Prophetic Lies – Chapter One

Written by: Kain

Years ago, two people sit at a small, round table in a quaint, little restaurant. The white walls of the restaurant, stained from countless children throwing food, are framed by a dark blue, wood trim. The table’s glass surface reflects the sun shining through the window next to the table. The blue, metal chairs show the signs of fading and the legs are slightly bent as if someone had used them to cushion his or her fall. The people around the couple sit eating their food or chatting with a friend. They remain, either intentionally or unwittingly, oblivious to the scene playing out at the table next to the window. A tall man with blonde hair and a black, leather coat sits with his head low. His head lay in his hands as his elbows rests upon the table. He stares endlessly in to the darkness within his palms. The woman across from him covers her mouth as she cries, silently, to herself. He finally musters up the will to address her. “I understand.”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for it to end like this. I just wanted…” Before she can finish, the man stands up and walks away, leaving her and her tears behind.

Siegfried sits, cross-legged, under a tree in the forest. His flamberge is drawn and resting on his shoulder. His black slacks appear wrinkled under the unnatural conditions. His short, blond hair waves slightly in the wind along with his unbuttoned, red dress shirt. His stormy, azure eyes barely shine through his squinted eyelids.

His past flashes before his eyes just as it has for weeks now. Sheathing his sword, he looks up at the sky. A solemn look covers his face. His head drops as he puts his hands to his forehead in a vain attempt to stop the pain. “Why can’t they leave me alone? Every step I take, they haunt me.”

Siegfried slowly stands up. He un-sheaths his sword into a lightning-fast slashing attack. Before his hair can settle back into place, the tree he was resting under is split in two. He slowly places his sword on his shoulder, but falls to the ground grasping his head in pain before he can completely sheath the blade. He cringes as he cries out, “Why? Why won’t it stop?”

“Do you really want it to?”

“Hey, you all right?” Siegfried looks up to see an old man looking down at him from a small ledge just a few meters away from where Siegfried is standing. He stares at Siegfried for a few seconds before repeating his question, “You all right?”

Siegfried yells up to the man, “Go away, old man. If I did need help, I wouldn’t need it from some senile, old cripple. Go back to your hut.” The man looks down at Siegfried with a disgusted look.

“Fine, brat.” The old man continues to mumble to himself as he walks away, but Siegfried is too busy regaining his composure to listen.

“Did I just hear what I…no, I guess not.”

Siegfried swings his sword in precise, calculated movements. His flamberge slices through the air with a grace reflecting years of discipline. He tries to distract himself from thinking about the past. All of his mistakes, all of his broken dreams seem to scream at him from all directions. Siegfried whispers to himself, “Why am I so possessed by the past? Why can’t I let it go?” Siegfried sheaths his sword and sits upon a small boulder left from a recent landslide. He covers his face in his hands.

“I’m so sorry…so sorry…so sorry.”

Siegfried stands and walks back to his house. As he enters his back yard, he can see his long-time friends sitting on the deck, talking and laughing. As he gets closer, they begin to notice him, one-by-one. Lukas yells to Siegfried, “Hey, Siegfried. What’s up?” Siegfried just continues walking past them.

Carina gets annoyed. “What the hell is wrong with him?”

“Yeah, he’s definitely different.”

“Definitely.” Fynn watches Siegfried enter the house and leave the view of the group. Inside the house, Siegfried looks around his modest room, full of cheap propaganda and lonely memories. He takes a look at an old picture that he drew when he was a kid. The Wheel of Fate took up a small portion of his largest wall. He looks at it long and hard. The image of a god-like figure at the height of the wheel and another at the bottom once filled him with inspiration, but the inspiration doesn’t come anymore. His faith has dwindled down to mere embers, no longer resembling the raging inferno it had once been. No, his faith in the wheel could never have been called an inferno. Deep down, he always knew he didn't truly believe in the wheel. He took one more look around his room, and then started to pack his belongings into two large suitcases.

Not long after the incident on the deck, Lukas and Fynn went to see if Siegfried wanted some of the barbecued chicken they just made. The pair opens the door to Siegfried’s room just in time to see him punch a hole in the picture of The Wheel of Fate and the wall behind it.

“Siegfried?”

Siegfried looks at them briefly, uninterested. He turns back to his luggage, clamps them shut, and begins to walk out of the room. He stops right after passing his friends. “I’m going away for a while. I don’t know when I’ll be back.” Fynn and Lukas watch as Siegfried continues down the stairs.

As Siegfried throws his luggage into the trunk of his car, a dark blue Mazda RX-8, he takes one last minute to look at his home. “I’ll return…eventually.”

With nothing to keep him, Siegfried drives off, not knowing where he’s going or whether he can find his answers. All he knows is that he must find resolution to his past. Something is haunting him. He needs to find out what, and crush it.

The car ride isn’t helping. He can’t stop thinking about that girl. “I know it has something to do with her. I can’t remember where she is. I can’t remember much of her at all.”

In retrospect, one can see all of the options given. In retrospect, one can choose the best path. It’s too bad that retrospect also means it’s too late.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean for it to end this way.”

“I don’t understand this. Why now? Why not back then? If I had such issues with this, why didn’t they come up sooner? I know. I’ll go back to the apartment I lived in when that happened. I’ll retrace my steps. That might give me a clue.” Siegfried hits the e-brake on his car and does a complete u-turn. He starts for the town he used to live in, Haven.

The name still sickened him. It wasn’t a sanctuary for any inhabitant, let alone himself. The closer he comes to the old town, the darker the sky becomes. Siegfried just arrives at the half deserted town when the hail begins to falls and the lightning gets its most vicious. The wind is strong enough to make steering his car difficult. He can hear the howling from inside. He refuses to stop. He is on a mission. No, not a mission, but quest. He would find what he lost. As he pulls into the parking lot of his old apartment building, he stares with grief at the ashes that was once his home. He gets out of his car and walks toward the smoldering wreck. The hail ricochets of his head and shoulders, but Siegrfied doesn’t care. He stares at the wreckage as if he had lost a member of his family. He is about to turn around when a flash of lightning causes an item to sparkle. Siegfried walks over and reaches into the ashes. As he clasps the object and pulls it out, he realizes that it is a pendant with a very familiar design. “The crux.”

“Hey, you can’t be rummaging through that, it’s dangerous.”

"I have seen things much more dangerous than a pile of ashes and I'm actually the one who started the fire that created them.” Siegfried turns to see the woman standing behind him. She looks at Siegfried with eyes that seem to grow unyieldingly.

“Siegfried?”

“How do you know me?”

“I’m so sorry…”

Siegfried’s mind reels. “You.”