WARNING:
This chapter is PG-15, for strong language (two F-words and some
others), graphic description of violence and gory imagery. My
apologies if any of you reading this have strong aversions to the
abovementioned subjects in bold.
Four
Chapter
37:
“Abandon every hope, ye who enter here.”
--Dante Alighieri, “Inferno”, Canto III
Within the first few seconds, they were quickly broken
apart: Mark and Paul charged forward, sparks and energy spheres flying from
Mark’s fingertips and all kinds of earthly beasts and unearthly behemoths
bringing up the rear behind Paul.
Christian’s double immediately threw off an energy
bolt, but Benjamin, standing beside the real Christian, swiftly stepped in
front of him, pushing him back as he repelled the bolt with his mind.
They fell back onto the ground, and Christian saw
Benjamin’s double, standing alone, doing nothing.
“Benji—”
“He won’t hurt us,” Benjamin replied tersely,
deflecting another energy bolt.
Christian was not reassured by this, but trusted that
perhaps Benjamin had some sort of hold on him, so he stood and let loose with a
volley of his own energy spheres.
***
Mark grinned as he felt the prodding at the corners of
his mind.
“Can’t get in, can you?” he sneered. “You can’t get in
to tweak with my brain like I can yours, and I’ll bet that tweaks you, doesn’t
it?”
The double snarled.
Mark’s grin stretched even wider, and he hoped to all
the higher powers out there that he’d at least get a chance to thank Benjamin
for teaching him what he knew; for having the foresight to see that Mark
himself would be vulnerable to the mind attacks of his own double.
“So the little one taught you to shield your mind,”
the double stated, no doubt having heard Mark’s thoughts.
“He’s not ‘little’,” Mark retorted, now
slightly pissed off. He knew that the slight had more to do with Benjamin’s age
than his physical stature, but what annoyed him was not the fact that his
double was hitting on Benjamin’s age; it was more the fact that Mark himself
was not very much older.
“So you know how to protect yourself, but what of your
other companions? You forget: you are the most powerful among them, and I doubt
that the rest are equally able to shut me out.”
Mark spared a glance at where Paul and his double were
causing the most commotion with the small zoo of unnatural monsters that they’d
both managed to cook up, and he bristled at the thought of this thing
touching Paul’s mind.
“I know you can heal yourselves,” Mark began, “but if
you touch any of them, I promise you, there won’t be enough of you left
to put back together, let alone heal.”
“Empty threats from one who is less powerful,” the
double sneered.
“‘Empty threats’ from the only person here that can
screw with your mind,” was Mark’s rejoinder. “Consider that for a minute
and then let me know how you feel about your chances.”
Mark’s double growled deep in his throat before
rushing him and releasing a flurry of energy bolts, which Mark dodged or
deflected with some of his own. The immediate area around them became alight
with bright flashes as both managed to land hits of their own. Upon getting
close enough, both would not hesitate to lash out physically either, and later,
after he’d managed to score two hard kicks, Mark considered using his power to
turn the double’s mind against himself.
He thought as he continued to fight, and when he
sported a purpling bruise on his left cheek, a split lip, a sore abdomen and
scorch marks on his arms and near his collarbone, he made up his mind.
No.
He wouldn’t tweak with his look-alike’s mind.
Besides, the double looked a little worse for wear
too, although admittedly not as bad as himself, perhaps.
And Mark wanted to feel this. He’d waited too long for
a good fight, and now the adrenaline just wouldn’t stop flowing.
Why ruin all the fun by bending the double to his
will?
Furthermore, this was the end of the world, right?
This could be one of the very last things that he
would feel physically.
Mark grinned.
All the more reason to want to feel this.
Paul had always called him a sadist; he wondered what
his best friend would have to say to the masochistic ideas that he was
currently entertaining.
***
“Shit,” Paul muttered under his breath as he watched
two tigers bound towards him. He backed up hastily before almost out of
nowhere, a serpentine head descended, snatching one of the large felines up in
its jaws and crushing the other under its foot, smearing blood and pulverised
bone over the ground.
‘That was close,’ he
thought, eyeing the dragon of his creation, currently shaking its head
violently, with the tiger still clamped between its jaws, blood flecks flying
everywhere.
