There had to be another metaphor for the silence that met Henry other than being able to hear a pin drop. He hated that phrase. He could pick a single leaf on an oak tree and figure out which part of the sounds of the wind moving between the branches were caused by that one leaf. It didn’t grasp the scale of hearing a being with power was capable of.
The quiet that faced him now was far more mundane. The silence of people too flabbergasted to speak. Surprisingly, it only lasted for a couple of seconds before it was broken. By his father, of all people.
“Is this for a story you’re writing?” Roger asked.
Henry shook his head. “No, I’m very serious.”
“What’s it like to go crazy?” his sister asked, smirking.
The look in his eyes when he locked his gaze on hers drove the sarcastic grin from her face. “Madness is the last vestige of protection a tortured mind has against pain.”
The silence rushed back in to fill the void left behind after Henry’s statement. This time it was his mother who broke it. “So, like that one show from the eighties? You know, where the guy goes back in his own lifetime to fix the past? I used to have such a crush on him.”
He couldn’t say he knew the show she was talking about, but it sounded close enough to count for this purpose. “Yes, like that,” he replied, “I’m in my past self.” Although it didn’t show on his face, he was relieved at least one of his family members believed him.
“What am I like in the future?” His sister was now leaning forward from her position on the couch. The smile was back but it was less sarcastic and contained just a hint of excitement.
“Dead,” Henry replied bluntly, “You are all dead.”
That declaration went over far worse than he was expecting. Roger stood with a frown, crossing his arms. Henry was sure this would have been intimidating to him when he was young. Back then his father had been the seldom-needed disciplinarian of the house, whenever things escalated past what his mother was capable of or (more commonly) willing to deal with. Wait until your Father gets home was a phrase he’d heard more than once.
“That was rude,” he asserted firmly, “We’re trying to listen to what you’re saying with...whatever this is, but you shouldn’t say something like that. Apologize to your sister.”
Henry’s confusion was encompassing. Did he word it wrong? Why was he supposed to ask for forgiveness? He was trying to impress on them just how serious this situation was. There were few things more important than impending death. Earth wasn’t safe enough for them not to know that.
“I won’t,” he rebuffed. This wasn’t working. He needed to switch to a more placating tone, “I’m here to stop it. To save everyone. You need to understand-”
His mother stood next to her husband. When Henry saw her expression he felt the muscles in his shoulders tense up. She looked apprehensive.
“Is this some kind of rebellion thing?” she asked, “Is there something we didn’t listen to you about? Is that why you dyed your hair and came up with this future thing?”
Her earlier question had made it seem like she believed him. The hard reality was that his mother was simply trying to humor her son in a situation she didn’t understand. A full moment passed as he struggled to push back the flash of anger this realization inspired in him.
This wasn’t going how he imagined. Henry knew the ludicrous nature of what he was saying would make it harder to accept for anyone who hadn’t lived through it, however he believed that those closest to him would be more willing to accede to his words on the bonds of familial trust.
He sighed as he ran a hand through his hair, “This isn’t a rebellion or a joke,” he shot a glance to his sister, “Or me going crazy. I am from the future. The world you know will end in my second year of high school. I am here to save as many people as I can. The sooner we can start the better off we’ll be.”
This is why I never had any students, he thought. His parents were trying to say something else but he started to tune them out. Something more interesting was happening with his sister.
While their parents had been talking Liz remained quiet with a look of concentration. She seemed like the one who was giving what he was saying the most thought. Surprising, but also not. Her grades were always good and she possessed an inquisitive nature. Hopefully she would connect some dots that their parents weren’t and start asking some real questions.
“How does the world end?” He wanted to smile but doing so would probably undermine the seriousness of the situation.
“Finally,” he put extra emphasis on that word instead, “Someone’s asking the right questions.” He stood a bit straighter and gestured all around the room with both hands.
“There is a form of energy present in all things. The air, the rocks, the trees, the animals. For a long, long time the amount of this energy has been slowly increasing. Reaching a level it hasn’t been in recorded history. Once this buildup reaches a breaking point it will cause the manifestation of...openings, portals all over the world.”
“These portals will connect to other worlds in this and other dimensions where that energy reached the breaking point millennia before we did. The natives of these worlds have adapted to using this energy. Their bodies have been changed by it.”
No one interjected with a quippy comment or inane question. Internally he smiled. Finally he had the sort of audience he was expecting.
“This energy has many names, some of which you’ll recognize. Qi, mana, prana, pah, magic, stuff like that. I usually call it qi or just energy. I don’t know where it comes from and don’t really get how it works so don’t ask. The important thing is that it exists and it’s effects are unimaginable.”
His sister raised a hand. He gestured a negative to her. “Let me finish this real quick, then we’ll go back to questions.”
