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Post by Mizagium on Jun 16, 2013 14:15:07 GMT -5
Echoes of the Past, Part 1 of 4
Knox only stared at her. "That isn't it, is it?"
"Tuu Scon always liked you best." There were tears in her eyes now as she turned away from him. He placed a hand on her shoulder.
"You know how this has to end." Tears formed in his eyes too.
"Yes." She whispered. She turned to face him and kissed him. They stood together for a moment before pulling apart.
"I'm sorry." Knox whispered back.
…
Come back!
When Know awoke, the image of Jiir-Row’s face remained burned into the back of his eyelids. He didn’t move, choosing instead to lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, and listening to the pounding of his heart. She was there, just as she had been those six months (or so) ago, as alive as she had ever been.
The tears in his eyes were real—so was the pounding of heart—but she…she was gone. And she was never coming back. He knew this, had been told this by his predecessor. Dead in dead. You can’t turn back the hands of time to save one person.
But then, he’d never really tried.
No, he musn’t think like that. He, Knox, was the Time Keeper now, the caretaker of the Timestream, guardian of one half of spacetime, and a caretaker of the universe. He was an Immortal, and he had responsibilities. Responsibilities he had been neglecting.
As he dressed, he reflected on how long the duties of Time Keeper had been neglected. At least a year. At least that long had passed since Stansilaus Grueman’s death. Those first six months he had not done a damn thing. Theska tried to teach him, but he didn’t listen. After that, well, there was that whole Imperatrix crisis in Awesome Land. And now he was back in Fun Land, back where everything had begun for him.
It was quite the metaphor.
He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror as he left his bedroom. A young man stared back at him, worn and weary beyond his years. He must not have been eating right for a while because he looked lean, leaner than even his days as an Organization back-alley card shark. He still kept his metal cards with him, though he had no real use for them. Even his robes were the same as then—a white version of the Mysterious Hooded Cloaks that new villains seemed to love to use so much, adorned with kings and hearts. Over his heart he had sewn a clover from Jiir-Row’s cloak. He needed a shave. And a haircut. Disgusted with himself, he turned away quickly.
“Theska?” he called throughout the Tower, but no one answered him. “Come on, old man, I need your help!” He searched every one of the absurd amount of floors, making mental notes to trim down the number at a later date, but to no avail. It wasn’t until he returned to the ground floor that he saw the note tacked to the front door. In an elegant scrawl it read:
Knox,
I have left on an important errand. I trust you will be able to hold things down until I return. You have grown so much and I am so proud of you. You know I would not leave unless the matter was urgent.
Aev’Uldron Theska Immortal Bearer of the Light
The note unsettled Knox. It sounded like he was saying goodbye, or that he might not return.
“Is it that time?” Knox asked aloud to no one. “Maybe…” He let the matter slide but kept the note with him.
Two more days passed without any word from Theska. Knox would have been more worried, but the nightmares kept plaguing him. Various scenes from his past played out in his dreams like a damaged film reel, skipping in places and blurring in others. The sound faded in some parts. But he knew them. Each scene involved Jiir-Row.
Finally, it occurred to him that maybe something was wrong with the Timestream, as ludicrous as that sounded.
But with no other options, he decided that was the best he could do. So on the third day, Knox journeyed to the open roof of the Tower, where the physical world was closest (metaphorically) to the Timestream. That was the true purpose of the Clock Tower, to provide an anchor point for Time, a place where its caretaker may enter or commune most easily. But Knox’s communing skills had been on the fritz lately. Whatever caused his dreams, clouded his time-sense.
“Here goes nothing,” he muttered, and closed his eyes. He had never attempted this feat before, not out of fear, but because it hadn’t really been necessary until now. The knowledge came to him unbidden, the recycled technique of the First Time Keeper, readily available to all successors.
Fun Land flew away from him. The inside of his eyes melted away, revealing a writhing mass of Technicolor energies. Physically, he remained on the Clock Tower, as he only allowed his mind to access the Timestream. Even so, the flow crashed against him, threatening to drag him under and pull him along. He resisted. He pulled back, viewing the flow from above and a great distance. Despite what many tell you, what Knox might tell you, time is not truly linear. Time is a branching, living thing. What constituted the “flow” were uncountable possible timelines, all moving together in tandem, sometimes crashing against each other, all different, but moving in one direction. Occasionally, the stream branched off, forming a group of realities vastly different from the rest of the flow. It was easy to typify a group as the “primary” flow, but he knew that to be a fallacy. His timeline was a branch of another, which was itself a branch…it went on forever. And each of those realities had their own Time Keeper. Many would be him, but others would have vastly different realities. If he traveled far enough upstream, he would eventually reach the Origin, the beginning of time from which all branches began—and if he followed it all the way downstream, he would reach the End, the convergent point where all divergent realities slammed back together…and ended.
Nothing appeared to be wrong with the flow itself, but he found it curious that his knowledge in his state was limited only to his own reality, when he should have mentally fused with all other Time Keeper and been granted temporary temporal omniscience. But no. Nothing was wrong with the Timestream; something was wrong with him.
