Day 0
“Lastly, use this gun instead should anything unexpected occur,” the voice sounds like a whisper but travels to the two heavily armed men easily. “Have fun.” A shadow leaves the ally leaving the two men behind, muttering to itself, “I hope he will be interesting. I put a lot into the hell maker but I am sure it will all be worth it.” Chuckling, it vanishes as it leaves the ally entering the sunlight.
“Dude, this feels wrong to me,” one of the men tells the other.
“Don’t tell me you want to chicken out now,” the taller one says.
“It just feels off that a Fated would seek out two notorious thieves, arm us, and give us a place to start,” the first one explains to his partner, “I do not think he would do this if he had nothing in it.”
“Relax, man I have you covered. I thought the same, so I found a light bringer who wanted to add some to the show,” he hands a crossbow to the first man. “This will be big I can feel it.”
      Day 1
Kire disliked his parents but never thought something like this would happen. His father was dead in front of him bleeding all over the hardwood floor. His mother was tied up and gagged next to the body of his father. Kire had just walked in the door from school. He had a crummy day already with a ton of homework due tomorrow. One of the two men standing over his mother turned toward him; the man proceeded to shoot Kire twice in the head.
“That’s it?” he thought. “That is my entire life?” As darkness closed in he felt a sensation similar to one of his episodes. “No. No! That is not the end. This is not over I am not done!”
“What are you willing to give for the strength to continue?” a woman asked Kire.
“I don’t care. I want to live,” Kire told her.
“Very well. Use this power wisely,” she told him. “Just be careful there will be a price.” Kire’s world brightened he stood up to the dismay of the two men who believed they had killed him. Fire burned around Kire.
“I relapsed. Mom and Dad will not be happy,” Kire said briefly forgetting the situation he was in briefly. The sight of his mother quickly reminded him of what has going on. “Burn, both of you better burn.” He muttered glaring at the two intruders.
“Too bad, kid. We are prepared for someone like you,” one of them tells Kire calmly. He pulls a pure black gun that seemed to be darker than complete darkness. Kire lunges at the assailant holding the evil weapon. Startled, the man fires at Kire’s shadow and not into him. Kire freezes, feeling a pain like the one from the barn incident many years ago in his chest instead of his leg. The other man grabs an ancient looking crossbow from his belt and puts it straight up to Kire’s heart.
“Die you monster!” he exclaims and pulls the trigger. The burning sensation of this injury reminded Kire of back when he looked up at the sun through a telescope. A sudden heat wave enveloped Kire, expanding outward.
A sinister voice whispered, “Avernus.” Afterward Kire passed out.
Day 2
Kire woke up in a hospital bed. Sitting up he was surprised to feel not a single injury, bruise, or any soreness from what had happened to him.
“Sir, there is no way you can talk to the patient right now,” a doctor says out in the hallway.
“I just need to ask him a few questions. He will be fine,” a woman told the doctor.
“That is not the point. There is no way he could be conscious yet. I promise to inform you when he is in a position to talk to the authorities,” the doctor explains the officer. Turning the corner, they enter Kire’s hospital room.
“Not... possible,” the doctor finally makes out. The police officer recovers and pulls a chair over by Kire’s bed.
“Hello I am Officer Katie Stratford,” she introduces herself. “What is your name?”
“My name is Minerva Maverick but I go by Kire,” he tells her.
“Alright, Kire. I looked at a file about you and it says you recently left your rehab center and released back into regular life,” Officer Katie shares with Kire.
“Yeah,” he mutely responded.
“So, what can you explain to me? There are four bodies burned beyond recognition and a boy who went from having a stake in his heart to perfectly health in less than twelve hours,” she lays out to him. “Can you see where I am coming from?”
A laughing voice echoes around the room, “She has a point. What are you going to do boy?” Kire recognizes it as the voice that spoke the word causing the flames to spin out of control.
“Who are you?” Kire asks.
