Before I begin- or, rather, you begin- I want to mention that for some reason this chapter was a pain in the arse to get out, and I struggled with it a lot. I had to force a lot of things onto the page where normally I could bleed my fingers typing so fast and long. Thus said, please give me harsh critique! I know there are plenty of things wrong with this chapter, but I just can't see them. I'm hoping you guys will. Thank you, beforehand, for your time and effort! Also, the chapters will be a bit (or a lot) longer than the prologue, so I'll have to submit them in two to three segments. I'll probably post them in the same thread- so if you're desperate to read it (ha!) you should check back. Or ask me in your post to inform you by PM when I post the next part.
Please read:
Bound :: Chapter One
Chapter Two
Sun filtered through the shutters, a ladder of light stretched out across the bed. Asher stirred, waking to the warmth on his face, and reluctantly sat up to brush dark curls from his eyes. He could hear cabinet doors opening and closing in the cooking room, clay pots grating against each other as his mother prepared the morning meal. Laiala was still asleep in her own bed, a stubborn lump under fur blankets. She refused to get up until food was ready and its scents wafted through the open door.
Asher half-tamed the dark, tangled forest he stubbornly believed to be hair, and dressed quickly. His mother offered him a smile as he stepped into the cramped room, ducking, as usual, to avoid collision with the pans hanging from the wall.
“Surely you’re not going in that!” she admonished, placing flour powdered hands on her hips as she inspected him. The boy glanced down at his academy clothes, plain blue trousers and a white robe.
“Mem, I wear this to school every day.” He pulled a face, leaning against the counter and appreciatively sniffing the seasoned vegetables and eggs. Vanelle smiled again and tilted her face away from him so he wouldn’t see her amusement.
“Surely The Council would appreciate your best clothes at-”
“The Ceremony!” Asher jerked upright with cognizance, then fled out of the room, just barely remembering to duck under the pans. His sister sidestepped to let him pass, then splayed out her skirts and spun slowly to show her mother. She was fitted in a lavender violet chemise, with a dark purple skirt and white blouse. She had painted a swirling design below her left eye, and black hair washed down her back in a wave of curls.
“You’re beautiful, dear,” Vanelle murmured, pulling off her smock and wiping her hands on a cloth. “You look just like my mother.” She smiled wistfully, watching her daughter spin around a second time. “You’d best go help Ash. Sky knows what he deems appropriate formal wear.”
Laiala grinned. “Sky knows what he deems inappropriate formal wear.” She turned and followed her brother’s trail back to the bed room, finding him in the midst of his upturned wardrobe. He glanced over at her as she came in, frustration creasing lines between his eyebrows. He had stripped himself of garments, leaving only his white cloth undergarments, and was holding up three different trousers. He dropped them when Laiala delicately stepped over the cloth covered floor.
“This is impossible,” he stated, gritting his teeth and kicking at a pile.
“Trying to find the perfect outfit that says ‘I should get a dragon’?” Laiala teased, kneeling down to shuffle through a pile. “Damn it, Ash, what were you thinking? Now the clothes you wear will be wrinkled.” He crossed his arms and grudgingly allowed her to hold up a pair of red pants to his legs. She studied it for a moment, then tossed it down and searched some more.
“Will you hurry it up?”
“Found it!” She produced cream-colored trousers, threw them at Asher, then dug deeper and pulled out a crimson shirt. “You’ll look beautiful.”
“Beautiful?” he scowled, but she ignored him and pushed the cloth into his chest.
“Change,” she demanded. They glared each other down for several seconds, arguing with their gazes, then Asher turned away and stepped haphazardly into the pants.
The road seemed mercilessly long that morning. Asher wasn’t sure if it was the nauseous feeling in his chest, or his sister griping about dust on her skirt. Folks still had paper lanterns hanging from their houses, a silent reminder of the wish he had made the previous week. He crossed his thumbs in the folds of his robe and wished again.
The academy was bustling with activity, a sure sign to onlookers that something was happening. Students were talking among themselves, as usual, but sixth year students spoke louder, laughed longer, and joked every time they got a chance. Asher could hear the anxiety beneath the excitement, and he smirked at it all. Such morons. There was no use being nervous about something you had no control over.
He crossed his arms to hide his own shaking hands.
“Asher! Laia!” A familiar hat bobbed up to them through the ocean of people, and Jate stumbled out before them. He took Laiala’s hand and kissed it lavishly, extracting a few giggles from her. “You look beautiful, as always,” he mumbled against her skin, keeping his lips there until Asher kicked him. Straightening, he surveyed his friend. “And you look… decent.”
