Eternal Beasts

Chapter 7: A Return to Clarity

Jared frowned as he gazed down at the burning city yet again. Crouched on his haunches, fingers interlaced into a double-handed fist and held in a thoughtful gesture against his pursed lips, he watched the invading army push through the final defenses and enter the city, a flood of darkness and destruction ravaging everything in its path.

It was his familiar vision. He must've come back to it when he was thrown into unconsciousness by the wave of pain triggered by the unleashing of the hidden force inside his mind. This time, however, no griffin stood on the tower next to him. Nor did the Watcher's human form come striding out of the smoke. This time he was quite alone on top of the distant wall overlooking the dying city.

"No, my Jared," a soft woman's voice quietly commented from behind him. "Never alone."

Far beyond being surprised by what appeared in his visions after all that had happened, Jared merely twisted his body to cast a glance over his shoulder. What had Fate sent him now? He was oddly disappointed to find the space behind him empty. 'Apparently nothing,' he grimly thought, returning his gaze to the city and its slow death. 'At least, not yet.' His lips pursed in thought. 'What did the Watcher say? The healer's magic was triggering what Fate put inside me too soon? Well, I'm not sure if that happened, but something was triggered by the healer's last sweep. I just hope it didn't hurt me badly!'

Without warning the breeze blowing from behind him, formed by air sucked in towards the city by the fires burning there, turned icy cold. Jared's eyebrow climbed in curiosity as he repressed an unconscious shiver. 'Huh? I don't remember that ever happening in the vision before!' Then, in the space inside an eyeblink, the vision disappeared and Jared found himself staring into darkness and shivering in earnest when his eyes opened once again.

"What...?" he stammered out loud in confusion, his body still echoing to the pain that had ravaged him after the healer triggered the sensation in his head. The cold bit deep, forcing him to wrap his arms tightly about his body in a vain effort to hold his rapidly vanishing heat inside. And, in the crystal clarity of that moment, his senses made a swift catalog of his environment.

First was the cold, bone-numbing and vicious, chilling the very air until it felt as if ice was forming on the lanky young man's naked flesh. Next was the rough, weathered surface against his back, harsh and splintered, long unyielding spikes punching through his clothing to painfully pierce his skin. Married to the surface against his back was the one beneath his buttocks, equally rough and uncompromising.

Shifting uncomfortably on that hard floor, Jared sucked in a quick lungful of the icy air, frigid enough to freeze his nostrils closed and braced himself. He certainly wasn't in Master Quinn's storeroom anymore. The question was, where the hell was he? Had the Cholim and their draconic allies found him? Did he now molder in some darkened cell, again awaiting his death?

With force of will, the lanky young man managed to stifle the growing fear swelling in his breast with every thought of the worst. Fear wouldn't help in here, chilling his blood and turning his muscles to jelly. It would only make his ordeal that much more difficult. Jared bit down hard, using the flicker of pain in his jaw and the jolt of teeth grinding against each other as a focus for his will. If he was going to find out what was going on, he needed to be on his feet and with a clear head.

Carefully the young man eased to his feet, fighting past the pain that knotted muscles with cramps and discomfort. As he did so, his eyes continued to scan the unbroken darkness in the hope it would part and reveal his place of imprisonment.

Swallowing back yet another wave of anxiety, Jared grimly noted that his body, at least, seemed to be fully healed from his brief, but intense stay with the Cholim and the Nysim-torith. That, in itself, spoke against his recapture. If he truly were in the hands of the Darklings once more, their efforts to break him would be felt in every fiber and sinew. Only a lingering pain suggested anything at all had ever been amiss, and he could easily attribute that to the triggering of the magic in his head.

Abruptly the darkness was pierced by a brilliant flash of light pouring through a small, dirt-clouded opening on the wall opposite, throwing the small room Jared found around him into stark relief. Mouth half open to cry out in alarm, he flung his hands up in front of his eyes to keep them from being completely blinded by the bright flash, but it was already gone. With its afterimages dancing in his eyes after its departure, a rumble of thunder tight on its heels named the flash lightning, a storm apparently brewing outside.

So he was in some sort of room, small and filthy, by the looks of it. In the brief moment of light, a door and four walls were revealed, the opening a window. Remembering the location of the door, Jared turned himself in that direction and slowly eased across the floor, his bare feet careful to avoid any sharp shards.

Wait a minute ... Bare feet?? Jared jerked to a halt to stare down at his hidden feet. What the hell happened to his shoes? In that instant, he also became aware of the chill seeping through his clothing as if it weren't there. Had he lost his sweatshirt and jeans as well?

Fumbling hands quickly discovered while he still wore the sweatshirt and jeans, they were reduced to tatters barely hanging on his body. Those hands also found an even thicker, matted beard fouling his face than what his stay in the Cholim hole had given him, his hair overgrown, tangled and dirty. In fact, his entire body felt as covered in filth as the room had seemed in the brief illumination that revealed it.

Jared's eyes blinked rapidly as his mind tried to digest what he had just learned, his muscles frozen by shock and fear into immobility. And in doing so, nearly found himself descending into insanity as his mind rebelled against the possibilities they examined.

Obviously something had happened in the space between the triggering and the wave of pain, and waking up here, cold and nearly naked, in this room. And, judging by how long his hair and beard were, considerable time had also passed. Not knowing what that something was, sent icy shards of fear ripping through his vitals. 

Unfortunately that, along with everything that he had experienced since hearing that whisper in the library basement, was an avalanche that rumbled down the mountain side of denial to bury his mind deeper than it could withstand. In an instant, it was overwhelmed and with an almost audible 'snap', he broke. With a shriek of terror dredged from his deepest recesses and flung into the uncaring darkness past raw and cracked lips, Jared dropped to the floor and scrambled backwards until he ran hard into the wall.

He cowered against that wall, moaning low in his throat, rocking back and forth with a mind bereft of reason once more. But not for long; with a rough growl that shivered through the worn wood all around him, the chamber's only door was kicked in and a massive figure stepped inside, only momentarily backlighted by lightning flashing in the heavens behind it. 

There it paused for a brief moment, head moving this way and that as it searched the darkness before striding across the small room to where Jared crouched against the wall. Bending down, it took hold of what was left of Jared's sweatshirt and with a surge of strength pulled the trembling young man to his feet and nose to nose with it.

Jared blinked and found himself looking at himself. Rather, a hardened, sun-darkened and powerful version of himself, the doppelgänger's eyes gleaming with dangerous determination.

"Snap out of it, Turcott," the hard version of himself snarled, giving him a shake strong enough to crack the bones in his neck with its force and rip the weakened fabric of the sweatshirt. "We don't have time for your shit! Focus, damn you, focus on what you have to do! It's the only way to keep your mind, the only way to stay sane."

When the doppelganger found Jared still staring stupidly at him, his face twisted with frustration and anger. A heartbeat later the wiry young man was hammered back into the wall, the impact shaking the entire hut.

"If you will not do it," the doppelgänger growled, lifting a massive, balled fist. "Then I'll have to do it for you!" A surge of thick shoulder and arm muscles hurled the fist forward, it's target the center of Jared's face.

Unconsciously the young human braced for the impact, suspecting it would smash him right through the wall. The blow, however, never landed. Instead, when the fist touched him, it became immaterial and slid ghost-like into his skull, the doppelganger behind it fading to insubstantiality. As the ghost limb pushed into his head, Jared felt a curious twisting deep inside his brain, like a key was pushed into a lock and twisted, opening another door. Then his mind's eye was nearly blinded by the blizzard of images that streamed by it.