched the frenetic movement about the boxlike house across the street where a hysterical woman explained to one of several police officers the cause of the disturbance: her missing six year old son. With a sigh of self-disgust he jumped down from his perch and left.

* * *

10.4 years later.

* * *

"Big Mama, we've found him at last."

"Where?"

"He's...attending high school."

"I'm surprised Sacher Torte has finally allowed him into the public view without cloaking his presence. He must be very confident."

"He hasn't destroyed the world, yet. So he must have some purpose behind this move."

"Perhaps we have something that he needs in order to fulfill his desire."

"This might be a trap."

"Yes, Mille Feuille, it might very well be, but now we have time for the next move is ours."

* * *

Carrot Torte glanced at the line of girls running track down on the field. They looked so inviting in their clinging tops and shorts, but he couldn't bring himself to chase after them. He sensed that maybe under different circumstances, in a different life, nobody would've been able to stop him. He had been receiving similar impressions lately and he was at a loss to explain why. It was almost as if he wasn't living the life he should, but that was crazy.

He closed his dark-brown eyes and stretched out on the metal bleacher. The weak spring sun valiantly attempted to chase off the lingering chill of winter, but all it did was sprinkle mottled shadows upon his face from the leafy boughs overhead. He liked the spring more than any other season. It always filled him with a sort of hope that never manifested during any other time of the year. Possibility and newness flourished in spring. At times like this he couldn't bring himself to believe things were as bad as his mentor believed they were. Did he really want to destroy the world?

"Carrot." The young man opened his eyes and looked about. Seeing no other person on the bleachers, he bent down and looked under them instead. He found an oddly dressed woman with purple hair waving at him from underneath. He waved back uncertainly. She seemed familiar, but he was almost certain that they had never met before.

"What is it?"

"Come down here."

"You come up here."

"Okay." He blinked and found her gone. He leaned down farther and banged his head on the metal when someone tapped him gently on the shoulder. He cursed loudly and sat up. The woman stood before him, smiling cheerfully.

"How did you get up here so fast?" he demanded rubbing his aching head.

"Magic." A prickling went up his spine. He had had this conversation, or one like it before.

"Magic doesn't exist."

The woman winked coquettishly at him and leaned closer. "Yes it does." The young man shook his head, and then regretted it as the dying pain flared up. Wincing and massaging the rising bump, he moved away from her. The closeness of her proved very disturbing. A deeply rooted ambivalence seethed along his nerves, which was odd because he usually associated that feeling with his guardian.

"Anyway, how do you know my name? I haven't seen you around here before."

"Oh, I know you...from a long, long time ago." The woman giggled and again moved closer, causing him to again scoot away.

"Are you a friend of my guardian?" Carrot felt as if he was falling from a great height and didn't know whether the landing would soft or bone-crunching. He couldn't think of any other reason for her knowing him. Perhaps she had met him when he was too young to remember, though his guardian never really seemed like the sociable type and even less likely to make a female acquaintance. The coy smile on her face froze and then turned into a sad, bitter line.

"I was."

He floundered about for something else to ask her, the feeling of falling only intensifying. Her amber eyes watched him with unnerving purposefulness. He had to look away in order to think correctly.

"What do you want?" He could've slapped himself. He probably sounded like some bad horror cliché. At least the woman's smile returned, in force.

"I just want to revive your memories."

"What?" She held out a gently pulsing crystal orb. He stared at it with trepidation. "What is that?"

"Take it, Carrot. I think it will explain a few things." Her voice became commanding, undeniable and filled with the kind of authority that made a person obey without question. He took the orb.

A horrible, almost inhuman scream pumped from his straining lungs and ripped out of his mouth. Razor blades of agony ripped through the delicate tissue of his brain and pounded out through his limbs, along his arteries and around his burning eyes. He grabbed his bursting head, dropping the orb, and screamed again as something deeply buried tried to explode outward and split his consciousness in two.

"Carrot, calm down. Don't fight it." A face swam briefly before his eyes and then faded into a chaotic sea of sightless effulgence.

He tried to call for help. He had to tell someone that he was falling, falling and couldn't stop. He was going to hit and it would hurt. It could be no other way.

Why didn't someone help him?

* * *

"Mille Feuille." The purple-haired man froze. Beneath him the young man thrashed about as his expertly suppressed memories attempted to surface in his conscious mind.

"Sacher Torte," he murmured, warily watching the black-haired man standing calmly at the bottom of the bleachers.

"Mama's trinkets won't uproot this boy's past memories. Only I can do that."

"And I'm guessing that you don't want to."

"No. Now would you please leave my ward alone. You seem to be distressing him."

Mille cursed in frustration, torn between driving a fist into the former Haz Knight's face and restraining a convulsing Carrot. A sudden, violent gust of wind buffeted the purple-haired man and he had to close his eyes. When he opened them again he found Sacher standing beside him.

"Damn you."

"That has been done already. Now leave, Mille Feuille." Sacher glanced over his shoulder. The Haz Knight his gaze and made the unwelcome discovery of a crowd beginning to gather at the bottom of the bleachers. The jet-haired man raised one dimly glowing hand and gestured at the milling people. "However, if Big Mama has abandoned her principles of not involving innocents, then I will fight your for possession of the boy."

"You will never change, will never compromise. Will you?"

"Will you?" Sacher countered with an enigmatic smile.

"No, and neither will Big Mama. This is not over, Sacher. We won't let you destroy the world."

"Again."

"What?"

"Destroy the world again."

"Of what do you speak?"

"As you said, Mille, this is not over. Now go back to Mama with your tail between your legs like a good little Haz Knight."

The purple-haired growled with frustrated rage and vanished.

"And everything falls into place." The jet-haired looked down at his still writhing ward. He laid a black gloved hand on the boy's damp forehead and mouthed a few words. Almost at once the boy's frenetic movements stilled and he sagged against the metal seat. "She still thinks herself in the right, and now she wants you to remember. She is persistent in her vision."

* * *

Carrot Torte awoke to a body filled with many small aches. A strong hand prevented him from jerking up right in surprise when he discovered that he was now in his own room. He turned his head and found his mentor sitting in a chair next to his bed.

"What...happened?" Dimly he remembered a strange woman and pain, lots of it.

"Go back to sleep, young one."

"Who was...?"

"Sleep."

The young man drifted back into a world filled with darkness and vaguely anxious waiting. Then he fell and everything burned with demonic fury. Somewhere deep in his dreams four voices called his name.

* * *

From Sarryn,

There it is. This is the unrevised, first edition of this story. I may revise it later on, but for now I'm just going to post it. So will there be pairings? Most definitely, but I'm not telling what they are yet.

Please review, no flames, and have fun reading and writing. (I wish more people would update. There are a whole bunch of stories that I've read and am now eagerly awaiting the continuations.)