SECTION III - The Stories

ELEMENTAL
Chapter One - The Buried Seed

        "It is said that there existed a seed, made of pure energy that came from the earth that lived. A single one left in a starry scene where it lived alone, all the other worlds dying to the fate given to them."
        "This beautiful seed was a gift, a curse, and an entreaty. A single soul was picked out after waiting eons for the right ground to grow. A hand will lovingly curl it to their heart, the energy threading through their veins until it delved into their being, to blossom and spread its newly born seeds of energy so that it would pass on with each generation, dispersing across the lands, the world, and eventually the stars themselves."
        "This is what is foretold. That the Elemental exists because of this one being, given a new piece of a human, binding into their soul, body, and mind, before completely taking over their heart, to strengthen and give light. Time will be rewritten and the course of humanity will change direction. It is up to this being, whom is call Elemental Nature, that will bring us to where we stand today."


        It was a quiet morning as Samantha Tulleck moved sluggishly in her apartment kitchenette. She was fiddling with the automatic coffeepot, not realizing that it wasn´t plugged in. She yawned, brushing her hair back from her eyes, peering out from messy bangs. Her brown hair fell down in wavy curves, much like a crimped perm save that it came from constant braiding of her waist long hair.
        Murky blue eyes blinked as she coughed and finally realized that the pot wasn´t even plugged in. She rolled her eyes as a cat jumped nimbly onto the counter.
        "Wild, didn´t I tell you not to do that?" She asked her cat. He was a wiry, domestic short haired, with black fur. His muscles rippled with each graceful movement. What she really loved about her cat was that his tail was long-haired, nothing but fluff versus the coarser hair coating his body.
        He gave her a bland look. She could picture him telling her that he never took orders before and he certainly wasn´t going to start now.
        She glanced at the coffee before reaching into the cabinet to pull out a mug. She yawned again, her jaw popping. "God, I wish I´d call in sick but then, that´d be lying, right, Wild?"
        Wild meowed, resting on his side. He looked mellow, Samantha noted.
        She poured her coffee before she stilled. She thought she heard something but it was silent. But Wild moved fluidly, with quick step out of the kitchenette and to the front door. She was surprised when he hissed, a violent sound that didn´t seem like him at all.
        "Wild?" The door knock made her jump before she hurriedly rubbed her hair down as best as possible. "Yes?"
        She opened to see Steven peering at her. She felt something crawl over her skin before she forced a smile. The pale, thin man wasn´t entirely pleasant, though he had a plain yet sexy appeal going for him. His bleached locks fell down in a short cut, curling tightly as his ice blue eyes, already unnatural in sight, peered out with something disturbed in them. "Steven, ah, what are you doing.. Here?" She asked carefully.
        She didn´t like him, particularly that his advances tend to be a little too strong. And from what so many of the women she knew who dealt with him, he was only after one thing. And that completely didn´t go with her own morals. But she was always polite but she figured she was about to draw the line. "I´d invite you in but it´s not all that clean in there."
        She attempted to exit only to feel herself fall backwards, the pain in her chest registering from where he shoved her a few seconds later. She looked up, seeing the look evolve into a crazy sneer. "Get out of my house!" She tried to be brave, to sound like she meant every word but the man before her wasn´t someone she recognized. The rumors of him didn´t mention this type of behavior. Sure, it took a while for the term ‘no´ to get through but he was never violent.
        She struggled to her feet only to see a blur of shadow move. "Wild!" Her head threw up but it wasn´t her cat that had lunged. Another man, a stranger moved against the other. Steven let out a inhumane shriek and suddenly, from underneath him, his shadow bulged and pushed up from the ground as Steven continued to make strange noises.
        The man had pulled back, his night black hair fluttering around his head in a uneven layered style, moved into a pose to jump. His eyes peered out, eerily golden with slits.
        Eyes that were familiar to Samantha. He glanced at her for a moment before speaking, his voice a soft baritone. "When he´s out of the doorframe, leave the apartment. I promise, you´ll come to no harm."
        Samantha blinked. It sounded so promising, she thought with a sarcastic frown. She managed to her feet as what had been Steven moved, his shadow completely possessing the man. She ran when she was supposed to, hitting the ground as she winced. She was still in her pajamas with nothing to cover her feet. She went down the path and turned just in time to be blinded by hot, white light. It filtered over her, shocking her system as her eyes rolled back, her knees buckled, and her world turned black.
        The group behind her was just in time as a man, looking greatly enough like the stranger in her home to solidify the fact that they were related, caught her as he peered around.
        "No one around," He murmured before lifting Samantha effortlessly.


