Hiskandrios Genesis

My first memory was of a little girl running towards me.

She was screaming, maybe three years old. Her long and golden hair was waving in the morning sunlight. Almost like an angel coming to save me.

I remember the pain of sharp rocks on my back, of soaked clothes on my skin when the little girl named Florencia Regalla found me lying down on the shore of a narrow river. I could not recall a single thing before that moment. I must have been around five years old, but I wasn’t sure. Florencia found me when she was out on a walk with her parents, and heard some strange noise, like a quieter thunder, and ran towards it. There she found me, laying down, soaked and shivering, with a confused look on my boyish face. A thin pink mist rose up above me and disappeared the moment she checked whether I was alive.

Florencia was an only child, born into the family of a logger and storekeeper. They had a comfortable life, by the three of them. But that changed when Florencia demanded her parents to take me in and take care of me. Nobody in the town of Darnel had ever seen me before, or knew of a missing child from any nearby villages. I only knew my name—Jonas Espian. I had no memory of my parents, or any life, before Florencia found me.

So her family took me in, but begrudgingly. Florencia had wanted it, and her father Dorne and mother Lielana didn’t know how to refuse her demands. She was, after all, their brilliant angel, frighteningly smart and clever for her age.

Although I was young then, even I could understand that her parents did not like me. They politely held back their aversion, trying their best to accommodate the wishes of their precious daughter. Of course later I understood the reason. I was another mouth to feed. Another burden on their humble income. Darnel was not a town where one could make a lot of coin.

Founded in the middle of Lienor, Darnel wasn’t much to look at to begin with, but a few thousand people lived there and called it home. Some buildings were built of grey stone, but most were wooden houses, with the usual problems of rotting support beams, leaky roofs, and mice running under the floorboards.

The nearby farmers grew their produce in endless fertile fields, or worked in the lush forests, often rafting massive trunks of timbers downstream. They had to do that early morning, when the water was just perfect for it. Were the loggers late, the water could not carry the logs as well, and the day’s pay was lost. This was one of the few bits of wisdom my adoptive father Dorne told me one time when helped him cut firewood.

It was a simple life, made of simple work.

So Dorne and Lielana Regalla took me into their family. They fed me, clothed me and gave me a tiny corner next to the kitchen to sleep in. Looking back to those times, I didn’t make life easy for my adoptive parents, either. I was quiet and aloof, often spacing out into my imagination where I loved to fight monsters and be a hero. I should have tried more to connect with them, but I was young, and they were under more stress that I was even aware of.

The unresolved conflict filled the house with tension. So it was on most days. I blamed them for not trying enough. Dorne and Lielana blamed me for being weird, and never getting along with the rest of the villagers. Even our neighbors stayed away from me. I never had friends, only a few acquaintances.

But what made me quiet and strange was something I was hesitant to talk about.

I spent my early years out in the woods playing soldier on some kind of adventure, fighting against imaginary enemies. That was when I started seeing the shadow people. They appeared early morning or right before sunset. Only then I could see them. An unmistakable darkness rushing in the corner of my eye, barely seen.

The shadow people, as I called them, were a looming presence I noticed in the corners of the limited world I knew. Always out of sight, never directly seen or felt. As years passed, I noticed them in Darnel late at night, in the dirty places of the town.

One night, a crowd of mercenaries passed through the town and let off steam in the tavern. They were already drunk when one of them slapped the waitress Lora, calling her degrading names before she ran out back. I followed her that night, and when I found her crying her eyes out, that’s when I saw a huge shadowy face almost leaning against her shoulder. But Lora saw nothing.

I even saw many shadowy creatures spiraling around a convicted murderer while the oblivious hangman fastened a noose around his neck. The murderer looked on with apathy, seemingly not caring whether he lived or died, also never even looking up where I saw a dozen dark shadow creatures swimming excitedly. That was the only time I saw them in broad daylight, almost joyously dancing.

For many years I was afraid to tell anyone, even Florencia, who was the only person who truly cared about me. I was already an outcast. Why create more trouble with acting crazy?

One day, a frightened horse struck Lielana. She fell and hit her head on one of the cornerstone of the street. We were told that she died instantly. Dorne was sick with grief, and even I felt heartbroken for some time. Florencia acted as the family anchor those weeks, consoling her father and trying to keep my mood up as best as she could.

I was sitting alone, losing myself to dark thoughts, when I could feel a shadow creature was close by. It appeared quickly behind me, and before I could even react, it violently swam through me. As soon as it did so, I passed out on my bed. All I could remember was being in the claws of nightmares. Then I heard Florencia running into my room to calm me down.

At that moment, she was like a bright ray of sunlight. How losing her mother was not affecting her that much, I could never understand. But there she was, comforting me and making the world make sense again. To me, she was always the mature one, and I couldn’t help but to look up to her, even though I was two years older.

On that night, I told her about the shadow creatures. She listened silently and just told me it was alright. That there was nothing to be afraid of, and it will soon go away. She said those words with such confidence, that I believed her, and for many years I never saw the shadow people again.

A few years passed.

We were finally old enough for Dorne to send us to school. There we discovered nothing new - Florencia was brilliant. Gifted with a mind sharper than a dagger, and a quick wit to make it dangerous. And there we also discovered that she was very much more gifted than me in pretty much every subject. My aloofness, and unwillingness to focus, gave the teachers the impression that I was slow.

Well, compared to Florencia, everyone was slow. But having her breeze through every topic with ease made me look even worse compared to her.

Florencia was brilliant. Ever since I could remember, she has been the one learning everything swiftly and without trouble, easing her way through school and life. Darnel was no match for her brilliance and thirst for knowledge. Neither the farmlands nor the forests ever offered Florencia any interest, and she had devoured all the books in the town library by twelve years old. She was gifted.

And next to her was Jonas, the strange friend who was never truly adopted by the Regalla family. The boy who always learned everything slower than everyone else, clumsy and quiet. The one who was suspicious of everyone, and unable to trust anyone.

Things changed the day we learned that both Florencia and I could wield magic...