A/N: Some of you guys might read me on fanfiction. If so, you'll know something twisted is on its way. Besides that, there's not much to say, except I hope you enjoy this story of two humans and their immortal masters.

Immortal Games: Part One.

The Players

OoOoOo

Des pressed her forehead against the glass of the car window, watching the Puerto Rican countryside fly by. Acres of plantain trees spread out as far as she could see, eventually giving way to rain forest and darkly green mountains. Growing on the side of the road were orange trees, and the clusters of bright fruit were growing so thickly that they would fall from their branches to rot on the ground and get squished under the tires of her mother’s car. They had stopped seeing the concrete, tropical colors that signified the squat houses so common here a long time ago, and now there was just the empty road and the orange trees that lined it.

Ginger, Des’s best friend, was sitting in the backseat with Des’s dog and sister, a Lab and a thirteen year old respectively. He was currently wriggling in the space between the seat and the cup tray, trying to stick his wet nose over Ginger’s shoulder to snort frantically at the wide array of scents flying in through the wide open window. Max, Des’s sister, was tapping her foot to the beat of the music pumping through the speakers and doing her best to pretend she was the only one in the car.

Ginger giggled, shoving her duffel bag in the dog’s face and pushing him back where he whined and slobbered, his tail flapping with the rapidity of a hummingbird’s wings. She cooed at him, grabbing at his head and trying to wrestle in the confines of the backseat.

“Cookie, down,” her mother commanded from the driver’s seat, looking down at him from the rearview mirror. He ignored her and began to whine mournfully from deep inside his throat.

Des reached over her armrest and smacked him on the snout with the flat of her hand. “Down, mutt!” she snapped. He obeyed, planting his rump firmly in the backseat.

“There goes Desti, layin’ on the smack-down,” Ginger said, grinning. Despite her name, she didn’t have red hair- in fact, it was dark brown. The only ginger qualities she had was her explosive, outrageously obnoxious personality. So in her own words, Ginger was ‘outgoing.’

Des called her ‘immature’.

“Close up, Ginger,” Des said, cranking up the car’s air condition as the oppressive tropical humidity began to spread from Ginger’s open window. “There’s no A/C at grandma’s place, so enjoy it while you can.”

Max, hearing this, let out the loudest sigh she could muster. She rolled her eyes heavenward when no one turned in their seats to ask her what was wrong. The teenager grumbled something under her breath, and when Des finally did turn in her seat it was to fix her with a disgusted glare. Max dutifully sneered at her older sister and looked back outside her window, wanting to check her cell phone for text messages but knowing that the mountains were interfering with her signal.

“Ginger, would you close the damn window?” Max said.

“Maximina Linthe,” Des’s mother said, using Max’s full name with the power that all mothers had in their possession to wither the rebellious spirit of any teenager. “I won’t have that language in my car. And you-” she turned her glare on the older of her daughters, “Will treat your guest with respect.”

“I invited her, so doesn’t that give me a little authority?”

“Des !” her mother said, glancing at Ginger in the rearview mirror with concern. Ginger seemed unbothered, however, and blew a kiss in Des’s direction.

“Aw, I don’t mind it, Mrs. Linthe,” she said. “I know Des is just expressing her love.”

“Something like that,” Des said, pressing her forehead against the glass again.

Though they didn’t share much in looks, both of the Linthe girls had a sharp tongue and the will to use it. Though they used to be inseparable, a year ago Des’s mood turned sour as her sister’s and now there seemed to be nothing their parents could do to reconcile the two angst-ridden teenagers.

Ginger filled her lungs with one more breath of tangy, citrus-crushed air before rolling her windows up and pulling her legs up under her. “So,” she said, “Do you visit your grandma often?” she asked.

“Every winter,” Des replied, smiling at the thought even as another, less pleasant memory came to the surface, of what had happened the last winter she had been here. “This is the first time we’ve brought a guest, though.”

“I’m flattered.” Ginger grinned.

“Don’t be,” Max said under her breath.

“Do be,” Des said, louder. “It’s a beautiful place. Used to be a farm, but now there’s just two chickens and a weasel running around causing havoc. We still call it the finca, though. Spanish for ‘farm’,” she explained when Ginger made a confused noise in the back of her throat.

“Farm equals finca huh? Groovy,” Ginger said, soaking up the new word and storing it away for future use. The only Spanish Ginger knew was hola and ¿Donde está el baño? She hoped to improve her vocabulary in her time on the island. “Does all this land belong to her too?”

“Her and her brother,” Des’s mother said. “Desti’s Grandpa died a long time ago, so now it’s just Grandma and Great-Uncle Conner. They don’t have any other help around the house- the last one was the cleaning lady but she left around five years ago.”

“What?” Ginger asked. “Just them, two old people in a foreign country?”

“They’ve lived in Puerto Rico longer than they lived in America,” Des said, rolling her eyes. “It’s hardly a foreign country, either. It’s just like America, only the people speak Spanish.”

“They don’t speak Mexican?”

Max sighed. “Full of questions, aren’t you?”

“I was born with a lust for knowledge.”

Des tuned them out, resting her forehead against the glass windows again with heavy-lidded eyes tired from months of insomnia. She didn’t know if this vacation would be good for her, if the silence of the countryside would soothe her into a sleep without nightmares or keep her awake, wondering if every flutter of the curtains on the open window was something terrible coming to take her away again. This time no one would rescue her from the dark cellar, bound to the wall with chains and shackles that nipped her skin with cold iron teeth.

