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ZYAIR MORTE, THE INCENDIARY
The dark cavern would provide protection for now.
There were no cameras here.
Only a small trove of supplies and a cot on the rocky ground.
He’d walked for several kilometers, crossing terrains, as he’d tried to process what he’d witnessed.
Fury spread like poison throughout Zyair Morte’s body. It was the growing seeds of the olde power, the dark powers. The magick that was infinitely stronger than any wielded for good and decent purposes. Rooted in hate. Rooted in suffering.
The olde powers were not always forbidden.
His grandfather embraced their planet’s history.
Reaching into the past, Zyair’s grandfather found the scrolls of legend and learned to harness his gods-given powers. He passed that learning on to like-minded others. The Incendiaries grew into a society, hiding though they knew the magick to be beautiful and wild. They were a society that wanted to better the world. They wanted peace and plenty.
“Burn the world and welcome new growth,” his grandfather used to say. “It is not destruction; it is the way things should be, how they should have always been. The House of Ramzen is content to watch the world slowly deteriorate, saying it is the natural order, but it is not. It is not. If only they opened themselves to the powers, as the ancestors did, then they would see. But instead they vilify it and turn away. It is your purpose now, Zyair, to do what I could not. To avenge your father and mother. You must become the most powerful wielder that the universe has ever seen.”
Zyair remembered his grandfather’s bony, malnourished hand lifting to his mouth and biting down hard enough to draw blood. He’d swiped that crimson across Zyair’s forehead, christening him a son of the olde ways. His grandfather had once been a powerful man, towering over others, and now he was twisted and bent, unable to even stand.
“Hypocrite,” Zyair seethed, acidic bile building inside his mouth until he had to spit. The liquid fizzled and foamed against the cold ground. “Hypocrite,” he hissed once more, swiping roughly across his chin to dry the dampness there.
“Are you okay?” The brittle-boned human woman who’d been following Zyair like a lost puppy approached him, tentatively reaching out a hand. He was supposed to keep her alive, a companion to make him weak during battle.
But her thoughts bombarded him, battering against him like a hailstorm of tiny stones, wearing him down. Dreams of her blue-green planet left behind. Of a small human child begging to be held. They had the same fire in their hair and dark green eyes. She was weak. A mother who should not be here, fighting for life. He pitied her, in the same way he would pity a malnourished herd animal too diseased to live and too skinny to eat.
The kindest thing to do would be to kill the animal. Put it out of its misery.
“Can I do anything to help?” The woman spoke again, barely a whisper, and this time touching his shoulder.
Zyair reeled away from her, as if her timid touch carried an acid more corrosive than his own spittle.
“Do not touch me,” he growled, feeling power spark at his fingertips. His grandfather had died in that shithole of a prison! And now, here was the high and mighty clan of Ramzen using the very magicks that had sentenced his own peoples to eternal banishment.
Raveen Morte had been a god. A powerhouse stripped of his natural gifts and stuffed into a holding cell no bigger than a wardrobe. Zyair could still close his eyes and hear his grandfather’s voice cracking and breaking as he imparted the wisdom of the olde ways. The Vanguard warden thought Raveen was too weak to present an issue. Zyair’s father, on the other hand, had been isolated from his father, wife, son, all of the Incendiaries. He had been thrown into shadows and forgotten. Even when Zyair was born, Soren had not been allowed out of the darkness.
Zyair’s mother held only hatred in her heart.
So Zyair grew up with hatred permeating his soul.
Hatred, and his grandfather’s teachings. So that he could one day take back the planet that should have rightfully been his.
The power grew. And grew. Like vraken vines wrapping around his internal organs and squeezing off his ability to breathe, his ability for his dual hearts to beat, his ability to think rationally.
A small part of him that was quashed by the parasitic vines saw the fear in the human’s eyes. Her emerald gaze grew wide. Wetness built at the corners. Tears began to stream. But Zyair could not push past his anger.
Kaio Targen had used the magick that had condemned Zyair’s father to a life of isolation and his mother to a solitary birth in a pitch-dark cell.
Hypocrite! Hypocrite! Zyair’s grandfather’s broken, weak voice shouted through his head. I told you they were the evil ones. I told you they thought themselves morally superior, hiding behind laws that suffocated any citizens on our planet who were blessed with power. They were the sinners all along. They were the ones who should have suffered a fate worse than death. Not us! Not us! We would have burned the world to make it new again. The crops always thrive after a firestorm. The land would have welcomed the rebirth! Yet they could not understand. They were too blind.
Kaio Targen, grandson of the betrayer Mallen Targen and the son of the facilitator Ramzen Targen. He deserved to die. Those he loved deserved to die.
But Kaio was not here right now.
And the human woman was.
Zyair lifted his hands, fire scorching at his back in a hurricane, racing past his shoulders, down his arms, through his fingers. The orange-red light of The Incendiaries.
