Aetheran Child (3 page)

“You think you're a hero, huh?” The bully threw Alexander on the ground when he started crying, “Fuck you. Damn kid,” he shook his head and turned away.

Alexander stumbled on the uneven ground. He tripped over a tree root and fell backward on a rock. Unfortunately, the rock bore sharp edges that quickly pierced through the boy’s skin, most prominently by his neck and on his head. The edge drove itself into Alexander’s skull and cracked it open, another part of it snapped his neck because of the force of the momentum the boy created by falling backward.

At that moment, Alexander was still conscious, and the light started fading away quickly. The darkness started to close in as all the blood started pouring out of him. He could not move, he could barely breathe and barely think. The boy did think, miraculously and could understand his environment. He felt death coming for him and all he could see was Nangern’s little sister taking a harsh beating, blood pumping out of her split lip. Nangern lay next to her, also beat up with a bloody nose.

“You cannot die,” A voice spoke to Alexander, “Take away the pain.”

The voice appeared out of nowhere and in the confusion, the boy lying down, bleeding to death, still heard it perfectly clearly. He thought about the pain. The pain the bully caused, all of it. Every day, he would beat up someone new. Every day, he would hurt someone. And today, it was Nangern and his sister. Both of them were bleeding, both of them were in tremendous pain and for what? Nangern’s sister must have known something but who cares? Why would someone hurt someone else like this?

As the boy lay on the ground, these fleeting last thoughts tormented his mind. No more pain. His parents are dead. He was alone. He was at an orphanage. No more pain. He felt the pain, the hot searing pain spreading through his body. But with that came energy and anger. The pain and anger coupled and brought him back to his feet. Miraculously standing, he saw his shirt blood soaked, he felt the throbbing in the back of his neck and head. As he straightened up in front of the bully, the boy’s neck cracked slightly and he felt a bit better. His eyes focused in front of him but he could not see anything or anyone beside the bully. The bully stood in front of the crowd of kids that assembled, yelling and laughing.

“This is how anyone who messes with me will end up like,” he announced.

Every word sent Alexander’s heart into overdrive as it pumped adrenaline and other chemicals through his body. He tuned out the bully’s voice and simply saw the boy stand. A tunnel vision encroached his sight with a bloody dark red. Alexander felt the energy blasting and pushing him forward as he took three jump steps and took the bully down. He jumped up in the air and tackled the boy to the ground, with his fist planted firmly against the boy’s stomach. And even during that fall, Alexander punched and kicked the boy. He did not fall with the bully, he still held his ground as the other descended upon the ground next to him. Seconds later he was chocking the bully while his knee crushed the bully’s chest. The boy squirmed and tried to get out of his grip but could not. He gasped for air but could not breathe as the knee on his chest made him exhale loudly. The boy rolled his eyes and stopped moving. Alexander let go and felt the surge of energy in his body fade away.

He collapsed on the ground. His eyes closed and his body trembled. The other boys from his dormitory caught him just in time; otherwise, he would have fallen into the dirt again. They swiftly dragged him away.

VI

Lights flashed through the darkness. All around, lightings hit Alexander’s body and all at once. Alexander became a lightning rod, drawing all the power into his body and receiving pain unimaginable. Yet each shock, each electric discharge bore a thought or a memory.

Darkness shrouded the area. Whenever lightning hit, a gray nothingness lit up for a few seconds. One flash revealed a tall man standing in front of the boy. The man showed no emotion. His face was pale or it seemed pale in the light.

Alexander looked around and noticed another man behind him. He was as tall as the first. Only his body was burned, scarred by battles, and he bore an artificial shoulder made of light. It resembled confined blue plasma searing the skin all around. Both of the men wore black long robes. The first wore his robe tightly wound but torn up. The second man’s robe did not have sleeves as they would have probably burned.

They went through some kind of metamorphosis and turned into a different pair of men within an indefinite amount of time. These men were shorter than the previous pair but still tall. Their bodies were ripped with muscles but they were skinny. They must have been runners because no one but runners would have had such toned leg muscles. Again, one of them was as white as a wall and the other one very badly burned and scarred.

