Titan: The Dark Path

Confession

Kate couldn't breathe. The air was poison. Her nostrils filled with noxious, sweet burning. That's what the other side smells like... despair and death. The air felt dull around her like it had lost potency. She couldn't draw it into her lungs and even if she could, it was tainted, dead.

"Do you know how long he's waited for this?" Lyle spoke, but Kate didn't believe it. It was unreal. It was like someone else was speaking and Lyle's lips were moving with the words like an echo chamber.

"What am I saying? You can never know," he said. "I understand your brother. To feel earth under his feet. Strength in his muscles. He dreamed about it, but like a fish dreaming of land it has no concept of the thing. There's no translation. Just like me and this place. I've been here before, but never like this. It's all sweetness and light. I feel the particles all around me and they're weak, malleable. Brittle."

Lyle smiled. It was an ugly thing, like unseen strings pulled his lips apart. Unnatural. His skin was puffy, moist, and stretched as though something inside was too big to hold. He sampled her scent. Intoxicating. He pointed at his head and said, "He's in here, you know. He's with me right now. He watches through the same eyes that I do."

Kate found just enough air to speak, "What are you?"

"I'm a traveler," he said. "I've dreamed of coming here. The air is so full of life and power. So are you. Every breath makes us stronger."

Kate felt filthy when he turned his dead gaze upon her. Something that wasn't her brother was looking through his eyes. Her brother was a suit—a vessel—for some terrible thing.

"What do you want?"

"I want to make the world better."

"I don't believe you."

"The world is the way it is because God made it that way. It doesn't have to be that way. It can be another way. It can be my way. You people pray to Him. You die in His name and proclaim His works, but He doesn't care. He sits above it and feeds off your devotion. He cast His own servants aside, without care for their fealty, in favor of this world and its people. I saved them and made them mine.

"I can remake the universe," the voice speaking through Lyle said.

When his eyes fixed on Kate, she broke out in a cold sweat and fear coursed through her veins carried by every frightened beat of her heart. Raw power radiated off of Lyle in waves barely contained by his fragile human flesh, bone, and spirit. The sound of his voice hurt her head and made her nauseous. Kate knew he was powerful beyond reason and meant every word he said.

"I can feel your fear, Kate," Lyle said. "It's addictive. Delicious... After all of those years of you carrying me around, feeding me, cleaning me, propping me up like your pet... It feels good to stand over you."

"You're not him," Kate said through gritted teeth.

"He fights me, but he feels these things, too. I want to show you what he can do now..."

Lyle picked up the couch with no effort and hurled it through the sliding glass door in the back of the room. Glass shattered and the aluminum doorframe crumbled in the couch's path. Once the couch settled outside, the night whispered, indifferent.

He turned back to her and his face was twisted with unspeakable glee. This creature drank of her fear and grew strong from it. He held his hands apart and cradled the air between his fingers. Light ignited in his palms and shone blue and red, swirling and surging and spinning until Lyle grasped a churning orb of incandescence. The air crackled all around the room, reacting to the unnatural force syphoning the environment. Strands of Kate's hair lifted off of her head. Finally, Lyle heaved the luminescent fireball like a chest pass. The blast exploded through the wall into the kitchen and opened a gaping hole in the side of her house. Kate screamed, but the sound was lost in the din.