A Spark of Fate

Chapter 2

Bones, the skinny man with needle marks on his arms. The man who just had his head blown off, slowly stood back up, his head still clearly missing. The skinny headless man then lifted his gun and continued to return fire even though he was headless. That’s when Jack spotted a silhouette appear from the shadow behind Tram. It looked like he had melted right out of the darkness. Tram was on one knee distracted doing something, so he didn’t notice.

The shadow man sprang from the darkness with a knife in each hand. He started hacking at Tram’s enormous back. Compared to Tram’s huge form, the little blades should have barely caused an itch. But as soon as the blades touched his body Tram started roaring like a madman. The blades were as black as night, and they seemed to cut Tram with little resistance. The man in the shadows quickly hacked with both hands, but as obvious as it was that he was doing a lot of damage, Tram was just too big. With one swing of his hands, he sent the shadow man flying, right in Jack’s direction. Jack tried to lift his arms, but he was still restrained. The shadow man landed right on Jack’s stomach, knocking the air out of him yet again.

Something interesting happened when the shadow man landed on Jack. As soon as the man landed on top of him, the man started convulsing. The shadow man screamed as he spasmed on top of Jack. He dropped both his daggers and foam started forming on his lips. The black daggers seemed to disappear as soon as they left his hands, then suddenly he stopped convulsing. The man seemed to go stiff and then fell off of Jack.

Smoke rose from his body. The smell of burnt hair quickly filled the alley. That is when Jack noticed the small static shocks occurring all around him. They were everywhere, seeming to surround his body. The sparks were white with a blue tint. A beautiful sight, the sparks would light up for a second and then disappear just like fireflies. But there were so many that it looked like he was covered head to toe in sparks.

The sparks were beautiful. He was completely transfixed, momentarily forgetting about the insane battle before him. Jack had never seen anything like it. Suddenly he realized what it was. Electricity. I am radiating electricity.

Why doesn’t this hurt? Jack thought. He could barely lift his head, managing to lift it just enough to look down at his body. He could still hardly see, but it looked like the electricity was emanating from his body. The sparks would slip out of his skin, not seeming to be bothered by any clothing. They came zipping out with force in the hundreds. They would then abruptly stop a couple of inches from his body, radiate for a second, and then slowly disperse. Only to be quickly replaced by another.

BOOM!

An explosion brought Jack’s attention back to the fight unfolding in front of him. The headless Bones just had another chunk blown out of him. Bones wasn’t knocked over this time and he didn’t even seem bothered. A huge chunk of his right side was missing. He just took a second to pick up the gun with his left hand then continued to return fire. That’s when another train drifted overhead, this one a slower industrial train. Jack was hoping the light would help him understand what was happening but weirdly enough the light from the train only served to exacerbate his confusion.

Finally getting a good look, Jack could see Bones in fact did have two giant holes in his body. The much weirder part was that his entire body looked like he was made of water. The parts of his body that had been damaged were dripping a clear liquid. There was no blood anywhere. The man looked half-melted. Jack started to wonder if this was even a man. He had heard of magical creatures and wondered if this was some sort of water monster.

Jack watched as the liquid all around the man slowly flowed toward Bones. Once reaching his feet, the liquid seemed to disappear into his body, his missing body parts slowly reforming as the mass of liquid coalesced around him. Jack couldn’t take his eyes off the incredible spectacle occurring before him, he had never seen anything like this. When he was still under the care of the orphanage and had free time to read books he had learned of the amazing elemental powers you could acquire throughout the world.

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Unfortunately, Jack could only dream of such abilities, knowing he would never have the money to escape the slums. The cores were so expensive they didn’t have any photos, only rough drawings. Jack had been impressed by the gun the man carried, signaling his wealth. But that was nothing compared to the cost of an elemental core. You could buy a city block with the money it would cost to buy an elemental core.

Jack watched as Tram summoned a smooth stone box out of the ground. From within the box, he pulled out a giant gun that had a large revolving cannon for a barrel.

