1998 - Before the Collapse
Z̷̢̗̥̝̣̺͐̃̄̒͋̕͠ͅɒ̸̪͓̟̫͇͉͂̒̓̂͌̚͜͠n̸̳̞̰̭̮̱̬̓̂͒́̑̅̂ǝ̷̨̫̹̘̠̳̫͌̒͋͋̍̚͝
There once was a girl named Emily Majors who never met a face that she couldn’t turn right. It was an amazing superpower to turn a smile so often. Throughout her life she seemed just prime to make sure that everyone she had ever met felt better not only about themselves after just meeting, but also felt better about their lives. Just knowing her brightened one’s day no matter what had happened previously.
Emily died.
At least, that was the story at one time. History is always fickle for people like Emily. People who have experienced great loss tend to say parables of the virtues of a person living on past their death—that even if the person themselves has died that their messages will carry on. Emily was a person who took things literally, and as is the chance—history was quite literally fickle with Emily herself.
A path was chosen by outsiders who simply sought to seek the truth. They guided the creature they knew as Zane toward a goal in search of the truth, and in doing so these outsiders have changed the very fabric of the world in more ways than one, but none so simply as for the survival of one Emily Majors.
Emily is not like other girls—much in the way that dragons are not like other reptiles. She was what one could call a Pathfinder. She needed only to close her eyes and focus on the space outside of spacetime known as the Cosmic Sea and her mind would journey like a wanderer on the precipice of a million possible adventures.
She would find herself amongst the billions of possible shades that inhabited the infinite vastness of existence. Back in the age before The Collapse—reality existed as several billion independent universes that stretched out as far as imagination could expand.
Golden stars lead paths toward new selves. She would open her eyes and one of her other personas would resume that life as if it had not stopped from where she had left it off. This wasn’t some ability to stop time—in fact, it was the opposite.
Emily—and other Pathfinders like her could simply process each individual life and history at a single time. Her focus would divert to a different timeline, and she could process every microcosm of what she experienced.
Pathfinders are no strangers to death as they tended to die in as many of the timelines that they lived. These abilities they have to not make them invulnerable to pain or erasure, even if they had other opportunities to live in. However, there was a great danger that superseded all for a Pathfinder...and that was the ever-long hunt of the Chronomalies.
A Chronomaly was a type of distorted multi-fanged beasts that existed outside the realm of the Cosmic Sea inside a den of their own creation. They hunger as the arbiters of spacetime—hunting down the trails of Pathfinders who so daily and casually steal from the universe to travel the cosmos. Traces that were stalked across worldlines of the infinitae—they follow the trails that all Pathfinders leave like cosmic footprints against the stars until they inevitably find their mark.
The fate of a Pathfinder who has run out of time experiences a fate far worse than any human death. In death, those same parables mentioned before would hold true—humanity persists—love and the memory that is held in others continues on until the end of existence. For a Pathfinder, the only fate that remains is emptiness. A nothing from the devoured and reclaimed time. So much to the point that the memories themselves of their existences and their contributions to their countless lives are equally torn to shreds. They are erased from every timeline without beginning or end.
Emily was in the middle of being erased—she had been confronted by a Chronomaly that had caught up with her travels and she was unable to escape. And things would have progressed as normal until the intervention of a mysterious interloper only known as Arkanus.
A lingering voice rang all around the mysterious being that thought these very thoughts. They seemed to be memories...yes, that was it. They definitely were memories. Memories of a recent past where the choice was made by the outsiders.
Arcanus, from secret, intimate, private. Ark, from refuge. He existed at the center of these intersecting points. Arkanus trapped the creature inside that prison—that existence out in the cosmic wastelands—far outside of time and space. It wasn’t his establishment, but he usurped control and held him there.
He started remembering more and more as the details came fluttering toward him like stray butterflies—flapping their individual wing beats to score large hurricanes in his mind. Flutterings of chaos theory scattered around his mind until they evaporated upon more careful consideration.
