Legacy

A Name

A.N. Just some advice, the music on the side of each chapter is suited precisely for each chapter and can really be great as background music for reading :)

~~~~~ The Before ~~~~~

I walked into my Screening, my hands oddly still by my sides. My hair brushed the nape of my neck, the upraised bun spilling out curls of ebony. Inelegant. My father wouldn't like that. As I entered the room, the gloom darkened my sight until I adapted to the darkness. 

Finally, I made out the V-shaped table already full of those that professed to be able to understand my future in their limited questions and their blind sight: only seeing what they chose to. Holograms shimmered in the space around me, coloured air painting portraits of me. I recognised the scenes but couldn't remember there had ever been a camera.

My eyes trailed over the twelve members that made up the Sun's Might. At the pointed apex of the V should normally have sat Sol's Light: our exalted leader, the one who kept us all going. Or, in some cases, forced us on, silver biting deep into our backs if we faltered. 

It was a pity the Sol's Light couldn't preside over my case but sadly, there was personal bias considered into the equation and he wasn't allowed in my Screening. I wouldn't say it was a great blow to me. 

There had been so many important events my father had missed, it really wasn't a shocker he had missed another.

The room was shrouded in shadow, the sun-carved mosaics closed against the light. On any other occasion, this room would be flung into brilliant shades of gold. But this was a Screening. Here, they would decide what I was made of. What use I would be to them. What type of metal I was - to see what kind of weapon they could fashion me into.

After all, the monsters came out in the dark. And knowing the creatures inside of us meant that they knew what we were going to be. Whether a soldier, whether a healer, whether a leader, whether a... destroyer. Not that they liked talking about that one. No one liked talking about that one.

Funny thing was, looking at the men and women who presumed that they were Sol's Chosen were the ones who chose the secret of the shadow over the illumination of the light. My father's right-hand and sitting next to the table's apex - Christian Riverane - had fucked his wife's best friend in an alleyway, an affair that lasted about five minutes. 

After he'd pulled his pants back up, Christian had killed her, ripping out her heart and crushing it to an ashy-black powder that would scar his hands as eternally as now her silence would be. Her body was probably still in the alley he left her but as that was the area that was renowned for the mad scavengers, it likely resembled more gnawed bones than a corpse.

I'd seen that future in the middle of my Information seminar. The following Friday, I noticed the third degree burns ripping across both his palms. Christian could have healed it in a matter of seconds if he'd visited one of the many healers at his disposal. But as they were government owned, questions would be asked. And some of us had the unique talent of knowing a lie when we heard it. 

Too bad he wasn't a healer himself. No, a distinguished leader was his fate and his particular talent was in the power of controlling hearts. Manipulating the populace's hearts had been how he'd won his position and influencing his wife's best friend heart had been how she'd agreed to the crazy alley-way idea. She had been such a pretty thing too. 

Gorgeous red hair and creamy skin with a body to die for - which she had died for. It was just a bonus for Christian Riverane that she was so thin: easier to break through her rib cage and rip out her heart. 

Now he sat in the second-best position of power, enjoying what money and power could do: a full head of black hair, piercing green eyes and lips that just begged for it. At sixty years old, he looked twenty, a perk to all the booster magic that was bestowed to a man of his position.