Pieces shattered and the nexus was born. Before long the Olethros attempted the same thing the Lethe did. Breaking the barrier between worlds and tearing a hole in time and space. I could see it all. I could see galaxies colliding together, the universe as it grew colder and colder even as we ran through the immer from one to the other. All of it from this moment to the end. I was a part of it. I could feel my mind sucked inside the Olethros. I felt it as if it was my own body. It had descended from human and this meant I could see through its eyes. I wasn’t just seeing through its eyes though I was in my own body my own mind witnessing my future every single moment all at once. Balkava had used me. In the heart of her empire she and I. I was just as much a part of the Olethros as she. She had made me immortal.
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Beginnings and endings are nothing more then inventions. They are a timeline a set of rules made to follow. Rules are meant to be broken. Past tense, present, future collide where am I now sailing through time. Every moment is behind us before us and every moment belongs to us. We are bleeding, have bled, and we will bleed. We are living, have lived, and will live and then we will be dead, will become dead, will have been dead. An endless cycle made from adjectives, nouns, verbs, are you all set to pronounce all of them? Will you suffer? Are you suffering? Did you suffer? Are you broke, broken, or breaking? Are you blind? Have you gone blind, going blind the only thing that matters is you will see, saw but are you seeing? It’s all about context, flow, exposition, action, and the events that happen, are happening, and will happen. The journey may not be the same every time but the result is always the same. The writings of a madman become the illustrations of a genius. Shit becomes Art. Art becomes shit and all the way back around. What is aesthetic today becomes hideous tomorrow and vice versa. The middle is nothing more then filler and the filler turns into the end. Another reality lost the war and right to exist. What gives you the right? You have no right to judge. I sit before the throne of the real before the throne of the new the old the present Gods and to each and every one of them I scream. Shards of everything splintered in veins can you feel it sense it don’t you like it? I could hear my own voice screaming in pain. It’s always been their waiting, setting, burning for the right time.
There is never anything one man can do to make a difference. It takes a movement of brothers and sisters and family. You can bend this however far you want but in the end you know I’m right. I have gazed into the hell that is time and seen as far as I want to. It begins with the hand of God a flash of light a malevolent scream of energy twisting and forming into various shapes. Then something else, a being of energy of darkness of nothing with no shape and no name only a cold stare. It is the voice you run from and the terror you fear. Drifting all around you its always suffocating till the very ends when you disappear and fade away only your name will be remembered for a few hundred years. Its all in the cold, the darkness when the stars burn out and the universe decides it has had enough running enough moving spiraling outward in every direction. This is when you come back into existence and back into reality. It was something you knew would happen. You have had all of infinity to wait. The voice in your head screams this has happened before and something deep inside of you is crying begging you to just wake up.
There are so many paths many worlds why should we choose just one. If I had never killed Narville would the Olethros be him instead of Balkava? So many of you there are to choose from so many lives to see and for a moment it is so easy for you or I to remember them all each and every thread of time the bubble the wave that makes up your every form, past, present, future. There are so many worlds. Various universes strung together by the silver lining we call the immer. We have always known this the alchemists, Witch doctors, shamans, priests, monks, oracles, and seers. Each and every one devoted to the ether. Each and every world tethered together a hologram shouted from a 2-D project. Quantum mechanics, string theories, heaven and hell, all painted across a canvas. The maximum entropy in any region becomes squared. There is nothing to do anymore but stare - Life itself it just a paradox with very uneasy questions and no answers. Yet so many of us are unready to see the world the way it is. It is the burning in the atmosphere around us so many inert ignorant blind and hopelessly dependent on that which they have known since birth. This is what allows one man or woman control - the rise of empires from the will of the system and those ready to die to protect it. This was why Balkava was able to gain control. This is the cost of power.
Each and every path lay out before me. The rise and fall of man, the imperium, the dominion, the peacekeepers, the sons of sol, the Romans, the court of the slain and the courts of the living. I can feel each and every one of them now passing judgment on me. I am Sev, the destroyer, the murderer, the conqueror, the weakling, the martyr. I am the harbinger and the vessel for which the universe itself will right its wrongs but I am nothing short of being a man. Every move I make I see the future change before me so many paths and misdirections.
Our universe restricted to nothing but a single brane of a higher dimension. Yet we are still so beautiful. Each and every one of us and every life we could have, should have, and
are living. We are all so unique from our face to our hair down to the tiniest atom in our body. The terra of Earth, the first modified for space, the humans that genetically engineered their bodies and passed those traits down all the way to me. Even the cyborgs with their tainted minds and bio- cells realigned by mathematics and quantum configurations. Each of us see, feels, smells, and touches differently. For some things can be unbearable they can be too much, the cold from a piece of ice that burns one hand and barely numbs another. The way our hearts beat at different beats yet they align when we hold onto the ones that we love. We are such beautiful monsters. We keep going through all this trouble to survive and for what? The warmth of someone we love. I could feel Hera in my arms again if just for a fleeting moment. If I had the power to stop time I would have only time nothing but a word is infinite, immeasurable and continuous. The shards have showed me the threads, the tethers; it has shown hundreds each and every grain of sand, leaf on a tree, and piece of dirt. We are all made from the world around us created from the clay. All that is left now is to kill that one person. The right person, the person that will solve so many problems, the one responsible for so much blood. I’ve been tortured and used all my life as tool, no more.