He knew that Mark and the others thought that he
controlled these creatures, but in actuality, he didn’t. Not fully. His part in
their actions mostly stopped at creating them.
After they were created, they were very much free to
do as they pleased, until he “dismissed” them from the real world and they
reverted to simple, fantastical creatures in his mind once again.
He did have a vague connection with them, however, and
he used this by simply ordering them to protect him. He knew that, in time,
when he became more adept at this, the connection would strengthen and he would
be able to control them completely.
Unfortunately, it looked like that time would never
come now.
Something in his chest twinged, and he turned; one of
his lions had been eviscerated. He winced at the gory sight, and then waved a hand,
making the corpse disappear; the blood on the grass remained, however.
He glanced at the huge creatures surrounding both him
and his look-alike; dragons—his personal favourite, lions, tigers, his double’s
own Hydras, and the huge malformed monstrosities which had been imagined on the
spot and were bizarre, walking jumbles of various—and mostly
oversized—dangerous animal parts.
‘This isn’t working… the battle isn’t moving.
All these powerful creatures and neither of us are winning!’
Rumbling could be heard as they stomped around,
sometimes clawing furrows in the ground, and an idea occurred to Paul.
‘Big animals don’t work… what about small
ones?’
Trying hard to tune out the noise, he concentrated
hard, squeezing his eyes shut, and two seconds later, he heard it.
The frantic scurrying of thousands of little feet;
little chirps and squeaks and hisses.
Rats, centipedes, spiders, scorpions and snakes
swarmed across to his opponent. They bit, stung, clawed and jabbed at the large
creatures that his double had conjured up, and the small animals scurried out
of the way faster than the larger animals could retaliate. Furthermore, there
were too many of them—attacking all over the place—for the bigger animals to
pick off. Some of the smaller, poisonous snakes were using their venom, while
the larger ones were squeezing the life out of his opponent’s big cats.
Paul smiled to himself. Things were starting to look
up.
Yes. They were. He was winning.
Maybe he should call them back now.
No need to waste his energy like this when he was
winning.
The seething mass of small reptiles, rodents and
arachnids began to dwindle, vanishing…
‘I’m winning…’
A loud roar suddenly made him look up; dragon fire blazed
past in a stream of brilliant orange overhead as one of his dragons bellowed
his agony over a deep gouge in its leg.
‘Wha—?’
His smaller animals were completely gone.
‘I didn’t—where’d they go?’
He stared.
‘I was winning…
‘Was I?’
He stared at the battle before him, confused.
Then he turned around—
And saw Mark fighting with his own double.
“Mark” fired off a bright green energy sphere, which
Mark dodged, and when the “twin” caught Paul’s eye, Paul saw the smirk.
Directed at him.
‘Call your creatures back.’
Paul froze.
He understood. He knew what had just happened.
“NO!!” he screamed.
That smirk again.
‘I will break you,’ he
heard Mark’s voice in his head.
Only, it wasn’t Mark.
He wanted to scream, but couldn’t; he felt the cold bleeding into his mind, his limbs feeling too far away; the dragon fire, roaring,
trampling—
And he couldn’t move—
And he was alone, cut off from things that he
remembered being able to control but he couldn’t remember now—
‘MARK!!’ was his
last coherent thought before he was overwhelmed by the feeling of everything
spinning out of control; himself and the whole world around him coming apart at
the seams—
And then someone came up behind him and grabbed him in
a choke hold.
***
He felt it—a strong sensation of being overpowered, of
being swamped; a feeling of intense distress and desperation; he sensed
screaming—if that made any sense—he sensed it, but could not hear it.
And lastly, he identified the mental signature that
accompanied the barrage of emotions and sensations.
Paul.
Then he registered the smirk on his “twin’s” face.
Mark spun around and saw Paul struggling weakly
against his own double, who had his arm clamped around Paul’s neck.
His mind very quickly processed what he had sensed earlier,
the expression on his double’s face, Paul’s current situation, and he
immediately put two and two together.
Fury boiled within him and spilled over instantly.
The tendrils of his mind snaked out in two directions,
seeking to avenge, to twist, to destroy completely and to mutilate beyond all
recognition.
