Chapter 3) The Markings

"You are trying to say that you have a suspicious ring in your pocket that magically controlled your body to put it on and use it to get rid of a wall of pure black flames?!"

Tricia was practically outraged at what I had just told her, and who was to blame her. The situation made no sense to begin with, and now I somehow have a magic ring that devours magic just because it can. I had little to no control over my arm when the ring took control, and to make matters worse, both my upper arms were starting to grow increasingly painful, even though I don't remember ever hitting them. Nick was trying to find a way into the conversation, but Tricia was not relenting, so in one desperate attempt to shut her up, I yelled for the first time in my life:

"Shut up Tricia, calm yourself over by the window for a minute because I'm trying to think of something. I'll call you back over when I have something worthwhile to say but until then. Just. Shut. Up!"

Both Nick and Tricia flinched really badly when I snapped. Tricia with a defeated face, trudged off to the window. As I relaxed my fried nerves, Nick looked to me as if he wanted to say something, but decided against it. After a full five minutes had been used to calm everyone's senses, I called Tricia over from her little "time out".

"Alright, first things first, to answer your questions, yes, I have a ring that I know nothing about yet still ended up using it. As for how, I honestly don't know. It was as though someone were using me as a puppet, pulling my strings. The second thing is that my arms are beginning to get extremely painful, probably from the skirmish I had this morning, maybe a pulled muscle, so I'm going to the nurse in a bit. Nick, I noticed you wanted to say something earlier, what was it?"

Utterly exhausted from talking longer than usual, I awaited his answer. Nick took his time, collecting his thoughts, then finally said:

"I was going to say that if the ring has symbols engraved into it, why don't we try to figure out what they mean? Who knows? We might get an answer."

Once we agreed what all of us were going to be doing, I went to the nurse to rest. Once I made it down to her office, I told her the problem. She told me to take off my long sleeve shirt so she can get a good look at it. Once I did so, she almost paled.

"Jason, I didn't know you had gotten tattoos!"

At that I ran over to the nearest mirror to see what she was talking about.

There they were, one on my right arm in pure black. The other in dark grey on my left. Both coiled all the way around my arm, with intricate markings placed in between all the interconnected lines. All the symbols were of an unknown language, except for a few words that I saw were written in Greek. On the left it read Katastrofi, meaning destruction. On my right arm I saw a word in Greek that read Elafris, which meant light.

"When did this ha-" and then I saw it in my mind's eye.

'It was when I touched that man this morning, isn't it? That's the only solution to this. How did he manage to get these on me? Did he move so fast even my Grid couldn't see it? What's going on with me?'

As I stood there, shirtless, scouring my mind for answers, the nurse kept on trying to tell me something, but my mind was too distant at first to hear her. That's when someone cleared their throat behind me and saw Tricia standing in the doorway. When she took one look at my half naked self, she blushed bright red and excused herself from the room. I took my time putting back on my clothes, and went into the hall to catch up with her. She didn't look me in the eyes when I first showed up next to her, instead, she looked straight ahead.

"Did you find something out Tricia?" I asked her after considering what we agreed on upstairs. I would first go to the nurse, Tricia and Nick would go to the library with the ring in order to identify any language that might match what was engraved on it.

"No, not yet. I had just come to check on you in the nurse's office. When I walked in, I hadn't expected you to be…" Her sentence drifted off as a blush crept back into her face. I didn't understand what she was blushing about, but I decided against asking her about it.

"So you left Nick in the library looking for a language that may or may not even exist in the first place, just to check up on me?"

"I mean, I didn't do it because I was worried! I did it just to show I wasn't completely rude to people. I just didn't expect to see you like that..."

With that, she squeaked a little as she realized just what she had said. After that, she started to stutter out garbled words until I saw Nick across the room and lightly ran to him. The room had been empty, all except for Nick, Tricia, and now myself. Halfway across the room however, a flash of pain shot through my entire body, and the source was none other than those markings on my arms. As I started to kneel in agony, Tricia and Nick both started to rush towards me, but I knew something was just about to happen.

"Don't get close! Stay away!"

At that moment it started. First, I felt the markings grow along my arms, slowly burning new lines into my flesh until they stopped at my wrists. From there, I could see that the markings on my left arm were glowing a bright red, while the markings on my right were radiating a blue hue like the onyx ring. What happened next was completely chaotic, and was a bit hard to see. From what I could tell, there was a black torrent of wind rapidly encasing me in all directions, and the floor under me was disintegrating with every passing second. The hole that had formed at my feet looked as though a completely spherical object had dropped just hard enough to indent the earth. Then I saw strong currents of electricity circling along with the black wind, completely cutting off both vision and hearing from the outside in and vice versa.

As I writhed in agony in the center of this sphere of chaotic elements, I let out a stream of curses and yells of pure pain.

Then something unexpected happened.

Time itself seemed to slow to an almost absolute stillness. I looked around, wondering what was going on, when I realized my arms had stopped hurting as much as before. If anything, they felt better than ever.

That's when they appeared, two divine beings that emanated pure power and ultimate grace.

On the right, this deity looked as though it were a woman, with long flowing silver hair and eyes, as azure blue as the sky with a tint of emerald in the mix. Her physique was one that could allure any man out there. As for her dress, it was as though clouds themselves had been pulled close together and woven into her shift. It flowed the same as her hair.

It truly was awe inspiring.

As for the one on the left, he wore an almost impossibly well built set of armor. His face was bronzed, and his eyes looked as though they held the infinite potential the universe itself could possibly ever own. His eyes were as dark as midnight, with little specks of white in the array, making it look like he had galaxies within them. His hair was an extremely dark brown, but, if caught in the light, you could see that the ends of his hair had been dyed red, making the end of his hair almost look like it was afire in the light.

His armor was as black as the deepest parts of the ocean, and when he shifted his stance, I caught a glimpse of a large emblem that had been placed there, a wolf with what seemed like claw marks on the wall behind it. His physique showed that it had been gotten through many difficulties and hard work. They gazed at me as though I were their child who had just stumbled upon them after being lost in the store.

That is when it clicked in my mind.

They are the representation of the markings in human form, they truthfully believe me to be their child because I might as well be. That is when they decided to start speaking:

"I am the deity that nurtures life, and holds her children in the light, keeping them away from their inner darkness. People on this planet have named me Yang. I represent all light on earth, but I still hold a shred of the darkness I could have been in my heart."

Yang stepped back to let the other deity step forward in order to introduce himself.

"I am the deity that destroys all, and hold my people in the darkness, keeping them from seeing the good in life. People on this planet have named me Yin. I represent all darkness on earth, but like in every adventure in the dungeons of old, you can find light at the end of the tunnel."

Now both stepped next to each other, looking as though they were trying to prepare themselves for this next bit, until they spoke in unison.

"We have come here, Jason, to tell you one thing. You, are a deity born of the indecision of all people on this planet. You represent both sides of all the universe. Both the light and the dark, in all its glory and suffering. You are, in a sense, our beloved child as well as a dear sibling if you will. We came here to see the person who bears both the Markings of Life and Death. This though, creates an unfortunate problem on a massive level. You see, since you bear both light and dark, whichever one you choose will cause a massive imbalance between good and evil."

"So, Jason, which do you choose?"

"The Light, or The Dark?"

They looked at me with completely still faces. They showed no sign of joking either.

They actually wanted me to make a choice between good or evil in the highest possible sense of it.

'You have got to be kidding!'

'I wonder what will happen if I choose just one?...'

'...but wait, they never said I couldn't….'

"Okay, I made a decision."