“Shut up.” Asher grinned. “I can’t believe you’re still wearing that stupid hat. You couldn’t leave it home for this one occasion?” Jate pulled it off, exposing the top of his mousy brown hair, and casually inspected the black material.
“I think it’s perfectly formal,” he said pretentiously. “Unlike that ragged excuse for pants you’re wearing.”
Laiala pressed her hand against Asher’s chest before he could lunge out at the boy. “Stop bickering like children! Kesha is gathering the class.” She grabbed her brother’s sleeve and pulled him through the crowd towards their mentor.
“-and fetch Henia and Toshi, will you?” Kesha was telling a boy. “They’ve wandered off somewhere.” Shouldering her way through the crowd, oblivious to manners as usual, Laiala squished herself between two people at the very front. Asher stood behind her, finally released, and crossed his arms again.
“Nervous?” Jate looked up at him, but Asher refused to meet his friend’s eyes. After ten years, Jate had gotten good at reading them.
“No,” he scoffed back, digging his fingers into his forearm. “Why would I be?” He glanced at the person next to him, a stocky girl who greeted him sometimes in the corridor, though they’d never been formally introduced. Now she only had eyes for their mentor.
“I’m nervous, too,” Jate said after several minutes. Asher swallowed a sigh. “What if I get a- a sheep? Or something worse.” He shuddered.
“Everyone! Quiet down!” Kesha called.
“A rat?” Asher offered, and earned himself a glare.
“You’re not helping.”
“Shh!” Laiala punched Jate halfheartedly, then turned back to the teacher in the center of the circle.
“Silence, now!” Kesha bellowed over the pandemonium. She tapped her fingers against her hip impatiently as the deer totem hanging around her neck glowed a soft yellow. Whispered shut up’s and listen’s ran through the crowd, and the clamor silenced.
After gazing around at the faces closest to her, she relaxed. “Right. Now. I know you are all excited- trust me, I know- but listen closely. The most due respect must go to me, yourselves, the guides, and The Council-” The name started a buzz of noise, and the woman closed her eyes until it ended. “The carriages will arrive here shortly, and you will be in the hands of the guides. They will show you around Amayil in groups- you are to be silent, and listen to what they have to say. The city’s history is important, believe it or not, and when we get back you will be tested on what you learned.” No groaning protests, surprisingly. Asher uncrossed his arms, watching the back of his twin’s head. No doubt she was soaking all this up like a new sponge in the well. “Individually, you will be called upon by a messenger, who will be wearing The Council’s emblem on his collar. He will bring you before Them, and you will be Judged. You will be Bound. And then, you will be brought back outside, where I will be waiting. That is as much information as I can give you on that matter.” Kesha paused, her eyes meeting Asher’s, as was understandable. His head was far above the rest of the student’s, and therefore easier to look at than a swell of eyes and faces. Still, it unnerved him, and he was glad to respectfully lower his gaze.
“We will arrive home late today if weather or circumstance permits; if not, early tomorrow. Your guides will explain regulations to you in the carriages. Are we understood?” A chorus of agreement, then voices yelling again, bodies moving away from the pack to dawdle around the field, now clear of lesser year peers. Laiala turned around to face Asher, her ocean eyes bright with exhilaration.
“Can you believe it?” she squealed, making both him and Jate flinch. “Today’s finally come! Finally!” She spun on her heels, stumbled, and Asher grabbed her shoulders to gently settle her back on her feet.
“Yes. So don‘t kill yourself before it‘s barely started,” he admonished, holding back a smile and not moving his hands away. She could feel them tremble against her blouse, and she pressed a palm over his knuckles.
“You’ll get a lion. I know you will. We wished on it.”
He swallowed. Yes, but that’s not what I want. “Wishes don’t always come true, Lai.”
“Ours will.” She patted his arm, then shaded her eyes against the sun. “The carriages! They’re coming! Come on, come, come!” In her haste, she even forgot to snatch hold of Asher. He followed more slowly as her and Jate ran with the rest of their peers to gape at the formality of it all.
A presence came at his side, unwelcome, but not leaving. “Tor Kesha,” he said courteously. She chuckled.
“I hope you and Mr. Jate will behave. It would be rather unfortunate for a repeat of Nuadar to occur, wouldn’t it?”
“Rather unfortunate,” Asher agreed, flinching at the memory. It had seemed fun, at the time, to ignore orders and jump the bull pasture fence. The consequences had proven otherwise. He looked down at the woman; her white mentor robes with the academy’s horse emblem galloping on the elongated sleeves stood out against her dark South Region skin. She looked back up at him, harshly for a moment, then her face softened.
“Everything will be fine, Asher. You will be Bound to a very honorable creature.”
Teacher or no, he couldn’t prevent his snide tone, it was the only emotion that covered his hope. “How would you know?”
