by M C Ashley
“Well that’s what happens when society dilutes the meaning of a word—it starts to lose its truth to those who use it.”
“Are we seriously discussing linguistics?”
“Sorry. I get sidetracked easily. This even though my brain works at a rate akin to a hundred times faster than your own.”
“I don’t follow.”
“You don’t need to. You need to do.”
“Oh lovely. Got any other ice cream koans you want to offer me?”
Nathan smirked. “Ah, TV Tropes. Finally, someone who understands me. Even if a spring is never discovered it still continues to flow.”
“Now you’re just plagiarizing.”
“How could I plagiarize myself?”
“Wait. You were Gen Fudo?”
“Is that so unlikely?”
“Well it’s—Can you not stay on task?” I watched him suppress a giggle. “Oh, you are just enjoying this, aren’t you? You’re a monster.”
“Actually, I’m a Leo.”
And then I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. This whole thing was so ridiculous. Instead of doing what we were supposed to we were just talking about nothing.
Nathan smiled warmly. “Good, I needed to know if you could still laugh. A man who cannot laugh is closer to death than he knows.”
I composed myself. “Oh no, not you too,” I said.
“I call it like I see it, son.”
“I’m not your son.”
“Not biologically anyways, but I reserve the right to call anyone younger than me as such, because I’ve lived long enough and cared long enough to be entitled to do so.”
“This is fun and everything, Nathan, but can I ask what the point of all this is?”
“Because I need a favor.”
I flinched. “What?”
“I said that I needed a favor.”
“That…was not what I was expecting.”
“Yeah, imagine my surprise when I was told that I needed to depend on you for this job,” Nathan said, waving his hand in the air. “Typically, I do this myself, but for some reason I can’t this time around, so I’m depending on you to get it done for me.”
“And why would that be?” I asked.
“No clue. I don’t claim to know the Almighty’s mind and neither should you.”
“Fair enough.”
“Although I do suspect it’ll be because you two are supposed to be working together in the other plans I have for you.”
“Wait what?”
“Oh yes, I haven’t explained that part yet. Ahem.”
I closed my eyes. Atanasio greeted me again, but this time his hand was near mine, beckoning me forward. His skin was molting, as an odd purple light emitted from his broken skin.
“MAGNUS BLAKE MACBETH AZAREL, SENTINEL OF THE GREY FORUM, I HAVE NEED OF THEE!”
I covered my ears and yelped in pain. “Ouch!” I cried out. “What the hell is the matter with you?”
Nathan threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, that never gets old.”
“YOU FREAKING PSYCOPATH! WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU!”
“Oh nothing, just the possibility that I could lose a connection to one of the many conduits of power I have.”
I paused, too confused to debate yelling again.
“You see, Blake,” he said, “I’ve got a job much more important than you could possibly imagine. I am empowered by God, but He’s chosen to empower me through some less than orthodox ways.”
Nathan inflated his right cheek with his tongue. It took me a while to register the fact that this was his way of thinking things through.
“Are you familiar with the concept of alternate realities?” Nathan asked.
“Yes,” I said. “They run parallel to the one we’re in, and the possibilities of what they contain and what their spatial rules are is endless.”
“Precisely. What if I told you that I was not from this world, but a part of me is?”
“I’d wonder when you were going to admit that you dropped out of college because you flunked your eastern religions course.”
Nathan smiled. “I come from a world like this, but much different. There is no Gray Forum, no invocation, and no vampires.”
I flinched. What kind of a world would that be? Mundanes living in bliss because the creatures of the night weren’t real? Amazing.
“Although we had our own problems, which soon forced me to take command of my destiny. My job is to protect creation, much like you, but on a larger scale. I have the ability to cross over into other realities and fix what I can based on what God tells me to do.”
“But there’s something here in this reality that empowers you,” I said. “And without it, you lose power.”
“Quite the logical leap there and also correct. These empowering objects help me connect to the fabric of every reality I visit, offering me their strength so I can use my abilities.”
“But what are these objects? What would you be able to connect to that helps you use your abilities?”
“Myself.”
“I don’t follow.”
“It’s crazy, but I need me to work.”
I shook my head. “Me simple man. No understand faux philosophic words.”
Nathan nodded. “I am being needlessly esoteric. Okay. Here’s the lowdown: The ‘objects’ I derive my abilities from are me, but not me-me, but the mes from realities across the omniverse, which contains all realities. There are two multiverses, each of which contain unique types of realities. Yours is in the first multiverse, while mine is in the second. There are differences, but I’m not gonna bore you with the details. We don’t have time for that.”
“Yet we have time to talk about nothing for thirty minutes straight,” I muttered.
“Point taken. Now, I tap into the powers that mes in alternate realities intuitively take in from every single moment they’re alive. If one of them were to die an unnatural death, then my overall power is diminished, especially in their native reality. That’s why I need to make some investments every now and then for certain people to be safe.”
“So there’s an alternate you in my world and you need me to protect him,” I said.
“Oh, you’re good at this. Yeah, in a nutshell.”
“And why should I do this?”
