Encounters with The Wanderer: His Journey Back (short story)

       You are the strangest person I could have imagined to come across in this world. From what you've told me, you're trying to find someone you've never met, someone you don't even know is still alive. But I have encountered this wanderer of yours, although it was ages ago. I had just come out of hiding as a large group of powerful warriors had passed by and I did not want to find out whose side they were on. Back then I was staying just outside of New York city.

       I sensed him long before he arrived. At first I hid. When he arrived, he stopped and fell against a concrete wall. I risked a glance over at him and noticed he was overwhelmed with sorrow. His head was between his legs and a katana with an orange-red handle lay by his side. He sat there in silence for a long time, until, finally, he started crying.

       Once he stopped, I worked up the courage to approach him. “You there!” I called out with fabricated confidence. His head picked up and revealed the face of a teenager sent to war. The youth had been drained from his eyes and they themselves seemed on the verge of disappearing entirely. I fell to my compassion. “You alright?” I asked softly.

       “What the Hell do you think?” He snapped back. “Look around. Does this look like Paradise to you?”

       “Look, buddy, I don't know who in the Hell you think you are, but I came here to check up on you. No need to be an asshole.” My anger got the better of me, but I wouldn't know that until he got to his feet. “What's your problem anyways?”

       “My problem? My problem?” He yelled. Suddenly the power I had sensed in him began to pour forth. Fires raged in his eyes. “My problem is this world! This war! This utter failure!” He threw his fist hard against the concrete.

       “What is it your problem? Who are you?” I returned, the fear of his wrath beginning to take root.

       “My name,” he howled in furious agony, “is Kuna Zero.” Fires burst forth from the ground surrounding him and spun around him like a tornado. His left hand seized the katana by his side and its shining blade burst into orange-red flames. “My spirit is the Firecat.” He started getting to his feet. His skin ignited; the fires enveloped his whole being. “I am the coward! The child of Seth himself!”

       I stepped away from the flaming man without lifting my eyes from him. He seemed to look right through me and ceased to move entirely. Then he let out the most bone-chilling scream I have ever heard. A grand pillar of flame erupted from him that shot up into the grey clouds above.

       A breeze, not of my own doing, blew by me, whispering to me carefully. “One who has stumbled across this child of Fire, put distance between yourself and his pillar of flame. He will recover.”

       I spoke and let my winds carry them to her. “How can you be so sure? Demons for miles will flock to him because of this show of his. He'll be overwhelmed in moments.”

       The whisperer on the winds took no time to reply. “He is an old friend of mine, and he is the child of Fire. The demons may feel victorious, but his flames serve as a warning.” She paused. “I hate to leave him alone, but he must grow. The wanderer, as he will likely become, will return when the day of clouds is over.”

       “How do you know he'll return then?” I questioned on the winds as I watched your wanderer carefully.

       A grand breeze blew around me and said, “the day of clouds will be over when he returns, awakened from his fallen state.”

       “How long till then?”

       “I don't know.” The winds sighed. “But I hope it's soon... We need him...”

       That was the last I heard that voice on the winds. Sometimes I would send out a breeze to the source, but I've never gotten a reply. I don't know who she was, but I'm sure that you've already heard of her by now. I don't want to know about her, no. Let me finish my story.

       With the whisperer gone, I was left alone with him again and a new sea of questions. I sat and waited. Then, after a short eternity, his flames vanished in an instant of change. The wanderer within glanced at his blade, which had been extinguished, sighed, and followed the road north without so much of a word. I wanted to call out after him, but I let him go in silence. I suppose the day of clouds is not yet over. I guess you'll be going to find him once more. For the good of us all, I hope you find him awakened and ready to find the voice on the winds.

       Good luck on your journey, stranger. May we never have to meet again.

-Zero