His double had been sneaking up behind him, and now
stopped in his tracks.
Paul’s double released his hold and stepped back. Paul
himself fell forward onto all fours, coughing and wheezing and clutching at his
throat. The imagined-animals-made-real all vanished at once, and Mark turned to
face his stock-stiff double.
“I told you not to touch them,” he snarled, taking two
steps towards his double. “I warned you not to fuck with me.”
Anger seared his veins and burned in his eyes.
This time, even Paul telling him to stop would not
bring him back.
***
Christian heard a scream and, worried, he turned to
look in the general direction of Mark and Paul.
It was all the distraction that his double needed.
He heard a strangled yelp—
“Chris!”
He turned back—
Someone slammed into him from the left, but it was too
late.
The energy sphere hit him full in the face, burning
like it would eat its way through his skin, and he screamed as he fell.
He heard his double laughing.
“Chris!” Benjamin’s voice again; Christian heard him
scrabbling around beside him. “I’m sorry—” he felt anxious hands grasp his
forearms; “I’m so sorry— I couldn’t… couldn’t block it—”
Christian didn’t blame him; his double alone was
proving to be more than a handful for the two of them, and Benjamin had been
trying very hard to shield both of them, deflect the energy projectiles and
break down the barrier near the River, all at the same time.
He was powerful for his age, but he had his limits.
Christian could hear the strain in the teenager’s voice already.
“Chris, say something…”
“Benji?” He blinked, still feeling the unbearable
stinging sensation on his face.
“Chris? Chris, I’m here— Are you… Where—where’re you
hurt?”
“Benji… I can’t see.”
Silence. More screaming from somewhere further away.
Despair. He sensed despair, like his heart dropping
through his ribcage and into his feet; like his soul being sucked out of his
chest so fast that he was left gasping for breath.
Despair. He understood. Benjamin couldn’t heal. He
couldn’t heal him. He closed his eyes.
“Benji, just hold him off as best you can; get us to
the River—”
“I can fix this,” the teenager suddenly said.
“Benji—”
“Open your eyes.”
“Benji, I can’t see!”
“You can.”
Christian started to reply, but he felt a sensation
flood in his mind, filling it like light fills a room.
And he found that, yes… he could see.
He saw himself, eyes closed, on the ground, holding
himself up with his arms. His face was horribly scorched; a vicious red burn
covered most of it—largely the area around his eyes—and the skin was broken and
bleeding in places. He saw Benjamin’s hands on his arm and shoulder. And as he
finally opened his eyes, wincing slightly at the movement of the burned skin,
he saw the vision of himself doing the same thing.
He was seeing through Benjamin’s eyes.
‘Benji, turn left.’
Benjamin did so, and Christian aimed a volley of
energy bolts at his double, who was caught off guard and was unable to dodge more
than half of them.
“We’re not out of the game yet,” he said loudly as he
got to his feet, Benjamin aiding him.
***
As oxygen returned to his brain and the spots stopped
dancing before his eyes, Paul watched what Mark was doing in morbid
fascination.
What he could sense Mark was feeling went far
beyond anger.
It was absolute rage.
His and Mark’s doubles’ limbs bent at odd, unnatural
angles even as they stood, making hideous crunching noises as joints bent the
wrong way and the bones cracked and popped out of their sockets. When they
could no longer stand on their shattered appendages, they flopped down on the
grass with such force that he could hear their backbones snap and crunch. They
threw their heads back against the hard ground repeatedly until blood drenched
the ground beneath them and flowed out of their ears and nostrils. They tried
to twist their necks around too far, reached a point where they could no longer
turn, but then screamed and shook their heads violently from side to side until
they finally snapped their own necks.
And through it all, Mark simply watched impassively,
fists clenched at his sides.
“Mark…” he said hoarsely as he regained his footing.
“Mark, don’t do this—”
“I’ll make them pay,” Mark hissed, but he did not seem
to have heard Paul.
“Mark, it’s over; they’re dead—”
“Dead?!” Mark’s head snapped up and he stared at Paul,
as if seeing him for the first time. And he laughed.
