PRYMERS

CHAPTER 1

Vyker

It was 11pm at night in the state of Trinix, located at the centre of the island nation of Deilburg in the Alliance Sea. A gentle, yet cold breeze blew across the skyscraper filled metropolis as constellations of lights changed formations with each light that turned on, and another off in those night-adorned buildings that stretched seemingly endlessly into the horizon as far as the eye could see. Tiny pairs of lights from vehicles moved along well lit highway veins and flyovers to and from the city.

Three individuals stood at the rooftop of one of these skyscrapers. A tall, slim man whose age looked in the mid-40s, dressed in a black faux fur coat with a white-coloured furry collar area and long sleeves, black leather polished pointy shoes, a dark grey shirt underneath the coat tucked neatly in the waist of a dark blue well-ironed linen trouser. His hair was glossy, short, well-combed with mixed alternating colours of black and silver hair-strands that went down to just below his ears. The irises of his eyes were a deep shade of red that resembled the hue of blood. His name was ‘Vyker’. He emanated an extremely calm yet inhumanly cold demeanour that was wickedly serene to the point of radiating a chilling aura around him. A human was kneeling before him, close to the edge of the skyscraper trembling visibly as tears welled up in his horrified gaze, his mouth slightly agape as if the words he wanted to speak were refusing to come out.

“You have failed me,” Vyker spoke calmy as his cold gaze shifted from staring at the sea of city lights back to the man who knelt before him. The kneeling man avoided eye contact as Vyker’s gaze locked onto him.

“Tell me, what am I to do with you?” Vyker continued as he reached into the inner linen pockets of his faux fur coat and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and glared at it’s logo for a few seconds before shifting his gaze back to the terrified man.

“P-p-plea-se g-give me a-another c-chance,” begged the man as he summoned enough courage to bring forth the words that were refusing to come out of his lips. His eyes briefly met Vyker’s cold gaze before the man quickly averted his eyes away. There was a brief moment of silence. The second human stood behind Vyker, nervous, watching the fate about to befall his fellow human. The second human had well-oiled, orange coloured short hair that was styled to spike up. He was pale skinned and had ash-grey eyes. His age looked in the mid-20s. He was dressed in a black leather jacket, black jeans and brown leather short boots. His name was “Chris Del Fereo”.

“It seems I had made a mistake in giving you power…,” Vyker spoke as he pulled a cigarette from the pack.

“P-p-pleas-,”

The man who knelt was about to beg when Vyker’s cold blood-red irises glowed brightly to the point of emitting bright red light as he fixed his gaze on the man who knelt before him. The man who knelt immediately ceased his plea for mercy and averted his eyes, knowing all the efforts to beg were futile. Thoughts raced in his mind as he thought to himself. After all, why would Vyker bring another human with him to bear witness to what was about to happen to him? Wasn’t it so that the other human would know what would happen to him if he somehow failed Vyker? Wasn’t he about to be made an example of? The man trembled violently on his knees as these thoughts went through his mind as if the ground beneath him was shaking.

What broke the trembling silence was Vyker holding the unlit cigarette about a metre in front of the man’s horrified yet confused expression; Vyker’s glowing gaze shifted from the man’s eyes to the cigarette he was holding.

“Light it…” Vyker commanded the kneeling man. The man’s heart skipped a few beats, as he tried to digest the situation before him.

“Are you deaf?” Vyker coldly commented as the man was still digesting the situation before him.

The man quickly snapped back to reality and collected himself together and focused his tearful gaze at the cigarette Vyker was holding.

The man’s left iris began to manifest a glowing red corona around it and his vision turned telescopic as everything blurred out except the cigarette that Vyker was holding , zooming in 2 steps in and 1 step out repeatedly before finally zooming in microscopically into the cigarette’s atomic structure, igniting a flame where there was none, spreading all over into the entire cigarette, consuming it to ashes instantly in reddish-white glowing fire that illuminated the area around in shades of red. The fire caught unto Vyker’s hands. Vyker’s glowing red irises shifted focus and glared coldly at the unnatural flame. The flame began to flicker and die, disintegrating into alternating sparks of red and white. After the flame died Vyker’s gaze shifted back unto the kneeling man fixated on him even more coldly.