He retreated to his body, sweating and gasping for breath.
“What should I do?”
But he knew what he had to do.
Jiir-Row’s death haunted him. Her reasons had never been clear to him. Why had she betrayed the Organization? Why had she deliberately set out to destroy the World Nexus? Why why why? He had been telling himself that it didn’t matter, that she had earned the end she got; he’d almost convinced himself of that, too. But now…with these dreams…
“I need to know. I have to know what really happened.”
Time folded around him like a cocoon, a warm, welcoming embrace, as if it knew what he wanted before he did. The years flew by in the timesphere in a blur of red and black and gold. He saw Fun Land age in reverse. When it finally stopped, the timesphere remained, but turned translucent, a thin membrane separating him from the outside. I moved with him.
He went to the old Organization XXI headquarters. And he saw himself, just a boy being brought into the group. Sunatt Ara waited at the entrance. Young Knox was being led by the hand by an older-looking man, cloaked in red robes and bearing a staff topped with an hourglass.
“Is this him?” Ara asked.
“This is him,” Stansilaus Grueman said cheerily. “Say hello, Knox.”
“Hello,” the boy said shyly.
“I’ll leave him with you,” Stan said, passing the boy to Ara. “He won’t remember anything about this meeting after this.” He started to turn away, but Ara stopped him.
“What about the others?”
“They still could be useful.”
Ara led young Knox away, leaving the Time Keeper alone. He started to teleport away, hesitated, and looked directly at Knox, which shouldn’t have been possible. But then again, he was the Time Keeper.
“Looks like I was right,” he said with a smirk. “Be seeing you.”
And he was gone.
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Post by Mizagium on Jun 18, 2013 9:31:30 GMT -5
Echoes of the Past, Part 2 of 4
Young Knox kept apart from the others for a long time. Weeks went without any real interaction with his fellow Organization trainees. They shot him suspicious glances and he returned scowls. They didn’t bother him, and he didn’t bother them.
Immortal Knox frowned as the days raced on. He barely remembered this. Why had he been so withdrawn, so passively hostile to others? And then he thought about what had happened before. Where had the Time Keeper taken him from? Where was his family, if he had any? Why in the name of Clyde couldn’t he leave well enough alone?
He almost reversed the flow when he saw her. Even though she was just a child now, there was no mistaking Jiir-Row. She was striking even then, carrying the air of a wisdom beyond her years. Like him, she ignored everyone else. They met entirely by accident in the halls one day. Neither was paying particular attention, looking down at something and they almost collided. Both looked up simultaneously and stopped moving.
“Watch it,” Jiir-Row said.
“Sorry,” Young Knox replied.
They stepped around each other and kept moving.
That he remembered. Knox’s earliest memory was him meeting Jiir-Row in the hall. He abandoned himself, confident his memories from that point forward remained intact. The time-flow around him sped up, centered around Jiir-Row. He watched her train, honing her Focus, become an expert card dealer. She and his younger self developed a rivalry of sorts, always sparring against each other and no one else. For a few years, they were each other’s only friend. Then came the squad assignments.
He remembered that day, being introduced to Jace, Sherri, and Crass—three kids he’d seen here and there. They all wore excited expressions and introduced themselves cheerily (loudly, in Crass’s case) while he staunchly refused to smile and only gave his name.
Jiir-Row was more diplomatic when she was introduced to the kids who would become her Clover Suit: Nag-Dee, the future King of Clovers; Kare-Voi, the future Queen of Clovers; Fon-Su, the future Jack of Clovers. He wondered if they were grouped together just based on their names alone. All four of them introduced themselves calmly and set about training together.
Young Knox, it seemed, tried his damndest to stay away from his teammates and downplayed his obviously far superior Focus. Jiir-Row was just the opposite, flaunting her excellent powers and earning the respect and admiration of her squadmates and many other trainees.
How easily they all believed in the man who commanded them. Excited by their new powers and too young to understand that adults sometimes could not be trusted. Did any of them truly comprehend the position for which they were being groomed? Did any of them question the Organization’s motives? No, they all believed in Tuu Scon Arzona…Sunatt Ara…who was he really? He was the one who believed in the kids, in their potential. Potential for what? No adult would ever have been mislead by him, with his vague speeches and lack of transparency. But kids…these kids were genuinely having fun. How could he be wrong?
Something of an impromptu tournament was held one day, a year or two later. The squads were pitted against each other, testing their powers. First up were the Spades and Diamonds—the Diamonds won by a hair. They faced off against the Clubs next while the Spades fought the Hearts. Diamonds and Hearts won handily. After that the tournament rules broke down and it just became an ad-hoc squad vs. squad day. The Hearts and Clovers beat all opponents and finally faced off in the last fight of the day. The sun was dropping towards the horizon and everyone was sweaty and tired and hungry, but they eagerly awaited seeing the two best teams fight.
Ara watched from his box seat.
