His mother shrugs unapologetically. “I’ll tell you about it later. Anyways, shouldn’t you be at training? It’s a major offense to leave before your team is finished with awakening their Chains.”
“Yeah, we all finished today.” Nick says. He didn’t know how he expected his mother to react, but when she does, Nick feels a little taken aback at how calm she is.
“Good job honey.” She says as she pulls him in for a hug. She releases Nick and looks into her son’s eyes, eyes that probably remind her of her late husband. She grins. “Now let me make you your favorite snack and we can talk all about the past few days. Your side and mine.”
* * *
“So that’s pretty much all that happened so far.” Nick says as he wraps up his tale of his stay in the Pit. His mother sat there smiling the whole time, nodding and shaking her head at certain parts. Of course, Nick started from the beginning, when Valus of the Void targeted him for no apparent reason. He told her about his teammates, and about how cool Isaac was. He elaborated over Hector and Allison as well, explaining how both of them cast a huge shadow over Nick.
His mother shakes her head. “An Invert, huh?” She says in disbelief. “I can’t believe he’d be on your team. I mean, what are the chances? And then there’s Marcus’ daughter as well. I guess the Council must have a lot of faith in Isaac to watch over you guys.”
Nick nods in agreement. “He says he’s a part of something called the Midnight Order, so I guess he’s one of the strongest captains in the Pit. And he’s pretty cool too. In a way, he’s kind of like… ugh, nevermind.”
Nick’s mom rolls her eyes and laughs lightly. “In a way he’s kind of like the older brother you wish you had, right?”
Nick pouts his lips, his mother’s candor surprising him yet again. But he smiles nonetheless at her openness. “Yeah. I don’t think he’s just helping me because it’s his job. I feel like I can trust him, kind of like family.”
“What about the other two?” His mom asks. “Allison and Hector, right?”
Nick cocks his head, his mind running all over the place to find the best way to describe his teammates. “Hector is lazy and rude, so he pretty much reminds me of my friends from school. He’s funny, but I kind of feel bad for him. He’s got a lot of personal demons to deal with.”
“What about the girl? Is she pretty?”
Nick almost blushes at his mom’s sudden change in topic. “I mean, uh… yeah she’s pretty. But she’s too upperclass for me, being the daughter of a Council man after all. Even if she was into me, her dad could tear me apart if I did anything to make her upset.”
His mother laughs as she picks up her cup of tea. “Well, in any case, I’m glad you like it so much. I’m so proud of you for showing up Marcus Marxon- that guy needs a serious attitude adjustment. And Nick, I’m truly sorry for hiding this from you for so long. I just-”
“It’s fine mom.” Nick says, cutting her off. “I’m just glad that I have the power to do something now- to fight back against the Void. Or Creepers.” Nick smiles at the old slang term used for the Void. It felt so silly now, looking back at all the myths about ghosts and other paranormal things people came up with to describe the phenomenon that was the Void.
His mother smiles as well. “Your father would be proud if he found out you mastered your powers so quickly.”
It’s an unexpected comment. Hearing his mother speak about his father so freely made the boy feel uncomfortable. It’s been eight years since he lost his father, but Nick still wasn’t ready to talk about everything.
“More importantly,” His mother says, distracting him from his dark memories, “I can’t believe that you inherited my powers. Now it makes sense why Valus would want to target you. I was the one Walker who Valus couldn’t defeat.”
“I can see why.” Nick says flatly. “You were a Council member after all, it makes sense that you were super strong.”
“It goes beyond that, Nick. The history between Valus and me is deep. I never told you how your father and I met, but I guess now would be the perfect time to shed some light on the Void and everything else surrounding us.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve been holding secrets in ever since I left the Pit, Nick. I was never able to return to the Pit after you were conceived, so I had no way of informing the Council of all the things I learned. Valus is not your average Void. There is an entire history that the Walkers and the Inverts are completely unaware of, but the Void have knowledge on. Lydia Walker, founder of the Guard, and the powerful Invert Serena both discovered this history as well. But they were unable to relay the information before they died in their battle against the Queen of the Void. It was thanks to your father, Nick, that my eyes were opened to this unknown world around us.”