“Because I am years beyond your age, and I know these things. I’ve witnessed countless girls and boys being Bound.”
“Ash!” Jate yelled to him, and gestured frantically for him to hurry.
“I should go. Thank you, Tor Kesha.” He took off towards the carriage Jate was leaning precariously from, not glancing back to see her sad smile. He climbed inside, crushed himself between the guide and a protesting Jate, and knocked knees with the girl sitting across from him. She smiled, and he looked away.
“Where’s Laia?” he demanded.
“Went in a different carriage,” Jate responded, resting his hat in his lap and fussing with his hair. “This is Asher,” he told the guide cramped into the corner. The man nodded and hastily scribbled it down on a small writing pad, his eye glasses slipping to the end of his nose. He pushed them back with a knuckle and glanced around at the five students.
“Right. So shall we begin the rules?”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Another note before you begin (this is the second part of chapter one). I changed Asher's name to Kodi. For personal reasons, and also because there is a semi-new book published called The Innocent Mage by Karen Miller (it's actually very good and I suggest it to you if you're reading Bound), in which the main character is named Asher. And his best friend's name begins with a J. I wasn't going to let it bug me, but it ended up doing so anyways. I just felt like I was stealing Karen Miller's characters, which is not the case at all. So. Asher = Kodi. No other changes were made.
I also want to thank everyone who critiqued the first part of chapter one, and also anyone who replied to the prologue as well. You guys have been so awesome, and I love hearing your feedback, good or bad. So please do what you can to rip apart this following. I'll love you eternally.
RATED PG13 for slight language. It's actually not even PG13 worthy, but I know some people are sensitive about swears.
Chapter One (Part Two)
The city stretched around them for miles; more colors and scents and people than Kodi had ever seen at a Moonflower Festival. He stared up at the monstrous buildings, awe smothering the air from his lungs. They loomed over the streets, watching the crowd crammed together between their marble walls. Marble- not mud brick. Marble.
"Boys- girls- stay together please," their guide yammered, nervously herding the five teenagers into a circle. "This building that we're stopped at is the Amayil Archives, first built when the Nurrians fled the civil war in the North...”
"Whoa," Jate breathed, his neck craned all the way back to see the carving above the library's gateway.
“...it was burned down during Resuku’s Revolt, and was restored to accommodate a larger collection of books and information in the Kiielo Dynasty three decades later...”
“Imagine living here.” Kodi looked around at the people pushing past their small group, and the finely groomed horses pulling carriages down the cobble stone street. Bounds, in both human and animal form, followed their Guardians.
"Now if you'll come this way- come this way, please, all of you." The man started down the street, and the five teenagers followed him.
"I feel like a duckling," muttered Jate. "I wonder where the other groups went off to."
"Must have all gone different ways," Kodi said absently, only half listening to his friend. There was a lady and her chameleon Bound selling some strange fruit, most likely from the South Region. Kesha was always going on about her home's colorful diet. And there- a person, with the tail and ears of a mouse, helping his Guardian load chicken crates into a carriage. Everything was everywhere. The buildings, Bounds roaming freely, carriages, and venders- selling rugs, clothes, meat, fruit, sweetmeats and pastries and everything. Kodi could hardly see it all, even with a head's height above all the others.
But his awe passed quickly, fading to boredom- with the help of the guide's droning voice. Jate obviously felt the same, his hands shoved deep into his pockets with his head lolling back. He couldn't concentrate if nothing exciting happened. "Do you think-"
"No," Kodi cut him off quickly.
"You don't even know what I was going to say!"
"You want to run off somewhere. I said no." The boy halted, and Kodi warily stopped as well. "Jay-"
"Come on, Ko. We need an adventure. We haven't done anything exciting since-"
"We got thrown around by bulls?" He clenched his jaws together, remembering Kesha's warning. "You can run off and have an 'adventure' if you want. I'm sticking with the group." He spun around on his heel- and faced a mass of unfamiliar faces. Stunned, he whipped back to his friend's brilliant grin. "You-!"
"Race you to the library!" Jate took off down the street, one hand securing his hat against his head. Kodi followed quickly, his heart squeezing in his throat. Kesha was going to kill them- slaughter them.
"Jate!" he called angrily, trying to catch up. If he lost his friend, he'd be completely alone in some strange street in the largest city of Kaean. He jostled past people, ignoring their complaints, keeping his eyes secured on Jate's obnoxious hat. Until something caught against his foot and he went sprawling out over the cobblestones. His senses blanked, and he floated on a cloud of pain for some time.
"Geez, you're awfully pathetic." The scorning voice lifted him out of the reverie. "You look like a bird that's flown into a window."
