A thought not his own entered into Kai’s mind. “Do you want to kill them?” Kia ran; not stopping, not slowing down. As memories played through his mind.
“Do you want to kill them?” His mother’s head falling off her body, his mother telling him to run for his life. Memories played through his head in a loop.
“DO YOU WANT TO KILL THEM?” The foreign words that were more concept and idea slammed into Kai’s mind.
Kai continued to run as he felt something reaching out to him, compelling him to turn around and fight. To fight, to see their heads parted from their bodies, to destroy that which had destroyed all he cared for. But, Kai listened to the last thing his mother told him. The foreign mind retreated yet something was planted like a seed that would one day sprout.
The pain from the wounds was nothing compared to the pain in his heart. The blood on his body was nothing compared to the tears running down his face, and the storm that raged inside of him. He had run too far to be able to see where his mother had died, but his mind could not forget seeing his mother’s head leaving her body. It played over again and again in his mind. Behind him, a figure could be seen running through the brush trying to catch up to Kai, but he was somehow moving faster than the man.
Kai ran through the forest; his body scraped and bruised. Each step took him closer to safety, but each step hurt. Each step took more effort, each step burned, each step took him farther from his mother, and with each step, two memories played through his mind. One was his mother’s head leaving her body. The other was his mother telling him to leave and to live. With each step, he drew farther away from the man chasing him. His hand hurt from gripping the medallion too hard, and his eyes were burning both from the strange pain he felt in his eye and the tears running down his face.
Kai broke out of the forest, and the man that had been chasing him was nowhere to be seen. His body turned to face where his head was looking. Kai looked back at a forest tinged with that amber color, but he did not see amber; all he saw was crimson. Crimson that stained his body, the crimson of his eyes, the crimson of his hair, the crimson that had stained the sword of the man that killed his mother.
Kai collapsed into a ball crying. Clutching the medallion, he heard a voice that seemed familiar, but he didn’t pay attention. All that went through his mind was the memory of his mother telling him to run and to survive. His body was picked up and a voice spoke to and shook him, but he didn’t respond, he only cried. Voices talked, but he did not hear them. His mind was only focused on one thing: the two memories playing through his mind over and over, again and again.
Kai felt a hand on his head and looked up and saw the guard that had been in front of the church. The man's mouth moved, but no words came out. Then they did. “What happened to you?” Kai’s mind went blank with the deep darkness of sleep before he could register the words.
Kai looked around and found that he was in a room. Kai looked down at his hands, and the medallion in it. The medallion was a piece of stone the rough outline of a scythe could be made out. He looked back up at the man who was patiently waiting.
“They killed her.” Kai said in a quiet voice before curling back up and falling asleep, yet even there the memories played over and over, again and again.
***
Kai woke up and found that he was in a bed with different clothes, the blood washed off and the medallion around his neck. Getting up, he left the room and after looking around, he found the stairs going down and found the man from the church talking to a slim brown-haired man.
“Ah Kai, I see that you're awake. Why don’t you come and eat something?“ Kai walked over, sat down at the table, and started to eat the plate of eggs put in front of him.
Kai’s hand moved mindlessly scoping the eggs up and into his mouth bite after bite. He didn’t taste the eggs, he didn't notice the two men watching him, and he didn’t even notice when he ran out of eggs and wasn’t eating anything. His mind was on one thing and one thing only. She’s gone.
The church guard placed his hand on Kai’s shoulder.
“Do you wanna talk about what happened?” The guard said quietly.
Kai didn’t move. He just sat there in a daze while his voice was unlike the last time the man had heard it. It was no longer the voice of a quiet, happy kid with his mom. It was still quiet, but all the happiness was gone. It was dry and monotonous with an edge sharper than any sword.
“People on horses burned and killed, mom got me to the forest and told me to run. She stopped them for a bit before they killed her.” Kai said, his voice completely devoid of the emotion one would expect a child to be feeling.
After Kai stopped talking, his entire body seemed to shut down. He did not respond to word or contact he just sat there limply staring down at the table, his mind somewhere else.
“We might as well take him to the orphanage. I doubt anyone will get anything else from him. It's sad what happened to him, but this is our world. All we can do now is find those who did this and prevent them from doing it again.” The man said.
“Agreed.” The guard said while nodding in agreement.
After Kai arrived at the orphanage, nothing changed for him. His movements were just as robotic as before. All he did was sleep and eat until one day, he got up without any prompting and climbed up onto the roof where he sat there watching the sky.
Every day, three things played through his mind. His mother telling him to run to live, his mothers head tumbling to the ground, and that almost voice asking him if he wanted to kill them.
His hands tightened into fists. I want to kill them. I want everyone who dares come after me or mine to die. He stared down at his clenched fist and relaxed his hand. But most of all, I want control.