Card designations hadn’t been assigned yet, but the Clovers fell into their future roles, with Jiir-Row taking charge. Young Knox’s team had not yet figured out that Knox was the best. Or at least, Jace still thought he could beat him. He was about to find out why that would never happen and he would never forgive him for it.
The eight kids stood opposite, then charged each other. No powers were used at first, just a few cards and a lot of fists. Everyone grinned the whole way, except Knox. He was beginning to remember what a dour child he had been. It was a free for all at first, until everyone seemed to find a suitable sparring opponent: Fon-Su and Crass, Kare-Voi and Sherri, Nag-Dee and Jace, and, of course, Jiir-Row and Knox.
Focus activated here and there, kids disappearing in a flash of localized time manipulation. Ara passed it off to them as a heightened physiological state consciously activated, but Knox saw the truth now. Every single one of them possessed some degree of temporal manipulation. Each was supposedly a potential Time Keeper, but only a handful of them possessed the deeply inate connection to the Timestream that he had. Jiir-Row was one such child.
He and she raced around the battleground, ramping up their Focus in increments, testing the other’s limits. Nobody in the audience could see them, but they kept pushing it further. By them time they reached their limit, time had all by stopped around them. They sparred hand-to-hand, evenly matched. Until, that is, Knox pushed his Focus just that step more and gained the advantage over her. She went down from his leg sweep and their Focus released, giving the others a sudden view of the Clover’s defeat.
He realized he was smiling at the end and so was she.
They stuck together after that, training long after everyone else had gone to bed. The rest of the Clovers and Hearts became rivals, but they became friends. He talked to her and hardly no one else. They talked of their pasts that she remembered and he didn’t, the families they hoped were still waiting somewhere for them, what they would do when they grew up. She encouraged him to communicate more with his teammates and he did; and they became close friends.
Rank assignments came and of course they became Aces. They congratulated each other and he could see the truth on his own face. He loved her in the pure and innocent way imaginable. He wanted her to stay with him forever and be his best friend until the end of time. He became awkward and fumbly around her, unable to speak like he once did, foreign emotions clouding his mind. How could he express what he was feeling when he himself wasn’t entirely sure of it? She saw it, he thought now, a long time before he finally owned up to it. When they finally kissed that night by the lake, she wore an expression that told of her long wait and relief that he was done with the waffling.
Then it happened.
Jiir-Row was practicing outside one day when the air crackled and a portal opened, dumping out a young boy he recognized vaguely. Initially suspicious, Jiir-Row and the boy talked. He was smooth, charming, and brave enough to get her to lower her guard. He flirted, complimenting her looks, her fighting style, the things she said.
And suddenly he knew who that was: Torran.
He stuck around for a few days, and she learned of his criminal dealings across worlds. But, he assured her, he was trying to turn over a new leaf. Once he shook the authorities following him, he would start over with a more legitimate lifestyle. And she believed him. Of course she did. He was a few years older than she and incredibly fascinating to anyone who’d never been outside the Organization headquarters.
On the fourth day, he had to leave. She begged him to stay, to start over in Fun Land, but to no avail. He had to go. She pleaded and he gave in, agreeing to spend one last night with her. He disappeared in the early morning, leaving her to wake up alone. She cried. She pulled herself together. She told no one.
She changed after Torran. Young Knox noticed it but would never discern the reasons. She trained harder, spent more and more time in the library. Her squadmates became her fanatical followers. The obeyed her without question. The years raced on and she and Knox drifted apart. He never stopped loving her, kept trying to mend the irreparably damaged relationship. Finally, the Clovers disappeared. For a year, no one heard anything from them. Organization duties went on without them. The wayward squad visited Groovy Land, Super Land, Special Land, Awesome Land, Really Cool Land, Ausum Land. They were looking for something and she evidently found it.
Then the Trial of the Wind Sage occurred. The Clovers had the daemon Mistah Jangles assassinate the government of Fun Land. Without them, the funding for the Organization was lost, but it was too late: Knox’s team was on her tail. They found her as she attempted to destroy the World Nexus, unleashing the monstrous F’yuren.
He watched again as they fought, as he spoke the words that haunted his dreams:
"I don't want to kill you, Jiir." Knox admitted. "But I...I have to."
"You...would kill me?" Jiir-Row whispered. Something about what he said hurt her. She moved closer to him, so that their faces were almost touching. "You still love me." It was a statement, not a question.
"I did once." Knox said rather harshly.
Whatever part of Jiir-Row that was human showed on her face. She tried to keep an air of unfeeling around her subordinates. But that was not who she was. Knox knew who she really was.
"Why don't you anymore?" But she already knew the answer. "The Organization was too narrow minded." She said suddenly as he tried to answer. "They kept us on a short leash. I had to be free of it."
"Your entire group is based on illegal activity!" Knox exclaimed angrily.
"Oh grow up!" Jiir-Row shouted back. "Are you not going to do something because you are told not to? Life is no fun when someone else dictates how you live."
Knox only stared at her. "That isn't it, is it?"