        Samantha woke up to the phone ringing. She sat up, feeling her back protest angrily. The phone rang shrilly as she winced with each step. "Hello?" She asked with a thick tongue. She rubbed her eyes and turned to face her television.
        And found herself staring at…five people, she counted.
        "Samantha, where are you?" Her supervisor spoke worriedly. "You´re, like, two hours late."
        Samantha stared at the group, dumbfounded before her gaze swept to the door and the front area. There was no proof of any incident. Thoughts clicked as she stared at the phone incredulously.
        "Oh, god, I´m sorry, Paula. I.. meant to call in sick," Her gaze was locked on the door, Steven flashing in her memory and a wave of nausea rolled over her. "But I passed out."         "Oh dear, are you going to the hospital?"
        "I…I…I have to go use the restroom," she managed, covering her mouth.
        "Of course, I´ll just write you down sick," Paula said quickly. "Get rest.."
        Samantha hung up wildly before turning to run to the bathroom before she threw up her dinner and morning coffee. She went to the bathroom sink and rinsed her mouth like mad, trying to piece together what had happened and finding that she was missing several pieces of the overall puzzle.
        She stepped out of the bathroom, finding the group having moved closer, peering at her like they expected something from her. "Who the hell are you people?" She managed. "I´m calling the police.."
        A hand grasped hers as she reached the phone. The first stranger looked down at her, with a crooked, tiny smile. "Samantha." She felt a shock at the familiar tone of his voice as she glared at him. "It´s.. me, Wild."
        "Wild is my -cat-," She explained coolly. "I don´t think.."
        He moved to linger over her, She realized how lanky he was, and fit. She stopped herself in her admiration and shook her head before refocusing on him. "I don´t care who you are but if you don´t leave, I´ll…"
        "Please, at least listen to us," A blonde spoke up, her eyes looking worriedly at Samantha.
        "Where is Steven? What did you do? You killed him, didn´t you? I´m calling the police!"
        Again, she attempted to retrieve the phone but felt fingers lock on hers almost painfully. "He´s fine. We´ve managed to save him from his fate."
        "Just barely," muttered a red-headed man.
        "Samantha, listen to me, I am Wild." Seeing the dubious stare, he leaned closer with a near whisper. "You sleep with Mr. Finkle every night. You can never wake up in the morning but love the night. You tell me to get off the counter but I never listen because I´d never listen anyways."
        She stared at him. He blinked before continuing. "And you trust me enough to leave you alone when you need your privacy."
        She staggered for a moment before flushing, tugging her arm away. "Pervert! Sick-o! You lousy son of a bi…"
        He held up hands in  resignation. "I´m sorry, I´m sorry, I´m sorry." He glared over his shoulder at a small chuckle. The one that looked like him hide his smile.
        Samantha was staring at Wild, her eyes wide as her face paled. "Your eyes.. Contacts?"
        "Please, those are how they always are," The redhead piped up. "Devon, hurry up and get her straightened out."
        The white blond, curly-haired girl turned and smacked him over his head.
        "Thank you, Sara," The blonde smiled at Samantha. "It´s all right, Samantha, but why don´t you sit down so we can explain the whole scenario to you?"
        Samantha felt herself be pulled numbly to the free spot on the couch. The blond shoved the lean, swimmer-built man off as he blinked in surprise.  "Gee, thanks Jaime."
        "No problem," She attempted to rest her feet on him but he moved easily out of the way.
        "First, I apologize for any inconvenience my younger brother caused," The look-alike spoke gravely. He had the same gold eyes, slit like a feline and an angular face, though he was more softer looking than Devon. His hair was far shorter and more well kempt.
        "Not older by much," Devon muttered, sounding rebellious.
        "My name is Andrew Porter. This is my mate, Jaime." Jamie, a perky blond whose hair fluttered around her face, framing a heart-shaped beacon warm with shining green eyes and a toothy smile. She was more ample in the peach flesh than the other girls but she carried it well.
        Samantha opened her mouth.
        "Don´t bother asking, we´ll get to questions in the end," The redhead said hurriedly. His spiked red hair looked almost unnatural. His brown eyes stared out with almost a sullen, childish glare to them. His pale skin was lightly dressed in pale freckles. He was limbered with gnarled joints and callused peach skin.