A huge freaking minigun? Jack thought. How could this possibly get more insane?

The weapon had a massive rotary barrel on the front. The ammo for the gun appeared to be a giant power crystal attached to the back of the gun. Those crystals Jack knew were different from what he picked up. Those are power crystals, a form of portable mana power. Power crystals were incredibly useful, but also extremely heavy.

Tram hefted his weapon and then went still again. That’s when Jack noticed what looked like tattoos forming all over Tram’s body. After a second he realized it was not tattoos, but stone. Tram’s entire body was becoming covered in stone. The stone was thick and completely covered his face. After covering himself, he stepped around the corner, heaving the huge gun with him. The gun took a second to spin up before firing. A high-pitched whining sound that increased to ear-piercing levels filled the air. Then the bullets started to fly. Incredibly loud booming shots, they fired one after another in unbelievable repetition.

After a few seconds of firing his cannon, Tram pulled himself back around the corner, the barrel of the gun was red hot and smoking. His stone body had obvious pock marks from where he had been shot, but none of the bullets seemed to have penetrated his stone armor.

Having been distracted by Tram, Jack hadn’t noticed the headless Bones forming what looked like giant water bullets in the air. He was waving his hands in weird gestures as he created them. They were swirling around violently while maintaining a bullet shape. Each one was huge, probably the size of Jack’s head. They were spinning incredibly fast with their front tapering into sharp points. The water roiled silently inside each bullet as they kept spinning faster and faster.

By now he had formed roughly ten giant water bullets. Once Tram had pulled himself back around the corner, Bones released his water bullets. They didn’t fly straight though, they flew around the corner in a homing pattern, each one flying in a different direction. The bullets eventually flew off, making no sign that they hit anyone.

“I’m almost out of mana!” cried Bones. The sounds escaped his half-formed mouth in a gurgle.

“Good,” said Tram, and to Jack’s surprise, Tram leaned back and swung a huge fist into the body of Bones. His liquid body exploded. Liquid droplets flying everywhere.

“You Bastard!” cried Bones. Jack could see the betrayal clearly on Bones’ face.

“It’s you.” Bones spoke. He collapsed on the ground now. The water was no longer flowing toward him. Now it seemed like he was slowly drying up. A disgusting sight but unfortunately for Jack, living on the street meant death was a part of his daily life. This was not the first man he had seen die.

Bones kept cursing out Tram as his breath slowly died out. His last words were something about Tram’s mother being unfaithful. Jack could not quite make it out. That’s when the shooters around the corner stopped firing.

“Give us back the core and we’ll let you go,” a voice yelled from around the corner. “You’ve got three seconds before we blow you all to hell.” The voice was calm. They were talking as if they did this every day. Tram looked right at Jack. He grimaced, as the knife wounds on his back continued to bleed freely. The situation looked dire. Obviously surrounded, and still restrained to the ground, Jack just couldn’t get his thoughts in a row.

Who was attacking them? Why did Tram kill his companion?

While Jack was furiously racking his brain with how he had gotten himself into this situation, Tram seemed to make his mind up about something. He made another gesture toward Jack and the ground started flowing around him once more. This time his whole body sank into the ground.

He rapidly realized he was entirely confined underground in a very tight space. His body had stopped emitting sparks, so it was pitch black. His leg still burned horribly, but Jack wasn’t paying them any attention, he was panicking. Never having been in a confined space before, he quickly learned that he did not like it. Not one bit.

Unexpectedly he heard and felt footsteps above him. Someone was walking right over him. “Where the hell did they go?” a muffled voice said. Hearing the voices above him, Jack was able to slightly orient himself. Focusing on his surroundings, he was able to calm his breathing a little. He could now hear multiple sets of footsteps.

“Search the area” another voice spoke. He continued to do his best to control his breathing. Slowly he lost track of time. After such a grueling event, he was exhausted. His breathing eventually settled, and he fell asleep, dreaming of fireflies.