"Tuu Scon always liked you best." There were tears in her eyes now as she turned away from him. He placed a hand on her shoulder.
"You know how this has to end." Tears formed in his eyes too.
"Yes."
“NO!”
Time stopped. He didn’t realize he had even done anything for a long moment, awaiting the death blow his younger self would deal to his beloved. But it never came and he realized the time stop was his own, no the combined Focus of the young ones. He walked forward until he could reach out and touch her—she blinked.
“Knox?”
“Jiir-Row.” He choked on the words.
“What are…you doing there?” She looked from him to his younger self, the one holding her. She wasn’t dead yet. Maybe… He pulled her away from the frozen statue of himself.
“Please,” he was already begging. “Why did you do it?”
“You must already know.” She always could read him like a book. “I had to find him.”
Everything he said after that meant very little; he just had to stall. Keep her alive for just a little bit longer, please. “Destroy the Nexus…break the distance between worlds…bring him crashing back to you…”
“Yes. I love him, Knox.”
“You ruined everything!” No she hadn’t. He was angry. “You almost killed everyone!”
“That’s why you had to stop me. I’d do it again.” No she wouldn’t. Time-threads filtered through his mind, realities where she was still alive. “I was never yours, Knox. I loved you once, but not with all myself, not like you did me. I’m sorry.”
“Come with me.” He was crying. “I can still save you. I can—we can still be together.”
“No.”
“Don’t say that!”
She spoke gently. “Our time is over, Knox. So is mine. I will never be yours like you want me to be. This is the end for me.” She kissed him. He tried to hold it but she broke away. “Goodbye, Knox. Find someone better than I.” She must have seen his eyes glance at Sarah, frozen in combat. “It seems you already have.”
“I can’t…I can’t lose you again.”
She returned to her original position and said, “You never had me.”
Time resumed. She died again. He cried again.
Then everything became a blur as he screamed out all the frustration and anguish he felt out into the river of time. All he could think of was Torran—and suddenly there he was. Knox grabbed him by the collar and slammed him into the wall. Jace, Sherri, and Crass all turned around, surprised to see their former leader appear in the DCI headquarters. Matteas looked to his squadmates, confused.
“YOU DID THIS!” he screamed in Torran’s face. “YOU KILLED HER!”
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Post by Mizagium on Jun 19, 2013 3:23:30 GMT -5
Echoes of the Past, Part 3 of 4
Nobody moved. Jace Sherri and Crass all looked on in bewilderment to see Knox, the former Ace of Hearts and current Immortal of Time. Matteas had never seen this cloaked man before in his life and readied his telekinesis, but his superiors didn’t move so he held off. And Torran just stared at the man who held him against the wall, crying and shouting at him.
“SHE’S DEAD!”
“Who?” he asked incredulously, knowing immediately that was the wrong thing to do.
Knox responded by slamming him harder. “DON’T YOU DARE! DON’T YOU DARE PRETEND YOU DON’T REMEMBER!”
“I really-“ Knox slammed him again.
Jace edged forward. “Whoa there, Knox. I’m not sure what’s going on here, but I’m sure we can all-“
“He killed her, Jace,” he said through clenched teeth.
Now it was Jace’s turn to ask, “Who?” Then he knew. “Oh. Look, just out him down.” He nodded to Matteas.
“I can’t,” Knox said, gripping harder. “I watched her die twice. I…couldn’t save her. You. You did this to her.”
Torran could only say, “I’m sorry, I don’t know who you’re—“ Knox slammed him a third time.
“DON’T TELL ME YOU DON’T REMEMBER.” He released one hand and wheeled back. Red and black and gold energies gathered around his clenched fist. “She’s dead! Because! Of! You!” He threw the punch, but it never connected with Torran’s face. Purple energy encased his fist. Matteas strained hard to keep his telekinesis going.
Realizing he only had seconds, Torran sputtered, “I’m sorry. I really don’t remember. I never did anything to this girl, whoever she is.”
As angry as he was, as much as he wanted to punch Torran back to the Origin, he managed to remember. Of course Torran didn’t know who he was talking about. This Torran had been brought over from a dead timeline. Jiir-Row’s Torran was dead, killed by Gree. Knox allowed Jace and Sherri to free Torran from his grasp. Matteas released his TK-hold and Knox’s fist slammed into the wall. A large section turned to dust and fell away. Had that connected with Torran, he would have aged rapidly and crumbled to dust as well.
Knox collapsed to his knees, sobbing. “It was…for you. She tried to find you. You left her! You left a young girl, stupid in love.”
The Crossmen all remained on edge, unsure of Knox’s next move. But really, what could they do against the Time Keeper? Only Torran inched forward and said, “I don’t know. I don’t remember. It wasn’t me.”
But Knox wasn’t listening. “All of it. She tried to…it would have destroyed everything…for you. Why? Why did you leave her?”
“Look, man, I-“
“And I can’t even blame you. It wasn’t you. I killed her. Oh, gods, I killed her!” Time energy warped around him. “I’m so sorry.” He looked back at them all and said it again. “I’m so sorry.” He vanished, leaving the Crossmen confused and unnerved, and part of their headquarters destroyed.