It wasn’t long before he was called down. When Kai got down he learned that it was some wealthy man looking to adopt a few kids.. Kai didn’t really care, he had a goal, and there was little else in his mind. At least until he saw the man. The instant Kai saw him, he knew that there was something not quite right about this man though he was unsure of just what it was. He was an older man with glasses and a cane; his face was clean shaven with no hint of stubble.
“Do any of them have magic?” The old man asked.
“Yes, four of them do.”
Kai’s head jerked up as his mind was focused and he felt the burning in his eyes increase. It was almost as if there was something that was swirling around the old man. The old man spoke to the kids before deciding to adopt three of the four.
“What about that kid?” The old man said, pointing at Kai.
“He recently came here after his village was burnt down and family killed by bandits though he has no magic.”
“I will adopt him anyway.”
The old man gathered the kids into the wagons before they headed off.
The kids stayed quiet while inside of the wagons for the first two days, but when the night of the third day came around, Kai finally asked where they were going.
“My name is Viktor, something that you should probably know. We are going to the place where I have been living for the past couple of years in the mountains. We will get there some time in the next two or three days.”
On the third day a bit after noon, they were joined by five men on horses who started following them though Viktor didn’t seem bothered by them. One of the five men rode alongside Viktor at the front. Kai closed his eyes and focused on trying to hear them.
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“I see that we have a good haul this time. Will it be sufficient for testing?”
“Yes, with the other kids, we should have plenty for now. We even got a new variable. I'm curious to see if we can learn anything new from him.”
Kai looked back and forth, but no one seemed to be paying too much attention to the kids. Kai’s muscles clenched as he prepared for what he knew he had to do. He could only hope that yet again, he would be able to get away. Kia jumped off the wagon and started running but was instantly stopped. Something sticky had wrapped around him. He looked down to see a black tentacle wrapped around his body.
“Hmmm it seems I was right, there is something different about you.” Viktor was looking back at Kai with one hand outstretched. “Anyone else who tries to run goes without food for the next week.” The shadow tentacle lifted Kai back on to the wagon, setting him down but not unwrapping from his body.
Kai glared at Viktor. But the man did not let him go slowly. They made their way towards the mountain until they got to an unassuming part of the mountain that was just like any other part. Except it wasn’t. The rock moved to the side showing a tunnel into the black. After the wagon had passed through, the wall slid shut leaving them inside of the mountain.
Kai and the three other kids were thrown into the cell. It was a room made of roughly carved rock with a cell door that let in little light. Inside the room were thirty other kids, yet despite the number of kids, there was still plenty of space.
Every day, some kids were removed from the cells, and food and water were brought in. Every day, different kids would be brought in and taken out. Kai tried to escape through the door a couple of times but never succeeded.
Every time the kids were brought back in, they seemed to grow a little more distant. And every night Kai dreamed about three things. His mother’s head tumbling to the ground, his mother telling him to run to live, and that almost voice asking him if he wanted to kill them. Every day, the voice seemed to reach farther into him, deeper into him. And every day, he resisted it, while he did want to kill them, but would not accept whatever this was.
Around him, the kids began to change as time passed, and eventually, some no longer looked like kids or really even humans. They would come back with different parts of their bodies deformed.
It wasn’t until the first year had passed till Kai was taken out of the cell and into a room. While Kai didn’t fight, he had not shut down like the others. His eyes were closed the entire time. His mind was focused on one thing: keeping that thing out.
The researchers strapped him to a chair where they started removing pieces of skin and doing other things trying to understand the makeup of his body and what made him different. For the next two weeks, that's all they did. They did tests on him until they finally tried something new.
A syringe was brought in filled with a strange glowing substance. The syringe was inserted into Kai’s arm. It was like having liquid lightning injected into him. It flowed through his body, burning and scorching everything that it came in contact with until it reached his heart where it seemed to disappear, but the pain did not. It only intensified. It was like a churning, raging sea was inside him, trying to burn char and purge the substance.
Kai found that he was in a cell, and four days later, they brought him out. The pain had settled a little but was not gone. It slowly faded until the second dose was added. Once every week, more and more was added. The pain was horrible, and the thing that seemed to be reaching out to him was his only thing to focus on other than the pain. Kai threw himself into it, resisting whatever it was and ignoring the pain, but it was not a comfort, just a focus. The only thing that gave him comfort was his mother’s medallion that no one seemed to pay any attention to.
Three more years passed, three years of absolute hell, three years of pain and suffering, three more years of the liquid lightning being injected into him before there was a change.
They brought him to a room he had never seen before. It was a massive room and carved into the ground was one massive circle with many more circles inside of it. Along the outside of it in the circles were thousands of strange symbols. Inside of the smaller circles was a myriad of items with little connection to each other. Sitting in the center of the circle was a silver ball. They brought Kai to the ball which turned out to be made of many chains wound together.
