• Waking is the hardest part. I open my eyes and a cruel barrage of light stings them. I grimace and slowly reach my hand up to shield my face. Even that slight movement hurts, throbbing straight to the bone. But I am used to pain. I feel a stirring beneath me, light and soft. It is my guardian. Somehow, I thought that he would have left, as elusive as he seemed. But indeed he was still there. I lean back, my head on his chest, suddenly completely wasted of energy. Every inch of me is sore. I can feel the blood encrusted to my skin and my mouth tastes like iron. Still, I am alive.
    I try to take my mind off the memories from the white room. I listen to my guardians breathing, slow and soft. I feel his chest shift up and down as he sleeps. He seems less bizarre when asleep. His silvery, glowing sheen is gone, and he looks near normal. He could be my age or slightly older. I suddenly realized how little I knew of him and how little he knew of me, and yet we had already promised to fight for each other. We were both drawn together by a debt that we knew not about ourselves. I sigh and study the sky. It is beautiful here. We rest against one of the walls of a massive stone building. There was a grassy terrain surrounding it, bordered by a forest. No doubt that there were already residents of that very forest feasting upon the dead. I shudder and push the thought away. This place was obviously nestled into mountains of some sort because a cliff drops off 20 paces away from us. A great forest stretches out below. The only thing that ruins it is the darkness, hanging like fog in a shroud around the building, all the time whispering.
    Beneath me, my guardian shifts and murmurs something. He is waking. I pull myself up, ignoring the wretched dizziness in my head. He opens his eyes and cringes.
    “I know it’s pretty bright.” I laugh.
    What?..... Oh. So you survived the night. He grimaces as though in pain.
    “I guess.”
    He stands up and stretches, then wanders to the edge of the cliff. I watch as he closes his eyes and lets the mountain wind whip through his hair. His glorious wings flex outward, unfurling, to capture the morning sun. I find it hard to believe that he came from something evil. Was he?
    No. Not evil. But not good. I am the balance.
    I accept that answer and look at his wing in curiosity. “Can you actually fly?”
    I don’t know. I’ve never tried. All I remember was that when I came into being, I was falling. Something broke when I hit the ground, and that was how the hunters found me. I couldn’t resist them. They locked me in that awful room. If I wanted to though, I believe I could fly.
    “Speaking of things, why couldn’t we see you in the room when we all were there?”
    Because I did not wish to be seen.
    “Hmm. Ok.”
    He sighed deeply. We should be going before more hunters come.
    “How? There is a sheer drop!”
    I said I could fly if I wanted to.
    With that, he reached over and pulled me tight against his side. Carrying as though I weighed nothing, he ran toward the edge. He didn’t jump, he just fell. And for those first few terrifying moments we were falling. I feel my guardian’s determination set. There is a loud snap as his wings unfurl and we are knocked back in the air. Then, like a dream, he glides downward on a beam of sunlight. Carefully he lands amongst the trees, setting me down lightly on the ground.
    There.
    “You don’t think enough.”
    You think too much. He folds his wings with a wince. On second thought….that may hurt later.
    I sit back against a tree, wincing at my own pain. Something starts bleeding again.
    Hmmm…. We need to find civilization. You need proper rest and fixing up.
    “For now we should rest here.” Here was in the middle of the woods, surrounded by wild, yet somehow it felt safe.
    I suppose the hunters won’t find us.
    “Don’t put anything over them.”
    I’m not.
    My guardian heaved a sigh. I couldn’t keep calling him that. I needed a name.
    “What are you called?”
    He seemed to think. I’m not certain…I have never known a real name…but…there is one, of the one I was reincarnated from. Harren. Call me that. And you?
    “Me? Back in the normal world, I was Alexandra. But in my division, I took on Alix, even though it’s only a little like my old name. I was trying to disown it for being sent there I guess, but I wasn’t very creative. Anyway, that’s who I am now. Alix.”
    Sent there……?
    I realize that he has no idea what I’m talking about.
    “Uhhh…see, my friends and I are…different. We can see things people can’t, but most people don’t want to see what we see anyway. We see darkness. Humanity’s darkness. People at first revered us for it, but then they saw power. We made good military tools. We could see enemy darkness and track it down. We could ignore the calls of it unlike normal mankind, and we could bend it to take them. So they trained us as assassins and sent us off to divisions. Like big camps. It was livable until the revolution. The hunters came into existence and basically committed mass genocide upon my kind in the name of God. They did it in the most sadistic of ways. We heard of it spreading through the camps, but we were the last one, so by the time we got the news, it was too late to act. That’s why I’m here.”
    I see… Harren kicks at the ground, then drops to my side. I’m sorry.
    “It’s ok. It’s not your fault.” I try to be mad at the world for what it has done. I try to condemn humanity for what it has created. Instead I just feel lost and defeated. I miss all of them. Each of my division-mates. “ They were good people.”
    The sunlight only seems to reflect my pain instead of ease it.