Parallel: A Story Of Two Universes

10-SHOWDOWN

This was it, I was finally about to achieve the retribution for which I had always yearned. She stood there, totally silent for what felt like an eternity. I didn’t know if, in this strange silence, I was meant to begin attacking. I stood there, just as motionless as her because I was in no way expecting such a situation. Eventually, I grew tired of the dead air and gripped my blade as tightly as I could, then walking toward her forcefully. She seemed to smile a bit, but I was completely unmoved by her response. I got right up in front of her and swung my blade to hit her arm, and I chopped right through it. However, she simply stood there, as if her arm hadn’t just fallen off, and as if a trail of blood hadn’t followed. Her lack of a reaction terrified me, but I couldn’t be distracted from my goal, so I brought my blade high and struck her right in the head. This time, though, nothing came of it. It was almost as if the blade was dull, but when I looked back over at where her arm was, I saw the true cause of the weapon’s failure to have an effect. Another arm began to crawl out of her, like some sort of grotesque mutation, but within a few seconds, it looked just like any normal appendage. I stepped back with pure horror, as she very clearly had some sort of advantage, the full possibilities of which I wished not to see. Then, she finally spoke. “You are going to see what the overseer can do, son. You are going to see the lord that you so clearly betrayed take hold of this world! You will regret your sin! You have already lost, you and the underworld, and now is the first showcase of such failure!” She raised her hand slowly, brought it back a bit, and motioned forward incredibly harshly. All of a sudden, a blast of colour shot into my eyes and I could feel that I was being thrown across the ground as if she had pushed me without even touching me. At this point, I simply started to run, as I didn’t know what other strange attacks she was capable of. Was I really wrong? Was there truly an overseer behind all of this? Well, if there is one, then he’s a real scumbag for letting all of this happen, and I don’t feel the least bit guilty for not appeasing such a leader. I rushed across the area, with her slowly following behind me. Once again, her lack of urgency was truly chilling, and I didn’t know what to do. I ran all over the place, trying to avoid the remaining scuffles of the war until I finally found one of the many corpses in the pile that I had previously spotted. Below me were two bodies, a police officer and a cultist, and they seemed to be facing away from each other, strangely enough. I noticed that they both had a bullet to their backs, meaning that they were most likely gunned down by another person entirely. I looked to the officer in the hopes of finding a gun but was disappointed on that front, so I tried to see what the cultist had. Yet another blade of the same type as mine, but this time they had a canteen sewn into a belt around their waste. I grabbed it and pulled it out of the belt, then drinking it. Not long after my pure, frantic desperation had faded, I realised that it very clearly could have been some sort of poison, but I felt a very different, much more positive sensation after drinking it. I quickly recognised exactly what it was, namely the strange golden liquid that had previously saved my life in the forest, however, this one looked to be a much darker colour. I felt a surge of power through my veins once again, but this time my mind gained the sensation of new interactions. It was as if I had gotten another arm, and I began to try and control some of these new possibilities as my mother got dangerously close. Eventually, I managed to think of something. That liquid in the forest had given me new strength and vigor, and this one felt incredibly similar, but only distinct in how it opened up new things for my body to control, meaning it very well could have been what allowed my mother to initiate that brutal attack against me. I took a deep breath, brought my arm back, and stuck it back out with insane force as she got just feet away from where I was. With that, I felt something incredible. Something spiritual, untethered to my physical or mental appendages, rocketed out of my hand and right at her, sending her flying back all of a sudden. She grew angry with this action, grabbing her own blade from a pouch and then gesturing her hand down to the ground. With this, she flew up into the air and began to fall back toward me. She positioned the blade as if she was to cut straight through me using the force of her fall. Clearly, the motion of the hand in tandem with signaling from the brain could lead to these different outcomes, so I tried something of my own. I reached to the side, where her hut was situated and acted as if I was pulling toward it. Surely enough, this worked! It was incredible how such an insignificant amount of force could result in a greatly more impactful action. I rocketed toward the hut and nearly crashed into it, but, pressing my luck, I made a motion to push against it. I gazed back at where my mother had landed to see her precise position and then shot right back at that angle. I crashed right into her, continuing to fly through the air. I looked up, trying to get a grip on this insane thrill ride, and I saw that I was quite close to part of the compound wall. I pushed her forward once I was even closer so that she’d crash right into it while jumping off of what would soon be her corpse and landing safely on the ground. After another moment of waiting, she finally crashed straight into the wall and looked to be incredibly injured. At this point, I knew it would be possible to kill her, as she had started reacting to pain once again. I began sprinting toward the wall until I found another corpse. This one was yet another officer, and I took his gun, getting ready to put an end to this. I held it steady as I aimed for her and fired the first shot. Though the Keeper never gave me that much of an idea on how these worked, I knew the basics, and, more importantly, I knew that it would only take a few shots to put this monster down. I got extremely close to her, and fired once again, this time managing to get the bullet right through her head. Her eyes dialed back and she seemed to die after this, but I couldn’t leave it uncertain. I grabbed the blade that she had been holding and lifted it up, but as I was bringing it down, yet another flash of colour appeared in front of me. I couldn’t believe