He laughed a deep, throaty laugh that rose into his
mouth and escalated in pitch as he threw his head back and his arms out, and
ended in a high, keening cackle.
“Dead?!?” he screamed. “No, they’ll heal. They
heal themselves, you see. They’ll heal and I’ll get to break them all over
again.” He paused and smiled; it looked more like a leer.
“Like dolls, but even better. Break them all you want,
into as many little pieces as you can, but they’ll put themselves back
together. Death is too easy. I’ll break them, kill them and bring them back
because I can—they’ll bring themselves back and I’ll do it all over again
because they can’t run from me because they deserve it—”
“Mark, don’t—”
“Whose side are you on?! What kind of idiot are you,
defending these things that just tried to kill you?!”
“I don’t want you to become like them!”
“Oh, so you still think that I’m like them, do you?”
Mark said, his voice suddenly conspiratorially soft, and Paul realised that it
was the wrong thing to have said.
“What did it feel like, having him invade your mind?”
Mark spoke again, gesturing to his double, lying motionless on the ground, his
body a mess of abnormal angles. Paul noted that already, the broken, formless
limbs were starting to straighten in places; Mark was right—they were
self-healing.
“That’s what happens when I do it, you know,” Mark
went on, smiling; smirking. “It’s the same power that we have. It’s not
pleasant, is it?” He paused and stared hard at Paul. “Is it?”
Paul swallowed. Apparently he wanted an answer.
But he couldn’t think of a right answer for
this.
“No,” he finally said. He took a step, stumbling
forward very slowly. “No, it… isn’t. But Mark, you have to stop—”
“Stop?! I’ve barely started,” he hissed, “and don’t
think I’ll listen to you like I did the last time. I listen to too many people;
I’m done listening. I don’t give a fuck about what you all have to say
anymore; I’ve taken all this shit for long enough when I’ve always known that I
can end it, and I’ve been holding back—”
“The River is the only way to end this!” Another step;
he reached out with his hands, pleading—
“And you’re gonna let them get away with it? You’re
gonna let them get away with keeping us here??”
“They didn’t—” Hands out, pleading; stop this, please,
please—
“They deserve it. They thought that they could keep us
here. I’ll show them. I’ll destroy this place. I’ll destroy it. They can’t keep
us here.”
“Don’t—” Hands reaching—
“Why not? I can do it.” Mark chuckled to himself. “You
know, Benji talked to his double once.” He ignored Paul’s look of surprise.
“You know what he said? He told Benji that I could be great. He said that I
could be great. Greater than all of you. And I am. I can be more than what I
am. And with a little help from you, I can do anything.”
Paul stared; his hands froze, still reaching, desperately
hoping that there was still something left to reach in the young man that was
his friend.
“I won’t let you do this… I won’t let you do this,
Mark! You’ll ruin yourself! Whatever it is that you’re planning on doing, I won’t
help!”
Mark laughed.
“Who said anything about wanting your consent?”
Paul felt the blood in his veins congeal all over
again.
“There’re four of us in the blood-bond, Paul. There’s
more than enough power in the three of you.”
Paul continued to stare, horrified.
‘Oh, Goddess, NO…’
***
He had never been one to deny what he was capable of.
He knew what he could do and he knew what he could
achieve, and as long as he wanted it badly enough, he had never let anything
stand in his way.
He could not remember ever being this angry, but he
felt it opening up possibilities for him. He could feel the entirety of the
power at his fingertips; he could feel the three other sources of power that he
was connected to; he could sense the world around him—this false world, this
illusion that he utterly loathed.
So the Dark Master thought that he could trap them
here, did he? He thought that they’d play his game; he thought that he could
throw them in this prison and force them to play according to his rules?
No. He would not stand for it.
‘I can be more than what I am; you can’t hold
me here. You can’t hold me here.
‘You can’t hold me.
‘No one can.’
And in that instant, he knew it and believed it.
He let go of all that had barred him before and he opened
his arms and welcomed all the power that was rightfully his to take; the power
that he knew had been his all along, if only he had not been so afraid to
embrace it.
He had been afraid that those around him would fear
what he could do. For so long, he had been afraid that they would not accept
him and what he could do.