“I-I-I-I’m s-s-orry , I-I-I-I d-din’t mean to,” the man shrieked in horror with an apologetic face that clearly showed he did not mean to set Vyker’s hand on fire.

Vyker pulled another cigarette from the packet.

“Once more….” Vyker snapped at the kneeling man.

The frightened man collected himself once more and focused is gaze on the cigarette Vyker held. A glowing red corona formed on his left iris once more as his telescopic vision scoped into the atomic world of the cigarette, sparking another flame this time coursing through the insides of the cigarette like a flaming serpent travelling from node to node of atomic connections until it reached the tip of the cigarette where it was about to erupt into all-consuming flame but he narrowed his gaze in concentration stifling the flaming reddish-white serpent from devouring the entire cigarette. The cigarette warmed up.

“There….see? Was that really that difficult?” Vyker commented in a calm reassuring voice. The frightened man’s heartbeat calmed somewhat and he sighed a relief.

“I-I wa-”

FYUHHHHHHHH!

The kneeling man suddenly felt a hand piercing into his forehead and gripping his brain. Vyker’s other free hand was glowing, enveloped in red glowing aura. He had jacked into the man’s skull and clutched his brain in his palms without causing a single drop of blood or bleeding. The hand had supernaturally penetrated the solid biological matter without tearing through it and was holding the organ within.

“See? You were what? Complacent are we?...You manage to light my cigarette for once without burning me and you think you are off the hook?” Vyker coldly hissed. He had already reached through the man’s skull and grabbed his brain. No blood came out where his hand pierced through the man’s head while his hand was firmly gripping the man’s brain. The frightened man began to throb and he began to scream as if he was being electrocuted. The reddish aura that had enveloped Vyker’s hand spread to outline the entirety of the throbbing man’s body, small red glowing light particles crawled from the sole of the man’s feet all over his body and collected at the point where Vyker’s hand was holding the man’s brain.

“I gave you power and you proved incompetent, like pearls before swine so is this power wasted on you,” Vyker coldly commented after which he pulled his hand away from the man’s brain, revealing a glowing reddish-white crystal which was shaped like a capsule gripped tightly in his palm. The man plopped to the floor, unconscious.

Vyker beheld the glowing crystal capsule and his gaze shifted to Chris and strolled slowly towards him. Chris could barely conceal his trembling as Vyker walked up to him and stopped about 30 centimetres from him. Vyker’s free hand casually patted Chris’ right shoulder causing Chris to jump in fright.

“You don’t have to be so frightened of me,” Vyker said as a smile formed on his face. Chris’ face formed into an uncomfortable smile as he briefly met Vyker’s glowing red gaze before immediately looking away. He only knew Vyker for a few months, yet one thing was absolutely clear from the first day he met him, whoever or whatever this being who said he could be called “Vyker” was, he was not someone to be trifled with, there was no refusing him, no running from him, no calling the police, who could beat this being anyway? Chris thought all this to himself. He had once bared witness in the past to how Vyker merely laughed after being set on fire, after which he had proceeded to single-handedly massacre an entire gang. He wasn’t even human although he looked like one. Chris was sure that everything he had witnessed about Vyker was but a fraction of the being’s power.

“W-w-what are y-yyou d-d-doing?”Chris asked in a shaky voice, still avoiding the being’s gaze.

Vyker’s gentle smile broke into a slight chuckle. With his free hand still gripping Chris’ right shoulder, he suddenly plunged the glowing capsule into Chris’ chest without wounding him, reddish white light began to breach into Chris’ body where the hand had pierced in, flowed within him and leaked out glowing light shafts through his eyes. The reddish-white light proceeded to outline Chris’ entire throbbing body.

