Nightmares - Adventures of The Three Wings (#1)

Cain

My legs were tired, and I was still alone. It was cruel, there was no other way of putting it. I'd left my rational mind behind several street corners ago, and all that was left was paranoia and fear. And boy did those emotions get to work.

Something began to gnaw at my mind. I recalled the moment I'd spent with Jacob earlier that day, training. Was he testing me? Had I failed a test I didn't know about. Perhaps this was the Three Wings way of kicking me out, leaving me in some impossible situation to go mad and die. The worst part is that it was working. I was going mad. Perhaps, given enough time, I would die. I wanted to, at least. It'd be cruel if I couldn't.

I wandered on though, somehow being driven to keep walking despite it all. Stopping would be giving up, and I wasn't quite yet ready to do that. There was still some rational mind left, it seemed. But it was buried deep underneath the adrenaline pumping through my veins. I'd lost track of how much time I'd spent wandering around in search for my friends. But of course, if they were observing me, I would never be able to find them. Janar could turn invisible if he wanted. Jacob could outrun me and keep on the periphery.

But then Peter showed up again, finding me huddling by the fire, wrapped in a dead mans jacket but still shivering. And he laughed before he said a single word.

"Ah there you are Collins, I found you," Peter gloated, "You know, the others have been looking for you, but they think you ran off. After all, some money and spare tech has gone missing, so you could have just run off to start a business or something."

My hands were shaking, and I couldn't stop them.

"How strange that my powers aren't working," I reasoned in the back of my mind, "Perhaps I'm just in a bad situation to use them in?"

After a while, I saw something that made my heart jump in my throat. It was someone's shoe... and their foot was still in it, chewed off. After a bit of looking around, I was able to track down some other articles of clothing, including another large jacket that had a small phone in it. It was a quite dated phone and barely functional, but it was still something.

A lightbulb went off in my mind, as I recalled what I'd done to survive the last time I'd been left in a place alone to die. At that time I had just enough technology on my person to make it through and out the other end. I'd learned from that experience.

I had found a lighter in a jacket pocket, but it was out of lighter fluid, probably all used up on the fire previously. So instead, I resorted to picking open the cell phone I'd found and combining it with some other bits to make something that generated sparks that I desperately hoped would catch on the kindling.

And it worked! I managed to get a small fire burning, and used a sharp bit of broken circuit board to cut open one of the mangoes to eat from.

Somehow, something caused me to forget the spare technology and plant matter that I kept in my pockets at all times. It was for that reason that I wore clothes that had lots of pockets, despite the fashion atrocity I committed. A shirt with two chest pockets. A blazer. Cargo pants.

My hands dived into my pockets, pulling out chunks of circuits, wires and seeds, and I felt my connection to them. These bits and bobs, junk to other people, were a part of me. I could feel it. The circuits began to move, reshaping themselves. The seeds grew along the circuitry, merging with wires and growing strange copper-tinted leaves. My powers were working! There was hope!

A little device formed in my hands, and I cupped it very gently. When it was finished, I began communicating with it, through my power as opposed to with my senses. There was a suspicion in my mind that I couldn't yet trust those senses of mine.

"What is going on? What does my environment look like?"

I got a response, a mental image. The device, with its improvised camera, could not see me clearly. There was something in the way, something dark. I frowned, and put in effort to improve the camera. My will dominated the poor component, and forced it to make generational leaps until it was the single best camera currently on Earth.

The mental image improved, and switched to a live feed so I could see any changes. I aimed the camera at myself, and still got nothing. My heart fell, and I let out a sigh.

The most important sigh of my life.

There was a flash of movement when I sighed, the darkness shifting slightly. My eyes widened, and I breathed out as hard as I could. For a brief moment, my eyes saw purple darkness, and then the street came back into view. But my camera's feed was clear and hadn't been affected, there was something purple in the air. Some kind of smoke or something.

"Now I know what I'm fighting against!" I yelled. Immediately, I got to work. More seeds poured out of my pockets and began to grow, and I shaped them to suit my will. Minutes passed by, but I was patient. Steadily, as my plants grew and began to suck up the gas, the world around me became blurred between two images. Several minutes later, I could see clearly again, and I suddenly felt as though my lungs were clearer as I breathed in fresh city air.

Jacob was standing in the distance, mouth agape. He jogged up to me and tackled me into a hug.

"Oof!"

"Cain! You're okay! How did you clear the gas?"

"With... plants... of course," I responded, referring to the ring of purple flowers that now stood in a circle around me. I patted Jacob on the back, and he let me go.

"Well, that's fantastic! Quick now, we've gotta help Janar, and track down whoever's responsible for this gas."

"Right, wait, hold on," I pinched the bridge of my nose, "That's too fast. Can I process things for a bit? I just had the most horrible time."

"Same here," Jacob frowned, "Which means that whatever nightmares we've just been through..."

It didn't take me long to realise what Jacob was implying. My eyes opened wide, "Janar!"