‘Nothing else to lose,’
he remembered, but he did not remember who it was who had said it, and he did
not care.
He was beyond caring. The people around him had held
him back for too long—he had held back for too long for them—and he
would not make his exit without coming into what was rightfully his.
‘Nothing else to live for,’
he remembered himself saying, and he pondered how fitting that statement was
before he began to draw the power around him into himself.
For a while, the influx of magical energy was
refreshing, replenishing his own strength.
Then something seemed to snap, and he felt the power
completely flood him.
And he was so alive.
How could he have ever refused this?
Power. So much power. It kept pouring in, and he kept
wanting more; the unbelievable feeling of complete control, everything within
his power, of being able to bend anything to his will—
He had been gifted the universe and everything within
it; the stars would expire at his wish, galaxies would collapse inwards on
themselves if he so deemed it, time would wind itself backwards if he desired
it and like a toy wound up backwards, that would break it and everything around
him, but he would not care and he would feel nothing and he would not be
affected, for he was greater than all the world and he would control, yes, he
would, and nothing was beyond him for there was nothing that was or could ever be
more powerful or greater than he andhewasallthatmatteredandexistedinthemidstofallthatpower—
He was no longer just awash in all that power; it was
part of him, an extension of him; he was that power.
And he could do anything.
***
His vision—or rather, Benjamin’s vision—wavered and
blurred slightly.
“Benji?” he called, concerned.
He watched through Benjamin’s eyes as Benjamin lifted
the blond “twin” and hurled him through the air; the “twin” landed hard, the
back of his head striking the ground, knocking him out.
“Benji, look at me. I need to find my way to you.”
Benjamin turned so that he was facing Christian, and
Christian saw himself.
“Benji, are you all right?”
No answer, but Christian walked towards him anyway.
Then, less than two metres away from Benjamin, he stopped.
In Benjamin’s line of sight, he could see Benjamin’s
double approaching himself from behind.
He spun around to face Benjamin’s double, and was
about to throw the first blow when Benjamin spoke.
“He won’t hurt you.”
“I won’t hurt you,” he heard an identical voice say
from in front of him.
He saw himself standing in a defensive stance, his
fists raised before him, and he watched as Benjamin’s double raised his hand
slowly.
He felt fingers settle over his eyes, closing them.
He felt warmth.
“Open your eyes,” two similar voices said.
He did, without question this time; his vision and
perspective changed, and he saw Benjamin standing before him.
‘No,’ he
realised, ‘not Benji. His double.’ The double was completely unscathed,
not a scratch on him. ‘But his double just… healed me??’
He whirled around quickly and found the real Benjamin
standing a ways off behind him, his face an expression of calm.
“Benji, what’s going on here?”
Benjamin didn’t answer again.
Then he blinked, and right before Christian’s eyes,
fell to the ground in a dead faint.
“Benji!!”
He dashed across, skidding to his knees next to him,
and immediately began checking his injuries. There were plenty of bruises; like
himself, Benjamin had been knocked around, but there was nothing serious enough
to merit what had just happened!
“What did you do?!” he screamed at Benjamin’s “twin”,
holding the teenager’s limp form close.
“I did nothing,” the “twin” answered levelly. “He is
exhausted.” He paused. “Mark is channelling your powers.”
“What??”
“He is channelling your powers; the three of you. He
is channelling them through the blood-bond link that you all share, and
Benjamin has nothing left to give.”
Christian gaped for a second before collecting
himself.
“I can heal him—”
“No. The healing energy will not save him. He needs to
recover his own magical energy, but Mark is draining him.”
“Mark,” Christian whispered, understanding, then
turned to look at where Mark and Paul were, once again.
Mark was radiating light and sparks that shot every
which way, and the dead trees near the River were wrenched out of the ground;
Christian suddenly recognised Benjamin’s telekinesis in that action.
He watched as a bright red shaft of light shot up from
where Mark stood, into the sky, and as the thick beam hit the greying clouds, a
loud clap of thunder sounded, and to Christian’s shock, cracks branched out
from the point of impact up in the clouds.
He watched as there was a large explosion of light,
which gave way to what looked like a shockwave, radiating out from Mark’s
position.