“What am I doing, you ask?” Vyker hissed as he injected power unto Chris’ body.

“I am bestowing power into you and in return, I demand your service to me, I demand that you succeed in what I tell you to do. Should you fail, it won’t go well with you, I have a grand plan that needs to be set into motion and there is no room for failure, be grateful that I chose you as the vessel to enforce my plan.”

Vyker pulled his hand out of Chris’ body resulting in Chris dropping to his knees on all fours. Chris scanned his chest with his right hand in disbelief of what he had just experienced.

“I have bestowed upon you power. My orders are simple, master it. You are now a Prymer. You deserve a new name. “CHRYDER”, thus shall I christen you. Do not fail me like the other human did,” Vyker said as he focused his gaze on Chris whose alias was since then hence forth referred to as “Chryder”.

The sky above Trinix suddenly flashed with purple flashes of light within the cloudy night sky, sounds of thunder could be heard within the clouds. A purple glowing capsule fell from within the clouds in the distance into an unknown part of Trinix. As the glowing capsule fell through the air Vyker’s eyes narrowed and his gaze focused telescopically at the falling capsule before turning to Chryder.

“I have work to do,” Vyker said.

To Chryder’s shock, Vyker leaped off of the edge of the building down into the city. Chryder walked to the edge of the building at the point where Vyker had leaped off and gazed down but he was met with only cars passing in the roads below. There was no sign of Vyker anywhere.

NEXT DAY MORNING…….

A cell phone alarm rang in an untidy room inside a studio apartment. Shirts, Jeans were hanged on the edge of a king size bed attached to the wall. A pale-skinned young man sat up from sleeping position. His age looked in the mid-20s, the irises of his eyes were purple in colour, his hairstyle was short, emo-looking, naturally bright-brown. He was bare-chested, and only had dark blue skin-tight boxers on him. He was moderately tall on average scale and weighed 70Kg with a moderately athletic build that was neither muscular ripped nor chubby. His name was “Galen Scillian”.

Galen reached forth to the phone alarm on the right bedside table and tapped it’s touch-screen interface causing the alarm melody to stop.

“I’ve barely slept and it’s morning already? Damn!” he sleepily murmured to himself as he rubbed his face with his palms and got off his bed. He dragged himself to the front of his laptop, opened up the morning internet news and let it play in the background while he went to the bathroom.

“Last Night a strange phenomenon was caught in the sky as people commented on social media of sightings of purple lights in the clouds. Some witnesses claimed with evidence of images posted online of what appears to be a glowing object falling from the sky…Authorities have yet to…”

“What a load of Bull!” Galen thought to himself as he glared at his own reflection, bent over the sink, brushing his teeth.

“Let me guess…you want me to believe in aliens? Yeah, right, Like that will ever happen,” He scoffed at the news that he was hearing from his laptop.

He finished bathing and pulled on his grey coloured jeans, white T-shirt with words written in graffiti-looking typography on the back and front ‘Who cares?’ He opened his wardrobe and pulled out a dark blue sleeveless hoody and wore it over his white T-shirt, reached beneath his bed and pulled black converse sneakers and wore them. Then he walked back, turned off his laptop and shoved it into its bag, grabbed his phone and left his apartment to catch the city bus.

Galen majored in Computer Sciences and Information Technology at Deilton Institute of Technology, a medium sized fenced campus that spanned the size of about 10 kilometres square and student enrolment population of about 10,000 across all programmes and batches. Galen was one among these 10,000 enrolled students. He was mostly a loner with exception of a few close childhood friends, none of whom were attending Deilton with him. No one at the university bothered with him because many thought him to be some kind of weirdo with his bright-brown emo- hair and odd yet naturally bright purple coloured irises. His looks were enough to spell “weirdo” as a label on his forehead just from a first impression.