The men walked and positioned themselves on either of Alexander’s sides. The very tall man appeared again. The two men stared at the boy intensely without blinking. As the boy turned around, he saw the ragged, scarred version of the tall man. Four men in total, all around him, staring. They started chanting and the world span. They became a blur of strange words and colors. Alexander could not escape them nor the grey world, they pressured him but he did not know what to do. Then, miraculously, Alexander woke up.

VII

Alexander regained consciousness but did not open his eyes. He tried to remember the dream he had but could not. As hard as he tried to pry open his mind, it was impossible. The hard ground on which he lay reminded him to focus on the situation at hand. Voices emerged from the silence.

“-we need to get him to our dorm…” Alexander recognized Nangern’s voice. It must have been another minute before the fallen fighter could hear another speak.

“Yeah, but did you see it?” Dominik spoke excitedly, “It was like bam! BAM! And then he got him in that choke hold. It was amazing!”

“Aye, even Ay couldn’t du sumthing like dat.” Taylor spoke with his thick accent, “ ‘E got Leo all pin’d down. ‘twas phenomen’l.”

Nangern sighed, “Shit, he needs to rest. Come on.”

Taylor and Nangern grabbed the injured barely conscious boy and carried him through the field. Dominik tried to help but really could not. Alexander was just too heavy. They carried him like on a stretcher with his arms and legs serving as the handles. The boy’s weight dipped him in the middle and he started to skim over parts of the dirt.

“Hold on.” Alexander exhaled painfully. Everyone turned. Nangern with Taylor placed the boy on the soft soil below. His body straightened and he let out a low moan.

“Hey, you finally woke up.” Dominik cheerfully smiled and watched the injured boy

Alexander grunted in pain again when he tried to get up but he could not manage to even move his hands. He opened his eyes and winked at the bright shine of the flaming sun. His eyes focused but his body still protested his commands.

“Mate, stay down. Ya need some rest, ya know,” Taylor caringly pushed Alexander’s chest to prevent him from getting up. Taylor made sure of that thoroughly.

“What…what happened? Is everyone alright?” Alexander asked everyone without narrowing the question. Slightly frightened, his eyes darted left and right between his friends.

“Well..”

 
“-you should have seen…”

“Bam! Bam!” everybody’s voice overlapped and distorted. They spoke at once and Alexander could not make out a single coherent thought.

 
“What? Can you speak one at a time?”The words softly escaped his lips. His strength permitted only a soft, near-silence speech. The boys listened.

“Oh sorry… lemme star’, a’ight?” Taylor apologized but still maintaining respect among others,” So aye think that you should remember ya’got yerself into a fight, right?”

Alexander nodded.

“Alright so…. Leo gave Nangern’s sistah a poundin’. He was relentless, even on our friend ‘ere, “Taylor reviewed and chuckled at the boy” Leo grabbed you, threw you on th’ground before you could do ‘nything,” He paused, “He threw you on the ground, ya hit yer head but then you got up. I dun know how ya did it, mate, but you stood back up with a huge bloody mess over ya.

 
“It looked like ya turned ‘to someone else. You were mindless, mate! Yer eyes focused only on Leo and no one or nothin’ else. Yea jumped up and threw Leo on th’ground and beat the living out of him. Boy couldn’t get up and ya passed out ove’ him.”

“My sister caught you before you hit your head on another rock,” Nangern finished Taylor’s story and the boys laughed uneasily.

“So…much…trouble…” Alexander groaned and shifted uncomfortably.

“Leo’s not going to tell anyone…believe me. He won’t tell anyone he got beat up,” Dominik chuckled, “You really gave him a pounding.”

“He’s right!” said Nangern excitedly, the beaten-up boy lying down imagined him smiling.

Alexander groaned, “I need some sleep..I’m dead tired.”

“Hold on, mate. We’ll get ya t’bed soon,” Taylor’s voice trailed off as Alexander lost consciousness again and felt the dreams, strange dreams rush in, for the Day was coming.