Nick shakes his head, he wasn’t quite keeping up with what his mother was talking about. “What do you mean? Dad was just a normal human, how could he know about any of the stuff that the Void know?”
“I wanted to tell you this sooner, but I didn’t want to mention it with Isaac standing there. Your father’s blood was similar to a normal humans, but his true origin lies with the-”
The vase sitting on the table suddenly flies off and shatters against the wall. Nick jumps out of his chair, and his mother looks around with worry in her eyes. The random vases and cups in the room start crashing to the ground. Shattered glass sprays towards Nick’s mother, but she dodges it with apparent ease. Before either of them can say a word, a body suddenly appears on top of the table. Nick jumps back, muscles tense and his pulse rising.
“You sure do like to run your mouth, Maria.” Valus of the Void says with spite evident in his voice. “This boy doesn’t need to hear any of the things you have to say. It wouldn’t be a very fun game for us to play if he found out all of the secrets to this world thanks to some woman who can’t keep her mouth shut.”
“You haven’t changed a bit.” Maria spits at the elite Void. “You still have that sadistic nature. This isn’t a game, Valus, this is something that Nick needs to know. You always complain about how the Walkers and Inverts don’t know everything about the Void, but you don’t actually want the truth to get out. Kind of a messy contradiction there, don’t you think?”
Nick’s instincts kick in, and a coating of frost appears on his hands as he begins to summon his energy forward. He launches an orb of energy at Valus, but the Void man effortlessly dodges it. Nick summons more orbs and launches them at Valus. He dodges each of them, and when one almost hits him in the face, he simply breaks it by touching it with his finger. The icy orb crumbles and falls apart into nothing.
“Your powers are still weak, but as I thought, you’ve inherited them from your mother.” Valus shakes his head, then disappears in a puff of purple smoke. Nick looks around, ready for the Void to try and sneak attack him.
“Nick!” His mother shouts out. He turns to see Valus holding his mother tightly by her arm. “Nick, Valus isn’t just the world’s strongest Void! His real strength is because of his-”
Her voice becomes muffled once Valus covers her mouth with his hand. “You just can’t keep any type of secret it seems. You’re going into timeout.” A sudden purple light appears in thin air and begins to spread wider and wider. Without warning, Valus pushes Nick’s mother into the light, and she disappears from sight. Nick shouts out and prepares to launch a volley of ice at Valus, but finds himself suddenly unable to focus. He looks into Valus’ green eyes and is suddenly instilled with an overwhelming sense of fear.
“Give her back!” He manages to say as his heartbeat rises. He didn’t know if it was from the anger he was feeling, or the panic that was washing over him. All he knew was that Valus had just taken his mother away.
“You’re lucky that I’m forbidden to kill you, or else your journey would end here. But I guess I can capture you and just hold you prisoner alongside your mother.”
Nick shivers as the man walks closer to him. He tries to summon
some energy, but it’s a wasted effort. There was no way that he could control his ice, let alone fight off Valus of the Void. He was paralyzed and he could only watch as Valus approached him from across the room.
“Help!” He screams. There should be a Walker somewhere, guarding the house from the Void. Amanda had said that they would send one to guard his mother. But where were they when there was a Void standing in his kitchen?
“No one is going to help you, boy.” Valus says, seemingly reading his mind. “That advisor lied to you- she never requested that someone be sent here to guard your precious little mother. Your life as a Walker is about to end here.” Valus reaches his hand out, and Nick feels the blood rush to his brain as he tries to think of a way out of the situation. As Valus’ hand draws close to his shoulder, he notices the one and only thing that could save him.
He looks up at the elite Void and shakes his head. “In your dreams.”