During his lecture class, Galen was at first focused solely on the professor who lectured about programming languages for making computer software. However, his attention quickly got distracted as his eye caught on what displayed on the screen of another’s student’s laptop in the row of seats in front of him. The strange looking student was dressed in a black hooded sweater (with a hood pulled up to cover his head) seemed to be staring at images in his laptop of badly wounded people from what appeared to be ‘freak accidents’ and reading the article related to the wounded individuals. Galen couldn’t help but stretch his neck and narrowed his eyes in focus to make out the words written in the article and he caught a glimpse of some of the words “Prymers”.

Being a person who followed up on current trends as well as current news and affairs on the internet, Galen was no stranger to the word “Prymers”. It had been a hot topic of discussion among the internet community of Trinix for the past 6 months after a strange phenomenon was caught on TV camera footage of what appeared to be a bright red lightning strike that originated from within the clouds, shot down into the earth creating a red lightning dome for a brief moment which immediately dissipated, leaving behind the crater with a diameter of two 16-wheeler container trucks. Ever since then, the internet had been filled with talks about all manner of speculations from climate change, to aliens, to super-powered beings, witness testimonies of the appearance of beings who possessed superhuman abilities. Some individuals even came out publicly and presented themselves as proof but for some reason almost all individuals who came out publicly , either died in so called “freak accidents” or lost their so-called “power” and ended up being discredited. The whole phenomenon became a topic for conspiracy theorists and media bees for a wide variety of speculations, none of which were proven to be absolute beyond the shadow of doubt.

After his lecture classes, Galen worked part time as a pizza delivery-man, driving a vintage-looking yet fast motorbike for Deildad’s Pizza Specials. His delivery job paid a decent amount of wages enough to cover his rental and other needs with exception of tuition fees for his college degree. Galen’s parents were in the countryside island state of Millvern. They could not afford to support his college life, so Galen had to sign up for a government loan in order to enrol in college.

MEANWHILE SOMEWHERE ELSE….

“Where are we going?” Chryder asked as he followed Vyker through an alley near the outskirts of Trinix.

“First, to meet your new friends…,” Vyker replied with a smile as he turned his head slightly while walking to look at Chryder from the corner of his left eye. Chryder was following him a few steps behind him.

“You disappeared, after you jumped off the building last night,” Chryder spoke.

“The Sense Capsule, I went to investigate it’s whereabouts,” Vyker replied as he kept walking.

“Sense Capsule?...” Chryder asked, not knowing what Vyker was referring to.

“The glowing capsule you saw last night falling from the clouds… it’s what can turn your species into prymers.” Vyker replied.

“Did you find it?” Chryder continued to ask.

“Sense Crystals have a mind of their own, they choose their “Bearer”, no one can see it, let alone locate it if it does not want to be found. It will only attract the one it has chosen and only the chosen one can see it. The best way to secure it is to not intentionally seek it. It can sense the will of whoever intends to seek it.” Vyker replied

“That’s odd…how do you seek something without intending to find it? And how can you retrieve something that has a mind of its own and has the ability to make itself unperceivable to you?” Chryder continued to probe with more questions, he sought to understand all about prymers.

“I have my ways…you don’t have to know them… we are almost there, you’ll meet your fellow prymers soon” Vyker replied.

“Did you recruit them all as you recruited me?” Chryder asked in a nervous tone.

“Take a guess ….,” Vyker replied with a sarcastic smile as he turned his head halfway to look at Chryder from the corner of his eyes.

Chryder did not like the way Vyker was treating him. It always made him uneasy. Deep inside of him, he somehow regretted ever accepting to follow Vyker when Vyker promised him power. But it was too late to back down now, it was already too late the moment he was saved by Vyker. His mind drifted off into his memories to the moment he first met Vyker, the moment his life changed. It was that day about 3 months ago, when his life truly began to take a different turn. Remembering the events that transpired that scorching night in the abandoned Industrial outskirts of Kingsway state, bordering north of Trinix state.