        "PETER!" The woman next to him glared furiously. "God, patience is so not a virtue with you."
        She turned toward Samantha. Her white blond hair fell down in very loose curls, giving her a look of utter femininity that went well with the oval face and wide, owl-like gray eyes that seemed to blend in with her pale white skin. She was very slender, delicately built with careful curves. "My name is Sara, that is Mark," she pointed to the man on the floor.
        Mark, a dark, brown-haired man who kept it all slicked back, gave a slow wave, his silver-blue eyes peering out of tanned Caucasian skin. The last woman in the group was a busty, expressive looking pale gold haired who wore her hair flatly down her body to nearly her knees. It created the illusion of waves along the carpet as her ash-gray eyes peered out from her olive skin. She nudged Mark who sighed noisily with annoyance.
        "I am Maria, Peter´s wife," she spoke with a rougher voice then the others but it held a regal note to it.
        All of them dressed in what was considered normal clothing - jeans, off-colored shirts - and yet, Samantha was worried. She had reason to be, she had two of them who had feline eyes and movable tails.
        Of which they had to be real but she had to check. She reached over to Wild, or Devon as the others called him, to tug on the tail experimentally. After nearly a year of being with her cat, she recognized the feel of the hair on the tail and turned white.
        "I´m not really known as Wild. It´s more of an alias," He spoke carefully, keeping his gaze neutral. He disengaged his tail from her grip. "I´m Devon Porter."
        Samantha took another sweep of her apartment before her gaze drifted toward the front door. "What happened to him?" She asked finally, unable to think of anything else. All she could picture was the grotesque face that Steven had worn when he had been nothing more than blackness.
        "Possessed by a Rogue," Jaime said matter-of-factly.
        "Demon?" Samantha tried to hide her surprise.
        "No, not quite. It´s a piece of the one called the Dark King."
        "Satan?"
        "NO!" Peter glared at her. "Just shut up and…"
        "Peter!" Maria kicked him in the thigh. "You shut up." She ordered darkly.
        "It´s nothing like that, nothing like you know. Admittedly, it sounds religious but it´s something disconnected though it could help given in whatever direction a person decides," Andrew stared at the flat stare before he cleared his throat.
        "A Rogue is a Shadowed Elemental, a mere phage existing in a human husk. At one point, there would be a soul still in there. Most likely, a deal was made - more power, more money, something that they wanted that they felt they couldn´t get so easily. For the first five minutes, you´re powered, energized, and in utter control," Devon spoke gently.
        "Until you find yourself locked in the far reaches of your mind, watching out as your world deteriorates and your soul is absorbed, eaten away by the Rogue. It´s how it survives, it tries to create its own existence by taking what others have. It doesn´t have a soul but because it cannot hold the human´s, that human´s soul ends up being destroyed. Forget about limbo, it´s dying and never, ever coming back from anywhere. It´s like you were never created." Jaime shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself.
        "And then why was Steven… possessed? Why did he come after me?"
        "It ties in to why we´re here in the first place," Andrew said from across the floor. "My brother elected to come first. He´s the strongest and the more likely to be able to do what he was sent to do."
        "I still say I would´ve been enough," Peter muttered from the sideline.
        "We´re human, in every right. But we´re more than that. We are the Elemental, those born with the additional genes of the Elemental Nature. It was considered a natural evolution, though it speeded through change and adaptation far faster than can be known." Andrew continued, ignoring Peter for the moment.
        "We can´t say too much because it would ruin a few things but we were sent here because the Dark King managed to use the Elemental Time, an rather obscure and rare ability at that, to come here. He wants to stop what we know, how humanity has changed and change it into his favor," Sara pointed out.
        "And how does this tie into Steven?" Samantha asked through gritted teeth.
        "Simple. It´s not about him, it´s about you." Peter said easily. "You´re the one that will change the world."
        "How can -I- change the world?" Samantha crossed her arms, wondering when she could go back into bed and actually wake up from this nightmare.
        "The prophecy," Devon said from her side, surprising her. He rubbed his face. "The few of the true Seers have been talking of the prophecy since the day we were founded as a team."
