Fire With Ice: Chapter I

I.

Xayn sat in a rickety wooden chair, but he paid the unstable seat no matter. He lifted the glass of rum to his lips and knocked his head back. Slamming the glass back down to the table's surface, he waved over a maid holding a bottle. Whether rich rum or weak wine, he would have anything. All intoxicating substances were welcome for a day like this one.
Smiling, the maid filled his cup, set the bottle on the table beside his glass, and then sat upon the corner of the table, lifting her many skirts and folding them atop her lap displaying with undue self-confidence her ankles, calves, and knees.
"You know what would go good with that wine?" she asked him, stroking his face. Xayn pulled his face away, never even making eye contact with the woman much less glancing over at the bare legs crossed at his right.
He sighed. "Away, wench," he muttered.
The maid slipped off the table and back on her feet. She bent her torso down to rest her head into her hands, trying to see into Xayn's piercing yellow eyes. Then she grabbed his face by the locked jaw and looked therein for a minute more. A knowing smile settled on her face.
"Does the scoundrel have a heart for another woman?" Xayn jerked his head from her grip, growling to himself. The maid laughed. "You, Xayn Qennison?! You're in love?!" He shushed her, glancing frantically across the room, knowing everyone had heard his secret.
"Shut up, woman!" he whispered sharply. One could see the steam drift slowly from the top of Xayn's head. The hag continued to laugh as she walked off, shaking her head at her unfathomable discovery.
Xayn hated this. He had never felt so much as a stitch of acknowledgement for anyone before. He had decided long ago that he would live for no one but himself. Having known no family, no home, not even a dog for a companion, Xayn did not even know what feelings were.
Feelings? Xayn told himself. These are not feelings, kid. This-this is simply infatuation. He looked deep into the flame of the candle before him. He could always sympathize with fire, the way it raged, the manner in which it devoured all in its path leaving nothing but mountains of dust and ash, worthless and dead. The way every single soul ran from it, screaming...
He reached a hand over to the candle and flicked the flame off of its wick. The flame shot across the pub and landed upon the shiny bald spot of a man, who after a moment realize what sudden heat he had felt upon his head...was feeling...
"Yooowwwww!" His first reflex brought his hands right to the lightly burned patch of skin on his head. His second grabbed his neighbor's water glass with a shaky yet swift hand and poured it on his bulbous dome. His third whipped his entire body around to glower at Xayn, eye twitching, jaw clenched, massive fists slamming the table as he bellowed "Qennison!"
Xayn had taken one glance over at the commotion, but, only slightly, amused had gotten right back to drinking until his troubles drowned in spirits. Now he lifted lazy, charcoal-lined eyes up to the brute who was walking over to the young man's table. The hefty giant dropped his hands onto the table surface, leaned over, and glared down at Xayn, who chuckled up at his opponent.
"You better watch yourself, you fire-flicking freak!" At this, Xayn's face immediately changed. His slight smile had fallen into a glare of warning. As he slowly arose from the chair, orange flames splashed across his pupils.
"What did you call me?" The casual way he asked it made the giant's trunk-sized legs quake nervously.
"I-I-I only meant--" the man stammered. By now he had back away from the table ever so slowly.
Xayn smiled with glimmering eyes as he snickered to himself. Then, in what seemed like a split second, Xayn in his fury swept the candlestick, his glass, and the bottle from the surface of the table. The crash of it all echoed in the room which had immediately become silent at Xayn’s noisy over-reaction.
"Were you planning on saying your last words today?" By now, the rage was visible as Xayn gasped with anger and his skin steamed. His thick black locks became blue flames waving with energy and a ball of fire formed above his palm.
"Everybody run!" the bar-owner shouted as he and many others ran out of the building. The large victim attempted to escape as well, but when he turned away from Xayn, he came nose to nose with the inflamed youth.
Unable to flee, he shrunk and took weak steps backward, lacking the ability to peel his gaze from the monster. Xayn cornered the man, raised a fiery hand, and--
The heat left his hand. A frozen, wet object fell into his palm. He looked and sure enough a ball of ice sat in his right hand where his ball of fire should have been. He dropped it to the floor and scanned the room for power source, but there was not one soul present.
"Did you do that?!" When he turned to look back at his victim, he realized the man was scrambling away. As Xayn started after him, he felt a tap on his shoulder. Confused, he turned around only to receive a blow to his right jaw-
Pain...
Ground...
More pain...
Blackness...

***

"Hello? Hello?" Xayn felt all the pain rushing to his face and his head all at once. "Wake up, sunshine!" Xayn frowned as the source of the voice moved to reveal rays of brilliant mid-day sunlight, forcing him to squint as he opened his eyes to a blurry figure of brown. He groaned from the pain. Pain. Something he only felt if he had done something stupid enough to get himself hurt. This pain felt different. It belittled and mocked Xayn, and he hated it. 

"Yeah, sorry about that, but, uh, I had to teach you a lesson." The voice was young and full of energy, and anyone other than Xayn would have found it charming. But Xayn found it annoying and then he found it incredulous that this was the voice of his conqueror, as the events leading up to the smart he was feeling on his right cheek began coming back to him. He made motions to get to his feet, but quickly realized that something, something extremely cold and wet yet not totally uncomfortable, was keeping his feet anchored to the ground. Xayn looked down at where his feet should have been, but a block of ice was there instead. He heard a slight chuckle, and then the idiotic stranger's pesky voice.

"Whoa, there, buddy," he said. Xayn turned his head up, but still could not quite make out the face with the sunlight shining down on him from behind the figure. He could hear the smile in the words. "Not so fast, now. You gotta rest that head first, and maybe a bit of that anger while you're down there."
Xayn raised a hand up to the sky, attempting to shield the sunlight from his eyes to better see the stranger. "Who are you?"
The stranger slowly knelt down to Xayn's level and without any blinding rays behind him, Xayn could make out the face. Xayn's face crumpled into shock, confusion, and doubt all at once. That was his face! That was his own nose with a slight bump in it! Those were his dark eyebrows and that was his floppy black hair! That was his mouth with a perfectly white set of teeth in it! The only traits this character lacked that made any difference between them at all was Xayn's pale skin tone, yellow eyes, and edgy style. The "Xayn" that knelt before him had sun-kissed olive skin, light blue eyes, and did not share Xayn's fascination for black leather and charcoal-lined eyes. He had a clean face although tinged with enthusiasm, and wore a brown wool sweater and a dark grey pair of trousers with his brown leather boots. His ears were pierced with two silver-engulfed sapphires matching the gold and ruby ones in Xayn's ears.
An Iceling. How was it possible?
All these thoughts and more flooded Xayn's mind before the Iceling could say, oh so matter-of-factly, "I'm Rhemi, your brother."