“Kire, I am Officer Stratford of the local police,” Katie told him, looking concerned.
“Not you,” Kire told her, “that other voice the...” he struggled for the word for a moment “the malicious one.” It seemed to be the best word for the attitude Kire received from it; he encountered plenty of it at the rehab center. 
“Sorry, kid. No one hears my voice unless I want them to. They can’t see me either, so just think of me as your first step to insanity. If you wish to be polite view me as your corrupt friend who now haunts your shadow. Call me Xaphan because I will be stroking the fires of your hell.” Kire glances at his shadow. It had about as many features as a stick figure but he had the impression it was smiling at him.
“Kire,” Officer Katie began
“What?” Kire ask taking his attention away from the shadow.
“Could you give me an answer?” Kire stared at her blankly. “An answer to what happened in your kitchen last night.”
“Oh,” it came back to Kire. “Well, I came home from school, and I saw my dad lying on the ground bleeding. I saw my mother tied up and two men standing over her. One of the men shot me. I got back up, and something whispered Avernus, then I blacked out.”
“Kire, according to preliminary forensic eveidence, three of the people burned were dead to start with. The last person dying very quickly, in what we can only account to as a gas explosion,” Officer Katie explained to him. “Now, I heard you used to have an issue with fire but if...”
Kire cut her off, “This has nothing to do with that!”
“Kire, four people are dead. one due to extreme burns over the entire body,” Officer Katie informs Kire, standing to her feet. She looked ready to continue but the doctor stepped in.
“That is enough, Officer Stratford. My patient is tired and needs to rest. Please come back later,” the doctor tells the officer.
“Very well,” she says. Officer Katie walks out of the room and down the hall.
“Now that is out of the way. I am Dr. Aamor. I am in charge of watching over you while you are at the hospital,” Dr. Aamor announces to Kire. “You do not need to worry people touched by Fate like you are common occurrences in hospitals in the last 30 years and it has been my job to watch unusual people since I was about your age.”
“You mean I am normal?” Kire ask Dr. Aamor.
“Not exactly normal per se your still an anomaly, but people touched by Fate often end up in the hospital before they understand their situation,” the doctor tells Kire.
“You said the phrase touched by Fate again. What does it mean?” Kire asked the doctor.
“Well, some people, when pushed to the their personal limit, get the chance to make a deal with a being of power. What it is and the conditions vary from person to person. For example, I myself have been touched by Fate and am telepathic, but I cannot use it for self-gain and I need an invitation to enter someone’s mind. Often times there is a sprit or helper of some kind that teaches the user about his power and allows extra strength when deemed necessary.” Dr. Aamor pauses for a breath and ask Kire, “Do you know the form of your helper? I know you have one because of the word Avernus in your story.”
“The shadow,” Kire tells the doctor. “It called itself Xaphan.”
“The demon who stokes the flames of hell combined with Avernus and your affiliation with fire... may I enter your mind, Kire?” Doctor Aamor asks suddenly. Kire, a little shocked by the sudden request, nodded his head. Kire felt a pressure around his skull and photos of memories flash at blinding speeds. Kire only recognizes one in five of them but the keep streaming moving faster as the new force in his head adjusted to Kire’s head.
“Sorry,” Dr. Aamor apologizes to Kire. “It has been a while since I have done this, so please bear with me.” Now the memories were more than images; they contained touches, smells, or sounds along with the visual. It also was about the day when Kire had less control over his disorder; mutable instances of burning the lawn, his live interpretation of the burning bush at church, the time he set his neighbors pool on fire, and the barn that left him with scars over his body and soul. The combined emotions of all these events left Kire desperate to release the tension.
“Small fire, no just a flame. A few sparks on the bed would give birth to a beautiful little flame to nuzzle us. There is no harm in it let it burn let it loose,” his disorder urged him. Taking deep breaths, Kire held up his right hand and pushed at the new sensation freed by the events that had happened yesterday. Small tongues of fire danced around his outstretched fingers burning them as He kept them alive voluntary offering his flesh as fuel to it.