With the Void’s hand just about to grasp onto Nick’s shoulder, the young Walker does the only thing possible for him to get away and live to see another day.
He slips into Valus’ shadow.
* * *
Hector noticed Nick only a few seconds after he appeared from the young boy’s shadow.
“Nick! You picked just the right moment to come back.” The boy screams as Nick tries to get his bearings. They were outside, standing at the bottom of a long flight of stairs. After a few seconds Nick recognizes the place as the Guards HQ- the same place Valus practically declared war on the Walkers. And just like before, the place was packed. Though this time it seemed that even more people were there. Nick figured that everyone in the Guard must have been there at once.
“Hector, my mom just got taken away!” Nick shouts. The tension that he felt before was fading away, and he was able to focus again. “Valus took her!”
“What?” Hector says in disbelief. “You can fill us in on what happened in a minute, something big is happening right now. Follow me!”
Nick didn’t want to take his mind off of his mother, but after surveying the chaos around him, it was obvious that something big had happened in the Pit. He reluctantly follows Hector, who leads them to Allison and their captain. The group was stuck together once again.
“What’s going on?” Nick half shouts over the mass conversation surrounding him. Isaac doesn’t look at him as he responds.
“We’re not sure yet, but it’s something big. A group of captain level Walkers came back from a scouting mission on the Void. They were trying to figure out more about the Void’s plan to execute us.”
“Well how is that a bad thing?” Nick asks, somewhat annoyed at the seemingly pointless chaos around him. He had more important things on his mind than some stupid status report.
Hector sighs. “They came back on the brink of death. And to top it off, all four of them were decaying.”
Nick raises his eyebrows. “Decaying? Like a dead animal?”
Allison shakes her head. “No, it has to do with a sickness. We keep forgetting you don’t know all the fancy lingo here in the Pit. Decaying is when-”
Nick wonders why the girl suddenly stopped talking, but quickly notices that the entire crowd of Walkers has grown silent. He looks up, and sees that the three Council members were now standing on the top of the steps, their advisors behind them. Allison shoots him a glance that definitely reads: I’ll tell you later, doofus. Nick nods and turns his attention to the Council members. Janice walks forward.
“Thank you for gathering so quickly from all over. Those who have abandoned a mission to come here, do not feel guilty, for what we’re about to tell you is something that all one hundred thousand Guard members should hear.” She steps back to the very top step, and Council member Axus steps down. His face is grave and marked by sweat, which Nick found quite odd considering it was a cool day out.
“The Void are preparing to destroy us all in one swoop- the Walkers and the Inverts. They originally planned for June 25th, but our captains who have returned have told us that they’ve had a change of heart. Seven days from now, the Void plan on wiping us out of existence.”
Murmurs finally break the unified silence, and Nick feels the panic from everyone else amplify his own. He just finished his training and then watched his mother get taken away- what was he about to get into next? He couldn’t possibly keep up with any extra drama.
“How could they plan on doing that?” Someone near Nick shouts. “There are a hundred thousand of us- plus however many Inverts are crawling around. How do the Void think they’re going to wipe us both out in one day?”
The crowd murmurs in agreement, and Nick looks to see what Isaac thinks. The captain stands with a solemn expression on his face, but he keeps his mouth shut.
Axus clenches his fist and yells over the chatter of the Guard. “We didn’t believe it either.” The crowd almost immediately quiets down as soon as he speaks. When it’s quiet again, he returns to a normal voice loud enough for everyone to hear. “But the captains who have come back have figured out the bare bones of the Void’s plan. In seven days, the Void plan on destroying the barrier between the four worlds. We’re not entirely sure how, but they’re going to bring every last Walker and Invert to earth and somehow trap us there. By doing so, the sheer number of Void will be able to overpower the Walkers and Inverts outside of their home territory. And I know it seems impossible, but if they can truly trap us on earth… well, we all know how much weaker we get once in the human world.”
