The Exiled Order

The only thing I heard was the sound of flames. Flames eating things, burning them. I managed to open my eyes. I stared at the mini dome-shaped ceiling directly above my head. "EXAL" it read. Is that me? What could it mean?

I managed to stand up and wiped the dust and pieces off of me. I looked around. There was dust everywhere and small fires here and there. I couldn't see the ground. I looked at the entire ceiling and eleven other mini domes were there. And despite all of the fire and debris, a machine lay intact next to me in the corner. I went to it and looked at it. It was all rusty and dusty. There were 2 buttons on the machine. A red one and a gray one. Above the red button read, "Your Significant Other" and above the gray one read, "The Baker's Dozen Leftovers". I thought, "Who or what is my significant other and why does the other button make me hungry." I snickered. I felt the urge to push one of the buttons. Being the greedy one, I decided to push both.

Nothing happened.
"Piece of crap machine," I thought. I walked to the right of the machine, pass the point of where I had woken up and saw a mirror. It was a big one, about 8 feet high. The mirror had a gold frame. I looked at myself. I saw these bright piercing blue eyes, the kind of eyes that could freeze someone in their tracks, by just staring at them. Just looking at those eyes, you knew something was up. I looked a little higher up and saw this piercing long hair kind of straight up, that of a blue color as well.

My brain started to shake and I fell to one knee, I clutched my head.....


An image of a man, just like me, passed through my brain. He looked all the same like me, only instead of piercing blue eyes and and piercing blue hair, it was red. A firery red. This man's eyes looked as if they were on fire. The man raised his arm toward me, then just jumped toward me and disappeared.

Another image came through my head. There was a giant heart-shape in the nothingness. In the heart, were just many shadows, all of different shapes and sizes. There was more to this image then I thought. The eyes and hearts of each individual shadow began to glow, and like a giant beam of light, they shot a ray straight toward my heart, my brain, my life.

I came through and stood back up. The mirror was shattered. Did i do this? A piece of paper lay on the ground. It was not there before. Where did this piece of paper come from? I picked it up. There was a whole lot written down. before i had a chance to read, the words mysteriously vanished. They just floated off the paper. A single sentence remained. It read "...not for the impure mind, heart, and body"

Was that me? An impure being? My brain shook again. I held my head for 5 minutes on one knee. When i was able to stand again, my brain was overcrowded. I knew about those people in that heart shape. I knew each of them, their stories, their lives, their purpose, their needs, their names. I knew the red-eyed man like the back of my hand. Everything about him. His life, his friends, his enemies, his purpose, his name. Were these people impure? Was i cursed? Who am i? Why am i here?

Before I could think another thought, I heard a noise from behind me. I turned around. The dust had cleared I saw another body laying on the ground, squirming against the rubble.
"Who are you?" I shouted. I didn't get an answer. I slowly approached the body and knelt beside it. A man lay there with this redish long hair. It wasn't like the guy in that weird dream of mine. This guy's hair was a darker red and straighter down.
"Where am I?" The man said slowly.
"I don't know," I replied, "Can you stand?"
"Yea, give me moment." He lay there staring at the ceiling for a sec. "What is Xias?" he asked. I quickly looked up to what he was looking at. There was another mini dome-shaped ceiling above him. Written in it read "XIAS"
"Xias, eh?" I asked him, as I extended my hand to help him up. He took it.
"What does it sound like to you?" he asked me, "A name?"
"Perhaps, when I woke up, above me was written EXAL. So maybe."
"What are we doing here? Do you know anything?"
"I'm just as confused as you are."
We both just looked around, puzzled. Then, it hit me again.

It was different this time. My hands started burning up. They were getting real hot. I lifted my hands up to look at them. They were on fire. But not red fire. Blue fire. The same blue color in my eyes and hair.
"WHOA?! What are you doing man, watch it," Xias said. Xias was what I knew him by, it was the only clue we had to knowing who we really were.

