Cinderstorm

When I stepped through the tear in the veil between the mortal and soul realm, I was assaulted by an array of colors, the dazzling display of colors made me feel so dizzy and disorientated, feeling my stomach lurch, I closed my eyes, before I disgraced myself and I threw up all over the place.

"Hey Brae we here" I heard Jax saying in my ear, I could hear the laughter in his voice.

That little shit — not warning me about the effects of going through the veil. Opening my eyes I glared at him.

Smiling cheekily at me, Jax winked then flew off. Now that we were in the mortal realm we had to be careful, while most of the mortals couldn't see us as we were souls, but there were mortals who had a sensitivity to our presence, and I was worried that I might just run into someone from one of the Soul worlds. Sentinels were sent from Soul worlds to guard over the mortal realm to ensure that Souls didn't cause mischief in the mortal realm.

Looking around I noticed that we had appeared in a ruined city. Dilapidated houses dotted the landscape, whatever roads there had been, had long been torn up and only scattered rocks now dusted the muddy path. The city must have been surrounded by a wall in the past as reminiscence of it still remained.

Someone or something watched me from the darkness within one of the buildings. I could feel their stare as it pressed upon me like a physical burden. Looking around nervously, I heard a howl in the distance, too far away to be a threat nevertheless I was still worried. Jax must have sensed my anxiousness through our bond.

Flying back to me he motioned me to follow.

"Don't worry about them, they won't bother us" he said quietly.

Them, I had no clue what Jax was talking about, but I sure as hell didn't want to stand around here longer to asked him, so I quickly followed him. Jax led me a small stone building. It must have been a cottage a while back, now it was just four crumbling stone walls, rotten wooden beams that use to be part of the roof above our heads.

"Cinderstorm said he would meet us here," Jax said.

"Oh." my answer was short and sweet, I really had nothing else to say. I was pretty worried about meeting the Ifrit, I had only heard about them before, and the stories were not comforting — but I trusted Jax — he would not have let me come if I was in danger.

As we waited for Cinderstorm, both Jax and I were quiet, there wasn't much to say. After about an hour I heard a faint rustling noise coming from outside, stiffening in alarm I turned to peer at the gap in the wall.

"That's Cinderstorm" Jax declared.

A large shadow appeared in the gap, and a huge creature stood in front of me. I had thought that I was prepared to meet the Ifrit, but what appeared in front of me was nothing like my imagination.

The Ifrit was nearly eight feet tall, its lower body was a small cyclone of black, gold and red smoke, while it top half appeared to be made out of flesh and fire. Two large horns sat on top of its head, just above its elf-shaped ears, its flesh appeared red, with rivers of flame running through the skin, looking like veins made of out lava. It didn't have normal eyes like most creatures, its eyes appeared to be pools of liquid flame.

One word came to my mind looking at the creature in front of me — powerful.

Swallowing, my mouth suddenly felt dry, I had the urge to flee, I knew that I wasn't a coward, but no sane person could look at an Ifrit in its natural form and not want to run.

"Hey, Cindy what took you so long?" Jax called out cheerfully.

I looked at Jax in horror, did he just call that monstrosity Cindy, is he out of his f*cking mind, I actually had the crazy desire to clean my ears out. I wanted to scream at Jax that you should call this guy Sir, you frigging moron.

Seeing my look, Jax just grinned at me, turning to Cinderstorm he said: "Cindy, this here is my person Brae, Brae this here is Cindy"

No frigging way was I calling this fiery creature Cindy.

"Hello... Er...Cinderstorm" I said as politely as I could, wondering if I should add a sir on just to be safe.

Cinderstorm just grunted in response.

"You ready" Cinderstorm said curtly, his voice rumbled as a mountain had just spoken.

"Yeah, but I have one thing I would like to ask," Jax said, flying closer to Cinderstorm, Jax went on to explain about the two books, and if Cinderstorm would be able to get them to us once I reincarnated.

Cinderstorm nodded, well if you call moving his whole torso as nodding. Holding his hand out he looked at me.

"Brae, give him the Soul stones and the books" Jax whispered to me as I just stared blankly at Cinderstorm.

"Ah right," I said, quickly handing over the backpack, which had the two books as well as the Soul stones. Cinderstorm opened the backpack, seeing that everything was there. He did his strange nod again.

Then lifting his hand, he waved and smoke suddenly surrounded myself and Jax, thankfully I didn't need to breathe, as the smoke became so thick you could cut it with a knife.

A flash of red light appeared, blinding me — then my world went dark.

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