“NO MORE”.
SEVER I reach out across the darkness and wrap my hands around Balkava’s throat. My vision returns to me. Time slows to a crawl. I ignore the pain from my wound as I lift my head and stare at my former mentor, my former lover, my former friend. I can see the look in her eyes as tears fall down her cheek. For a moment I feel the urge to pull away to grab hold of her and cry. She is not just looking at me. I can see she is looking at her own reflection in my eyes. I can see the shock and horror, the surprise in her as my grip around her neck tightens. I feel her struggle to tear away at my flesh with the Lethe sword but I caught her by surprise and her hands are empty, she is defenseless. There are many worlds, many directions we can travel eventually the human race will die out or become something akin to the Olethros but not today. That path doesn’t begin today. I don’t blink. I don’t look away. I never let my eyes leave her gaze. I will be the last thing she looks at in this world. There is no speech and I give her no other reason then my own defense. I am a predator, an animal and she is my kill. My hand tightens more. The two of us are locked away together in this moment in time forever; an instant that lasts an eternity. She lets go and I watch as she takes her last breath. The cold air turns to vapor and dissipates around her. The life leaves her eyes. I feel her grow lighter as her soul has become severed from her body.
I am Sev the God-killer. I let her neck go and she falls to the ground. All around me I can see her deathsquad pointing their rifles and ready to slay me with their swords. None of them move. Each of them could have killed me the moment I put my hand on her. W
ere they afraid? Several of them take a knee throwing their rifles to the ground and bowing. They live to serve a master, none of them born with any aspirations of their own taught only to obey. We are animals no better then a pack of wolves. I have shown in front of a crowd that I am alpha. I am king of the monsters.
It takes a moment but I finally take it all in and realize I’m still not dead. They lower their weapons and I can see many of the faces that were once full of fear are now smiling or have a look of content about them. My wound stopped bleeding. To my side I can see Aira sitting in her chains smiling. Cree is crying and Talon looks like he has seen a ghost. I get it now. Balkava stabbed me in just the right spot. When Aira had saved my life… ‘The connective tissue would regenerate - - reseeded with my own cells.’ The ghost organ I had inside me had began regenerating the moment Balkava twisted her sword. It kept me alive long enough to kill her and even now it was regenerating continuing to keep me alive.
I stood there for several minutes on my knees before falling down and setting myself up against the throne. I could feel several small pieces of bone pierce my skin from where I had leaned. I cursed still holding my side and staring at the trail of blood I was leaving behind. I needed to catch my breath. Aira was already standing over me yelling at the guard to grab a med kit so she could patch me up. It was Talon that grabbed the supplies she needed. Barely a minute passed. Aira began wrapping my wound, it had already stopped bleeding but the cut itself was still open enough to worry about infection. She treated me like a mother would their child. She treated me as if I was the most important person in the world. She looked just like she did when we were children. She looked at me and smiled saying she couldn’t believe what happened and confirmed to me what I already thought was true about the ghost organ.
With the death of Balkava no one was afraid anymore. We were free. One of the deathsquad approached us and bowed to his knee. All around us the others were taking a knee as well. It was as if I had become their king. “The Cyphers are at your command,” he said. He was obviously the one in charge. He wore the same black attire the rest of them had on except his helmet had two jagged ends that extended from the side like the wings of a bird or space fighter. Killing Balkava had put me in charge. My first order was a simple one. I asked them all to retire and lock themselves in their quarters until I could send for them.
Only a few minutes had passed since I held Balkava’s neck in my hands. I could still feel the warmth from her body now lifeless and cold. The moment after Aira had sealed my wound I climbed reaching for Hera on the cross. It was Aira and Talon that ended up doing the climbing for me. Gently they unstrapped her lifting her body and carrying in unison to the ground and placing her in my arms. She still had several wires connected to the back of her neck and spine. Her eyes were wide open and her pupils were large and black while red veins that wanted badly to burst swallowed the white in her eyes. Her skin was paler then I remembered. It had been so long since I held her in my arms. The last time we saw each other we were healthy, fit, the best each other could offer before the fight with the Skrav and landing on this world so many of our past wounds had healed. Now we were broken, our bodies weak, our health poor, our minds and emotions scattered both our lives had become so full of death and sadness. All of this because of Balkava; why did she have to think power was the only way she could gain control, forcing others to do what she wanted, she never once thought about asking, she never once thought about working with the rest of us, she never once thought about us being a team. Not even her Cyphers mourned her death.
