From Whence the Smoke?

 The sound of the wind cutting through the streets in a small town, there’s nothing quite like it. It may not be the thrum of a big city, but it has its own identity. The way the rustling of trees blends with the sounds of a child’s laugh or a barking hound, far enough to be indistinct, an echo, but few enough that you could just barely think you knew just who they were.

For Sebastian Blackwell, coming home from school one day. It happened so fast.

The teen, broad shouldered and with a mane of shaggy black hair, had been making his way home after school had been long done for the day, and Mr.Haywood, had ousted him from the machine shop after hours, thanking him for cleaning it up.

“Not that I really minded,” He said to himself as the thought came to him, scratching at the side of his face, “ ‘s only fair play for letting me tool around in there after hours. Woulda done it for free if he’d needed the hand, t’be honest.”

It would hardly have been the first time. Heavy lifting? Call Seb. Watch something? Call Seb. He might not have known what to do with his life, but he knew damned well that he could do for other folks and he was happy to do it.

His jacket hanging over his shoulder, shed to deal with the heat, his scuffed work boots tapping against the pavement, he’d been on his way home, listlessly dragging his feet, when a local dog, a floppy eared thing with copper fur and stubby legs, had come barreling into his feet.

“Hey now! Little guy, come on now, I’m friendly! I know, I know, I smell all smokey and strange and I’m real ugly.” He told the dog, crouching to pet it for a moment, not minding when it nipped and snapped at his fingers and more than glad for the distraction from the impending thought, for the thousandth time, that he wasn’t sure what to do with himself once he graduated. The little pup’s teeth were barely managing more than a pinching pain with the number of callouses and burn scars, the legacy of his seventeen years having had more than a little heavy lifted and hard work either at a stove or, in recent years, a welder. So it wasn’t like he cared over much.

“But I’m not a bad guy! I promise. C’mon now! Tch, c’mon now, that’ kinda f…ricking hurts a little!” He told the dog as it clamped its jaws down hard, censoring himself as he saw a child, a short boy with ruddy red hair, barely in school himself, rushing over.

He didn’t recognize him. Even in a podunk town like this, he didn’t know everyone, but he vaguely thought the child looked like one of his sister’s friends.

“Maybe a little brother? That your owner boy?” He asked the dog, not wanting to admit that he honestly couldn’t remember his sister’s friend’s name either if asked. Though hadn’t he helped fix her car once?

And then out of the corner of his eye, he saw it. A glint of silver, far down the road. A chill coated his spine, like an icy hand sliding down it.

It was so fast.

“Kid!” He shouted, shoving the dog off of him as he threw himself forward in a tackle, his left arm extended to shove the child clear.

He had a brief moment to make eye contact with the woman driving the speeding car, see her look of fear as she tried desperately to slam on her brakes, before his whole world shrunk to the child’s scared face and his own outstretched hand.

And as he threw himself forward, he felt his hand touch the front of the child’s shirt, shoving him back hard. He didn’t have a chance to feel bad about that though. It was almost…like the world had slowed to a halt, the as he felt his chest touch the asphalt, the child clear ahead of him, tears already welling over a scrapped knee, and the faint kiss of something against his right side.

The sound of a small town’s streets, brushed with wind, have their own kind of magic. They tell stories and have their own homespun dignity, even if they lack the majesty of a big city. Their own sound.

The worst thing that can happen, is when that sound is cut through, like a knife tearing through paper, by the wail of sirens, car horns and a scream, sobbing sounds.

But while others would have to live with that, Sebastian never heard even a whisper, as before his eyes, the world….changed, went black as it boiled down to that singular point on the back of his hand.

Heat, black burning heat, and his vision blurred as everything seemed to fade away.

A roaring sound filled his ears as it did, and for a moment he wondered if this was what dying was like. Cloying heat and then…

A cool breeze swept over his back and black-marks spread across the back of his hand. An complex symbol like old filigree, a kind of wedge shape, like a triangle with a flattened tip, pointing up to an intricate, hollow star shape resting right over the knuckle of his middle finger, intricate, pluming lines flowing around it and down from the base of the wedge, illuminated by a dim glow, as if dozens of fire flies were dancing around him in the darkness, just beyond his vision.

And the world bloomed back into focus.

