ZYLUS

Four days since his last good meal, Zylus was beyond what starvation he could withstand. The thirteen-year old with a mess of dark hair down to his shoulders stood on his bare feet and shambled toward the entry of the family's shantyhouse. He grabbed his father's green coat and pulled it over his tank top to account for the cold, then slipped on his wooden sandals.

Cold acidic rain pattered against the hood of his coat, an intoxicating aroma filling his nostrils. His stride brought him to the nearest marketplace, about a kilometer away. Everyone was absent, staying in their homes to wait out the storm. Everyone but Zylus.

He began to go through stalls covered with tarps, searching for any leftovers. Most were empty or utilized locks too advanced for the boy, though he managed to find a small fruit that had been bitten into, which bore a small hole that looked to be from some kind of worm. Some people, he thought. To waste such a treasure just because of a worm? It would've been a snack for Zylus.

Peering down, he saw his dark-colored feet. They had turned brown from the acid rain, though he had grown null to the pain after years of it. He shook his head, clearing his thoughts and turning to return home, but what was in front of him would change his mind.

A small chest, the edges of which lined in gold, sat atop the inner lining of a sign for a jewel-trading stall. It was well-hidden, but it stood out like a sore thumb then and there. The light shone through the tarp made it seem to glow. Zylus stretched his arms upwards towards it whilst standing on his tiptoes, but was unable to reach it. He carefully hoisted himself atop the table, which made his mission a success.

It was too good to be true, there was a lock covering the front of the shiny box. But it's heavy, Zylus thought in tempting himself. He stored the small treasure in his coat and quickly returned to his home, where he decided he would hide it amongst his personal belongings until he could find a means of opening it.

"Psssssst," Zylus hissed out, hovering over his younger sister Zareah, who remained asleep. "PSSSSSSSSST," he tried again. A bounce of the fruit off of her forehead followed, which did the job. "Ugh," she groaned out as she turned onto her side and rubbed her head. Zareah was six or seven, or maybe even eight now - Zylus didn't care to keep count, it was a complicated thing for him.

Presenting the fruit, Zylus took a bite before offering it to his younger sister, who quickly took a very small bite in response. "We won't have to starve for much longer," he bragged. His sister smiled and nodded. She didn't talk much, but she was always behind him. Even if the two had nothing, they always had one another.

Shaking his head with a smirk, Zylus continued. "Not make-believe, really. I found treasure, I just have to unlock it." he said before grabbing the chest from under his blanket and carefully showing it off to Zareah. "Real gold, I'd bet, and the real-real treasure has got to be inside. It's heavy."

Wide-eyed, his little sister was in awe of the thing. She looked all around it before speaking. "T-treasure!"

"That's right," Zylus replied with a warm smile. Even if it was just rocks inside, the excitement it brought for his little sister would be enough. The two quietly hummed together awaiting the end of the storm.

Several hours went by before it was safe to emerge. Zylus took his sister by her hand once they were ready and traveled to a very special place to him. There was a great tree of at least ten times the size of Zylus that hung over an unpopular pond, hidden by hills on each side. All trees out here were dead, but they still stood strong.

Climbing up the tree, Zylus peered down at his sister stood at the base. "Come on, you can do it if you try," he called out. She had never climbed with him before, but she had grown too much for him to carry on his back with ease. Hesitation on her face, she reluctantly took hold of a trunk within reach and began her first attempt. To Zylus's surprise, she got a foothold easily. A natural, he thought to himself. "Catch me if you can!" he shouted down before turning upwards and starting to climb more.

Nearing the highest he'd ever gotten, the boy slowed to a stopping point and peered down to see how his sister was doing. He couldn't see her. "Zareah?" he inquired down the tree. Leaning outwards carefully, she came into his vision. Her body was static and sprawled out across the ground on her back, her eyes closed. The worst feelings crawled through Zylus as his heart rate accelerated, the boy scaling down the bark quicker than ever.

Feet digging into the moist dirt, the boy knelt down and inspected Zareah. She didn't appear to be bleeding, but she was knocked out. He felt through her hair until finding a knot on the back of her scalp. Unsure how to proceed, he carefully lifted her in his arms with all the strength he could muster and began running back home as the world spun around him.

Home was different. Every residency was ravaged, tarps torn and doors broken down; something horrible had happened. Trying to navigate the remains, Zylus avoided men armed with swords and armor in search of either of his parents, who would surely know what to do with his sister.