“What did they do to her?” I asked the Cypher leader. “Balkava had us hook her directly into the nexus we acquired from the Aelita. We split it using a Skrav sword recovered and injected her with several shards. She is the eyes and voice, the seer of worlds,” he then looked down to the ground as if he was mourning for his part in all of it wishing he had chosen his words more carefully. Cyphers were less than human; so much of their moral compass had been augmented and taken from them as they were enhanced to serve Balkava and the elders before her hidden away inside the depths of the Erebus. They were a more a subspecies now like the caretakers but they were still sentient enough to know right from wrong. Like so many humans that blindly follow they followed never stopping to think about the future only believing what they were doing was for a greater good. None of them shot at me when I killed Balkava because in that instant that small slither of time they each had the same epiphany and through the small bit of human will they had left they each gave themselves the order to stand down.
I began carrying Hera to the medical bay. If we could get there Aira and Cree could synthesize the protein in my blood. My blood was the key. I could save her. It was our only chance to bring her back to reality and away from the visions she must have been having. We were several decks away. My adrenaline gave me more then enough strength to carry her but it still felt like we were running for an eternity. The holes in her skin were we had to pull the wires were bleeding. This was my responsibility and no one else’s. Balkava wanted to turn her into me. All I could think about was saving her. Talon, Cree, and Aira were following close behind me. Weakened from the crash the Erebus was still a mess, hallways were lined with broken pillars, walls crumbled into living quarters and the internal structure of the entire ship was twisted as pieces of wire bled from the ceiling above. We could see the sliding doors to the medical bay when the ground collapsed beneath our feet.
Hera fell from my arms. I felt like I was floating in space. In my mind I could see the stars surround me in every direction, the Erebus in her prime flying away from me as I float holding nothing more then a rifle wearing only a small space suit my oxygen leaking from my air tank. I felt like I floated there for hours until the two massive ion engines were nothing more then a blur until the entire Erebus disappeared. We all hit the ground at about the same time. I heard bones break as Aira, Cree, and Talon fell unconscious. Hera lay in front of me her eyes still open staring into nothing. She looked like a doll. I prayed we wouldn’t be too late. Aside from the empty blank stare she seemed fine completely unaffected by the fall.
It was a thirty foot drop. We landed inside one of the Erebus’s smaller hangers. The only light seemed to come from the hole we fell through and an opening that led outside in the snow about a hundred yards away but there in the dark I could see several eyes peering at me. Had I stared so long into the abyss? No. From the darkness came a creature I now had the pleasure of encountering several times it was another wild hellbeast. I could see the small specks of dust and blue snow floating around the room. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. I had no weapon, no rifle. It slowly crawled on its legs towards us. I looked around and picked up a long piece of debris that was shaped like the handle of a scythe. It was broken torn and sharp at one of it’s edges, the edge that I pointed towards the creature as we looked at each other moving in a circle around the room. I was protecting my friends, my family, protecting the few I had left. I had survived so much beginning with the drowning of Dom and the Seraphim leviathan on Errikus, training on Erebus, the antliods, the Skrav, the Tesh- kar, the wilds of Eden-3, joined the resistance and even slayed the two mortal Gods: Narville and Balkava. Everything had led me to this moment I was now face to face with the beast that haunted my childhood, the creature I had been brought up to fear.
Once upon a time on Earth brave warriors would walk willingly into the wild to test their skill against boars, bears, lions, and wolves. I was no different now. I could see my breath in the air, feel the sweat fall from my forehead and freeze before it touched the ground. The tingling in my arms turned from a small discomfort into a sharp shooting pain and then my body fell numb and I was threw myself through the air holding the piece of rubble like a spear and placing it inside the heart of the monster. I hung there for several seconds before letting go and falling to the ground. The creature fell to the ground dead. Moments later I managed to wake Aira and together we carried Hera and T
alon through several corridors checking each step for weaknesses. Finally we made it to the medical bay and I placed Hera down on the table. Aira searched the ground finding a syringe and taking my blood and placing it inside the metabolic chamber that would separate my cells and the artificial protein. Hera would be saved.
Aira used some ammonium carbonate mixed with a perfume to wake Talon. The two of them were trained in field medicine and together they began to treat all of our wounds. Hours passed before they gave her the protein injection. I began counting the minutes till I could hear her voice again. I watched her eyes from the side of her bed as they became less dilated and slowly the red began to fade away. The protein was working. Hera would be just like I was now. Visions would come and go but they could be controlled.
She opened her eyes and screamed. Her eyes, face, her body was tense and terrified. She began to mumble her mouth unable to form words. She looked like a scared child. The closer any of us came to her the more frightened she became.
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Through the darkness he stumbled to catch his grip, he tripped and fell... down a rabbit hole, but when he reached the bottom it wasn't a magical world. More darkness shutting out the light. There were no magical creatures, no kings no queens, no mad hatter and no tea parties. The scent of smoke and cold clutched the air, filling his lungs, choking him with fear. Blind and senses dulled he gathered himself together and stood up. He felt his arms and legs binded to the ground... chains that held him down. The sound of the jabberwocky hissing filled his ears. Trembling in fear he began to cry. There was nobody around, nobody to even watch him die. Alone with the jabberwocky he kneeled muscles tense, the water ran down his eyes and flooded the room.
Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) Page 34