Somewhere along the line his parents had retaken their seats. Henry froze momentarily as he tried to regain his train of thoughts after noticing that, snapping his fingers three times to get his brain working again.
“Qi. Yeah, qi. People, animals, even plants bathed in high amounts of qi for long enough can figure out how to use and manipulate it. At the most basic level simply being suffused with qi will make you stronger, healthier, and longer-lived. At the most advanced we enter the sorts of things that only happen in legends.”
He counted off on his fingers.
“Flight. Magic spells. Seeing something a hundred miles away. Cursing your enemies. Ripping trees out of the ground with your bare hands. Qi can make you capable of pretty much any kind of supernatural ability you can think of, you just need to figure out how to make it do that. Which, unfortunately, the otherworlders have thousands of years more experience than us at.”
Henry sighed deeply. This was the unpleasant part. Even after everything that had happened, all of the time in between then and now the emotions he had from those days had never truly went away. Even with the sanitized version of events he was giving them now.
“We were entirely unprepared. There was no warning, just suddenly dozens of portals all over the world. Some of them were empty, most weren’t. A new world getting added to the web of portals through the Omniverse is something incredibly rare, and with how comparatively weak we were it was like leaving a wounded animal in front of a pack of predators.”
He longed for a cigarette. A cultivator’s body rendered the addictive properties of mundane tobacco harmless, but there was just something relaxing about being able to pause your thoughts to inhale fragrant smoke.
“The Earth was invaded on multiple fronts. Everything from organized militaries with hundreds or thousands of archers each firing arrows with more power and range than a rifle, to hordes of monsters that can run faster than a plane and shrug off artillery fire, to individual qi-users so strong they single-handedly flattened any force we sent to stand against them. I’d...even heard there was a particularly nasty portal in Africa that had this creeping vine coming out of it that after only a few years had overrun half the continent.”
For the sake of his family’s sanity he’d decided at the last second add a healthy dash of understatement to his last sentence. He’d personally fought against the Verdant Oblivion more than once. An endless plant with city-sized roots that stretched it’s vines across multiple worlds, unintelligent but fully capable of defending itself. A menace that would devour every other living thing on a world, strip it bare of all qi, then extend it’s tendrils through the nearest portal, drinking in the energy and pushing it back towards the rumored original taproot.
Any world that was fully taken over by the Verdant Oblivion was a nightmare of towering woody vines, waxy green leaves the size of mountains, and seedpods capable of birthing monstrosities strong enough to rip a lower-realm cultivator in half immediately after hatching. Those worlds were prized by Alchemists, Wizards, and Wood root cultivators for the rare materials that came from older sections of the Oblivion. There was even the belief that the vine began as a spiritual plant being raised for consumption by some ancient fool of a cultivator.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Telling them any of that wouldn’t help anyone, though. The forces that came through the other African portals would end up fighting the ravenous plant and kept the continent in an uneasy stalemate that lasted for decades. If he got around to making a list of priorities for saving the world that would be near the bottom.
Henry made circles with his index finger. “To remove a lot of detail from a too-long story, the Earth gets overrun, the natives get slaughtered wholesale or enslaved.”
“This is where I enter the story. Myself and a few other survivors of old Earth got together under the vision of our Captain,” Henry’s eyes unfocused as he thought of her. Later, he reminded himself with a shake of his head, “That vision was to build a time machine and send someone back. It took some time, but we gathered all of the needed components. Chaos and disorder happened, and I ended up being the one who went back.”
All three raised their hands. Since Liz was the one who’d raised hers earlier Henry pointed towards her first. “Go ahead.”
“How are you going to save the world?” she asked, “If the army’s going to lose what can you do?”
Henry nodded. She was still on the right track. He’d have to come up with something special to give her when the time came. For now, it was time for him to reveal the plan he’d come up with while waiting for them to get home at the dining room table.
This was it. Make or break time. He needed them to agree to this part so that he had a base to build on. Right now, he had only the barest idea of a plan. He needed to entice them so that he had time and somewhere to work from.
“I know how to use qi to refine your body and soul into a potent weapon,” he stated, “I can teach this ability to others.” Henry looked at each of his family members in turn.
“I intend to teach you.” He gave them a moment to process that.
Marilynn looked puzzled, her normally smooth brow wrinkled from her scrunched-up face. “Do you want us to save the world with you?”
Henry shook his head slowly.
“No. I intend to teach you so that you can stay safe. Cultivation will give you perfect health, increase your lifespan, and give you the strength to fight monsters unarmed,” he shrugged, “Also it’ll give me a good opportunity to see what works and what doesn’t when teaching folks from pre-collapse Earth. Also also I’ll be using the time I spend training you to increase my own cultivation.”