I

A spaceship slowed down, entering the known universe, and the Solar System. Its design imitated that of a needle: long, narrow, and sharp at the front. The back curved into bluntness so smooth that no extrusion could be seen on its polished cover. Smoothed out by atom by atom, the friction coefficient numbered to zero. It reflected any light and in all directions, making the ship glow with a halo.
 

The swift-space of faster-than-light speeds required the aerodynamics provided by the sharp front end. It also allowed for smoother and easier inter-dimensional travel. The dimensions used for travel have changed and switched over hundreds of times. Explorers found new pathways and ways to twist the higher dimensions for travel. The Sacred Race of All gave the first galaxy travelers a way to access different worlds, and they built on that. It is yet unknown but the most famous archeologists of the Milky Way work very hard to decipher the tombs of these creatures, the Sacred Race, to unravel the mysteries of the galaxy and the universe.

The ship exited the swift-space after a year’s worth of travel across the vast galaxy, from near its core. Master Raki sat down from exhaustion and wiped the sweat off his brow. Exhaustion brought him down, especially since the council decided he did not need a vessel crew. Alone, the man meditated and thought. He reflected upon his life and trained to keep up his shape and physical vigor.

He realized a flaw in the plan early on, the mission, and the prophecy. No one could expect it because no one knew. He calculated and decided. The destiny would crumble and everything true would be wrong if he let the mistake exist. The third cannot be suppressed, he thought, I have to warn The Spirits but I cannot wait. There was not enough time to discuss this. He had to send the message to Nethers who should already be on their way, close to Earth in fact. Their way of travel was much more risky but faster than swift-space. Instead of just accessing the sixth dimension and looping into an alternate universe with laws that not only allowed faster than light speeds but demanded it, the Nethers used the seventh dimension to get into a time where the universe was at its end. The Great Crunch, and many other endings of the universe, allowed them to surpass time/space limits but at higher risk. It took less time for them to get to Earth from the Andromeda galaxy than for the Spirits to arrive from the Imperial Core Planets.

The first two have to be separated during their flight, the master thought, one to be with Nethers, the other with Spirits but what of the third? The third was peculiar, the third was unaccounted for.

They must not meet, any of them.

“I will have to disguise myself,” A thought flashed through Raki’s mind. He meditated once again, clearing his mind to lay out the new plan in detail. As the pieces of the plan started falling into the large puzzle, Raki’s eyes turned brown from blue.

II

Alexander floated in a dark place, without a single thought. Lightning, hosting threads and strings of thoughts and ideas, flashed every other second supplying ambient light. When the dark came again, it was as dark as Alexander’s hair which shined and waved with every loud thunderous blast which shook the air and the boy.

The boy stood still and remembered a similar dream he dreamt. He dreamt it a month ago, or a week, maybe a day, hour, minute, probably a second. Sense of time left him, the dream always seemed to take an eternity but a second at the same time. An infinity in a zero value. He dreamt and could not voluntarily think.

He saw the two same men from his last dream, the two tall men. One burnt and one white as a wall. One stood in front of him, one in the back. This time though, two women stood by his side. They were skinny with long hair. They seemed beautiful and graceful, full of love actually. The first was splattered in blood, with scars on her body from numerous fights. Her veins and the energy around her pulsated ominously. She smiled, showing off her sharp gleaming white teeth. The other woman seemed to waver like the water or the clouds in the sky. Her peaceful smile and her clear blue eyes resembled that of a goddess. She was pure. The contrast between the women burned Alexander’s eyes.

A voice whispered, “Things aren’t always as they seem to be,” it lingered and seemed to breath in and out with the lightning strikes, “Choose a path or do not, it makes no difference,” the voice sighed and the next sentence sounded more of a desperate plea than a statement, “There is no good. There is no evil.”

The four standing figures started chanting and spinning in a circle. Some kind of energy formed around Alexander and enveloped his body. The boy’s body flooded with vast amounts of adrenalin. His mouth dried up and his lips started to crack. He felt blood upon his tongue. His pulse sped up until his heart beat too tightly against his chest, trying to get out. The boy’s breathing quickened but there was no pain only anxiety. Alexander wanted to run and never stop but he could not move. Frustration started to build up in his mind and he wanted to scream but again could not. He woke up.