“Soo…” Jace said finally. “Who wants to tell Dace that an Immortal other than Zais wrecked part of his building?”
“Who wants to tell Zais that?” Matteas offered, wiping the blood from his nose.
Not wanting to deal with that, the Crossmen made themselves scarce. Maybe there were some crimes to bust out in the city. That’s what they did, right? Fight crimes?
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Knox hadn’t consciously summoned the time rift that sucked him away, but he let it. He let himself fall into the Timestream and be carried away with the flow, his mind touching numerous realities. His head ached from the amount of knowledge he tried to process at once. His body ached from the strain of the Timestream on a mortal form. His soul ached from the deepest sorrow. Nothing mattered then. Nothing all.
Nothing…nothing…nothing.
And nothing greeted him when he opened his eyes. He couldn’t even say it was darkness. There just simply wasn’t anything around him. No ground, no sky, no air, no light, no darkness. Pure, unmitigated nothingness.
“My,” remarked a voice in the nothingness, “aren’t we a whiny little time-god, eh?”
A male figure stood over him. Maybe not stood. Loomed perhaps. He was tall, although no reference points existed. Disheveled reddish hair exploded from his scalp. Freckles dotted his face. A suit adorned his lean frame, tie undone and cuffs unbuttoned. He looked like a man just off from a party, sober enough to remember the night, but drunk enough to have had a good time.
“Who are you?” seemed like the first question he should ask, but instead he went with, “Where am I?”
“Welcome, my friend,” he said, spreading his arms wide, “to the End.”
“The end? End of what?”
“End of everything.”
“How did I get here?”
“I dunno. I was about to ask you the same question. Don’t get too many of your kind this far down the line, eh? None of you Immortals left.”
Knox stood…well, got to his feet. Even without a solid surface beneath him, he was able to stand. Of course, in nothingness, there was no gravity, nothing to say he couldn’t stand at all. He tried not to think about it.
“The…the end? Like, the END end?”
“Aye. The END end. The Grand Finale. The Apocalypse. Ragnarok. Judgement Day. Whatever you want to call it. A’course, that’s not really where we are. This AFTER the End. There hasn’t been anything left in…” he trailed off.
“How long?” Knox’s sense of time was completely gone.
“I don’t rightly know, my friend. Ain’t no time here, ya see. That died with everything else. Asking how it’s been since then…it just don’t work that way. It’s been…” He threw up his hands. “Even if I had tried to time it, it wouldn’t work. Clocks don’t run without time. But you know that of course. I guess you could say, it’s been no time at all.” He grinned. “Or, it’s been all the time there ever was. You’d never know.”
“It’s all gone…”
The man in the suit sighed. “Is pointing out the obvious part of an Immortal’s job? I’m pretty sure that was fairly self-evident.”
Then Knox asked the question to which he dreaded the answer. “Who are you?”
“I thought that were obvious, too.” He grinned again and thrust out a hand. “I’m End. Nice to meet ya.”
Knox shook it gingerly.
“Like what I’ve done with the place?”
“Can’t say I much enjoy the end of the world.”
“Universe,” End corrected. “Multiverse. Omniverse. Hell, reality. This wasn’t limited to just Awesome Land and it’s peripheral dimensions and universes. This is the ultimate fate of the whole of every single reality. Everything that ever was…it’s gone,” he reflected wistfully. “And it’s a damn shame, too. I rather liked most of it.”
“You did?”
“Course I did. Except that awful pop music. Guh. Particularly that Beiber character; I wasn’t sad to see him go.” He chuckled softly. “But sure, can’t say I enjoyed annihilating everything ever. But whaddyagonnado?”
“Then why…?”
“When I sleep, see, I still dream. I observe everything from my chrysalis. Once I wake, I get to work.” He shrugged. “It’s just how things are. Origin sets them up, I knock them down. Repeat ad infinitum. Seraphina and Delmerith did good work, you know. Not sure about the whole ‘giving magic to everyone bit’ on Delmerith’s part, but eh. You know, mate, they like to go about how they created everything, but I’ll let you in on a little secret.” He leaned close and put and arm around Knox’s shoulders. “They weren’t the first, you know. Something else created them. And when that happened, I was born. So was she. Creation began Origin and End. Even you, my friend. You Immortals weren’t conscious creations on their part. You simply sprang into being when the idea of time was thought of. Light. Darkness. Space. Knowledge. Order. Chaos. All of you.”
Knox stared out into the void. “So nothing I did mattered. It all winds up here, with you. What’s the point of it all?”
“Hey, hey! What kind of talk is that? All things must end. Nothing lasts forever. Does that mean you should just give up? What would I dream about if everyone gave up? Man, I wish I could be one of you, just for a few years. If there’s anything I’ve gleaned over the years, it’s that if just one person cares about you, it’s all worth it.”
“Oh yeah?” Knox felt particularly bitter that moment. “Who cares about you?”
