It was just a rather ordinary day. The whether was actually quite nice except for the dark clouds on the horizon. Since Jared didn’t smell that odd pre-rain scent he was fairly optimistic the sky would clear up.
He was right as not an hour later the sun broke through clearing up to a nice sunny day. Jared was a bit smug about it informing his friends he knew it was going to clear up. They just rolled there eyes like always.
The rest of the day Jared Glass went to class, hung out with friends, even got the last order of cheese sticks from his schools canteen. Something of which put a little smile on his face all throughout lunch. Overall a fairly nice yet ordinary day. Absolutely nothing strange, new, exciting, terrifying, or life changing happened the entire school day.
It was a bit to simple and Jared didn’t want to go home yet. So when his friends suggested going to the new arcade he jumped at the chance. Literally jumping out of his seat and falling on his face, and he and his friends burst out laughing.
With school over he and his group of friends headed out to a new arcade downtown a few blocks from the school.
“I'm really excited, they got a new dance machine.” Kyle began to do a dance illustrating his skills, badly.
Jared laughed, “There still making those.”
“Duh. It's one of those rainbow ones.” He said seriously.
“I have no idea what your talking about.” Jared said shaking his head. He had tried a few but never heard of a rainbow dance machine.
Kyle was a bundle of energy trying to get us all to move. “This is gonna be great.”
That was when the day changed from ordinary to unpleasant if not downright horrendous. As the group walked across the street a massive truck came barreling around the corner out of control, and tipping over. The teens froze unable to move out of the way, as they were struck.
It was just supposed to be an ordinary day. A day nothing of note happening. It was the only thing Jared thought. As he watched the truck that had just ran him, fling Kyle past him. The worlds slowed down as he saw his best friend hit the floor his eyes fully lifeless. The trailer being pulled suddenly separated and fell into another crowd of people and the truck itself slammed into a building.
Jared wanted to cry, and scream, but there was no air in his crushed lungs. He hurt. Dieing in the middle of the street along with his friends. The last of his will spent darkness creep-ed in to claim him as a bright gold light ripped him and the others souls away.
#
“No. No. No!” A man shouts in panic scrambling around between worlds. Forced to watch a scene of horror unfold.
It all happened in flashes. A nightmare of children being crushed as people were pinned and killed. Nicki had experienced each and every one of the deaths. The moments of fear, pain, and confusion. Before being tossed back to the between his soul reeling from it all. It was all completely wrong.
Nicki was stuck, forced to witness, forced to watch the horror of it all. What was worse he could see the threads of fate all around rippling tearing free. Almost like another hand was helping them along. He had to do something, reaching out into the people’s fate, only for purple lighting to course through him, burning him and pushing him away.
Nicki was having trouble focusing on anything as every time he looked out he became someone else. Then he saw them. The souls being torn away, damaged, and frayed their fates like split ends slowly unraveling. NO!
Nicki couldn’t let the nightmare have its way. This was his dream, his horror and he reached through the pain and shock. He screamed when he touched the first soul the pain beyond anything he could imagine. It was the child’s, and if he let him go. He would appear in another world, and become a Hero. But he would be damaged. Nicki pushed all the power he could muster into the Heroes thread weaving it back together. Nicki was exhausted as he let the Hero go.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Then all around souls were being drawn away with the child, each just as bad. Nicki didn’t remember if he was able to help them all. As his memory became hazy, and the world became unreal as he flitted to each soul burning with each one he helped.
Last thing he thought as he watched the souls depart was: My hands hurt. Before he was swept away into the dark.
#
“That was just the first. I was scrambling to do anything I could to help but there was only so much I could do. At least that’s what I thought. I didn’t know they were hindering me at the time. Making everything worse.” Nicki was staring up at the screen in the auditorium. His mind is back there with them. He shuffled over to the podium, flipped some switches.
“Why were you there?”
“I was in a coma. This is where my spirit was pulled. Without an anchor like my body, I was brought to the souls of Heroes instead of the other way round.” Nicki finished setting things up. “Now, you might be thinking. That’s so horrible, at least they became whole in the next world. Heroes always are.”
Drystia looked up at Nicki’s face. She could see the pain in his eyes. So she stayed silent and tried to prepare herself for what he would show next.
#
In a world in desperate need of a Hero. Where forces from beyond the plain are tearing their way through and the people are barely holding them back. Here is a world of might and magic, a group of Mages, Priests, Witches, and Shamans delved deep into the magic of the world, the soul, spirit, and people, in their desperate search to summon one that could help save their world. If they could just get a foothold, they could work on closing the rifts. They had heard legends of the other-worlders. People with impossibly fast growth. This was a desperate gamble focusing on stories and legends, yet they had pulled it off. Worked together for the last year, gathering the needed reagents, and now they were ready.
The magic built to impossibly dense levels, as the world was enveloped with an explosion of light. The first thing most people heard when their sight returned was a Priest shouting, “Get the Healers!”
In the center of the room, where magic flowed, now sat dozens of people of all ages writhing around, beaten and bleeding.
The heads of all the orders were scrambling to understand what was going on. The Archmage was checking and rechecking the lines. The Witches were searching the natural energies, while the Priests and Shamans were doing their best to stabilize the people.
When the heads gathered looking flustered the Archmage flustered his normally immaculate robes disheveled from crawling across the floor. The Bishop’s robes were covered in blood, the head Shaman looked exhausted after his dance of healing, and the Witches eyes constantly searching. The Bishop was the first to speak. “How could this have happened?! What went wrong?”
The Archmage quickly defended himself. “I Don’t know. We checked the spell over five times. Went through walk-throughs. Triple-checked the stories and legends. Hell, we even had the Witches contact others who have done this ritual. Everything was set.”
Even the Bishop was taken aback by the amount of preparation, not realizing the amount of man-hours put into this.
The Archmage continued, “There should have only been one Hero. One! Not the dozens we got.
The summoned people were all stabilized and unconscious, except for the single unharmed boy who was utterly terrified by all that was happening. He just stood there looking on in horror through it all. Then the recently healed people started waking up and began to scream.
They weren’t screams of pain, now they looked around and screamed in fear, The last any of them remembered was the accident, then they woke up broken. Now they were whole again. It was almost to much to handle. A few were coherent enough to ask what was going on. A few lashed out at the people attempting to help them. It was all spiraling out of control again.
It took a mass sleep spell to knock them all out, they would wake them one by one. Try to explain it all, hopefully, they would be more receptive. The heads reasoned.
#
Back in an office, with a man and a doll. “I got to see what happened to them directly. It was a weird combination of strange yet hopeful.”
Drystia watched the memory play and something quite add up between what she was seeing and what was being shown. “Nicki, how many people made it to the other side?”
“Twenty-seven.” His voice sad.
Drystia gasped. She hadn’t counted but there had been more the twenty-seven people taken out in the previous accident. A lot more.
A dark chuckle fell from Nicki’s lips, “I see you counted. Three hundred. Three hundred souls were taken. I could only save twenty-seven.”
“That’s horrible. I didn’t know she said consoling. Nicki sat down next to her, his eyes never straying from the screen as it continued. Drystia could only watch on in horror as similar scenes played out, over and over hundreds if not thousands of times. With only slight details changed. In each, she could see him fight against another, as they tried to unweave his work. Where he burned himself out time and again. Over and over he fought it was pure madness. Is this what he meant? How was he still sane?
There, in a dark auditorium, only the screen providing light, a lone doll sits, with her child. Doing the only thing she could, she watched his pain and journey. Sitting right along with him, as they delved into madness.
* * *