Stopping in his tracks, Zylus had found what he was looking for. He lowered himself down before laying Zareah on the ground and stepping over her. His heart stopped as he grew teary-eyed at the sight of his parents' bodies laid out with blood covering their necks, leading to pools beneath their heads.

The boy searched through their belongings as his cheeks housed tears, finding everything except for the stolen chest. Searching faster and more unruly, frustration grew in his chest. Before long he sat on the ground, bawling his eyes out. His family was charged for his crime. He had gotten away with it before, it had never gone to this extent . .

Packing a bag, Zylus was preparing to journey for his sister's sake. There was nothing left for them here except for misery. He carefully lifted her and began to wander away aimlessly.

It had been hours and Zareah still hadn't woken. Zylus broke down, unable to continue on whilst carrying her. He began begging strangers for anything, explaining their situation; most people laughed or spat in his face, as everyone around here lived in struggle. Some offered to buy his sister for a few low-value coins, but he would never accept nor even consider it.

One stranger wearing a dark robe with velvet lining knelt in front of her. "What is it that happened to her?" a gruff male voice inquired. "She fell . . There's a knot on her head, and she hasn't woken," Zylus replied. "How far was this fall?"

Zylus shook his head, "I don't know." The stranger lifted her wrist before holding his fingers to it in observation. "You're both quite malnourished." Zylus's eyes grew dark, he wasn't sure what the word meant. "Would you come with me if I said I could help her?"

Desperation made the decision easy. "If you said that . . then yes," Zylus cleverly responded. "I could help her," the man replied before standing. He began walking in another direction, beckoning for him to come without offering to carry the unconscious girl. Zylus stretched before lifting her again, dragging his feet in pursuit.

After an hour of travel, Zylus was relieved by the man lifting his sibling from his arms, which were victim to muscle failure. They continued on for a while longer through the wasteland before arrival at a building consisting of refined wood and stone, including other materials the boy wasn't familiar with. The architecture was far more complex than anything from where he was from.

"What is this place?" Zylus wondered aloud. "A safe place." The man laid Zareah on a stone table before lowering his hood to reveal short grey hair, which nicely matched his voice. He went about sorting through bottles and cabinets, all of which were covered in drawn symbols that Zylus with which he wasn't familiar. "You're an astrologist," the boy made a guess with one of the largest words he knew.

"Why's that?" the man responded before brandishing a syringe, filling it with liquid. "There are constellations everywhere," the boy observed. "Where?"

Inserting the needle through a spot between Zareah's knuckles, the man pressed on the back of the syringe to administer the medicine. Zylus pointed at one of the labeled drawers. The man chuckled as he watched, "Letters, boy, not constellations."

Letters? Zylus wasn't familiar. "What's its purpose?" The stranger put away the syringe and lifted Zareah's head before inserting a small pillow underneath it. "It's a way of spreading information, similar to how you and I are speaking. With the letters, I can tell which drawer has what inside." he explained. Zylus didn't understand. "Couldn't you just remember?"

Shaking his head, the man smirked. "At a certain point, life became too large to remember such things." he approached Zylus with an extension of his arm, presenting his open hand. "Doctor Waylon," he said. In the light, Zylus could see a faded scar stretching across the entirety of the man's face diagonally. The boy looked down at the hand, unsure of the gesture. "My name is Zylus, and she is Zareah . ." he responded.

Reaching in front of himself, the doctor grabbed Zylus's hand and pulled it between them before moving it up and down in a kind of handshake. Confused, the boy watched their hands. "Handshake, it's called," Waylon said. "In my world, it's what you do when you trust a stranger." Zylus nodded, but didn't really understand why.

Waylon said that it could take a while for his sister to wake, but he assured him that she'd be okay. The two sat in front of a stone-built fireplace and got to know one another. Zylus told stories of struggle, Waylon spoke tales of monsters and adventure. "How did you get the scar on your face?" Zylus bluntly posed. "Betrayal," the man responded as his eyes drifted downwards. "A tale for another day, perhaps."

Zareah did wake, after another day. She cried for a while, confused, but eventually calmed down with Zylus's comfort. They were fed well by the man, given something tough to chew that he called jerky, and fresh water from a well.

In a moment of rest for Zareah, with Zylus sitting next to her, Waylon came to their side and tapped the boy's shoulder for attention. Peering up at the man, he noticed beckoning in the slight nod of the man's head. He stood and followed out to a balcony.