“Because you don’t turn down people in need, even those who could do it better by themselves.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“Because He told me not to. Obviously, He has better things in mind.”
“So it always seems.”
“Also,” Nathan went on, “it’ll be the first step in a much larger plan that will lead to you figuring out more about what happened to you.”
My ears perked up. “Then you know what happened to me? Why I lost my memories?”
“Yes.”
“But I’m guessing you won’t tell me now.”
“For a worthy cause. You don’t know the price of your memories just yet.”
“Were you the one who took my memories away?”
“Yes and no.”
“For reasons that’ll ultimately benefit me?”
“Yes, but that’s one of many reasons for why it had to happen.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me?”
“No, now is not the time, but I give you my Word that I will tell you the truth when the time is right.”
I sighed. “Fine, I’m your man.”
“Good, because he’s been captured by the Horde.”
“Come again?”
Nathan’s face stiffened. “I told him to leave his home on the outskirts of the Free-Zone to come find you and in the process, he got caught by a Horde caravan, one that was heading to Vice City with tributes.”
“Tributes?”
“Sacrifices for the Feast.”
I gasped.
“Precisely,” Nathan said. “The Horde is offering slaves from the nations under their control to placate the Sanguine Collective. They have an embassy i
n what you would recognize as having been Biloxi, Mississippi, from which they travel to various cities in the Sanguine Collective to deliver these tributes. Your Nathan lived in a small town very close to Biloxi, but before he could leave his home, they found him and captured him, not knowing what he was, but intending him to be used for the Feast.”
“How far away is Nathan—I mean my Nathan—I mean this reality’s version of you—I mean—”
“—to remove confusion, refer to me as Nathan-Prime and him as Nathan.”
“Thanks, that makes more sense, if not a bit egocentric.”
“It’s a character flaw. But to answer your question you didn’t finish, he’s almost in Vice City. Here…” Nathan reached over to me and touched my head “…I’m feeding you Nathan’s location. Follow the instructions you’ll intuitively know, and you’ll find him no problem.”
I shook my head, allowing the information to process in my head. Whoever Nathan really was, he was beyond anything I had ever experienced. No one from my world could have matched him in power or ability. A part of me was even glad that he was forbidden from entering my world.
“I want to do this, Nathan-Prime, but I—” I started to say, but stopped. “Zea’s right, though. I’m outgunned, facing an enemy I can’t beat.”
“It’s rough, I know,” Nathan-Prime said, “but I wouldn’t ask this of you if I didn’t think you could do it. You don’t know this, but I have reason to trust you, even though some would say I have no business trusting you. You weren’t my first choice for the job, but when I was shown the error of my ways, I repented.” He offered his hand. “You can do it.”
“But I’m not strong enough to fight these people alone. If the whole Gray Forum couldn’t do it…if my family—my friends couldn’t…”
“So? Be better than what you are. Use every ally you have. Embolden them to seek out truth, and they will follow you into the fiery pits of Hell to do what must be done to save this world. Although there are other ways of doing this…”
I closed my eyes, feeling weary for a moment. The instant I saw total darkness I found Atanasio grinning at me, as he waved his hands towards himself. The canyon had returned, still with no discernable bottom, but this time Atanasio levitated above it. I felt him sending a message to me. If I could just learn how to fly, I would never touch the bottom. I would never die.
I could see my family again.
But there was something wrong with him. A closer inspection of his skin revealed that it was necrotizing. He wasn’t like the others. They were perfect in beauty; there was no hint of death upon them. Why was he different?
“…but then of course there’s always a transference invocation,” Nathan said, drawing me back to reality. “Now those are really something else. Do you understand?”
Yes” I said, taking his hand.
Nathan gazed at me for a moment, lifted me up to my feet, and then shrugged to himself. “You hide yourself worse than you think,” he said, in a polite, fatherly tone. “You need to confront the way you feel, or you’ll end up worse off for it.”
“I—” I said, but he held up a hand.
“You don’t need to explain yourself to me, Blake. You’ll figure it out when the time is right. Are you ready?”
“As best as can be expected, I guess.”
“I’ll take it. Now it’s time to wake up.”
My consciousness faded. The dream world Nathan-Prime had constructed blurred away. Before I finally left, though, he raised a hand to wave and spoke once more.
“Oh, and Blake, you won’t be alone in this fight. One who has yet to reveal himself will come to your aid, whether you like it or not.”
3
I woke up to find Zea hovering over me, checking my bandages. I jumped up and accidentally knocked her into the floor. To her credit, she recovered quickly, moving faster than I expected, and stood beside my bed, her lips pursed.
“Sorry,” I said. “Had a rough dream.”
“I know,” she said. “I felt some of it. Sorry for intruding.”
“It’s okay. Mara explained your abilities to me. I know it’s difficult for you to not feel what I feel. Thank you.”
Zea smiled. I smiled. I couldn’t help it. It’s hard to explain, so go ahead and call me a sap, because she had a pretty smile.
“Wait—how did you get in here?” I asked. “The door has a password. Oh, wait a minute. You had to yell the password, didn’t you?”
Zea shook her head, but then nodded. “It was stupid,” she said.
I repressed my need to laugh.
