Twisted Dawn - 9. Wait. What?! Reverb

My fingers shut like a steel trap around my father’s throat before anyone even realized I had moved from my spot across the room. I intended to crush the life out of him but as I noticed the signs of possession I slammed him into the wall and threw him away from me. With him out of the way I helped Mathias up and slowly checked him over to be sure he was alright. I don’t know why but I had developed an intense urge to protect him and it had absolutely nothing to do with liking him.

I began to turn around intent on putting my abilities to good work by dispatching my darling sister when what I saw tore my heart to pieces and pushed me past my breaking point. She stood looking up into Ashley’s eyes with extreme pleasure as he gazed down at her with a lost look in his eyes.

The jagged sword she once held so menacingly towards me stuck two feet out of Ashley’s back as he shuddered and tried vainly to force Erin backwards. As he realized his efforts weren’t working he looked to me and Mathias and with a pained smile his legs buckled and he crashed to the floor.

With one last sadistic smile in my direction, Erin faded to nothing. I ran to Ashley as fast as I could but he was already slipping into the realm of death. When his last breath finally left his body I quietly stood and made my way to where Mathias was standing keeping watch over my father. Reaching out to touch both, I flexed my will and engulfed the house in a raging inferno which left no inch untouched and warped from the burning house.

You know how they always say incentive can loosen even the most tied tongue? I had my father singing like a bluebird in less than a minute flat. There’s nothing like threatening someone to spend eternity with his dead wife in her antique dry- rotted home. He took extra care to persuade me he really didn’t want to be buried alive with a seriously decomposed corpse. Or maybe it could have been the part where I stripped his flesh from his body and used a little bit of uncontrolled pyro-kinesis to cauterize the gaping wounds.

By the end of an extremely long half hour I had Martin’s location, speculation about Erin’s location and some info that there was a child born a few years ago with traits from Erin, and Ashley. and Martin. You can imagine my shock and wonder when Martin’s name was mentioned also. But since no one had seen the child in the past year and half there was very little speculation about his actual location. It didn’t matter to me one way or another because my main focus was his parents.

I had planned to deal with Erin first but as soon as I began scanning for her I was surrounded by an armored contingent of soldiers dressed in all black with a design which reminded me vaguely of the matrix of fate. I had seen this symbol when Mathias and Ashley were being held before and my anger flared instantly before I brought it down to a simmering rage. As the first of the un-invited guests reached out to grab me, the rest jumped back in surprise as he burst into a blazing inferno.

I locked eyes with the bespectacled figure that everyone else seemed to defer to but he just stood there smiling at me as if we were old friends. As I focused my attention once again on finding Erin, one of the soldiers felt it pertinent to interrupt my concentration once again. As the soldiers hand settled into a grip on my neck, I felt a pull and a sensation that I was being drained completely. With my unadulterated rage no longer in my control I imitated his move signature and began to drain huge amounts of energy from the soldier. Once he was too weak to continue trying to drain me, I held him up and began to rip the purpose of his attack and visit from his mind.

As I finished the man with the glasses turned to walk and told us to come with him. As Mathias and I began following him we were transported to a large estate. While walking I could feel my power come alive and lay in wait as if we would be in an epic fight for our lives at any second. Noticing the same reaction in Mathias, I instantly focused on the situation at hand and began to look around to get a feel of the hosts. We were led into a large anteroom and told to have a seat before our armored escort walked out the same way they came in and latched the door behind them.

‘I don’t like this one bit,’ Mathias said once we were alone and I really had to agree with him. Closing my eyes once more I opened my awareness to the large property and at once was rewarded with an in-depth lay of the land and vital information on all of its inhabitants. As I finished I looked over to Mathias to find him staring at me and a yellow glow around his eyes. Moving slightly away I poked him and once he focused again I asked him what he was doing. As the glow faded he told me he was reading the timeline and trying to determine if I was truly the warrior of the Council of Nyes.

As he spoke the last sentence a door opened further into the room and 2 of the most beautiful specimens of humanity ever walked into the door. A single woman and man walked into the room and introduced themselves as the Council of Nyes before asking why they were summoned. Mathias obviously knowing who they were kneeled in front of his chair but as I stood they all began to fall to their knees. I was as confused as Mathias appeared on the floor until I was addressed as the Totem of Power. As I was filled in on the history of my ancestors and the title I was now addressed by, I also received a telepathic background on time and every important figure in the councils graces.