“Cultivation?” his father, quiet since Liz had thrown out her question about how the world ended, asked.
Henry scratched his scalp. Explaining all of this wasn’t something he was really ready for. He was sure that his family understood the idea of magic but that didn’t mean they could grasp the concepts. He shuffled through his memories of the beginner cultivation texts he’d perused over the years to try to come up with an answer. Luckily one had already been on his mind.
[“Cultivation is the diligent practice of directing the outside flow of qi inside of the body to reject the fate set by the heavens, achieve immortality, and ascend to the highest peak,”] he recited.
Henry’s entire family looked at him like he’d grown a second head.
“What?” he asked confusedly with a glance around the room. The answer couldn’t have confused them that much. Nothing in his memories showed his family as less than clever. That was about the simplest answer he could have given them. In fact, it came from the manual for the technique he was going to use as the foundation of their cultivation.
“Henry, was that Chinese?” his mother asked worriedly.
He recoiled from her question, trying to piece together what had just transpired. It wasn’t like cultivation manuals were written in English. Even though the Omniverse was supposedly endless, there were shockingly few real languages to learn out there. Most of the major factions that were strong enough to propagate their ideas were governed by immortal beings who enforced the language they spoke as the official tongue of their nations. The Omniverse didn’t just suffer from cultural stasis, it had top-down calcification.
This shouldn’t have been a problem. He knew several languages he could speak, read, and write in with proficiency and a smattering of others he could at least ask for directions in. One of the benefits of being a cultivator was the improvement of the mind. Difficult languages could be mastered in a short period of time with focused effort, even shorter if you employed, ahem, improper methods like ripping the information directly from the mind of a hapless mortal.
That was the answer. He wasn’t currently a cultivator. The ability to seamlessly translate between tongues was lost to him until he reached at least Foundation Establishment.
He could feel the headache coming on. Patience was never his strongest point, and now he’d have to sit down and manually translate all of the manuals he knew into something they could understand.
Henry rubbed his forehead and groaned, “Time traveler nonsense. Cultivation manuals are written in a language that’s kind of like Chinese and it’s also the language all the major cultivation powers speak,” he noted, “At least, the ones I’ve interacted with.”
He started again.
“Cultivation is the way of refining your body and mind with qi. You are cultivating internal strength, hence the term,” he explained, this time making sure he was speaking the correct language, “There are many ways to accomplish this and I know enough about a good chunk of them to be able to teach others.”
Unskilled as he was at public speaking, he could see that he’d told them too much in too short of a time. His family looked confused, worried. He couldn’t tell if that was for the future or for him.
“I’m sorry,” his mother started, “This is all a lot. I mean, if this is real everyone is going to die? And you’re a future wizard back in time to stop it by teaching us future magic in Chinese?”
Henry considered the thought, then nodded.
“Yeah, that’s just about right. A cultivator, though, not a wizard. That’s a whole other thing,” he cracked his knuckles, “You won’t have to learn the cultivator’s tongue, though.”
Marilynn shook her head and leaned back on the couch. “I’m sorry,” she said, “This is a lot for me. Roger?”
Henry’s father still looked like he disbelieved what his only son was saying. He wasn’t going to lie to himself, even with the muted emotions he had in regards to his family that stung a bit.
Roger was rubbing his chin, something he did when he had to think deeply on a subject.
“I don’t suppose you can prove any of this?” he asked, “I think we’d all be more willing to believe you if you had some evidence.”
An entirely reasonable suggestion.
One that Henry was not prepared to fulfill at this time. There wasn’t anything he could tell them that was verifiable. He didn’t know what the next year would look like. He didn’t know the lottery numbers. He didn’t even know the current President.
He certainly wasn’t going to let them know that, though. The fastest way to lose credibility was to admit you didn’t know what was happening. He schooled his face into a neutral cultivator’s expression. It would come off as condescending, but maybe that would help to sell him as an authority.
“I didn’t come back with a history book,” he retorted dryly, “If that’s what you mean.”
“I mean,” a serious look let Henry know his father did not appreciate his response, “The magic. Do you have any way to prove these claims of magic powers.”
Henry’s fingers involuntarily twitched. To be doubted to this extent was an unusual situation. Even with Mags and the others there was an understanding that, as a cultivator, he wouldn’t spew meaningless statements. The pursuit of immortality was the pursuit of perfection in all things. He was a monster, but not a monster. Well, maybe he was, but he didn’t lie often.
His mind raced. Did he have a way to prove it to them? There were very few ways for mortals to use qi. Talismans could be used by anyone with the know-how to activate them, but he didn’t have any. Anything else needing something beyond pure mortality. Henry made no mistake, this body was mortal, even after the soul refinement.
He stopped.
The soul refinement. His soul was larger than a mortal’s. Weighed down with meaning and experience. Even restricted by the limitations of his body it was the soul of a powerful cultivator.