“Her,” replied without missing a beat. “Out there.” Knox followed his pointing finger to a single point of light in the endlessness. End smiled. “It’s started. Origin’s coming, bringing the new reality with her. Isn’t that something. Such beauty.”
“I couldn’t save her. I tried and I couldn’t…”
End shook his head, not taking his eyes off the light of Origin. “Not everyone can be saved, my man. Sometimes you just have to move on. Every end is followed by a new beginning. You just have to be patient.”
Origin crept closer. The void erupted in the brightest, most brilliant fire imaginable. Knox looked from it to End, who watched, enraptured by it all. “She’s so lovely, ain’t she? Look at her, coming to meet me like that. I must be the luckiest guy in Eternity.”
“So what should I do then?”
“Go back. Live your life. Some things can’t be changed. Others can. Find what you can do—and do it. Moping and angst are unbecoming of an Immortal.”
He was right. “I want to see it. I want to see the new beginning.”
“That’s it,” End said with a laugh. “All right there in front of us. Heh. In front of us. Looks like the idea of Space has been born, then.”
“What?”
End pointed. A shimmering sphere about the size of his head fluttered about on the edge of Origin’s advance.
“And there’s Order, Chaos…Light, Darkness…Time, ah, Knowledge.”
Seven shimmering sphere danced among the advancing flames of Origin. Her light seemed to surround them now, flanking to consume End entirely. Almost everywhere he looked, light had spread. Only a small patch of emptiness remained directly behind them.
“I think it’s time you skedaddle, Knox,” End warned. “Origin don’t take kindly to the leftover bits of the previous…existence. You should be able to feel Time’s flow again.”
And he could. It faint, but the Timestream touched his mind, a comforting presence that filled an emptiness he hadn’t known until it was filled. “I…thank you, End.”
“Don’t thank me yet, laddie. You’ll be seeing me soon. Just remember: I do what I do not out of malice. It’s just who I am. I’m End. I End things.”
Knox gathered as much power as he could, until he could see the Timestream, the previous Timestream.
“Oh,” End said. “One last thing. Make sure you give that bugger of a Chaos Immortal a good kick in the arse.”
“Karzem?”
“Or however he’s spelling it when he does it. Kick him good.”
“I will.”
Knox cast one last look at the glittering sphere that would one day become the Immortal of Time. Origin was nearly upon them. He could almost see her, radiant and stunning, carrying with her the full might of creation.
“My darling,” End whispered.
“Hello, love,” Origin whispered.
Knox retreated into the Timestream just as Origin collided with End. And he found himself smiling. He had just visited the end of everything and witnessed the birth of a new everything, so why in the hell was he happy? End was right. Some things couldn’t be helped. He had to find what he could do and do it. It shamed him to realize it took until the end of the world to figure that out.
But there was one more thing he had to do: he had to know where he came from. It might not change anything, but he had to know.
It full synch with the Timestream, Knox pushed upstream, far from the End, where the flow broke and crashed against the nothingness before tumbling away into oblivion.
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Post by Mizagium on Jun 20, 2013 10:46:20 GMT -5
Echoes of the Past, Part 4 of 4
Knox followed his own time-thread, tracing it all the way back to where he was introduced to the fledgling Organization. Previously, he had been unable to follow the thread past then, but now the way lay open for him. He felt more connected to the Timestream than he ever had before. For the first time, he felt like a real Time Keeper.
The journey upstream became muddied. Following his past involved some time travel, but that didn’t entirely surprise him. When he arrived at the moment he desired, he found himself in a vast city. Naturally, he immediately suspected Dynasty City.
“No, that can’t be right. If I had been born in Dynasty City, I might have encountered myself before. Unless this is one of those annoying Dynasty Futures. Luckily, this city seemed devoid of morally ambiguous homicidal cyborgs named Glitch or insane 80’s rockers named Max or even eventual time travelers named Dace. No, this seemed like a fairly normal supercity, all things considered.
The key word there was “seemed”.
Something exploded off in the distance. Knox cringed. He recognized that kind of explosion. That was the kind of explosion that usually heralded insanity. He sighed, fully aware that he was going to have to investigate. Somehow, someway, his past was over there.
He clouded the membrane of his time sphere and took off.
“Go go, Gadget Shuriken!”
Knox recognized that voice. It was Leon Veralice! What in the Fallen Paradise was he doing here? At least that meant he hadn’t traveled too far into the past or future.
“Never mind, it’s not worth it. Well played, Bread Wizard! But I’ve still got a few tricks up my sleeves!”
He was getting closer. The sounds of ridiculous battle were all around him, along with the screaming of pedestrians. Yep. Leon was definitely involved. Knox had to wonder if Johnny and the rest were also here.
Knox arrived at the scene in time to see a boy about his own age unleash a glowing shockwave on what appeared to be a robot that had transformed from a helicopter of some sort. Yeah, that sounded like Leon’s thing. Over there stood a…bread robot. Oh lord. What had he wandered into?
That’s when it happened.