“Although it must have served some purpose at one point in time,” Zea said. “I have to admit it’s an unconventional way to maintain security. Then again, the more that I’ve read up on you, the more I find out that your whole career was unconventional.”
“You spied on my life?” I asked. “We’ve known each other for less than a day!”
“It has been two days since you fell asleep,” Zea said without a sense of mischief.
“What?”
“It has been two days since you fell asleep.”
“Yeah, I got that part. The part I don’t get is why.”
“Then you should have asked ‘Why?’ instead of ‘What?’, Sentinel Azarel.”
“All right, sister, I do the comedy bit around here.”
“Says who?”
“Says me, because I’m in charge.”
Zea grimaced. “And why would that be?”
I flinched. Nobody had ever asked me that before.
“Because I…am?” I asked.
Zea let out a short sound that could’ve been mistaken for a chuckle. “Well, are you or are you not? Make up your mind.”
What is wrong with this woman? I asked myself.
“I am, because I am,” I said. “I’ve always overseen my life. I led my group ever since I first enrolled here and kept doing so since then.”
“Fine, if you insist,” Zea said. “Your wounds have healed. The reason you were out for so long is because your body shut itself down to heal your wounds. Also, it seems you intuitively do this to avoid leeching power from your surroundings.”
I nodded. It was an old technique my mother had taught me to help control my power. If I wasn’t careful, my unconscious mind could collect energy from around me while I slept and cause me to overload from the power I took in.
“It helps protect others from my inability to control myself,” I said.
“Fascinating,” she said, nodding. “Once you recover from this, would you be willing to teach me?”
I paused. “I can’t.”
“And why not?” Zea asked, taken aback.
“Because I need to leave now.”
I stood up and cracked my neck. Looking to my right, I found my clothes, which someone had folded onto a nearby chair, and started to change into them.
“What?” Zea asked.
“‘Because I need to leave now,’” I quoted, smirking.
She growled. “Why?”
“Because the man who talks to me in my head told me to,” I deadpanned.
“You’re insane.”
“It’s a gift.”
“You can’t leave—your body’s still recuperating. Granted you’ve healed faster than you should have, but that doesn’t mean you should do whatever you feel like the moment you wake up.”
“Someone’s life is at stake,” I said, looking into her eyes.
Zea stiffened, feeling my sincerity. “Someone’s life is always at stake,” she said. “You are not responsible for every human being on this planet.”
“If I’m not, then I should be. Listen, I got your point earlier. I’m facing an enemy that won’t back down, but I need to do this. More than our world is in trouble right now.”
“I don’t follow.”
“The man I talked to in my dreams is Nathan, yes, the same one that started the Gray Forum. Long story short, he needs my help to save an alternate reality version of him and I know wh
ere to go.”
“And how do you know that?”
“He touched my head and now I know where to go.”
Zea furrowed an eyebrow. “Then I have to apologize,” she said.
I flinched. “Why?”
“Because obviously I hit you harder than I thought if these are the dreams you’re having.”
“Very funny,” I said, frowning. “But I need to go.” I placed my fedora on top of my head. “I’ll be back and hopefully with a friend, maybe two if Nathan’s right.”
I walked over to the door and found Zea blocking it. Her stance wasn’t hostile, but I could was agitated.
“How do you propose doing this?” she asked.
“Well.”
Zea clenched a fist, but I saw her lips try to stifle a laugh.
“Listen, Zea, I have to do this,” I said. “I’m coming back. I’m an adult. You can’t force me to stay here. Besides, we’ve established that I’m in charge anyways.”
Zea sighed. “I’m not convinced,” she said, stepping out of the way. “But I won’t stop you. It—It took a lot out of me to stop you the first time. I don’t want to have to deal with that again.” She looked me in the eyes. “Please don’t get yourself killed.”
I smirked. “No way, sweetheart.”
Zea opened the door and walked out, as I followed suit. I nodded at her and then started down the hallway, ready to leave the Fortress and save someone I kind of already knew.
Chapter 10
Have you ever asked yourself why you’re willingly listening to the voice in your head when it tells you to attack a caravan of vampires that could easily kill and eat you?
I have and I was wondering if it was too late to plead insanity.
I had exited the Vice City sewers after walking for about an hour, fearing that if I tried a teleportation invocation too close to the city limits it would be discovered and give away Mara and Zea’s position. Then I had walked for about a mile, seeking refuge in what used to be Surfside Park. Providentially, it seemed like this side of the city had been abandoned in favor of the town’s center. I’d detected no human or vampiric life near me.
Then I had constructed a teleportation invocation, marking the lines carefully onto the sand. For people like me who had almost no skill in teleportation, it was of the utmost importance that we paid close attention to detail whenever we marked off our circles. The slightest mishap could cause us to end up with half our leg inside a building, or to end up several hundred feet underwater, or any number of horrible things. Only the teleporter knew where they were going, which prevented people from following us and using our circles for their own ends. Teleportation was one of the hardest schools of invocation to learn, and no prospective Sentinel or Psionic in training could practice without the presence of a senior official of the Gray Forum with them, due to the danger involved.
