PENANCE

A lone boy stood, staring at the star-speckled sky, his mind drawn to the girl just a few feet from where he lay. She was a beauty, that one. He couldn’t believe she was his. Every single thing she did screamed Art. The way she linked her fingers together, the way she smiled. The one girl who knew so much about him, yet… she didn’t shy away from his questionable past. As the emotions threatened to pull him under, he shook his head to clear his thoughts and face what was before him.

“A shooting star!” She screamed in excitement as she pointed at that far-off speck in the sky, becoming larger and larger by the second.

“That is no shooting star.” He managed to say, fear clogging his throat. He took in the lush grass swaying in the night wind, the beauty of the stars that more or less blotted out the sky. Then, he turned to look at the girl on the ground a few feet away. She was sitting up by then, fear morphing her once beautiful features into something unspeakable.

“What is that?” Her voice quaked as she asked, and he closed his eyes momentarily to stop the bile from going up his throat.

“Our death.” He said, not mincing words. His throat bobbed with unspoken words and something else underlying.

“I’ve always loved you. I just- I just wanted you to know. This once.” He squeezed the words out of his mouth, wrangling them like one would do to a piece of wet cloth.

“You? I’ve always seen you as just a friend.” She turned towards him then, his eyes red from tears. But he was grateful for that moment. He got her to look at him finally. And her eyes shone with regret. The screams came first as the shooting star she saw earlier was big enough to blot out the stars in the sky. And the heat. God, the heat. He felt as though he was being cooked from the inside out.

The sky boiled like a cauldron; giant drops of fire rained down from the clouds, turning the lush green grass into something out of Hades’s fantasy. Blades of grass crumbled before his eyes. Withering without as much as a touch from him and fizzing out of existence, flames taking its place. The greenery is overtaken by the force that darkened the universe and turned rivers into lakes of fire. She screamed the most. He didn’t. He just watched the shooting star fall and gave a small smile.

She was never his to own anyway.

*

Darren. That was his name. The man-boy with the power to manipulate space at his whims. He was a prodigy even among his peers in Earth 75. They had hoverboards to trapeze through space. That’s right, hoverboards. Fuelled with nothing more than gravel and sand.

“Gloating again? That’s not very ladylike of you.” He rolled his eyes at the voice that came from just behind him. Glenna. His childhood friend. If you can count a hundred years as childhood. Before they settled—before the metamorphosis, they never grew older than the teenage age. But, after settling for five years and being a pain in the butt for half of those he called his cadre, he realized that he was ready for metamorphosis. But then, Glenna wasn’t. Hence, he had to stop halfway and wait for her to be.

“I’m not a lady, for crying out loud. This is argument number what? Five thousand and seven?” He groaned, using flawless fingers to massage his forehead. Glenna just laughed as she walked towards him. Or, more like, she glided. She had more interest in the hoverboards than he did. The room was no larger than two children’s playroom, yet it had enough space due to his meticulousness. Not a strand of space is out of place, exactly how he wanted it to be.

“Number five thousand and eight. You missed one.” She laughed, planting a wet kiss on his skin. He would have gone as red as beetroot if she didn’t deftly move the conversation elsewhere.

“So, I need to weave a new dress. You’ve been called a genius for so long that it has become music to my ears. I need a strand of space to weave into a cloak I’m almost done making.” She tendered her request before him, and he took in her presence. She was young, after refusing the metamorphosis for the third time. Yet.. she had eyes of peace. The brown of her irises reminded him of worlds he hadn’t dared to touch for fear of breaking them apart. He’d seen them in his wakings. They were peaceful and oh, so beautiful. The serenity in them was what drew him to them at first.

“Okay, I will. But why just a strand? Why not a whole chunk?” He asked as she raised her eyebrows at him, and he almost melted into the chair he sat on. If you can call it sitting. It was a haphazard view, an upturned table, yet he was upright. The world he’d come to know extended universes and eternities. It was a world of madness, but at least it was his.

“One sec.” He said, raising his hand in mock surrender. Then, everything stopped. As his concentration cleared the level of the primordial beings, he tore a portal through the world. It was a red wiggly thing struggling to close, but he held it open with sheer willpower alone. When he found out that portals were alive, he decided to lord over them one way or another. They didn’t make it easy for him, though. While it wiggled, he stretched a hand into the portal and drew a strand out of that limitless vastness, loping it through his fingers like a struggling worm. It shimmered in and out of existence, blue like the untold skies, red as fiery dragons and demons of worlds he’d only read about.

“Got you.” He smiled as he held a strand. Then, the world went to hell. Before he could remove his hand from the portal, it yawned like a gaping chasm and swallowed him whole. He was screaming, but Glenna was still in timeless mode. She wouldn’t know what happened.

That is mercy. That has to be.

Then, the world shut itself as the portal consumed the world he’d known all of his existence and winked out of reality. The screams didn’t come. Nothing did.

*

Carrion. That was his name. His name. His name. He tried to hold on to it, but it slipped out of his grasp like an eel, and he followed after it, crawling after his name with it on the tip of his tongue.

What was his name again? Ca.. Ca what? What was his name? The man with scars lining his body like the universe's stars was lost. He tried to think. He tried to remember where he was. Yes. He was fighting Archanoid—the mother of spiders. One could even call her a deity.

He dodged an incoming web made of madness and silk, woven with anger and hate. She was large, towering above him like he was a pesky fly. He hated that. He was the warrior who battled nightmares and abominations. He had to win. But then, what was his name? His name.. what was it again?