“Enough,” a voice warns inside Kire’s head. The fire goes out, and with the pressure eased Kire lets the fire die away.
“Explanation please,” Dr. Aamor asks Kire.
“I have a really bad case of pyromania that I seem to be falling back into. Sorry,” Kire tells the doctor.
“I am sorry those memories must have brought back some of the triggers for it. Anyway, I saw your demon,” Dr. Aamor informs Kire. Kire becomes confused at hearing about this. “There is no other way to describe it. Looking at your memories of that night, you have been hit with two different projectiles meant to influence someone who as been touched by Fate. The result has left you different than you should have been. They both had an effect on you and on what should have been your guide in this world. So the spear has made your body essentially immortal: you healed quickly before, and now I do not believe there is a way to kill you. It also created loyalty inside your demon: it can not tell lies and it must respond to any question you ask it.”
“Is that true?” Kire ask the shadow sitting on the wall.
Sighing, it answered, “Yes, it is true. I can not lie to you or refuse any additional information that might apply.”
“However be careful because it can still lead you astray, and the its name it chose for itself, it will try to answer in unclear ways sometimes. On to the bad bullet, your helper is now corrupt: it has a form for you. Instead of just helping you grow it will interact on its own to guide you down that path, and I doubt it is a good one. The direct effect on you is your body is not immune to your own fire. Normally, you have a resistance to your personal element. This is very important when you deal with an energy source like fire, but you have been stripped of this protection, so whenever you use your power it will use your flesh and anything else as fuel without discrimination. Combined you must be careful to learn what you must from your demon and not to rely on it. Do not use your fire excessively because you will feel a lot of pain when you do using your own flesh as the starting material and since you cannot die you just need to stop for it for it to repair like what has happened to your hand.” Glancing over Kire sees his hand has fully recovered from second and third degree burns he had inflicted on it a few minutes ago. A small beeping noise cuts the silence.
“Blast,” Dr. Aamor grumbles. “I need to tend to other business, Kire. Be careful. Get some sleep, and we will talk some more tomorrow.” Kire waves absentmindedly as Dr. Aamor walks out trying to process everything that had been shared with him in those short minutes.
“Healing is tiring,” Kire notices, “Maybe sleep is not a bad idea.” The last word is followed by a yawn and Kire lies falls to sleep.
Day 3
Like the saying “nothing travels faster than light except maybe bad news,” Kire was woken early in the morning to the sound of heavy pounding against his hospital room door. It seemed that the news of the events surrounding Kire had made its way into the hands of someone who understood what they meant and took extreme action over them.
“Freeze!” A voice shouts at Kire.
“Come now, Kire, let’s go with the nice police and see what they want at this hour,” Xaphan whispers to Kire in his creepy way. Sitting up Kire squints against all the flashlights in the room.
“I said freeze!” A voice shouts followed almost immediately by a gunshot.
Day 4
“Wakey, Wakey, Kire. It’s time to have fun in interrogation,” Xaphan whispers in Kire’s ear.
“Shut up, you,” Kire grumbled at it.
“Well, this is the least interaction I have had before being hated,” says a measured voice across the table Kire had been sleeping on. He looked up glaring at the voice: entering his line of sight was an old man in a black suit.
“Who are you?” Kire asked him.
“I am called Judge. I am called that because I decide if you live die or are imprisoned,” Judge tells Kire.
“I like him, he seems more fun than that doctor,” Xaphan informs Kire lounging in his shadow chair on the wall.
“Well, that’s great you like him,” Kire cried sarcastically. “Then I must be in a wonderful position.” Judge raised an eyebrow at his outburst. “Not you,” Kire clarified for Judge, “Talking to that useless monster,” pointing at Xaphan. Judge stands up and leaves the room stolidly. “What is his issue?” Kire asked Xaphan.