And he watched as the green grass beneath him and
Benjamin turned to dust as the strange wave passed, and he looked up when he
spied lightning out of the corner of his eyes. The sky was coming apart,
cracking like glass, black nothingness showing through the widening cracks.
‘I remember this…’
He remembered this vision.
He had thought that it was showing him the end of the
world.
He had not expected it to be the end of the world at
Mark’s hands.
“Mark,” he mumbled again, suddenly remembering the
situation and the half-dead teenager in his arms.
He glanced at the world falling apart around him,
heard Mark scream out his rage; saw Paul, on his knees, looking helpless, and
he focussed and transported himself and Benjamin over.
“Mark!!” he shouted over the gusting wind, the
thunder and the furious howling. “Mark, stop it!!”
He set Benjamin down and raced over, but was stopped
by a strong grip on his arm. He turned to look and found Paul holding him back.
“Paul, let go!”
“Don’t go near him.”
“He has to stop what he’s doing! He’s channelling—”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Yes.”
For the first time, Christian became aware of the tone
of defeat in Paul’s voice.
“He has to stop it.” He looked back at Benjamin. “He’s
draining Benji.”
Paul looked up and followed his gaze, and looked at a
loss as to what to do.
“Talk to him, Paul! He has to stop!”
“He won’t listen.”
“Tell him!! He listens to you!”
“He won’t listen! He won’t listen to anyone!!
If he was willing to listen to me, do you think I’d have let him do this?!?”
Christian stared.
“Why aren’t we feeling the drain?”
“We’re both a rank higher than Benji. We’ll feel it
soon.”
“We have to do something… We have to stop him, knock
some sense into him—”
“It won’t work. He’ll just absorb anything you throw
at him. We can’t stop him from channelling our powers; it’s part of the
blood-bond—it allows those in it to draw on the others’ powers.”
Christian turned to look at Mark, then walked back
numbly and sank down next to Benjamin, lifting the teenager and holding him
close, resting the younger boy’s head on his shoulder.
‘This can’t be it… this can’t be the end; I
Saw it… it wasn’t like this…’
‘But it was,’ a little
voice within him countered gently. ‘This was what you saw a long time ago.’
‘I thought it had changed. I thought we had
changed it. The last vision that I had of the end was different.’
‘Don’t you remember what you were taught once?
Everything changes everything. You See possibilities. Only possibilities. And
there are thousands of possibilities, but—’
“…We only get one chance to live only one of those
possibilities,” Christian murmured, finishing the thought. “Like a lottery with
impossible odds.”
And suddenly, Paul was there, kneeling in front of
him, taking Benjamin’s hand and turning it over.
“He’s bleeding,” he said, and Christian looked down
and found that the cut on Benjamin’s palm had split open again and was leaking
blood.
Christian looked at his own left palm and found that
the cut had turned a dark red. Or was it that the rest of his skin had turned
paler in comparison?
“Paul, we have to do something,” he pleaded.
“We can’t.”
“We have to try. It’s down to just the two of us. We
have to find some way to prevent Mark from siphoning off Benji’s energy.”
“You want him to draw from us instead.”
“It’s all I can think of.”
“We won’t last for very much longer.”
“We’ll think of something. For now, we can take it.
Benji can’t.”
The wind gusted even more, and the ground began to
shake. Gaping holes were beginning to show in the sky, blackness and darkness
laced with angry, red, pulsating light. In the distance, Christian saw more
shafts of crimson light shoot down from the sky to the ground, and he saw
everything around them wither and crumble into dust, leaving only the River
unchanged.
Christian felt Paul take hold of his left hand with
his own.
“We have to try,” Paul whispered, rising up on his
knees, leaning in and gently grasping Benjamin’s shoulder in a protective grip.
Christian nodded and gripped Paul’s hand tighter. They
huddled over the younger boy, eyes closed, heads almost touching, and together,
they began to murmur a spell that would shield the teenager sheltered between
them; a spell that hopefully, Mark was not powerful enough to bypass.
Paul was not sure that anything was more powerful than
Mark at this point, but he hoped that it would work.
He hoped, for there was nothing else that he could do.
‘Don’t do this… please… Come back to us, Mark;
come back, please…’