The Journeyman Sagas

Chapter 1 The future of things to come The Future Light refracted through the branches of the giant oak launching contorted shadows across the lush field, probing, searching for the source. As it crept through the strands of grass, sweeping stealthily along the freshly trot dirt now awash with water from the light drizzle, it reached its destination. Its target. Moving slowly inch by inch, the light lit the body leaving half consumed in darkness. The boy knelt in the mud, rain breaching his cotton shirt, his small body shivered as the cold crisp air was sucked into the delicate lungs, a mind in torment. Strands of hair fell forward blocking his vision, masking the visualisation of a truth which was undeniable, and with it, the realisation his fate had already been cast. Mud breached his trousers and soon droplets of rain fell to the earth from his brow, intermingled with the tears he shed, not because he felt, but because he did not feel. No more a child, but the first day of manhood. The drizzle accelerated and as storm clouds gathered, soon a clash of anger ripped through the sky and with it, darkness once again resumed its battle over the light. Light which breathed both life and death before it. His face was caught between the two sides, one the possibility of redemption and the other to a burden which would sweep right the way through his emotions. Bright eyes, focused resolutely on the inscription as the gravestone shimmered before him. Running his fingers over the rough stone, the words read: ‘Here Lies Mother of Natas, Born 1965, Died 2020’ No words of peace, nor of kindness, or deeds of valour. A simple statement to a life which brought with it the potential to change the world for the benefit of mankind and yet, as each second passed of her life, as the light failed, a step closer to our darkness. He ran his fingers again across the freshly cut carving and felt the undulation of the words. Tactile senates’ triggering pulses through his fingertips as his neurons probed the frontal lobe, which with chemical imbalance suppressed his emotions. He longed to feel those words in his heart, to experience the feelings he never had. A son devoid of love, a human devoid of passion, but above all a soul starting the quest. Its journey filled with endless possibilities but in reality, its reality only one inevitable conclusion. He had no ability to feel the one basic human right humanity possessed. The possibility of emotional contentment and love. The boy clenched his jaw and felt the blood drain from his face. He had no positive emotions, no endowment of love or of happiness, and no ability to feel gratification or peace. Anger, pain, doubt, rage were his vocabulary and it consumed him. Filled him with an emptiness which ran deep and as a full as the well of despair that fed from mankind and in turn he fed from mankind. Yet, inside this frail body a heart beat strong, pounding for the future it unflinchingly sought, a future which did seek the light but not for comfort nor for revelation. No it sought the light. To destroy it and with it the hopes of humanity itself. Half mortal human, half breathing evil. He closed his beautiful crystal blue eyes, face thrust into the heavens, his small arms outstretched, fingers probing the air for a presence which was always there for those who rose from the depths of depravity and death. He had not fallen from grace. He had rose from Hell itself. This presence always lurking, waiting , menacing. As the trembling rose from within his body, he could feel the rage slowly build, a volcano started to show signs of imminent eruption. This rage stretching, expanding below the surface, until it erupted like a volcano spurting out a lava of negative emotions. He roared in painful satisfaction. “Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.” As he screamed his voice transformed. From a diminutive boy, he evolved in the same moment. His shirt ripped as the muscles stretched growing two feet in height and breath. No more was he the symbol of weakness, of physical frailty. Now was his chance to break free of his self imposed cocoon and impose his dominance on the world that slept quietly. “It is my time now..... I call upon my powers, my birth right. I open my poisoned soul to be consumed by my destiny. Hear my words, people of this world. Look upon my face and worship your new master. Your new world of pain. I enter your darkest thoughts and in doing so release all those nightmares to this world.” Thunder exploded. Surrounding him it tore into the ground, shredding and destroying everything in its path. The once proud oak, shattered into a million splinters as the power pulsed through his veins. As he opened his eyes, blood dripped from each socket. His wrath brought a hurricane of black horses which swept his spirit up into the atmosphere and he rode their backs pounding across the sky and with it the fragile state that held our world together. A new but familiar evil had arisen, had taken its first step to a path that could not be changed. Old enemies awoke. As the fury subsided, he found himself laying flat in the dirt his hands dug deep into the ground, trying to reach the coffin of his mother, below the surface. And yet he chose this time to reach out, to feel her warmth, now resolutely lost in the coldness of death. Was his outstretched hands and reaching her a necessity to sooth his torment or was it to crush the possibility of an emotion that pure evil should not possess? Alas, the time was soon as it was written. Words that would incite, mutate and flood forward, a tidal wave of a new order. The order of death. Revelations in all its uncompromising mercy. The lone warrior watched from behind the rock wall. His body lathered in scars, and in his soul a burning fire driving him on through the endless nights and the journey of torment. His giant powerful frame stood tall and proud, weathered and bruised by the sands of time’s constant flow of attrition on his resolution and yet as strong as the granite that ran through this planet. In his hands he held the small sphere, the key to his past and his future. Inside his hardened eyes, his burden could be seen, a quest that once again was his to bear. He had seen this evil before and he knew its power, knew its insatiable desire to destroy without reservation, and knew its ability to turn the weakest minds against others. To start his quest again when all he had sought out was with him again. Palencia and his daughter found in the fires of Linsantus Galaxy system. Above all for him, it held the last link to his final quest. To restore Danial soul. As his fury grew, he observed the boy change into the man. He moved forward, his colossal broad sword held tightly, and forward, each step taking him closer to the shadows that surrounded the man. When the warrior was within ten feet, the boy- to- man without looking around, hissed. “Welcome Nathanial, at last we meet again. Have you come to bow and pay homage to me.” Nathanial paused. “Come Journeyman, embrace my power and follow me, as is your destiny, to follow my darkness. You must feel it, feel its abrasion violating you cell by cell, soon there will be no Nathanial to go back to, but instead my servant and eternal right hand of the forces of darkness. See how powerful we could be together, see how you could have everything you want. I will grant you that Nathanial. Come, come take my hand and call me master and all will be yours as you wish....”