Titan: The Dark Path

End of the Road

Eric Steele walked the lonely country road just like we found him. He followed a bank of clouds flowing along the road just like when he left D.C. Perhaps it was a sign he was on the right track, perhaps not. But it was getting so he didn't believe in coincidences anymore, so along he went. More and more trees lined the road. There was a forest ahead. The fresh green canopy of trees looked so much like a flat sheet from his vantage point, warped such as it was.

He was wounded in body and mind. And the latter was consumed with guilt and weakness and succumbed to visions from the Source without restraint or filter. He saw memories and he saw visions and he saw things that didn't exactly qualify as either. He saw much and more.

Every step hurt. He took another. Every breath burned his lungs. He pulled new air. Every blink of his eyes stung. He stared up into the open sky and out towards a horizon he will never catch. He thought about his dad. He knew that it wasn't superhuman resolve that drove him forward; it was stubbornness he could have only gotten from his father. Eric was now grateful for it. He drew upon his father's strength as all sons do.

When Eric told his dad he wanted to play hockey, Tim had warned him it would be hard. "You're smaller and you're joining up to play pretty late. Some of these kids have been in skates since they could walk—you're just starting," Tim had said.

"I can do it," Eric had said. He didn't understand what his father was telling him.

"It's not going to be easy. You're going to have to work twice as hard, take a beating, and play the role other kids don't want to play."

"What's that?"

"Everyone wants to score goals. They want to skate fast, hit hard, and put the puck in the net. But there's more to hockey than that—sometimes the puck goes in the corner surrounded by three other guys hitting and slashing, and..." Tim poked his finger in Eric's chest. It hurt. "You have to go in there and get it so the guys who skate fast and hit hard can score."

"But I want to score, too."

"You should certainly try, but you have to do your job. You go take the beating so the skill players don't. You're small and will be new at this. You'll be underestimated."

Eric had only one goal to his name and it was in a confusing scrum in front of the net, so it might have been another player, but they gave him the credit. And Eric always fought for the puck in the corners against guys twice his size, sending the puck up along the boards for his skill players to reach. He skated harder. He took hard hits, many of which sent him sprawling. And he did his job.

He had a new job now. He was still taking beatings and hard hits. He was still playing a role he didn't want to play. But Sarah wasn't here to play it. So he would. He kept walking, pushing further ahead, digging into depths of pain and exhaustion he didn't know existed. Eric liked to think that, if nothing else, his dad would be proud that he fought through the pain, the tiredness, and the hunger to keep going. He wouldn't let the road beat him.

...not like the demon had...

The demon didn't just beat him, it crushed him. It outmatched him. It didn't underestimate him. It didn't need to. Eric winced with every step and clutched his side, torn open by the claws of the hellish creature. He was lucky to have escaped with Maya and only as wounded as he was. That being had known itself and its power. But it knew Titan's power, too. Eric knew that he had power, but he had neither the ability nor the knowledge to master it. Fighting Bone, a lumbering behemoth with no focus and no training, like himself, was one thing. Taking on a pure demon, forged in the darkness outside our world, was another.

He thought about Luke Skywalker confronting Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back. Luke was not a Jedi Knight. He was just a brave young man who could hardly levitate rocks let alone engage in light saber combat. He had only trained with Jedi Master Yoda for thirty minutes and failed every test he was given. He could neither control his anger nor his fear. He faced Vader to save his friends with only his love for them and instincts propelling him. But Vader was a fully-trained Jedi Knight wielding the power of the Dark Side of the Force. He had been choking people left and right for two movies, an unstoppable force. Luke had no business confronting him. Luke only escaped because Vader was conflicted and could not kill his son.