“You forgot, only you can see my movements. So, from his perspective and pretty much everyone else’s, when you point me out, you look crazy. You might be crazy in other regards, but you are not schizophrenic yet,” Xaphan pointed out to Kire’s dismay. Without warning, Kire started laughing. “Maybe you are. What is so funny?”  Xaphan asked.
“Well,” Kire began, “I realize my action was stupid and there is nothing I can do about it, so I laugh at my own inadequacies.” Xaphan shakes his head at the mind of his host. “So,” Kire started, “do you know any good jokes Xaphan?”
“I know one joke,” Xaphan replied slowly. “What makes no sense but most people believe?”
After pondering it a little, Kire relents, “I give up. What?”
“Pop culture,” Xaphan tells him. Kire finds this funny and laughs. A hissing noise becomes noticeable and a white gas started filling the room coming from the vents. “Interesting... a combination of liquid nitrogen and sleeping gas,” Xaphan notes.
“Well, I do not plan on going out,” Kire stated firmly, igniting his hand as he stood up. Kire then touches his hand to the metal table and, to his delight, it ignited with contact to his fire. The gas and the fire had both begun to spread: the gas now covered the entire floor and the fire has spread across the table and onto Kire’s arm.
“You’re going to loose your feet,” Xaphan warned.
“I know,” Kire grumbled as his shins and feet erupted in flames. Walking to the door, leaving a small fire burning in the wake of each step Kire tried to open the door with his non-burning hand. Upon finding it locked he glanced at his flaming hand: he could see the bone of some of his fingers and wrist along with muscle as the fire had burned through all the skin past mid-forearm.
“Hey, when does the whole immortality regeneration kick in?” Kire asked Xaphan.
“For now it activates when you loss consciousness so when you go to sleep next you will repaired,” Xaphan tells him.
“Will it ever activate when I am awake?” Kire wondered.
“Perhaps,” Xaphan speculates. “It depends on how long you let yourself burn if you might force it to activate early.” Nodding, Kire goes back to the task at hand: the Cooling agent plus sleeper gas was now at waist level to Kire; he pound three times at the door causing his radius to break, half of his forearm falls onto the ground by the door, continuing to burn, leaving just his ulna sticking out of his elbow his arm.
“I am not going down here,” Kire muttered.
“Well than try this,” Xaphan held one shadowy hand out, “Minauros.” The fire transformed from free flowing blaze into black bubbling goo that instantly covered most of the room. The gunk spread across the floor and walls, clearing the gas still seeping into the room. Kire could also feel the change in the heat produced by the fire, easily three times hotter than it was. Kire dipped the end of his ulna into the goo on his legs and touched it to the edges of the door. In less than ten seconds the metal door was a burning pile of rubble beneath Kire’s feet. Kire begins running, shaking goo off onto the floor at every step, setting the hall ablaze. A door opens along his path and several people could be seen inside including Judge.
“Eat it!” Kire shouts as he passes, throwing some goo off his leg with his remaining hand. It missed and hit the door instead but everyone in the room flinched with the exception of Judge. After Kire passed some of them stand to chase after him.
“No,’ Judge told them, “We need to contain the fire and talk about what we are doing.” Kire ran out of the building and continued running into the local woods almost a mile away from the station. In the woods Kire shouts nonsense into the darkness under the trees until the pain and exhaustion kicks in causing him to pass out in the woods.
“Well, it’s about time,” Xaphan murmured. “He has been going for almost half an hour” Xaphan glances behind him at the trail of burned forest that was putting itself out with since the source of the unnatural fire stopped fueling it.
Back at the station, the tired group gathered around the table Kire saw on his run past.
“So we have a famous arsonist afflicted with pyromania and perhaps other mental disorders with supernatural fire. Based on the words we know involving power-ups, Avernus and Minauros involves the nine hells,” Judge summarized. “And it appears that he may be accelerating because of the skip of our lack of knowledge of when he activated Dis.”