He flew out of the way as an incubator shattered where he stood one second earlier. She wasn’t playing.

“Foolish mortal. Do you think you can harm me? It doesn’t matter who you are, World Walker. You can’t escape from me.” She spoke, venom dripping out of those pincer-like things. They made a clanging sound as he swallowed, looking into those red eyes that had intelligence to them, something beyond the years.

“One last chance. I will give it to you. Remember, pride and ego cannot win this war. Maybe you and the others can.” And then, before he could ask what she meant.. a scary sharp finger elongated from her finger, and she flicked him out like a fly.

There was screaming. And then, there was nothing.

*

He woke up with a groan. There were several groans across him, and he was shocked to realize that he wasn’t dead. He wasn’t scorched. But he didn’t remember what his name was. He remembered her, recognized the girl who took him as a friend before the world became a sea of fire. Why, then, was he unhurt? The others stood on shaky feet, an otherworldly feel to them. There was something he just couldn’t place. They wore things he’d never heard of, or perhaps the dark skins rippling with fire and the darkness of the deep. Maybe it was the blades of darkness in the place where teeth were meant to be, but there was something.. out of place. One of them wore nightmares on his skin; he could see death. Death rippled with muscles and scars that seemed to blot out the skin. But strangely, he didn’t feel fear.

“So, an explanation is in order?” He said to no one in particular. Even the being who looked as though he was 25 and 15 at the same time. As though the world couldn’t decide on his age and let him be both instead. He noticed that this being wasn’t standing on his two feet. He was.. hovering.

“We’ll see soon enough.” A boy his age spoke, and he stared at him in wonderment, wondering how alike they were. The way the boy squinted made it glaring that he used glasses to see. Same with him. Even though he didn’t even know their names, they were about ten. Some had hands for feet, and others weren’t even walking on the bare ground. They just.. existed. There was no way to explain their existence, so he didn’t bother.

“An explanation.. for this. All of this.” Another boy spoke, and he didn’t balk this time. He just waited.

“Here it comes.” The boy who spoke was already running.

“Here, what comes? What?” He asked, but everybody else had cleared out of that barren field. The world he was in was empty. There is no sign of green. No sign of brown either. It was as though the world was drained out of colour, and no matter where he looked, despair loomed.

He felt them before he saw them. He knew who they were before they spoke. And even without an introduction, he knew everything about them.

The Destroyers Of Worlds.

They smiled; one hovered just like that man-boy. One had skin with uncountable scars. And then, he saw himself. That cruel smile, that deadly presence. He felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather.

Someone dragged him by the scruff of his hood, and he felt.. everything. There was no other way to describe what happened. Then, he turned to stare at the other him with a cruel smile as that being let out an inferno where he was standing a moment before. It was… hot. But strangely, he wasn’t burning. He wasn’t even singed. He was.. okay.

The man-boy dropped him on the ground unceremoniously, and he muttered his thanks, but the others just raised their eyebrows, staring at the beings beyond them. Beings with their faces. Beings with enough power to destroy universes. It was them. Ageless. Timeless. With a snap of a finger, they were gone like they didn’t just lay waste to a large expanse of space.

“I think I know what’s going on…” A tenacious finger went up, and the squinted boy was allowed to speak.

“That is us. Timeless us. And.. we destroyed our universes. Now.. we have to fight against the us that are world destroyers.”

“We don’t have a choice to decline?” The man-boy asked.

“We have doomed worlds. This.. is penance.” The boy spoke again, his eyes filled with trepidation and resignation.

“So, we were summoned here to kill our future selves? That’s a sick sense of humor.”

“This world is sick, and when the Arachnoid told me, I didn’t believe it.” The man with the scars spoke, and his scars seemed alive, melding with his body.

“Can you tell us what an Arachnoid is?” Another asked. So, he told them. Everything.

“Pride and ego, huh?” A guy spoke, and they finally understood what they had to do.

“This is depraved. All of this. Depraved. What the hell?” He spoke, shaking with anger.

“Hell doesn’t exist, apparently. Future us made sure the world became it.” A brittle laughter from the man-boy.

“This is it, then? We die in a land of no name? Our names were stolen from us. I can’t dredge up a single memory.” The scarred man said, eyes smouldering. I could tell he was pissed off.

“This is our penance.” The squinting boy said again, and I was tempted to throw him out of the universe. Such a goody two shoes.

“I don’t care. Whatever I have to do, I will do it. And it doesn’t matter who’s on the line. I have to go back home. Also, you can’t fight fire with water. Not in my world, anyway. It takes a monster to kill another. We will take the unorthodox approach. Did they want to seclude us and destroy us? World Walkers, indeed. Bastards more likely. I won’t take that. Neither should any of you. We have the power. Can’t you feel it? We can change things.” The man-boy spoke fervently, his eyes filled with loss, anger, and something else.

“That’s right. We won’t let them decide for us. If we have to die, we might as well raise hell before we do. Now, we need a name.” The hooded boy spoke, and the others nodded in approval.

“How does The Restorer of Worlds sound?” There were hoots of approval, some going as far as clapping. Then, they stared at the sky at once. Drained of colour. But then, the World between Worlds had always been a resting place for World Walkers.

They had to fight. And this time, they had to fight themselves. Their memories returned, and they could see themselves in the past, present, and future—the Destroyer of Worlds.

No more. They decided not to make the same mistakes. Not again. This time, they’d restore all they destroyed. As the squinty-eyed kid said, it was penance.