Dark green grass under his chest, the sounds of heavy branches rustling and whispering in the old ash trees that surrounded him. The moon shining down over head, enshrined among the stars like a queen holding court with all her ladies, more numerous and magnificent than he’d ever seen in his life as they looked down on him, illuminating his entire, suddenly changed world.

“Wh…what the fuck.” He whispered, eyes wide. He was lying now in some kind of glade at night. A second ago he had been about to die in the street.

He lay there for a moment, struggling to process it all.

“Alright…alright. Okay…what… Okay.” He said to himself, breathing in heavily, before blinking as something black seemed to fill his vision, filled with glowing sparks, shocking him out of his brief panic.

“Smoke? No, it had…it moved wrong....” he thought as he struggled up to his feet, giving himself a shake as he stared at the mark on his hand, and then at the smoldering black substance as it drifted to the ground.

“Ashes”

He could tell that much, from how they drifted and moved wrong for smoke, weightier, but where they came from didn’t before he took in his surroundings. Old rocks overgrown with moss jutted up from thick grass at the foot of ancient Ashwood trees.

“Where...where the hell am I?”

That thought, and the questions of what the hell had happened to him, of why there was this mark on his hand, of where he even was, were strangled however, as out beyond the trees he heard a woman’s scream.

Shrill, sharp, and choked as if something was trying to silence her.

He didn’t think. Someone was in some kind of trouble, needed something. That was more important. Or maybe right now, he didn’t want to think about his situation, and he welcomed the excuse not to.

Regardless of his reasons, he dashed towards the source, pulling his jacket on before bulling his way through the branches, not even flinching as the leather took the brunt of it. Another scream, and the sound of laughing voices, rough and low, met him from up ahead, and he simply moved faster, legs machining.

He burst out from the trees, heaving heavy breaths, and took in the sight of a carriage, an actual carriage, large and sturdy, but well decorated, was knocked onto its side, some kind of large reptile lying dead and bloody at the front. The wood was covered with lavender paint, etched with silver detailing. Nearby, one of its doors lay, half smashed with a coat of arms embossed on the side, a shield bearing a crown atop a snowflake against a lavender field.

Across from it, spikes of ice littered the field, bloody corpses strewn about. Figures in silver armor, and ones in ratty leathers or gray robes. Scattered like a child’s discarded, broken toys.

“I’m saying what the hell is going on to myself a lot the last few minutes.” Was the thought that came to him numbly, as a young woman, about his own age, pressed herself against the ruined woodwork of the carriage.

Dressed in a white jacket and dress out of one of his mother’s period dramas, she bore a hateful look in her impossibly violet eyes, curls like spun silver wild and tangled as they framed her face, clutching at the arm that was attached to a hand that currently covered her mouth, her nails digging in and drawing blood, her arms trembling slightly, though he wasn’t sure if it was with fear or rage at a glance.

The object of her glare was the figure with said hand over her mouth. Gruff and firmly built, nearly Sebastian’s size, and he was the biggest person he knew, with tanned arms covered in scars under bronzed plates of armor over his forearms. A man with one eye and a bald head, one of several, done up like some kind of medieval bandit. A long-hafted, heavy spear in his other hand as he pinned her to the ruined carriage.

The others around them were picking over the bodies of men in silver armor, seemingly under the direction of one in a gray cloak. They pulled weapons from steaming corpses, not even bothering to clean the crimson flow that covered their rusted blades, as what seemed to be their leader kept talking to the woman he was accosting.

“Stop struggling you little bitch, I don’t want to ruin our payday too much because I had to pluck out those pretty eyes of yours.” the bandit snapped, earning laughter from the rest, raucous and foul, even as they eyed the girl their boss was currently manhandling with eager, greedy looks that made their harsh, scared features barely even seem human.

They were all armed, armored. Most of them seemed rusty, cruel daggers, jagged spears, and heavy axes abound, but they were still more than he had. He hadn’t even grabbed a rock or a tree branch.

But their backs were to him, focused on their boss playing with his food. She kicked at him, elegant boots with their tall heels thumping against the man’s armor, drawing a grunt of pain.

Move. He had to move. Why wasn’t he moving? That was the thought that struck him, after racing all the way here he suddenly froze up when he actually saw why?

The one-eyed brigand shoved the girl more firmly up against the wood, shifting his grip as he tossed his spear away, reaching for a knife at his belt.