“Giant robot? A robot? Really? And you have no cod piece to demand respect from this little mecha servant of yours? However do you believe you are going to defeat this wheat warlock with a dinky contraption like that! It doesn’t even have a proper cloak!! All ROYAL mechas have cloaks.”
The prince shook his head at the commoners surrounding him and reached into his utility belt. “Now let me show you are REAL mecha!”
And with a blinding flash, no doubt to call the attention of all the others in the area, he reached into his endless chamber of weapons/toys/useless things/playgirl magazines that kill grandmothers (it wasn’t his fault he swears) and retrieved a gadget that he had not yet seen before. IT was just a shiny chrome remote with a single button and no instructions. The prince was bewildered, no, no he wasn’t. He wished me to tell you that royalty does NOT in fact become bewildered, for that is a third world problem. He merely had a gap in concentration.
Knox looked around for the source of the narration, half expecting to find Narrator. Instead, he found a strange man standing on the periphery of the action. It seemed he was a servant to the codpiece-cad prince man and whose only job was to narrate the prince’s life.
Knox had to step back to fully comprehend what was happening here. The prince (oddly known as the Dayman) had assembled…a mecha made of hobos. The young man also conjured a mecha out of what appeared to be folded barriers. Knox recognized the feel of his powers; the boy was an Immortal, or at least, he was becoming one. Then…then dumpster babies attached themselves to Hobotron. Something else happened and then the block exploded.
Leon’s thermite reaction leveled the entire city block and ended the mecha battle. Knox remained in the destruction after the party dispersed. This was where he was supposed to be. He dreaded what he might find, but drifted down to street level anyway.
“Mom!” A boy cried somewhere close. “Dad!” He rounded the corner and Knox’s heart skipped a beat. It was him as a child. He knew it instinctively. The time membrane popped and the two Knoxes came face-to-face. “Um, can you help me?” Child-Knox asked, close to tears. “I can’t find my mom and dad.”
Knox forced himself to smile, already knowing what had happened. “Ok, let’s go look for them.” Child-Knox took Adult-Knox’s hand and led him through the devastation. “Can you tell me what they look like?”
“Well. Daddy has a beard like this.” He tried and failed to show a beard. “And Mommy has hair like this.” His pantomime of long hair went much better.
“Ok. What’s your name?”
“Knox.”
“Well how about that. That’s my name, too.”
“Really?”
“Mhm. Must be good luck. How old are you, Knox?”
“Uh. This many.” He held up six fingers, preoccupied with searching the wreckage for his parents.
“You’re becoming quite the young man.” Knox scanned the burned and exploded area, hopefully to find his parents before his younger self did. “Do you remember what happened?”
“Kinda. There was this bright light and then a loud boom. Daddy and some of the other men shouted something, but I couldn’t hear them. We were all blown around. When I got up, I was somewhere.”
Knox frowned. Were his parents vagrants? Had they been living in an alley somewhere when the thermite exploded? He was liking his origins less and less.
“This is it!” Child Knox ran ahead suddenly, letting go of his hand. “This is where we were when everything exploded.”
His suspicions were confirmed. Knox’s family had indeed been vagrants living in an alley. Said alley was now filled with charred and smoldering debris. Child Knox called, “Mom! Dad!”
They both saw the forms at the same time, blackened and twisted skeletons, mouths locked open in a perpetual scream. He had his young self in his arms and turned away, but it was too late. They had both seen and now young Knox was crying into his adult self’s robes.
“It’s ok,” he soothed even though it wasn’t. “Shh. Don’t cry.” But he was telling himself more than his young self. “That might not have been them. They could still be out there somewhere.” But Child-Knox shook his head. He knew better. They both did.
“Well there’s something you don’t see every day.”
Knox glanced up to see Stansilaus Grueman waiting expectantly. “Hello, Stan. I suppose you’re here for…the boy.”
The Time Keeper frowned. “How did…ah. Right. You’ve figure it all out by now, huh?”
“I have.” He breathed deeply, not letting go of his child form. “I wanted for so long to go back and make you find someone else. To leave me out of it all, but I see now why I can’t do that.” Stan waited patiently. “And I suppose…if he turns out the way I did, I can’t deny him his future.” He hugged his child version tightly. “It’s going to hard, kid. You’re going to be alone for a long time. You’re going to hurt more, lose someone very important to you. But you have to listen to me: Keep going. Don’t ever give up. You’re more important than you know and I’m glad I got to meet you. I know…you don’t understand right now. You won’t even remember me saying this to you for a while…but when you do, you’ll say it again. And you’ll understand why everything had to happen the way it did. And the best part is: People are waiting for you. You’ll find the best friends you could ever imagine. And her. Try not to screw it up like I did.”
He stood, but his child form refused to let go.
Knox spoke to Stansilaus now. “You’re about to do a lot of terrible things to a lot of people, Stan. Are you prepared for that? Are you able to live with yourself knowing what you’re about to do?”
The Time Keeper sighed. “If it all goes the way I want, I won’t have to for very long. And it seems like it does.”
