2. Day One

A man coughed as he waited, sitting at the first end of a long rectangular table, playing in his files, turning a few pages in a nonchalant way. The room was barely lit, a single lamp hanging from the ceiling, flashing on and off, almost balancing like a pendulum. Reading with such light was out of the question, but apparently, those who worked there didn't seem to take this matter so seriously. This room was for interrogation. You usually didn't need to read anything, and if the one interrogated wanted to read some papers incriminating him or not, he would not be able to answer in any other way than his natural emotions and feelings. When knowing the goal of this room, it appeared all too brilliant, all too intelligent, all too dishonest.

That man could however not care less. He was not here for interrogation, but for a simple meeting. A meeting in the dark. Things had to be kept secret.

A door behind him opened. He did not turn. The woman would eventually sit right in front of him, and he would have all the time to see her face, or lack of, with all the surrounding darkness to hide his sight.

"Good evening Harvey."

"Evening' Clara."

"Anything new?"

"Let's just cut down to business." said the man, again, being the apparent nonchalant type. As Clara sat down to the other end of the table, Harvey sent the files sliding across, so that they would reach the newcomer's hands. Clara did not bother touching the files at all. She took her own that she'd brought along, and began her formal speech.

"In regards to the incoming matters, it has been asked that statistics of the current agents were to be reviewed, and that a choice should be taken. Only one agent to perform one mission, so long as it is the good one." said Clara.

To which Harvey simply replied. "What you see is what you got."

"How is he?"

"Excellent, flawless, strong, sane, and currently on duty."

"Terminal phase?"

"Yes. He will come back to us in three days."

"Full name?" she asked.

"If you just read the paper..." sighed Harvey.

"Full name."

"Rupert Spring."

"Any abilities?"

"Classified."

Clara dropped her papers back on the table. She readjusted what seemed to be glasses, and looked up to her partner.

"Classified?"

"He won't tell."

"But I need to know if he's capable."

"That, he is." said Harvey, his face dead serious. He had not deviated his eyes from Clara a single bit since the beginning. Clara thought for a minute, gladly took the break. Harvey was not kidding. He usually never was, and yet, even for him, proposing a man without true knowledge of his capabilities should have been out of the question.

"Give me numbers." insisted Clara.

"Right in front of you."

Nonchalantly herself, Clara slid back Rupert's files to Harvey.

"Increased physical strength and resistance. And according to records, he slayed the Dorion Frenzy on his own." he answered.

"No explanation?"

"None."

Clara sighed of desperation. "Have him prepared."

The woman stood up, walking across the room, heading for the door. As she got to the knob, the man spoke up, his face ever as straight. The dim light was hypnotizing, and he could feel it. Something important had slipped through, and he had not bothered to ask. This room was brilliant indeed.

"What is a Dorion Frenzy... Miss Thorpan?" he asked, still looking in the same direction.

"We... we are not supposed to say the real names." she weakly scolded him.

"The reason I insist so much on saying your real last name is to prove your fragile mind how serious I am about this question."

"You don't have to be so cold."

"Answers, Miss Thorpan." he insisted.

The lady turned the door knob, opened, and prepared to leave.

"The last test in a simulation program... It is usually meant to prove agents in training that you will always find stronger than you."

"Meaning." Harvey's voice turned darker.

"That even with twenty against one, no agent ever got the best of the Dorion Frenzy program."

The silence reigned. The following minutes were empty, and even though Harvey did not have any other business sitting at the table, he stayed there, until Thorpan decided to move on. The door closed silently behind her, and a shadow was cast on the room as she walked away on the other side of the window.

Harvey only sat there, unable to move.

More minutes passed, and finally, at last, another voice rose from the dark in front of Harvey. It was casual, although unstable, shaking. As if related to the voice's nature, the shadows moved, and as the face became clearer, so did the voice.

"Well done Harvey. You were so good I don't think we'll need you again after all."

"Shut up." said Harvey, his voice even colder. "You didn't intend on letting me live from the beginning anyway."

"And still you accepted?"

"She's alive and well, they have the right man for the job, that's all that matters."

"It's all a matter of time anyway."

"I should say the same."

The man in the shadow smiled. Like dancing butterflies or opening flowers, the walls were tainted in a violent, yet beautiful red.

All that was left, was a smile. A smile in the shadows, and the crunching noises on Harvey's head disappearing in the dark.

1. The Forgotten Tale

Once upon a time, in a dark corner of the universe, away from space itself, grew an evil matter, a black smoke covering a black life. It expanded little by little, as an unfathomable never-dying disease, unchallenged by the emptiness it occupied. It went on with growing for billions of years, only to finally cover the entirety of all existence, the entire universe. And soon, the world came as a newborn child; a floating matter in the belly of what used to be a small darkness. Men also came as children, and from their unique capacity to communicate their thoughts and fantasies, they named - mostly those known as sages amongst their peers - this energy around them, this creature with no face, EVIL.

Feeling their pride was minimal under all the power they could sense in Evil, Men decided to encage all the Evil of the world in one body. Something, they hoped, or someone, would hold in all the power they so feared. But Evil was not an enemy to be taken lightly. It was more ancient than anything, and so, very easily, it repelled men away, eating on their lives, tempted to burn in dark flames all they cherished.

Men forgot Evil, and gladly, as they had been more than scared by what they chose to be their enemy. Evil did not challenge them. It cursed them daily, by natural act, and not by will. It was to eat and drink the souls it buried in its core. And so for years, it consumed, humans growing under a shadow they could not rise against, and slowly tired out by what energy Evil could take out of them. It went on for years, decades, centuries. But on the eve of a new millennium, something out of the ordinary happened. Something broke Evil's routine. A small light had appeared, radiating hope across the galaxies, spaces and souls; all that Evil had ever covered. No one knew how it appeared, but it was thought that in the expiration of what any life had to offer for Evil to consume, another power had appeared to balance the unstable. They named this tiny white light, GOOD.

With its shining love and hope, Good merged in with Evil, and ceased all trouble for every living thing. The two powers were not in clash, but somehow seemed to form a neutral, inactive energy. Men were tempted to take the opportunity and force Evil out of its place, but again, they failed, unable to modify the structure of the two powers combined. All was well, at last.

However, after the first two decades passed by, the world was in doom again. It screamed for horror, and that for one long awful day. There had never been a suffering like the first of December, where all living things were asking for death at the very same time. Good and Evil were gone, disappeared, taken away, or at least some pretended.

And thus, the story of how two powers formed the world, consumed it and freed it was forgotten, if only remembered by those who knew its importance…