None of them were watching him. They were all watching their boss.

He grit his teeth, gaze flicking over the brigands. Seven in all, though the bodies on the ground told him there had been more.

“An axe? I’ve chopped wood before.” He thought to himself, locking onto one man, near the fringe, who held his long-hafted weapon in a loose grip.

Questions like "could he clear the distance safely, was chopping logs at all comparable to chopping people, was this at all sane", none of those were considered because he simply couldn’t afford to.

 He was lost, horribly lost. He had no idea where he was, how he’d gotten here, what he was doing. All he knew was that right now there was someone who desperately needed help and he needed to focus on that because that was something he could actually do something about.

Something seemed to burn in his lungs and hands. It bloomed behind his eyes like a building fever, even as he tightened his fists, and Sebastian grit his teeth.

He moved.

“Oi what the-”

“Where the-”

“YOU FUC-”

He dove in a tackle, slamming into the man on the fringe and driving him down before snapping to his feet, a youth spent getting into every kind of scrap imaginable serving him well, before he rushed onward, stomping on the man’s head, hard. Something cracked under his boot and the man howled in pain as Sebastian seized the axe he’d dropped, gripping its haft tightly

“You thieving rat! Where did you come from?” The one-eyed bandit snarled, dropping the girl and whirling on him, along with the others.

Behind him, the one he’d just stolen from was screaming as he rolled about in the muddy grass, clutching his ruined nose. And the others closed in.

Sebastian froze, as the reality of his situation sunk in at last

“Fuck was I thinking.” He muttered as the situation truly hit him. And then he saw the girl, struggling to crawl away.

Their eyes met for a moment, and his jaw tightened.

“Someone needed me. That’s what I was thinking.” He told himself, swallowing thickly as the first of the brigands to reach him swung at him with a sword, swearing bloody murder. He stumbled back, and lashed out wildly with the pilfered axe in response, holding it akin to a baseball bat. Sparks flew as metal screeched against metal, and then the others closed in.

“Fuck, fuck FUCK.” He swore again, swinging wildly and roughly, with as much force as he could muster. The greater reach of his weapon meaning they were kept back as he kept moving backwards, like wolves evading the horns of a bull.

But he was outnumbered, and horribly out-skilled. And he wasn’t the only one with some reach to him.

The leader, spear in hand, waited, watching his flailing. And then, the moment he saw an opening, the moment one of his men tried to catch and lock up Sebastian’s stolen axe with his own weapon?

He lunged.

Sebastian saw him. He had an eye for details. He saw the silver glint of the man’s spear, just like he had a car.

But rather than what he expected, there was a boom as the man moved, becoming a blur.

“Thunder Drive!” The man roared out as he shot forward, a blast of howling sound echoing out behind him as the one-eyed brigand lunged, spear forward. Impossibly fast, crackling with some kind of green glow about his spear, the tip thrumming like a struck tuning fork

Sebastian flinched on instinct, his left hand coming up from the haft of his stolen weapon to shield himself, faster than he thought possible. Something in his gut lurched, and he felt that chill again, tracing her fingers down his spine.

And then the air cracked, as the mark on the back of his hand flashed once.

Ash and smoke erupted from his palm like a solid wave, glowing with searing-hot embers, whirling and howling as the leader crashed into it and screamed.

The other brigands staggered back, some hitting the ground and scrambling away.

“Boss? BOSS!” One shouted, the others clearly panicking, while the one in the gray robe seemed to be readying himself for something, a sneering face under his hood with scarred lips twisted up hatefully.

The smoke dissipated, and their leader’s remains lurched to the ground, scorched black and sheared bloody by the burning, razor force of high velocity ashes.

Sebastian shook, seeing the ruined corpse collapse, his palm sending up plumes of ash, as did his heavy, desperate breaths, and he turned to them, swallowing thickly.

They looked at him.

“Is that enough?” He thought to himself, seeing their terrified faces. Suddenly, they seemed less like inhuman maniacs, and more like they were as confused and terrified as he had been.

But he remembered how they’d looked at that girl a second ago, and raised his left hand towards them, squaring his shoulders and tightening his white-knuckle grip on his stolen axe.

“Alright, who’s next?” He bit out, a lot more savagely and bravely than he felt.

“I just have to figure out how to do that again, right?” He told himself silently, trying to ready himself.

He could do that, right?