Once done I had an extensive knowledge on the nature and uses of my various powers and an obligation to rid the world of the menace I had once called my other half. As we prepared to leave I was given one last bit of information to help accomplish my task and right the many wrongs done by Erin and Martin over the years. I was told to locate the Time Rider and either succeed in procuring his help for the mission at hand or kill him to make sure he couldn’t be corrupted into working for Erin. I turned to walk away and as I took my first step I fell into a vision of sometime in the immediate future.

‘Two men enter the estate with the same life signature. ‘My name is Cronos Strath.’ All of the color drained from my face as I began to shake my head back and forth trying to wake up from this nightmare I had found myself in. “How?” I asked suddenly feeling anxious and very scared at this new turn of events. He once again stared at me as he began to formulate an answer. ‘I need to get you away from here so I can save us both. I am you. But I am also the personification of what you must now become. I, you, we are time itself. The two will become one and the Time Rider will be resurrected into something far more dangerous than the council has ever encountered.’

As I stood up straight I turned to Mathias to see him staring at me with a frightened look on his face. Turning back around to face the Council I asked “Since when did the visions come with narration.” The look of shock and horror they wore on their faces turned hard as I was told to eliminate the Time Rider immediately.

After their declaration they exploded into a spectrum of light and disappeared. Looking over to Mathias once more he finally told me ‘that was a prophecy, and now I must ask you to turn away from the council and help me save the Time Rider.’ As he finished his plea I asked him one question. The question seemed so simple to me but was so dangerous that the consequences of my curiosity never hit me until after I was given an answer. “Why?”

‘I have to go Alex,’ Mathias muttered as he turned around on the spot and vanished in a plume of fire. “Wait!” I screamed after him but I was talking to the space he had just vacated. I stood there for a second longer before I decided I would find out the connection Mathias had with the Time Rider myself. As I stood in the anteroom of the manor, I felt a slight breeze and noticed the displacement of space which is an indication of time travel. I stepped sideways slightly and backed into the wall. As the blue light reached its full concentration, I stepped forward making contact with it and was shifted into the flow of time. With my increased curiosity I decided to stay within the current time and observe what was happening.

The events within the manor had progressed to the point where my vision ended when I started to feel as if I was being watched. I slowly turned my head left and not even a foot from me stood the same young man from within the room. I was captivated by his face. I knew him from long ago. But his eyes, they were as black as night. This wasn’t the young man I had known, this was the time rider. I started to back away when he roughly grabbed by neck and threw me from the time stream. I looked back to see those see those eyes become malevolent as he slowly closed the rift and winked at me.

I stood up and tried to figure out where I was with no luck. Turning to walk away I was almost to the end of the alley when the blue pulse began and another rift opened in the same spot as earlier. I lifted myself off of the ground and quickly made my way back as the rider fell over and vomited. Steeling my resolve I pounced on him and by the time he was finally able to look up at me we were already over fifty thousand feet from the ground, and my threat had already been issued, “You will help me Time Rider or I will kill you.” After just a second he raised his eyebrows and uttered my name. I froze. There was no way. The time rider had no recognition of me, I saw only malice in those pools of darkness, but the pools of gray seemed as if they knew my every secret. As I had to keep leaning forward to see him, I finally noticed that he was falling and tried to bring my arms up to catch him. As he fell I called out Cronos as I began to descend to catch him. I was a touch away when all of my movement just stopped. I tried to scream for him, at least call to him, and when he looked up I thought he ha heard me somehow, until I saw the look on his face. The horrible ‘oh shit’ look he carried wrenched at my heart and I found myself apologizing to him for not being able to catch him. As he began to pick up more speed, I could feel myself begin to move again. I began to speed downward again even after I realized I could never reach Cronos in time. Damn!

- Chamber of the Council Of Nyes

“We told you we didn’t want to be disturbed.” ‘I think you’d want to hear this,’ Martin announced with unconcealed glee. “Speak, mortal but know that you are not welcomed here.” Taking a deep breath and steeling himself, Martin began to speak. ‘The Time Rider is ours now. Your beloved Totem of Power is dead. You have two days to submit to us, or we will eliminate you from this, as well as every timeline there ever was and ever will be.’ The twins who made up the council looked at each other for a brief second before they moved as two parts of a well oiled machine. Blurring so suddenly that Martin never knew they had moved until they were already upon him, when he finally attempted to get away the only movement his body could offer was to fall backwards away from his head which was held aloft by the young man. The female, looking sideways at her brother appeared to be in thought as she opened her mouth to ask, “Did you really have to kill him that fast Alex?” turning to look at her over his prize, his expression became gleeful as he answered, “Nope. But come on Erin, you have to admit it was still fun.”