“Yes, sir,” the one to his left responded.
“I want every cryogenic-based power user we employ back here a days to contain this boy,” Judge informs them all. “Well, start moving!” Worn out as they were they understood the importance of this and hurried to the surviving desk to begin making calls. 
Day 5
Kire wakes up in a panic. The world around him is pitch black with only a little trickle of starlight shimmering, piercing the darkness. Glancing around him, Kire perceives Xaphan leaning against a tree in its two-dimensional way.
“Glad you woke up so soon,” Xaphan said. “We need to move for they get here.”
“How would they find me? We are lost in the woods!” Kire asked. Xaphan pointed to the right and following its path he sees a trail of destruction caused by a low fire, leading all the way to where Kire slept. “Oh,” was all he could say to the damage he had caused.
“So I suggest you go that direction,” Xaphan points behind him, using the tree to express himself, “And I suggest you run.” Kire agreed that he needed to move fast and started running that direction. After a few minutes, Kire had a flashback to leaving his arm behind. Reaching over he is greeted by a calming sensation of warm flesh. Letting out a breath, Kire continues running at an even faster pace, reassured by his healing talents. After a while Kire came across a clearing with a river cutting through it.
“Hey, why did I not get tired?” Kire asked Xaphan not even winded from his run.
“Bonus of regeneration is you cells renew themselves at a faster so, it becomes increasingly harder to wear you out,” Xaphan explained to him. Kire accepts this and remembering why he stopped here he bent to drink from the river. “Heads up,” Xaphan warned. Glancing behind him there was a white haired woman dressed in camouflage. A white ray shot from her outstretched arm toward Kire’s position. Kire drops flat letting the ray pass over him it continued, and the river froze where the beam hit.
“Can I shoot stuff like that?” Kire asks.
“No, you can throw burning objects and the fire will spread from where it lands,” Xaphan offered. Kire grabs a rock and ignites it along with his hand. The woman was talking into a cell phone when a burning rock landed near her feet. “Now push on the fire over there,” Xaphan commanded. Kire closed his eyes and, remembering the part of his mind, he lit the fire. He saw the fire inside it and upon urging it to grow the flames grew like they hit gasoline growing over 20 feet into the air and six feet wide. All across the hill she was standing on. Kire starts running in the opposite direction extinguishing his hand on the way.
“Since we have a moment, can you explain to me what those words do to my fire?” Kire asked.
“Due to the interference between the shadow bullet, and the spear of light your power takes form of the fires of hell. With me so far?” Xaphan began. Kire nodded, ducking under a low hanging branch. “Okay, so each one of the words is the name of a hell and upon saying it, the hell is released, changing the fire you have created into the fire from that hell. In theory you could change part of the earth into that hell with practice. The important part for you is the use of the hells is sequential and they each have a cool-down time waiting on the most recent one. Right now you could use hell four to nine, but the second hell, Dis, is unavailable to you because we skipped it for Minauros, the third hell, instead. Still with me?” Xaphan asked pausing.
“Just one question, what happens if I use the ninth hell?” Kire softly ask.
“The ninth hell is devil central, so I may be wrong, but I believe it may be the beginning of Armageddon,” Xaphan told Kire.
Shocked Kire stopped running. “I am the start of the End of Days!” he shouted at the shadow.
“It’s not guaranteed, and if you are, its going to happen all over at the same time so even if you don’t do anything the event will still happen,” Xaphan informed Kire. “You are not so powerful that you can start the apocalypse on your own. No, there are three, six, se- wait he died, but then his son, so, yea, seven people, including you, that all need to go berserk at the same time to cause the apocalypse.”
“That does not make me feel better,” Kire grumbled.
“Put your hands up!” shouts a high-pitched voice. Glancing up, Kire sees the woman he left behind with his flaming rock and a group of eighteen more people with white hair surrounding him. “You are under arrest by order of the Judge!”