        "I remember that day, at inauguration," Mark shuddered. "That man, such an old figure and yet his power…"
        "All for seeing," Jaime pointed out. "He is a true Seer. Magnificent."
        "Jaime," Andrew said warningly. She rolled her eyes.
        "The prophecy," Devon continued, staring at the group with hard eyes. Apparently, he didn´t like being interrupted. "It  goes something like this."
        "From the time of the dawning of the Elemental, a woman will rise to Nature´s Call with the help of her Equivalent. Twin powers will swirl and evolve as the woman will spread Light across the Heavens and the Sleeping will awaken to the call." They all repeated it dutifully.
        "It´s short," Jaime said with a roll of her eyes. "And utterly obscure. People wouldn´t have paid attention if it weren´t for people like us." Samantha frowned at her. "Seers."
        "Seers aren´t the same as the Elemental. There was a point in life when people bred specifically to hone the strength of the sixth sense, creating a line of Seers that could do a multitude of things," Andrew explained. "When we get together, pretty much anything could be solved."
        "First, let´s break down the prophecy in bite sizes," Mark smirked at Peter. "To make it easier to understand," He said pointedly to Peter who looked sullen.
        "Dawn meant the beginning of the Elemental bloodline, of who started it. A woman just tells us the gender of the person," Maria waved her hand in the air airily. "Her Equivalent is the other Elemental who is compatible with her. Together, they will awaken her slumbering powers. With their combination, two children will be born, who will be like yin and yang." Sara spoke with ease. This was something they had all memorized.
        "But the Seers were confused on the last part. The woman can only be awaken if she has her children because she´ll spread her genes of the Elemental, aided with the genes of the Equivalent. She, herself, I don´t think is supposed to do anything more." Peter finished.
        "I´m to be a broodmare then."
        They all stared at Samantha. "No. No, no, no!" Jaime blurted out weakly. "It´s not like that. See, Seers are grand and powerful but sometimes, especially if its something more powerful or something to be kept a secret, we can´t tell everything. If we could, you think we´d let wars happen?"
        "No," She continued. "You have something ´more´ but we don´t know what that is. But we know who you are."
        "And how did that come by?" Samantha tried to picture a resource that had every little fact that could´ve drawn them to her.
        "Your energy is different from the others," Devon responded. "If you were trained with us all of your life, you´d be like us, able to sense each other because of our individual energy signature. For the most part, human life here is repressive and there are no changes or individualism."
        Samantha covered her face, tired of this conversation, of all of this mumbo jumbo that made her head hurt. She was pretty certain she was still asleep or maybe she was trying to be delusional. "Get out."
        "But.." Someone protested but Samantha still felt ill.
        "I said GET OUT!" She screamed it. She went to the door, opened it in a rush, aware of her angry trembling through her body. "I´m not listening any more to this goddamn crackpot. I´ve got better things to do than go insane or be used like a freaking bitch in heat."
        They inched around her, smart enough to leave well enough alone. Well, almost all of them. Devon stood his ground, staring at her with that familiar gaze of his.
        "I swore to protect you. I meant it."
        "I don´t care. You can go rot in the gutter for all I care." She  opened the door more wider in invitation, her teeth gritted.
        Devon shook his head. "No, Samantha. I will not leave. I don´t do orders well so bossing me won´t work."
        She slammed the door angrily. "Then leave me the hell alone, Wild."
        "Now, if you don´t mind, I´m going to bed and when I wake up, none of this will have had happened."
        But she stopped at her bedroom door, looking over her shoulder as Devon stared back at her. His gaze was sadden, hesitant as his hands fumbled in front of him. He acted remorseful. "What?"
        He gave a shadowed smile. "Nothing. See you when you´ve awakened."
        And she closed her door very carefully, her mind numb and empty. She watched her hand, trembling as she gulped. "I hope I am asleep. If I´m not, then I´m so screwed."

....Return to Section I - The Beginning?
....Return to Section III - The Stories?

DISCLAIMERS

      Worlds Within (title/site) 2003 - 2009 Wildnature. All stories, characters, writings by and (C) Wildnature.