Titan: The Dark Path

Darkest Before Dawn

Unseasonably cold winds blew through the trees. The air smelled of pine and oak and something burnt, sickly sweet. Whether that odor came from downtown or from ahead of him in the woods, Eric couldn't say.

It didn't reek of human flesh, so that could be a sign...

He fought to keep the images of the burning bodies out of his thoughts, but they wouldn't go. The screams stayed, too. The stench wouldn't leave his nose either... Sweet, smoky, charred...

Hot blood ran through his veins. Blessed molten ore boiled in his bones ready to spring, but he walked through the woods bare-skinned. His flesh steamed in the biting frost growing in the air. But the cold couldn't touch him.

His eyes were red and bleary. He still understood so little, but the more he learned the less he wanted to know. His mind swam with a thousand different thoughts and his heart bled. He longed to armor himself in the old shell that he had worn for so many years after Sarah died and again after he lost his first love, Melanie.

But Rose cracked the armor... and Kate had removed it...

He couldn't hide from these things anymore, not with what he now knew. As he walked the lonely roads, he had seen many things, felt experiences that were not his own, and remembered doing things that he had never done. He had seen through the eyes of generations of Titans since the first, a young man who hadn't asked for the responsibility that was laid on his shoulders (or the boiling metal that was poured on him).

I can relate...

But there had been a blind spot he couldn't see. He once saw his father killing demons in downtown Buffalo, New York. But after that, the images were broken, fleeting, and unclear. He had thought that it was his waning health—broken and weary from the beating Bone had given him and exhausted from the long, hungry wandering on the roads—that clouded his mind with hallucinations. But no, he couldn't see because the line had been broken. Not from atrophy or loss, no, this was an intentional act done in desperation. A baby cried. A woman howled. Art Steele lay fallen with a sobbing wound in his chest, splitting the simple "T" that adorned his armor. Tim Steele stood over him in darkened broken armor of his own, chest heaving and dark energy swirling in the air. Eric saw his mother holding the dagger and heard her speak the incantation and then the world bled crimson red—the force of the blast had rung in his ears as though he'd been there.

...Titan had been there, if not me, personally.

He saw Father Kelly and the Women of the Woods. Father Kelly had known them by name as parishioners and townspeople, but Eric knew their name... The necklace that Kate's mom, Helen, wore was godsmetal and through it he knew things the good father did not. He felt their reaction to the explosion of power wrought by what his mother did—she summoned dark magic, an old spell, never before spoken to stop a Titan consumed with fury.

...consumed by Evil...

Nancy didn't know what it would do and neither did Art when he forged the dagger and gave her the words. The method had been passed down to him by his father and his father before him. He hoped she wouldn't need to say the words and use the dagger, but just in case... Evil could not claim Titan. It had done so long ago when Titan was well-known and heroes were plentiful, but this was a different time. The incantation, focused through a godsmetal blade, ripped Titan from Tim's bones and cancelled his power. But tremendous power was needed to break the chain. Only Titan's power could cancel Titan's power. Titan was a mortal being, he could be killed, but Titan's power transcended mortal life. It transcended generations.