They made him place his hand on the ball of chains. His hands sunk in, and the chains wrapped part way around his forearm. Touching it felt strange, it was not the expected cold metal on skin, but it felt like the strange mental touch that he felt for years ever since his mother died. It did not make him nervous or feel anything like that. Instead, it was strangely soothing like a mother comforting her child.
The background went unnoticed by Kai. The people behind him started some kind of magic. The carved lines glowed and massive amounts of magic could be felt in the air, but all Kai felt was that mental touch, and then panic. It felt almost the exact same as the thing that had been asking him if he wanted to kill them. The new mental force started trying to force their way into his head. Kai’s mind moved forth and a wall was erected, massive, solid and scarred. Yet those scars were not signs of weakness; they were signs of his strength and what he had endured. But it buckled, the chains smashed, forcing their way around and through it.
There was something else backing the chains, but Kai didn’t care. He had persevered this long, and he would not give in now. When his mother had died, he had persevered when he had been trapped and forgotten for a year, he had persevered when he had been injected with what felt like liquid lightning he had persevered and now when something tried to force its way in he persevered. Something other than his wall buckled, something other than his wall cracked, something other than the chains slammed into him, something other than his wall shattered. Everything went black for Kai as his mind shattered.
Kai’s mind was like a puzzle, and another puzzle had just crashed into his, shattering them both. Something reached down around the puzzle pieces and pulled. The two puzzles were put back together not as two but one. Immense pain shot through this new mind, pain that multiplied itself and eliminated itself for two puzzles could not be put together into one. Yet something held them together. The soft, beautiful voice of a woman spoke.
“And let that which has been unbound be rebound as one.”
Something burned molten hot around this new mind. It was as if someone had decided to use lava to glue his mind together, and there was something else that tightened around his mind slowly compressing it into one whole.
Three months of agony, three months of his mind being seared back together. It took three months for his shattered mind to be reformed, but it would never be whole again. One mind of a man in his 20s who had died trying to protect a childhood friend. The other was a 9 year old boy who had lived a life of loss.
Once the researchers were done with Kai’s binding, they took him from the room and threw him into a new cell. From then on, he was trained. Twenty hours a day was dedicated to nothing but training; the other four he was given to eat and sleep, the time spent eating, sleeping and training was split in three. Kai moved more like a robot than a person, seemingly unaffected by anything other than broken bones and failing muscles.
Broken bones and failing muscles was exactly what he ended with and had during their 10 hour sessions. Bones were broken and muscles were tired to the point of failure. Healers would come in and help him. They were not standard healers that would use some kind of magic, and his bones would heal. No, they were more researchers that would inject something new into his bones. This new thing felt like a fire had been lit inside of his bones, slowly burning the marrow away, yet it healed him. Soon, his strength had surpassed that of even most mundane adults. Bones were broken and muscles were tired to the point of failure. Healers would come in and help him.
The only time things changed was after those three months. Kai was no longer a robot, something seemed to have returned to him. When he fought, there was something to it. It was not just the utter hate that the trainer could feel off of Kai. No, under it was something that wanted to get strong. Kai was learning quicker, far quicker, than a person should, especially a 9 year old.
10 months passed of Kai getting more and more proficient in hand to hand combat before everything changed.
***
Viktor walked to where the binder and safeguard was being trained. Opening the door, he motioned for the assassin to come with him.
“What is it?” The assassin asked.
“We are needed for the next couple of weeks. There is something endangering further work on our part.” Viktor said as they walked.
“Alright i'm coming” The assassin said.
With that the two men left.
***
Kai awoke but not to a boot to the stomach or anything similar. There was no pain that woke him, and he felt rested, at least more rested than he should have. Looking around, he saw that the trainer was not there. There was a clanking, and the door was opened up.
“Get up.” Can a growled unfamiliar voice
Kai got to his feet, and a hand roughly grabbed his arm and started pulling him along.
“Come on.” The same voice said
Kai was dragged out of the room he had spent the last year in and towards a new part of the facility that he hadn’t been to before. As he was dragged, he heard that almost voice in his head again. It was growing louder and louder. Kai put up his wall and smashed something into it. Again and again, over and over but Kai’s wall had gotten stronger.
He was dragged deeper and deeper into the facility. Smash, smash, smash, again and again, his wall was hit. It was no longer the repeated thumping of before. It was now a wild and chaotic beast thrashing outside on the other side of the wall.
Farther and farther, he was dragged in until he felt something around his neck start to almost imperceptibly buzz, but as he went farther and farther, it buzzed more and more until everything stopped. And then it hit again. His wall shattered and everything went black.