“Like Hell!” Kire yelled back at her.
“How pertinent that you use that phrase,” Xaphan pointed out.
“Take him down,” the woman told the group: nine others along with her fired beams of white toward Kire.  The others raise their hands toward the sky, like in worship, creating an ice storm around the tops of the trees. Kire, in response, lights his entire body on fire wasting no effort in holding back.
“Help, please,” he pleads to Xaphan. “I need you to get out and you need me to not be an ice cube in order to continue.”
In response to this Xaphan, bends over like it is going to share a secret slithering up Kire’s body, “Cania.” The fire covering Kire’s body turns pale blue and expands outward, eliminating the rays of frost coming toward him.
Kire notices an odd sensation and asks Xaphan about it, “Two things: one, why am I not burning and, two, why is this fire so cold?” Kire started shivering after pointing out the temperature of the area had dropped over a hundred and fifty degrees.
“Cania is the eighth hell and one of baron wasteland, due to how cold. Nothing lives there, and the reason you are not burning? I have no clue,” Xaphan admits. Kire looks at it in shock, so Xaphan defends himself, “Look, I do not know everything. I am stumped at this one.” A loud cracking sound filled the air and rather than disappearing it continued growing louder and louder. Within moments the forest Kire was running through was as flat as a blank photo and as complex as one, too.
“Where did everything go?” Kire wondered.
“Too cold. Everything flash froze and shattered into smaller pieces, except those cryonics; they are resistant to it, of course,” Xaphan added, seeing Kire surprise. Frozen flames danced all over the land and off in the distance, trees were still standing, covered in white. An oak door appears in the wasteland walking out of it is Judge.
“Xaphan you said the apocalypse would only happen if six people and me all go too far at the same time, so just this once, release the last hell and we will make it out of here,” Kire told Xaphan.
“That will not be necessary,” says a familiar female voice.
“Who are you?” Xaphan shouts into the world.
“Hey, what is wrong? Normally I am getting upset not you!” Kire ask Xaphan. Judge was in the same position as when the woman interrupted. Actually now that he looked, the entire world stopped as if someone had hit the pause button. “What is going on?” he wondered outloud.
“This was the deal, Minerva. I granted you strength and you did not care about the terms for the power, so I had you go through this as the price of your magic,” she gleefully told him.
Kire fell flat on his back at this turn of events. “None of this happened? It was all fake?” he asked the sky.
“Yes,” the voice told him, “Judge and Dr. Aamor both exist, though, you have not meet them, but your parents and everything else was not real. In fact the entire event was a dream you created for yourself.”
“None of it was real,” Kire repeated looking up at the sky questioning his own mind.
“Well, good luck, and I hope the real one goes better for you than this did. See you later Minerva,” the voice said, and the presence that seemed to carry it vanished. Once it did, the world of ice started fading into darkness.
“Well, see you latter, Xaphan,” Kire told his shadow. “I will see you on the other side.”
Once more Xaphan seemed to smile and replied, “See you there, partner.”
Day 6
“Good morning Minerva,” Doctor Aamor told Kire. “I am Doctor Aamor and I will be watching over you while you are here.”
“What happened to me?” Kire asked the doctor.
“You have been in a coma for seven days, Minerva,” Aamor told him.
“Doc, I go by Kire and also,” Kire hesitated over his plan, “do you know a man by the name Judge?” Dr. Aamor seemed shocked to hear that name, but Kire continued, “I want to get things straight with him this time and try to control what is going on. Can you help me do that?”
“Of course I can do that,” Dr. Aamor reassured him, “I hope things go better for you this time.” Kire almost had a sense the doctor knew how much had happened to him but that was not his concern right now.
“Xaphan, do you remember what happened?” Kire asked the shadow sitting in the same position as him on the wall.
“Yes I remember,” Xaphan confirmed for him.
“We will do better this time,” Kire promised his shadow. Xaphan nodded in agreement.