A hidden well of anger surged within him, the last bits he hadn’t quite purged. “I’m going to do better than you, Stan. I’ll…we’ll be a better Time Keeper than you ever were.”
“I know,” he said sadly. “Now, it’s time.”
Reluctantly, Knox handed himself over to the waiting arms of the Time Keeper. His young self began to cry, but a simple one-finger tap to his head silence him.
“Just like that?” Knox asked.
“Just like that.” Stansilaus hefted him into a more comfortable position. “He’ll wake up and remember nothing.”
“At least he gets it back eventually.” He laughed darkly. “At least I can no longer say you stole my life from me, Stan. I hated you for a long time. I think I still do. But I forgive you. I don’t know if it helps; I don’t care if it does. But…I have to do this.”
When he turned around, Stansilaus was gone.
He sighed again. “One last stop.”
Time enveloped him, dumping him six years earlier outside a disheveled home. His home. His former home. His parents’ home.
He knocked.
His father answered the door. “Yes?” He looked like a slightly older version of himself, but with a beard. They shared eye color, skin tone, even the jawline. His father must have seen it, too, because he said, “No. It can’t be.” He looked back into the house, then back at Knox. “Knox?”
“Hey, dad.”
He was pulled inside quickly. “Martha!” His father shouted into the back room “Come and see!”
“Derrick, hush, Knox only just…got…to…sleep.” His mother appeared and instantly recognized her son, just like his father did. “What. How. Are you doing here?”
“It’s…a long story.”
They sat at the table. Martha made tea and they talked. Knox explained what his job was now as best he could—luckily, his parents were of the intelligent type and grasped the concept of Immortals fairly easily. He learned that he had just been born, but Derrick had also just lost his job.
“Hard times,” he said with a grin. “We’ll get through it.”
Knox didn’t have the heart to tell them the truth.
Finally, it came time to say goodbye. They showed him to the door and he hugged them both as tightly as he possibly could. They knew it without him saying it. Something bad happened in their future. Why else would their adult son come back in time to see them? But they didn’t ask. They understood on some level.
“I love you,” he told them.
“We’re so proud of you,” his father said.
“You’ve become quite the young man,” his mother said. “And that’s all we ever wanted for you.”
Unable to bear it any longer, he disappeared before them, returning to his own time.
Martha and Derrick stood in the doorway for a long time before exchanging a look of resolution and determinism. They shut the door and went in to check on newborn Knox.
-
He was crying when he found himself in Really Cool Land. A good kind of crying, not the self-indulgent pity he’d wallowed in recently. Knox had seen his parents and nothing could ever take that away from him. He didn’t question why he was in Really Cool Land; he must have had Sarah on his mind. So he went up to the palace and knocked.
He did not expect Sarah herself to answer.
“Knox!”
“Sarah! What are you doing here?”
“I…same to you. Parents are away. Practicing this whole ruling thing.” She stepped out and closed the door behind her. “You?”
“Oh I was just…it doesn’t matter. Look, Sarah, I…I just wanted to say that I’m sorry. I should’ve come back. I…don’t know why I didn’t. Stupid. There was a long period where I enjoyed feeling sorry for myself, but as of a few seconds ago, that’s done with. I don’t expect you to forgive me or anything—that’s not why I’m here. I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry.”
Sarah took a deep breath before answering. “I forgive you, Knox. I won’t pretend to understand what’s been going on with you—you’ll have to fill me in one day—but I’m ok. And it seems like you are, too. Maybe…I think we could have a shot together. But I just…I need some time, ok?”
Knox smiled the best smile he had ever smiled. “Time? I’ve got time enough to spare, Sarah.”
She smiled, too. “Awesome.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Come around sometime.” And she went back inside.
-
Knox nearly danced his way through the portal back to the Clock Tower. He didn’t. But he almost did. With everything wrapping up the way he wanted for once, he decided now as the proper time to assume the proper clothes for his office.
He thought of Stansilaus’s red robes and hourglass staff—and decided it wasn’t for him. Too old-fashioned. And he never liked hourglasses much; he was more of a gears and cogs man than a grains of sand man.
That was it.
He snapped his fingers and his Organization XXI robes were replaced with a Victorian-era three-piece suit, crimson red with gold embroidery and a black tie. He toyed a hat before decided against it. No mustache or beard—the beard made him look like his father. Instead of a staff, he conjured a pocket-watch, gold and devoid of outer markings. Inside, the hands ticked away time over a picture of Jiir-Row, the way he remembered her that night by the lake. Always remember but never dwell. He stashed the pocket watch and examined himself in the mirror. He was going to be the classiest Time Keeper ever.
The front door swung open with a loud creak and slammed shut.
“Theska!” Knox raced down the stairs. “Where have you been, old man, I have so much to tell…you.”
Theska staggered forward, wheezing. He looked haggard and older than ever. He lost his balance and fell forward into the ready arms of Knox.
“Hey, hey old man. What’s wrong? Theska? Theska!”
To be continued in Cassandra: Say My Name…
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