Suddenly he blinked and he was outside of the casino that rested at the edge of this malediction. The casino rang as a hollow temple of all of humanity’s blunders and darkest and slimiest concoctions.
There was a dragon here that not long ago sought to burn—burn the darkest depths of the corruption of this prison, for there was but a seed lying in its heart like a poisoned heart that came an almost undoing.
He watched the casino fade from all around him as the void started to break—the burning darkness down below broke down the facade. He felt the echoes of the reapers like him out in their den—starving for lost time. Starving without thought—without will. He was different from them in that sense—and that was all because of the path he was on. The path he chose and the path those outsiders chose for him lead him to his own will—his own existence, thoughts, memories, and now desires.
A strong force urged him to return to the casino—to the prison to erase the slate clean and continue his supposed penance, and sure, if he desired so he could even reconstruct the burning artifice of Arkanus and return everything to how he wanted it.
But he did not.
He ripped away from the false existence this pocket provided and found himself on the streets of a damp city on the eve of the New Year.
It was close to the new millennium, but not quite there. His sights immediately set on a group of teenagers on the other side of the street. They’re walking away from Times Square—the ball had just dropped not moments before. They were yearning to beat the crowd that had gathered among the momentous occasion.
Throughout the excitement—the liquor, the buzz, the lights, the fervor, he saw Emily Majors hanging in back of the group. She had a bottle of her own in hand and was jogging in a rhythm of her own design. It was not hard to assume that the each of them had consumed copious amounts of alcohol at the ball drop and some time before in a crowd where they could get away with it.
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A boy—no older than nineteen wrapped his arms around Emily’s side in order to pull her back as she pushed forward—nearly tripping over herself.
Zane Hannes and Emily Majors—the group’s treasured couple and most voted to remain together post high school endeavors. It was ironic the kinds of stakes that humans placed on their futures—as if they knew anything. Emily though, he could pick her out in an instant.
She had a magical allure to her.
They started to cross the street over to his side. Suddenly, a feeling he was unfamiliar with took over—it was a foreign feeling he hadn’t been used to. A fear crossed his mind and sudden realization took over. Before he could reason it out he felt a terrible sinking but familiar feeling in his gut. This feeling had returned from before he entered the casino. The dark pull of the reaper, the feeling of a shadow following him. That same feeling he felt pouring out from the Chronomaly Den.
It hit him like a bullet, and no sooner did he shed the skin that he had been using—the skin he would replace in a few moments time. Under the mask he existed as the reaper, the Chronomaly hunting down his target. So long had he searched...and suddenly the pain he felt all throughout his ordeal inside the prison made sense.
The longing feelings he endured in search for Emily were stolen from this boy here—when he stopped on this scene initially. He remembered it now clear as day—this was not the first time he stopped to see this group of people sloshily stumbling their way through the night.
And it was because he missed his target on that day, and because of that he knew he was going to miss today, too. He worked in cycles and suddenly he felt the inevitability of his actions creeping up behind him.
If he had the ability to change things, their stories would be much different. But as the events played out, so shall they again. Girl steps ahead, boy notices the threat. Boy throws out his hand in front of girl. Girl realizes the true danger—tries to escape into another life but is prevented as the boy breaks her focus. Makes his job easy. Ensures his victory. At least, he thought.
Instead of erasing Emily Majors, he stole Zane Hannes. He has not stolen before. No Chronomaly had. It would not be thinkable as to what would happen. His goal was always to return to the Den. Return the time, but that changed ever since he stole Zane. He saw more, he felt more. His desires melded as Zane the identity melted away—leaving him alone to take the body—take the mind.
And now in the choice that Zane and He sat—he stared at Emily as she stood frozen in fear as their friends ran for their lives—as if their lives had enough merit to warrant fear from him. He stood staring at her through Zane’s eyes and suddenly, finally, they were his eyes.
Because he had remembered this, and because he remembered this, he remembered where he was supposed to go next. He was supposed to chase Emily down...but that wasn’t going to happen this time.