The crowd begins to panic, including Nick. Did the Void really have such a power? If what they’re saying was true, Nick suddenly had a lot on his plate. He feels a drop of sweat run down his face as Council member Marcus steps down. He looks at Axus, who grunts and steps back up. Once Marcus looks out at the crowd all of the Walkers draw silent once more.
“Don’t fear, Walkers. The situation may seem dire, but we have seven days to stop the Void. And this means that every single Guardian will be on a mission to help out. Thanks to the captains who returned, we know that whatever the Void are doing, they need to be in the human world to accomplish it. So, every one of the Guardians who have finished training will be deployed tomorrow to scout the earth and find the source of the Void’s plan. That’s the only thing that has us still worried. We know the gist of their plan, and when they’re doing it, but we don’t know how they plan on executing it. So your job now is to figure that out, and then counteract to foil the Void’s plans.”
Isaac finally speaks up, much to Nick surprise. “What about the Pit? Who will guard it with the Guardians are away?”
Marcus laughs and outstretches his hands. “Well, that should be obvious, Captain Isaac. Us three Council members will stay here to protect the Pit. After all, we’re the most powerful Walkers alive. As long as we’re on the front lines, the Pit will be safe.”
Slight cheers come from random Guardians all over. But Marcus holds his hand up, and they stop instantly. Marcus frowns. “The Pit will be safe, that’s for certain. But all of our efforts to protect it will be for nothing if you all cannot figure out how the Void plan on destroying us. Put all of your efforts into figuring out how to-”
Marcus stops talking when a sudden cloud of purple smoke appears halfway between the giant crowd of Walkers and the Council members themselves. With a purple flash, a young man is suddenly standing there. For a second, Nick mistakes the boy as Valus, but then notices that this person lacked the purple hair of the Void man. Though the purple smoke undeniably meant that this boy was from the Void. Nick feels a little bit of panic seep into him again, but quickly realizes that one Void couldn’t take on all of these Walkers. Marcus tilts his head and looks down at the young man.
The color from Hector’s face seems to drain. “Damon?” He asks. Nick stares at Hector and wonders why the boy seemed so familiar with the Void standing before them.
“Why do you dare to interrupt a meeting of the Guard?” Marcus asks. “Are you stupid? Or maybe you just have a death
wish?”
The boy looks at the Council and doesn’t seem to show a single sign of nervousness in the face of the three most powerful Walkers. “You don’t need to worry about finding out the Void’s plan anymore. I’ve come to tell you their plan in it’s entirety.”
Silence hangs in the air for a second. Axus shouts as he walks down a few stairs.“What do you mean? Why should we believe what you say instead of just killing you where you stand?”
“Stand down you two.” Janice orders. “We should listen to what this man has to say. After all, Valus came specifically to retrieve him. It would be wise to hear his words. And then, I’ll determine if we can trust what he has to say.”
The Council members exchange looks. Marcus sighs. “Fine.” He looks out over the crowd of Walkers. “All of you are dismissed for now. Rest up today, because you’ll all get your mission briefs early tomorrow morning. We need our Walkers as rested as possible for the mission ahead.” He looks down at the Void on the stairs. “Come with us, boy.”
“And also, Captain Isaac,” Axus adds, “Bring your team as well. There are some things we need to resolve with Hector.”
Isaac nods and looks back at the young Walkers. Nick snaps out of his daze caused by the random Void appearing, and begins to follow Isaac as he makes his way through the crowd. Allison and Hector walk behind him. The Walkers all around Nick begin disappearing, jumping into each other's shadows to go home and rest. Not a single one defies Marcus’ order, even with one of the Void standing right before them. There were so many Walkers, and yet the entire group was in danger of being massacred in just a week’s time. Nick didn’t know what the Void were planning, or if he could even trust the one standing in front of him. The only thing he knew was that his mother was being held captive by Valus.
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