Light of the moon casted over the wasteland, tons of empty desert in their view. "When will you tell her?" Waylon asked. Zylus stayed quiet, watching his dark view of the hills warp. "If you wait, it will only make it worse," the old doctor advised. "She's a child," Zylus expressed his concerns. "And you're her family," the man finished his sentence for him.

The following weeks found the young pair choosing to stay with Waylon, making a home of his shelter. The doctor traveled often, gone for several days at a time. Zylus had eventually found the courage to tell his sister what had happened to their parents, but she didn't act rash nearly as much as he expected. She cried for the day, but continued to eat and was better consoled once Waylon had returned.

They were offered a permanent place of refuge with the doctor, and accepted. People of all sorts would visit them, but never were hostile. Waylon was, as they learned, an important part of an organization that hunted monsters, especially those classified as sin, in the name of saving the world. Sin were creatures that, according to the religion Waylon practiced, invoked the purest evil known to man. "The oldest letters we have say that they brought about the end of the world," the doctor had taught them in one of his lectures.

As the pair aged, Zylus expressed his interest in joining their ranks as a hunter of these monsters. He claimed it was the least he could do to repay Waylon for the life he had given them. After countless declines and years of watching them grow, the doctor finally allowed the young man his blessing to begin training.

Training involved several pillars of ideology, the first of which being strength. "One must possess the ability to overpower their enemy," Waylon's words echoed in Zylus's mind. He practiced on a stone pillar everyday, denting it over the span of months. Zareah wanted to participate as well, but once several of her fingers had fractured, the doctor forbade her continuation. Eventually, the tower collapsed from a full-force kick that in turn shattered Zylus's tibia.

Disapproving of the failure, Waylon refused to provide pain medication to Zylus throughout his surgery or period of recovery. Zareah took the spotlight in the following pillar, witt. To each of the visitors, she partook in a game that involved her lying over details of her identity and life until someone called her out. It was extremely uncommon for her to be caught in a lie, though for her brother it was a challenge, even to the extent of her coaching him with her newfound confidence.

The third and final pillar was loyalty. "Deception is a tool for your protection, however you must always be loyal to the cause," Waylon said in a more serious tone. He handed Zareah a sharpened blade as they stood over Zylus's resting body, whom was secretly awake. "Kill your brother," he commanded. "He can't defend himself, his leg is ruined," the man continued. The young girl peered at Zylus before shifting her eyes back to Waylon. "What would he do?" he egged her on.

Clunking on the floor, the blade lay static. "I will always be loyal to my family," she said staring in the man's eyes. Waylon smiled. "She considers me family, too, Zy," he spoke. Zylus was sat up when Zareah looked over. "I never doubted you, sister," he said with a smirk. The two of them had passed what the doctor outlined as the precursor to their admission into sin-hunting training. Zylus's leg was freed from its cast and stronger than ever before.

A handful of weeks later, they joined Waylon on an expedition. They were introduced to a group of people with variants of armor and weaponry unlike what the young ones had ever seen. The following year, they would follow the group through missions of fighting off feral cannibals and giant man-eating worms that lived under the desert sand.

Tales were being born in every day of their lives. The doctor had left them with the group of strangers, claiming his days of fighting in the front lines were over, and that he'd be found at home when they grew tired of adventures. A group hug between the three marked the last time they would be together for quite some time.

As is turned out, what the two had been roped into was out of Waylon's control. The organization was massive, spanning across lands Zylus had never known to exist. They were pawns in a game which they did not know the rules or players of. Mercenaries that acted as commanded, rarely to perform any unpaid actions of kindness. It was completely opposite to what they had been taught. The line they agreed would be the end was the slaughter of innocents, but that line came and went.

Zylus and Zareah fought together against countless enemies, each one pulling them further from where they began. It became a vicious cycle that soon became second nature. Receive mission details, slay, return. After a year of this, Zareah took her brother aside and vented her feelings of leaving the front lines.

Disagreeing, Zylus told his sister that she could do whatever she pleased. "This is all I have," he explained. "I'll see it through until the end." Zareah shook her head. "You have me, and Waylon . . We could take a break," she tried convincing him. He scoffed. "I suggest you be on your way before dawn," Zylus threatened. "You know we can't leave unless ordered. There will be a price on your head."

Morning came after what seemed like an eternity for Zylus, having not gained a wink of sleep. His sister was missing from her tent, and a scout was sent in search of her. He exhaled a sigh before regaining his concentration and beginning his morning routine, as there was much to be done in preparation for the war to come.