He felt a grin curl across his lips. He was sure it had a sadistic edge, but his patience was already wearing thin.
“Yeeesss,” he said, dragging out the word languidly, “I do have something I can use as proof.” Henry leaned forward with a malevolent expectation in his heart, “Would you still like to see?”
Watching his own father move back from him was unexpected and a little thrilling. There was an intoxicating element to being feared. It was something he was supposed to be working on.
“Is it dangerous?” his father asked dutifully, glancing over to wife and daughter who were shooting looks back at him.
Mimicking his father, Henry looked up at the ceiling and rubbed his chin. He didn’t really know. Normally, he’d be in control to such a fine degree that he could target individual petals on a flower and make them wilt individually. In his weakened state? Best to not let them know.
“I can assure you that, while uncomfortable, you will be in no danger,” he stated with a confidence mostly faked.
His father caught the distinction immediately.
“Why would we be uncomfortable?” Roger asked.
Henry answered with a shrug.
“It’s an ability used mostly for intimidation,” he explained, “I can only do it because of the power I used to have. It’s also the only qi ability I can use until I begin regaining my strength.” He tapped a foot dramatically.
“Will you continue to think I’ve gone mad or let me show you some real magic?”
The VIP of this conversation, Liz, looked excited.
“I want to see magic,” she said.
Her excitement blunted the building anger in Henry as he felt a small pang of guilt. They didn’t deserve the future that fate had in store. What he was about to do would give them a taste of that future. At least enough to wake them up about the seriousness of his words. It was necessary.
A small, familiar voice in the back of his mind laughed at the hollow justification. You just want to see them suffer, it said, To punish them for daring to doubt you.
It was foolish to respond to that voice. Even more foolish to pretend it wasn’t accurate. He knew from hard-won experience that the voice didn’t speak the entire truth, just the worst one. His darkest reasonings playing on repeat in the back of his head forever.
One short discussion he honestly didn’t pay much attention to later, and it was his mother who spoke up again.
“Okay, we’ll see your ‘magic’,” she said, putting emphasis on the word. Henry was starting to think she didn’t believe him. “But if nothing happens can we please talk about what’s really going on?”
Henry felt the embers of annoyance flaring up again.
“Sure,” he affirmed magnanimously, “However, when this is over, and you know beyond a doubt that what I’m saying is true, you will train under me.” His jaw set and he met their eyes with an unblinking look of determination. “I will not allow this family to be caught unawares again.”
Without a moment’s hesitation Henry loosened the iron grip on his bloodlust, instead letting the full weight of his anger out, backed by the not-insubstantial weight of his soul.
. The current him couldn’t put anything near a real attack’s strength behind it, and probably couldn’t keep it up for long, but that didn’t matter. They were untrained mortals.
To a casual observer nothing would have changed. He was still standing on one side of the living room. His family was sitting on the other side. Not even the leaves of the several houseplants in the room were rustled by what happened.
A closer theoretical observer, though, would see the truth. His family had stilled completely, the muscles of their bodies rigid. None of them could look him in the eye. His sister looked like she was on the verge of passing out.
Calmly, Henry walked over to them, bending at the waist so they could see his face clearly. He tilted his head and took a moment to watch them strain to meet his view.
“What you are feeling right now is called killing intent,” he said in a soft, calm voice, “This is what a cultivator is capable of. Even the simple desire to kill can be weaponized, turned into something dangerous.” He reached forward and touched each of their foreheads with his left index finger.
“Right now a child could kill the three of you and you’d be unable to even raise a hand in defiance. If I had the strength I did before coming back just using this ability would have caused you to drop dead at my feet.”
He straightened up and looked at each of them in turn. His father was practically vibrating in what he could only assume was a combination of anger, fear, and shame. His mother just looked scared. His sister was barely staying conscious, nearly overwhelmed by the animalistic instinct to flee.
“There are no jokes here, no happy ending where someone else swoops in and saves the day. Take this as seriously as the grave. The end of everything you know is coming and I have the way to keep you alive.”
Henry sighed. This wasn’t how he wanted this to go at all. The limits of his ability were also rapidly approaching.
“I am sorry about using this method,” he apologized as sincerely as he was able to, “I know it’s terrible. It’s the only proof I have.”
A racking cough broke the technique’s hold on them. Each of them sagged involuntarily. Henry’s vision swam. A spoon’s worth of blood splattered against the hand he raised to cover his mouth. This was the limit of what he could so with something as simple as killing intent. He was more disappointed in that than his family not believing him.
“An untrained body is too weak,” he said, smiling at them while blood trickled from his mouth, “This is nothing. Very small.”
He toppled to the ground as the darkness rose up to claim him.