I shook my hands to put the fires out. I got the one on my left out. But the fire on my right hand didn't go out. Instead, the fire turned into a fireball and shot across to the other side of the room. I heard a light "ow" sound. Xias and I looked at each other, and ran toward the sound. We found another guy laying there. This man a whitish hair color. He turned his head toward us, and from out of nowhere, jumped back. "Who are you guys? What do you want with me?"
"Relax...." Xias looked up, "Xymed. Relax. We are not here to hurt you. We are in the same situation you are in right now.
After explaining the situation to Xymed, we searched the rest of the room to see if there was anyone else around. But there wasn't. Under the remaining 9 domes were different names, presumably 9 dead people. The consensus now was to leave and try to figure something out.
"Hang on a sec," I said, "I found something earlier." I had Xias and Xymed follow me to the machine I found earlier. "When I pushed this button," I pointed to the "Your Significant Other" button, "I think I was overcome with a memory of myself, but I am not quite sure. And this other button," I pointed to the other button, "I think these are people we need to find."
Xias and Xymed had no idea that those other people in that heart-shape had "cursed" me. Made me impure.
"I think you're just shell-shocked Exal," Xias said, "See..." he pushed both buttons, "Nothing."
"Yea," said Xymed, he pushed the buttons too, "Nothing."
It wasn't before long before they suffered the same fate I did.
"What'd I tell ya? Do you think it's a clue?" I asked.
"I don't know," Xymed said, "But I feel 'dirty' now. I feel 'crippled' in a way."
"Let's just go" Xias said. We all looked at each other and unanimously agreed. We headed for the door. Right before the exit, on the wall to the right, 3 hooks appeared from out of nowhere. On each of these hooks was a white trench coat looking thing. Above each coat was our respective "names."
"It might get cold," I said, "We are basically wearing nothing as it is."
We all took the coats and left the room.

We walked outside, out the building. The sun was setting. Surrounding us, was a barren wasteland, as if everything had been abandoned. You could see tumbleweed just roll right by. None of us said one word. We just walked. We eventually came to a sign, but no one could read it. Someone had scratched the words off. Where was we?

Above the horizon, we saw what appeared to be a city with many lights. The three of us headed toward it. We then took a breather near a tree. We were exhausted. The city seemed to get farther and farther away, but we knew we were almost there, and we had to keep walking.

Before long, I was overcome with a feeling of hunger. I spotted a berry bush and I reached down to pick up some berries from a bush. As I reached down, my hand was overcome with that same burning hot feeling and not before long, that blue flame appeared on my hand. But it wasn't the same blue fire as before. The flame was more in a wheel shape.
"What in the world?" Xias jumped back
"I don't feel anything," I replied, "It's weird. No pain whatsoever."
"Interesting," replied Xymed," Let me try something. He put his hands in similar positions as mine and something appeared. A different object from mine. It was more of "warped guitar" type thing. "Cool." he said.
"I guess it's my turn," Xias said. He did similar motions and a hammer-like weapon appeared. "I love it." he said.
I concentrated hard and the flame wheel thing went away. I grabbed the berries and ate them, as did the others. We continued to walk.

Those berries didn't really fill us up. But then, we saw a deer lying on the ground, dead. We needed to eat this. I was starving. We hung it from a stick, and placed a fire pit under it(like a savage or cannibal). We would get sick and die if we ate the deer raw. Then I remembered.
"I got an idea guys," I said to the other two. I stuck my hand out as I had done with the berries, and the wheel appeared again. I tried the same thing with the other hand, and got the same results. I pointed the objects toward the fire pit, trying someway to get the fire to go over to the pit to start the fire. BOOM! a strand of fire shot out of the wheel and lit the fire in the fire pit. We enjoyed one hell of a deer.

Continuing to the city, we came to a river. Water! We ran to the river's edge, and knelt down and started to drink. In the water, I saw my reflection. My reflection soon became another's. That red haired guy I saw, the one that looked just like me.
Xias and Xymed said they saw the person that saw earlier.
We were all startled and we hit the water. Ripples were formed but slowly went down. The reflection was gone. Who was he? What did he want? Was he that impure soul? I had to tell the others about the piece of paper I saw earlier.

Just then, a woman appeared.
"You three are special," she said.

We all tried to speak, but none of us could. This woman talked to us, explained things to us, explained who we are and what we are truly, how we are clones of a specific person. She explained those visions we had of the people. She explained who they were and what they were. Exiled.

This woman then told us we had to listen to her and do as she says, in order to be normal, and not impure. IMPURE! The Note! How did...? Whoever she was, she was right. I turned to Xymed and Xias. They looked at me. For some reason we were easily convinced to listen to her. We asked no questions. All she told us is that what we would do next would lead us down a path of evil.......