Stirring in her mind, Cain was always there now. After her baptism in the Eye of Perdition, the only thing that caused him to flee her skull was pain. Sometimes she deliberately cut herself just to be free of him for a time, but her body healed far too rapidly for that to last very long. He saw everything that she saw, felt everything that she felt, and knew everything that she thought. It was both humiliating and a violation of the highest degree. None of her most private thoughts and desires escaped his notice.
Her desire for revenge amused him, and he even seemed willing to help her
avenge the Subjects. Cain’s presence within her mind had come with the power to twist people’s hearts, see into their souls, and force them into mental confrontations with their worst fears. She could drag out every impurity and lay it bare for them to see now, whether she understood them or not. How she longed to use this ability on the Council.
“I will begin again,” the Apostle said aloud. “Another world, another chance for revenge.”
She grasped the crystal that hung from her neck and felt reality bend around her.
She would serve Cain as diligently and faithfully as she had to. And when she finally set him free, and they stood face to face, she would destroy him.
In the back of her mind Cain laughed.
*****
“What just happened,” Kari asked.
The Apostle had stopped pacing, grabbed something around his neck and
vanished.
“He’s gone,” Jonathan said. “Did you see that purple flash?”
“Like when we jumped to this world,” Michael agreed.
“He has a shard of the Gate too,” Kari said, touching her own crystal shard
hanging between her breasts.
“How’s that possible,” Jonathan asked. “Dad has complete control of the Gate.
How did the Apostle get a piece of it?”
“Now we come to the part that concerns you three,” Marce said as she seated
herself again, gesturing to Markus. The image from outside disappeared. “Please, be seated.”
“You know something about our future,” Kari asked as she sat.
“Yes,” Marce nodded, looking each of them in the eye in turn. “I have seen a
great darkness descending upon all of creation. This darkness threatens not only my world, but every other as well. I see the stars going out one by one. I see life extinguished and chaos ruling over all. Something is coming. I do not know what it is, but I do know that if it ever arrives here it will bring about the end of time itself. I have foreseen that the only people that have a chance to stop it, are you three, and some others that you will meet along the way. Most important of them all will be one like you.”
“Like me,” Kari asked, pointing at one of her fox ears, “you mean like this? A Heretic?”
“Yes,” Marce nodded. “I do not know if he is male or female, what he looks like, or where you might find him. I only know that if you do not have this person with you when you face the coming darkness, you will fail, and all will be lost. This person will make a great sacrifice that only he can make, and it will take quite a bit of convincing for him to see the necessity of it, then, and only then, will the darkness be averted.”
“That sounds very ominous,” Michael said.
“Very ominous indeed,” Jonathan nodded.
“Can’t someone else do it,” they said together. “We hate anything that resembles work.”
“Thank you for telling us these things,” Kari said
“I wish that I could tell you more,” Marce sighed, “but such is not the way of my sight. I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Kari said. “We’ll keep our eyes out for
another Heretic.”
“Well,” Michael said. “I think we’ve done well for our first adventure.”
“Indeed,” Jonathan agreed. “We really should be getting on to the next. We
wouldn’t want to keep the looming, formless darkness threatening to bring about the end of time itself waiting would we?”
“You two are such idiots,” Kari said with a laugh.
“But you just called me brilliant not ten minutes ago,” Michael protested.
“Fine,” Kari smiled. “You’re a brilliant idiot.”
“Won’t you stay for the night at least,” Marce asked. “After all that you’ve done for me, I have done little to show my gratitude. At least let me give you a feast to see you on your journey.”
Kari didn’t need to look at the twins to know that they were practically drooling with the mention of a feast. For beings that did not need to eat very regularly to maintain their strength they sure could pack it away given the opportunity.
“I think we can stay one night at least,” she nodded.
Chapter 9: Half Night
There were many things to trouble Gabriel as he and his guides rode deeper into the wasteland, but for some reason, the most troubling of them was the fact that he still had his watch. None of his other possessions had turned up, only the watch. There had to be some reason for it. Or perhaps the Northern Sage had only left it to him in order to taunt him. The man seemed sadistic that way. It was useless on this world anyway, and that did not speak well to how any of his other electronics might have fared. He kept it anyway, unable to bring himself to throw away the only link he had to his old life.
Despite the fact that his watch was currently running backwards at varying
speeds, as near as Gabriel could tell, the day and night cycle of this strange new world lasted about forty hours.
Beginning the day off with ten hours of light, the red giant sun rose in the east and the massive, colorful planet rose in the west. The planet eclipsed the sun at midday for four hours of relative darkness, and then the sun would reemerge for another ten hours of daylight. Then came six hours of dark night, followed by four that were lit up as bright as day by several moons in the sky catching the light of the unseen sun. Then there were six more hours of dark night before the sun and planet rose again in the east and west. It was an astronomer’s wet dream, but it made for a very strange sleeping schedule.
Sam called the midday eclipse half night, and insisted that they stop and sleep for a few hours during this time. And the time in the middle of the night when the moons shone brightly was called half day and she insisted that they use the time for traveling.
With all the short naps, long sleeps, and irregular daylight hours Gabriel was completely incapable of keeping track of the days. It was like having the worst case of jetlag ever conceived of by man or god.
Looking up at the planet directly above, Gabriel could barely make out its colorful whirls in the dark. The gas giant lacked the luminescence that it bore when the sun was out, though the edges blazed with the sun’s corona like a solar eclipse back on Earth.
The dark shadows of three moons made a triangular pattern on the surface like the holes in a bowling ball.
“This has to be a coma dream,” he muttered.
Looking over his shoulder, Gabriel eyed his sleeping guide. As he watched, she shoved a hand down her pants to scratch between her legs before beginning to snore loudly, her tail twitching with her dreams. Sam and her world seemed so real, but on the other hand, things like this just didn’t happen. When people got splattered on the windshield of a bus like a bug on the interstate, they did not pop out on a nuclear wasteland orbiting a giant bowling ball in the sky, unless his childhood preacher was way off on the whole heaven hell thing.