it, but she was still alive and managed to blast me away before I could finally put her to rest. At this point, I was fuming, but there wasn’t too much I could do as I felt these new abilities begin to fade away. I turned around and began to run once again, though I resented the very idea of fleeing from such a vital task as fighting her. As I ran I managed to grab the blade that I had just dropped, part of this never-ending struggle to keep defenses. Multiple cultists spotted me and joined in on chasing after me, but I was determined to get away from them by any means necessary. All I needed was to find a good spot to ambush, and I could have a shot at stopping her. At this point, it was quite clear that she wasn’t exactly impeded by the limited supply of that liquid that I had, meaning this would be much harder than fighting any old crazy person. I managed to get into a house that looked abandoned and used a nearby chest to block the door. I scurried up the stairs and pushed open the grille of the window to escape onto the roof. I looked around from the side of the house to try and find where she was until I eventually spotted her close to the crowd that was now trying to burst open the door. Once she got past the overhang of the roof I slipped off of it and ended up right behind her. I twisted the blade around with mastery, knowing that this was the next pivotal strike. I lifted it up and managed to stab right through her chest. I knew that wouldn’t be enough, so I lifted it again, with it going through her torso this time. I continuously brought that blade down with all the force I could muster as the crowd around me desperately tried to peel me away from their leader. However, I was not to be stopped. Not their chants for my blood, not their physical touch that would, under any other circumstances, bring me down, NOTHING was going to put a stop to my attacks. Then, I felt the brightest flash of colour yet, but this time it was not from an outside force. This spiritual strength blasted out of me and pushed all of the oncoming cultists back, forcing them to the ground. With that though, I collapsed. This was something truly special, I previously felt totally without the powers of that liquid, but it seemed that I no longer needed it. As if I was granted the permanent value of it. I had fallen, at this point, but I knew I couldn’t give in to my weakness just yet, as the spectacle I had surely made would attract many threats. I waited for them to come and take me, uncertain of what would happen next, but I heard, saw, nor felt anything… until a single gunshot raced through the air. I crawled around until I could see behind me and was witness to none other than the man who had brought me here. He rushed over and lifted me up, holding me, as it was clear that I was unable to walk. “I’m so sorry, I never meant for any of this to happen.” I noticed his body was trembling, as he had probably just been through a similar sort of hell as I. He carried me through the compound as I gazed upon more corpses, pools of blood and ash, and homes that I had once known, completely destroyed. I always thought that seeing the end of this horrific place would be cathartic in a way, but that was far from accurate. All I could feel was regret for everyone lumped into this. Everyone who had fallen for it, because they simply succumbed to what they thought was righteous. Most of all, I thought of the people among those corpses who may never have wanted anything like this, because, in this clearly cruel world, I doubt they didn’t suffer the most. I thought of Vilitamar, a boy with no malice in his heart, yet he was likely gunned down with as much cruelty as the ones who had beaten me. Even my mother isn’t all to blame for this, she simply has been manipulated her whole life to engage in these terrible acts, and maybe, all along, I had been the same way. As I looked through the flames of torture and death that engulfed me I couldn’t help but consider that I was just like my mother. Maybe the Keeper wanted such a horrific retaliation all along, and though that doesn’t excuse what the cult did, it means that I was just as much a tool of some strange person as the woman who I just shot in the head. I could feel the officer trembling a bit as he held me, and when I looked up at his face, I could see a tear crawling down it. Through the certain, powerful exterior of these officers, there was a core subject to terror at the slightest sign of uncertainty, and through the purely demented exterior of these cultists, there was a real individual, tainted only by this horrific makeshift society based on a lie. “We’re here, are you alright?” He asked, at this point completely sobbing, once we got to his car. “...” I had no words to say, only thoughts to try and recover from. My brain was a brutal machine, pumping the worst ideas imaginable into my body, but I had to fight past it to give a courteous response. “Yes. Yes, I’m okay.” Said my mouth, totally opposite to my head. He set me in the backseat while he climbed in front. I sat up slowly and got a view of the compound as we drove away, and as I saw the result of this all, my mind cleared up. A thousand uncontainable thoughts condensed into one question. “How many gunshots… How many gunshots did you create?” I said through the silence previously broken only by his hyperventilation. He stopped crying after a few moments and then, once the silence had had its time, he replied. “It was a war, son, the gunshots were made for me, I just gave them a home.” As we drove through the forest I couldn’t help but wonder one last thing. The question of my mother’s status in life or death now took over my mind as I accepted what the officer had just said, but I already knew the answer that really mattered. Even if she was dead physically, even if this war was the end of my battle for the Parallel and the ordinance of the overseer, her memory would never leave, and in a way, that’s even more powerful. If I had gotten closure, seen her die truly, then I would know my fate, but the uncertainty surrounding that gave her an entirely new habitat. Now, she was a memory that would haunt me forever. A possible threat that I would forever fear. An adversary that would forever be at war with my livelihood. And, above all else, a mother that I would forever have been alienated from. In the end, that’s really what I will struggle against.

THE END

Credits:
Written by-WalterTheGermanyBall
Produced by-1 Big Boy Critic & S.L Pravil

Thank you to everyone reading this & everyone who has supported me to this point