He stood there, with full knowledge of his time in the prison—thanks to the outsiders who helped break the cycle, and he decided he was going to continue the trend. He was going to break the cycle—to disobey.
She looked at horror at his face—it was the face of the boy she liked in this life, but it wasn’t wholly his face—it was distorted, shaped wrong, as if it trailed off in shapes that almost seemed to reflect the stars if you stared too closely at it.
She wouldn’t have considered him conventionally attractive anymore—hardly anybody would, and there was an almost excitement in the feeling that something so minute could matter to him now. Because it did, and in that moment of eternity between the two of them there as the rain started to pick up an air of silence hung for a thousand years’ worth of conversation.
Emily realized that he was no longer there to hunt her down, and so she made her escape, one of her leave-behinds replaced her so simply—nobody here would notice the difference, but he did so simply. It was a subtle change that flashed as recognition between them.
This Emily didn’t know what he had been here for, and so for all intents and purposes she was no longer relevant to his interests. He turned away from the her of the now turn away from her and the her of the now called out the name he had stolen. He didn’t answer, he only continued to run, leaving her in the dust. He was free now—and he was going to use that freedom to his advantage for once.
I simply start running. I am free, and I am going to use that freedom to my own advantage for once.
In his mind he started feeling the rumblings of memories from the prison resurface—they became clearer and clearer as he continued running. He was going to keep all of them—retain everything.
~...~
2044
Z̷̢̗̥̝̣̺͐̃̄̒͋̕͠ͅɒ̸̪͓̟̫͇͉͂̒̓̂͌̚͜͠n̸̳̞̰̭̮̱̬̓̂͒́̑̅̂ǝ̷̨̫̹̘̠̳̫͌̒͋͋̍̚͝
California evolved after The Collapse. Zane had seen echoes of the changes he had previously existed in before his own personal loop. The machinations laid by creatures far beyond his own imagining—Creatures of the Night that had hidden away from their own worldly purposes to lounge away in an existence removed from time so much to the point that its own time just loops on and on.
Zane had felt sick that he was trapped in such an awful cycle—but even moreso to the fact that he had wanted to keep on going as he did. Before he ever stole Zane away he was such a simple being. Nothing but purpose to fuel his existence along—to return to his den and exist as a primordial nothing until his call was made—until a new Pathfinder was found. It was disgusting—deplorable behavior that he—
He strangled himself close as a powerful urge came over—licking his lips as his arm reached over his chest and grabbed his shoulder blade tight—digging his nails into the skin. He bared his teeth and made a low rumbling from the pit of his stomach until the sensations slowed. The pulsing shapes that comprised his face pumped as the blood through his body beat in rhythm, and slowly they began to fade.
He still felt his compulsions. They were aberrant detestable feelings that he needed to stay. If he needed to punish this flesh until he got in control then so be it. He started to breathe smoother as he looked out on his surroundings—a vast settlement lie before him with energy pulsing through the ground by the thousands. He felt an immense hunger within him that desired to feast, but he stayed it back down.
A tower of immense light had begun shooting into the sky—and immediately he knew the energy that had he had been feeling—a Pathfinder existed among the ranks of that settlement. He closed his eyes and he saw the face plainly in front of him.
Here, in this new world—the body had stolen had aged a significant portion—he hadn’t been a fan of how quickly the human body had decided to age, yet he still found that he could sufficiently hone his strengths and train to limits the original Zane could have only ever wished.
Ever since the new world shifted over, he tried to search down those mythical creatures that exuded so much power to create prisons like the one he was trapped in, but if he should happen to come across the familiar scent of a Pathfinder along his track...well, bad habits always were hard to break. Who knows? Maybe someday he’ll run back into Emily Majors—the same he ran into on that fateful day all those years ago and they could have a meeting just as grand—just as liberating—just as...delicious.
He made his decision simply—and made his move, diving into the night as the tendrils from the top of his head flew behind him in the wind. He would be able to hide in the dark of night easily. The excitement that bubbled up within him carried years’ worth of feelings he was just waiting to explode. After all, he still had a mission to accomplish.