"Help me up," Kodi muttered through clenched teeth, and a second later an arm wounded around his shoulders to unsteadily lift him to his feet. He could feel Jate's breath against his face, and he winced and turned away from it. "You really need to chew on mint more often."
The other boy laughed as Kodi straightened some more, pressing a hand to his back.
"Good, you're being an asshole like usual. I thought you might have banged your head up and would start giving out flowers to children."
"Shut up. It's my shoulder that I hit." He pressed a hand to it, causing pain to shoot across his collarbone. Gritting his teeth, he pushed Jate off of him and looked around. The hustle of the street was dimmed, rushing past the small seclude they were in. The dirt under Kodi's worn boots was much softer than the cobblestone streets they had been traversing the past few hours. "Where the hell are we?"
"I dragged you off into an alley before you were trampled. You've got to cut down on those starsweets, y'know. I could barely lug you a foot." Jate patted Kodi's stomach, then pushed his hat back to survey the brick wall. "Guess they aren't so rich and mighty that they can afford marble all 'round."
Kodi wasn't listening to him. "Look at this." He brushed his fingers against a jumble of nonsense symbols, written into the brick with black chalk. Jate pressed up next to him to squint at it.
"What does that mean?"
"I don't know, it's... weird. I've never seen anything like it before."
"It's a different language." Jate traced one of the symbols with his thumb, eyebrows knitted together.
"That's impossible. There's no such thing."
"It's called Hyento." The two boys jumped and instinctually spun around at the new voice. The woman twined her fingers together to rest them over her pregnant stomach. “The language of Seers.” Kodi glanced over at Jate, then back at the lady. She offered them a sad smile. “Do you know why your people are Bound?”
“It’s always been that way.” Jate, for once, was bashful in front of her beauty. Kodi wasn’t sure if it was because she was carrying, or because she was quite obviously wiser than them. Not more knowledgeable, like their mentors, but wiser. It surrounded her words like a thick cloak, choking out any argument.
“No, not always.” She was staring up at Kodi, but he felt infinitely small beneath her gaze. “You are Bound because there is magic inside of you. Magic too great for one person. So it is divided, between a Guardian and a Bound, and therefore neither are too powerful. That is what creates the Bound; your own magic. Not The Council’s.”
“Ah,” was all Jate could say, his voice faltering in that one syllable.
“Who are ‘seers’?” Kodi asked, determined not to feel so belittled by this woman. But she simply shook her head and turned her back to them. Her hair, redder than any fire Kodi had ever seen, fell almost to her waist.
“My name is Evalen,” she whispered, her voice blowing around Kodi’s ears like wind.
“Evalen-” he began, but she was gone. He blinked, blinked again, then turned to Jate, who was staring at the Hyento again. “That was odd,” he said after a second.
“What was?” his friend asked, not looking up at him. He was tracing with his thumb again, trying to make sense of the faded black lines.
“Evalen.”
“Who?” Jate met his eyes now, and Kodi saw in them no Evalen, no Hyento, no fiery hair. Jate did not remember.
“Nevermind,” Kodi said softly, then cleared his throat. “Nevermind,” he repeated, louder. “We have to find the group.” Laiala would have been proud of him as he grabbed Jate’s arm and pulled him off down the street. It wasn’t until they had finally located the group and the tour guide was yittering on to them about the importance of staying together and not getting lost, that Kodi realized what the woman had said. Your people. Not our people. And she didn't wear a totem; did that mean she had no Bound? No, that was impossible. He stared past the tour guide's shoulder, trying to make sense of it all. Hyento, Evalen and her disappearance, the absence of a Bound, and Jate's sudden memory loss.
Adventure was kissing the edge of his mind, but he wasn't so sure that he wanted it. Adventure was Jate's occupation, not his.
“Are you listening to me?” the guide waved his notepad in front of Kodi’s nose. “Why would you even want to run off like that? You could get lost! These streets aren’t safe at night! I would lose my job!”
“Excuse me-” the man whipped around to face the boy who interrupted, but he stood his ground against the rage. “Is this boy Kodi of Senyuur?” The guide finally noticed the winged staff sewn into the messenger’s collar, and bent low in apology. The dove sitting on the boy’s shoulder tweeted sweetly, fluffing up her wings.
“Yes, yes it is.” He wrung his hands together nervously. “My deepest sorrow for-” He was waved away so the messenger could step up to Kodi. Jate nudged his side.
“Kodi of Senyuur?”
It took a moment for him to find his voice. “Yes, sir?”
“If you would follow me, please.” He began making his way through the crowd, slipping easily between the people. Kodi followed silently, fear clamping his throat shut.
You said be harsh, so harsh I shall be. . . 
