Power of the Gods

Chapter 23

"You don't have to do this!" Justin pleaded. He was eight years old and standing in his old bedroom with another boy that was the same age. The boy was wearing a sleeveless hoodie, the hood pulled down over his face.

The boy was holding a backpack and a duffel bag in his hands. "Maybe I don't, but I certainly can't stay here," he said. "I'm not like you, I'm not the angel. Everyone likes you, not me. They all see me as a monster remember?"

Justin walked over to the boy and took the duffel bag from him. "Who cares about what other people think about you?" he said. "I don't think of you as a demon. That has to count for something, doesn't it?"

The boy took his duffel bag back. "Not enough to change the fact that everyone here sees me as a monster!" he shouted, his anger rising.

Justin saw fur growing on the boy's arms. "You're losing control again," Justin said.

The boy looked at his arms and the fur started to go away. "Another reason I have to go," he said. "I can't control this. I'm not you. What will I do if I lose control and hurt you? I refuse to be responsible for that."

"Where do you expect to go?" Justin asked.

The boy stood at the door. "Any where but here," he said. "I'm not going to stick around any longer, I would rather be somewhere where no one knows me than somewhere that everyone fears me."

"What makes you think I can't find you?" Justin asked. "Alpha and I can track you."

The boy walked to the door and turned around. "Don't bother looking for me," he said. "You're not going to find me. Besides, either Zeta or I can smell you from a mile away." The boy walked out the door leaving Justin standing in his room alone.

"Justin. Justin! Open your eyes!" Sam shouted.

Justin opened his eyes and saw that he was laying on the ground inside of what seemed like a crater and staring at a red sky filled with black clouds. Sam was kneeling on the ground next to him, shaking him awake. Alpha sat next to her, keeping watch for any attackers.

Justin sat up. "Guess we made it through," he said. He looked around, but didn't see anyone else. "Where are the others? Did they make it through?"

Sam helped Justin up to his feet. "Don't worry, they're fine," she reassured him. "Kylan took the others to do some recon. Alpha and I stayed behind to keep a watch over you. You passed out when we came through the rift."

Justin rubbed his head. "Sorry, I don't know what came over me," he said.

Sam looked at him. "You talked a bit while you were unconscious," she said. "Who was it? You said 'don't leave.' Who was it that left?"

Justin sighed and looked away. "I've never really talked about it before. About him," he said. "It was just hard, watching the person that was closest to me, closer than my parents, walk away."

"Who was it?" Sam asked.

Justin didn't say anything, not because he didn't want to, but because he found that it was too difficult to say it. "It was his brother," Alpha said for him.

"Thank you," Justin said. "He's right. It was my brother. He ran away when I was eight because he didn't think he belonged. I haven't seen him since then."

Sam couldn't help but feel bad about bringing up the topic. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't know."

"It's fine," Justin said. "Let's just find out how everyone else is doing. Maybe they found out something useful."

Justin climbed up to the top of the crater and to a look around. The ground around them was made up of a combination of dark gray dirt and dead plant life. He felt like he was in a post-apocalyptic savannah.

Sam and Alpha climbed up next to him. "It's so...barren," Sam said.

Alpha stuck his nose up as he sniffed the air. "There doesn't seem to be any Dark Seekers around," he said. "At least if there are, I can't smell them. I can't smell Striker or Lunar either."

"That's a good sign," Justin said positively.

It wasn't too long before Kylan walked up behind them with Porter and Lucas. "Good, you're up," Kylan said. "Now we can get to business."

"The land stretches out like this until it connects to a bridge leading to a stone path," Lucas explained. "It looks like the path might lead to a castle. I'm willing to bet that that's where Striker's at."

"What about Dark Seekers?" Sam asked. "Did you encounter any?"

Porter shook his head. "No we didn't," he said. "We found what were probably campsites, but they were basically emptied out. Nobody was home."

"Great," Justin said, clapping his hands together. "Less trouble means we can get to Striker faster. Onwards my friends!"

Everyone followed Lucas and Kylan as they led the way to the stone path that Lucas had mentioned. When they arrived at the bridge, Justin peered over the edge at what was assumably the Nightmare Zone's water. It was dark red, looking at it made Justin start to feel sick as he looked away and crossed the rest of the bridge.

They stopped at one of the abandoned campsites that Porter had mentioned. Justin decided to take this time to climb up one of the nearby trees to see if he could find the castle that Striker was hiding in. Finally, he spotted it. A tall castle made of black stone, surrounded by a moat with a drawbridge over it and something else that he couldn't make out completely.

"I've got some good news and some bad news!" Justin shouted down to his friends.

"What's the good news?!" Sam shouted back.

"So...the good news is that I can see the castle and we're probably around a good ten miles from it!" Justin shouted, sliding down the tree trunk to the floor. "The bad news, is that about five of it is made up of Dark Seekers."

Porter buried his face in his hands. "Well isn't that just great," he sighed. "How are we supposed to get into a castle surrounded by those things?"

"We fought an army of them before," Lucas said. "Why not take them out ourselves?"

"Gee, I don't know, Lucas," Kylan said. "Maybe that's because last time we had the entire school staff to back us up. Not to mention the fact that when we fought them last time, we not only barely survived the attack with no energy whatsoever, but we didn't even actually beat all of them. Remember?"

"Oh, right," Lucas said quietly.

While Kylan continued to scold Lucas, Justin started to come up with a plan. "Actually, we might not need to fight them," Justin said, looking at everyone with a smile starting to form on his face. "I think I might have a plan."