Ancient: Prologue

            Feet pounded on the sidewalk. A girl raced around the corner, heels in her hand. A new club had opened up downtown and she'd snuck out to go with her friends after her mother had said no.

            Now she wished she'd listened.

            When she'd left to go home she'd noticed she was being followed. She picked up the pace and so did her stalker. Now they were both running full tilt down the street at one in the morning. Without even realizing it the girl had backed herself into a dead-end trash alley.

            Shit. The girl hefted her purse and her heels in her hands trying meagerly to defend herself. The stalker closed in and the girl focused on his creepy stark white smile and the knife that glinted in the shadows.

            The stalker rushed her and the girl gave up thinking about fighting and closed her eyes preparing to die. She heard a thunk and winced, then realized she wasn't in pain. She opened her eyes. A giant scythe was sunk into the asphalt; its black flames cast an eerie glow and made the shadows dance.

           "Scumbags never change, even after a couple of millennia, do they Sis."

           "Nope."

           The voices were powerful, ancient, and slightly childish all at once. They made both girl and stalker look up at the red brick apartment building where the voices congregated. What they saw made no sense.

           Two girls were up there, one propped her chin in her hand and her elbow was on her knee, which was braced on the lip of the building, which was designed to keep people from falling, like she was going to vault off into the air. The other sat on the lip and let her legs dangle just above the windows of the top most apartments, clutching a scythe that looked impossible for her to lift, which sent snowflakes falling to the ground and ice spidering down the brick wall, frosting over the windows

           "Who the hell are you?" demanded the stalker, craning his neck to get a better look.

           The first girl launched herself into the air, twisted mid-air and landed next to the fore scythe, cracking pavement.

           "History has called us many things." She said, yanking her scythe from the ground reveling that it was as big as the other girl's but twice as menacing.

           "We are the Parthenon gods, the fates, the shikigami's from Japan….." the second girl had floated down behind the stalker, when the other had his attention, like gravity had no hold on her, "We are Joan of Arc and Helen of Troy. We are angels and demons, redemption and damnation."

           "We have judged you and found you wanting…." They said together, their gazes locked on the stalker.

           He snapped. He lashed out with the knife intended for the girl huddled against trash cans in fright. It glanced off the fire scythe and ricochet toward the second girl, who dodged, but the knife left a hairline cut across her cheekbone anyway.

          The girl with the fire scythe swung it in a screaming arc, black flames trailing, and sliced into the stalker, cleaving him in half. The second girl sprang into motion. She plunged her scythe's spiked tip shaft into the tar spewing snowflakes and ice tendrils back into the alley and out into the main road.

          Icy vines whipped and lashed at something invisible. They curled around the air and a foggy white ankle became visible. As they worked their way up, a fuzzy bleached image of the stalker appeared, bound by them.

         The girl released the shaft of her scythe and threw her left wrist into the air. The moonlight glinted off a bracelet that was a bunch of little suns linked together, with different colored gem like centers. The bracelet started to glow and foggy whips leaked out of the suns.

         The wisps grew bigger and bizarre creatures started to form. They had fox like faces and ears, snakes like bodies, and six crab-ish legs. While some floated around the girl, others reached and twisted towards the stalker's blurry form, latching onto him, freeing him from the ice curls but dragging him towards the bracelet, from one prison to the next.

         When the stalker was safely contained in the bracelet the glow died down, the creatures disappeared, and the girl lowered her arm.

         "What are you…." breathed the girl, who creeped away from her trash can cover, but cowered away from the stalkers diced up body.

         "You've been given a second chance." stated the girl with fire scythe.

         "His soul has been locked." said the second girl, gently picking her scythe out of the pavement, "He cannot reincarnate and will not be a factor in your current life or the rest."

         They moved to leave.

         "Wait!" cried the girl they had rescued, "How is this possible!"

         "Try not to think about it. You'll just hurt yourself."  the first girl reached out towards her and awoke in her bed the next morning with the ghost of a dream in her head.