Instinctively, she clutched the wrist of her left hand with her right, as if trying to cover the scars that were already hidden by the long sleeves of her shirt. That was something else that bothered her. In Puerto Rico, she didn’t have the excuse of “I’m cold” to explain the long sleeves, the scarves, heavy baggy pants. And nothing could ever hide the livid gash across her forehead that trailed down to curve around her eye like an upside down question mark. Makeup helped sometimes, but Des disliked makeup as a rule. Not like her sister, who had learned how to apply eyeliner and powder with all the skill and precision of a soldier girding himself for war.

Des never told her mother exactly what happened last winter, the last time she came to visit her grandmother- only that time she had traveled alone. The only person she ever told was Max, and Ridver, but she would probably never see him again. Still, Mrs. Linthe knew that Des had been pining to come back to the island despite the pain that was there, hidden in the morning mists, and so they found themselves driving up the familiar road like they did every winter with the sunlight beating down on them to drive away the thought of anything that might come in the night. It was hard to think of those things when it was such a beautiful day.

Ginger eventually rolled her window down again, sticking her head out like the dog wanted to do. Des didn’t say anything this time, instead letting the mind-swamping smell of citrus flow through her, and the steady motion of the car lull her to sleep. Before she lost herself, she noticed the dirt trail that led away from the road to the spring where sometimes Des would go when she wanted to be alone. She thought she saw someone walking down the path, but that wasn’t so unusual. Sometimes people went there for water when there were hurricanes and stuff. But why was someone there now? She didn’t know; she fell asleep before her mind could register what had happened.

While she slept, miles and eons away, someone else woke up.

OoOoOoOo

Rik’s eyes snapped open as he felt another presence in the room.

He leaped to his feet, heart racing wildly when he saw that a dark figure was bent near his open dresser, rummaging through his things. Feeling anger at this breach of privacy that overwhelmed his fear of strangers, he walked forward and grabbed the small person by the shoulder, pulling them to their feet and growling to them: “Get out of my room!”

It was not a stranger.

Rik let go as if he had been burned, retreating a few steps before remembering himself and bowing low from the waist, his entire affronted attitude dissolving.

“Master,” he said- an apology and a greeting. “I didn’t recognize you in those clothes.”

“Oh?” the Master in black said, his raspy voice muffled by the black scarf that covered the lower half of his face. “Well, that’s understandable.” He turned around, pointing to the pile of clothes he had laid out on the floor. “Now that you’re awake, let’s get to business. Pack those clothes, and nothing else. Cross assigned us another mission.”

Rik’s eyes widened. “Another? But it’s only been three weeks since our last one!” he stammered even as he went to fetch a traveling bag, resisting the urge to search for any of his weapons. The Master had said only to pack clothes, and the Master was to be obeyed.

“Make sure you don’t use something too modern, and here, catch,” the Master said, pulling something out from the depths of his black cloak and carelessly tossing it to Rik. Rik reached over his shoulder and caught the item without looking as he still searched for a leather backpack. When he finally turned around with the backpack in hand, he gave the object a closer look.

It was a silver cross, plain without inscriptions of any kind. It hung on a silver chain whose delicate appearance belied a magic strength that would resist breakage of any kind. Rik stared at the cross for a long time, as if not believing what his eyes told him. Clenching his fist tightly over the cross, he wondered if the Master could hear his heart beating.

“Lon,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I can’t have this.”

“Tch. Rikard, if I say you can wear the silver cross, do you think anyone here is going to question it?” Lon said, shaking his head in exasperation.

“But humans my age can’t-”

“You’ve earned it. I say you’ve earn it.” Lon’s icy blue eyes narrowed, and he suddenly put a hand on Rik’s shoulder. He had to reach up, since the young man was a good few heads taller than him. “Kneel, Rikard,” he said. “And tell me- who am I?”

Rik got down on one knee, putting his right hand over his heart and his left hand crossed over it, his thumb resting on his cheek while his middle and index finger pressed against his forehead. When he spoke, he didn’t speak as person does when answering a normal question, he spoke as a student reciting a line that had been forced upon him day after day until it became as much a part of him as the tongue and mouth that recited the words.

“You are my Master,” he said, emotionless, his head bowed and his eyes trained on the ground in front of him. “I am yours from birth to grow into whatever you please. You are the Gardener who tills the soil and plants the seeds of knowledge. Your words are the rain that blesses the ground. When Harvest comes you will cut me free from the earth to walk my own path, and I must choose from the Chain, the Spade, or the Cross. That is my fate,” he moved his arms to stretch them both out in front of him, palms upward and head bent even lower, “Unless it would please you to instead end me now, Master.”

When he reached out, the sleeves of his nightshirt stretched back, revealing two thin green lines on his wrists. They were plants that encircled his wrists, with sporadic flower buds that bloomed into pure white flowers to match the ones on the backs of Lon’s hands when the Master in black reached out to take Rik’s hands.

“Today is not the day you die, Rikard,” Lon said, and despite himself Rik smiled and let out a relieved sigh. “Now, as your Master I demand you put that cross on and stop complaining,” he said breaking the tense mood in the room. He let go of Rik’s hands and stepped back, watching the blooms shrink and turn back into buds. “Don’t take all day- put it on.”

“If you say so…” Rik frowned and stood up, reaching behind his neck to fasten the clasp. “Is this why we have to leave again?” he asked while packing his things.

“No,” Lon said. “It’s complicated and the Chains won’t even tell me what weapons are allowed, much less the political and economic state of the world. We could be going straight into the middle of territory claimed by both sides of some civil war, but of course when we arrive we’ll find it’s much worse than our wildest nightmares and we’ll probably die a terrible death because the Crosses told the Chains that type of information is classified and neither of them tell the Spades anything, because who cares about a Spade and his apprentice going on a mission to a backwater world that doesn’t even know our organization exists?”

Rik blinked.

“Exactly,” Lon said. “Now get dressed. We’re leaving.”