I’ve been meaning to bring balance to one of my longest running personal story lines. Dating back over a decade, at it’s height in the Free-form RP chat rooms of days gone by Darius, the Soulfire’s, and various attached characters and arcs grew amazingly and I had the privilege to write with some awesome talents out there in the internets. But times change, people lose contact and things fall apart. I felt it was time to bring some chaos to the confusion and start a process of rebuilding.
So here below is the first step to restoring a wide spanning story line I’ve been arc wielding for a decade.Yes it’s a first pass draft, but it’s raw and why I love it, even if it drained me a bit as I completed writing it moments ago
He stood within the unending flow of the Eternium, within each stream a time, a world, a reality, a strand of the tapestry of existence. All around him worlds existed going about their path through the Universes. Tempting to visit, but he held himself back from entering any, for within that unending moment surrounded by the real and surreal, his primary concern was centered upon one flow. One stream which moved apart from the rest, its links had been broken and while it was in the process of merging back into the pattern of the Eternium, it was still fractured.
Shards of that stream jostled and rotated within the confining walls of the partition he had created to affect repairs. Searching through the various scenes captured within the fractured stream, he sought those of who were most important to himself. The lives of various beings he had taken great interest in, ones he had guided, supported, helped, or in rare cases blocked from moving in incorrect directions. The moments that each were trapped in, some broke his heart to see them being replayed, while others made him smile wide, his timeless grey eyes crinkling around the edges as he grinned large, or shed luminous tears as they jumped from one frozen moment to the next.
The stream would be restored, the moments unfrozen and the repairs would take old, shifting events into their proper order, removing the contaminations and replace some events with what should have happened, while others would be brought into the proper context and further defined. It was relative in how it would proceed of course, for the occupants of the stream most would find that no time had passed and would not notice what had changed or what was missing. Some, such as the ones whom he observed would remember the pieces altered or removed, yet they would know they were gone and even why for they had been involved on a personal level with much of the initial cause.
The pain would fade as pain generally did, but the memories would remain of what might have been, what could have happened, and what had happened in both the altered flow and the proper flow. It would take time to sort it out, deal with the implications and the changes, but they could cope. He knew they were survivors, by and large they understood the scope of change far better perhaps than even he did. Yet the process for him would seem like the passage of several ages, for time had no meaning within the Eternium, for he was outside it, the observer looking in through the windows of Forever. Ever so gently he brought for the shards he cared most to observe the moments that were locked within them. He wanted to see where things had flown apart for each, what had been avoided or magnified.
The first to come to hand was that of Erasmus the prophet, one of the few, rare individuals Fate and Destiny had chosen to gaze upon the Book. He recorded events within his darkened tower rooms, cut off from most of his own world and time to document events far from him in his future. Very little had ever touched him from his own time or world, most of his contemporises left him to his own devices, and he’d only had one meaningful connection to his own personal reality. Erasmus’s scene however was far from some greater purpose, he wasn’t documenting the future, nor experiencing the Book, yet he was still writing. Though for him the fracture in time had not disrupted his era it had certainly disrupted his life, for he had been thrust into the unknown territory of the living when Oleander had come bursting into it like a supernova. The observer watched as Erasmus scribbled a love letter, one that was unlikely to be delivered. That was one of the observers worries for this particular shard, that Erasmus’ experiences with Oleander would be removed and that it had never come to pass and he would loose the beginnings of true living. As Erasmus formed words on the page, a letter written endless times in the frozen moment, the observer pushed away the shard back into the stream; he could not watch further knowing that such a regular, mundane, and vitally important moment might never come to pass.
“So many things lost, so many things gained, will they ever be the same again. What price will they pay for your folly Darius; can they pay your butcher’s bill?”
Darius asked himself as he pulled forward another shard, another moment of another life trapped and waiting to be absorbed into the restored Linear. He caught sight of the young Prince Anjel, a descendant of Erasmus several generations in Erasmus’ future. The scene was of a grand ball within the Imperial Capital, the night Anjel would begin the first steps towards consolidating his relationship with Deliverance. They looked so splendid in their finest clothing, dancing together in a frozen moment, embracing each other with tempered passion, while never crossing the line of decorum. It spoke volumes of their connection. Some things were meant to occur and yet even this scene while it was part of the real reality, it could be contaminated and require alteration, a change of a name, a change of dancing partners. It could all change as restoration passed through that timeline. Darius smiled and allowed him self to have at least some measure of hope, however pointless it might turn out to be.
He swept this scene away to bring forward another, another one that broken his heart so very much, a scene he desperately hoped would be deleted, voided, removed and never occurred. The generations that followed Anjel, his son’s, his grandchildren, and several of their companions were at the epicentre of the contamination that had ripped apart the very Stream of their temporal flow. Before Darius’ eyes was a scene he positively wished he’d never had to have seen, let alone find frozen in replay over and over again. Great tears fell from his ageless eyes as he looked into that moment, watching Daire, one of the greatest of the family in generations. His own protégé` that he and his brother deities had taken such interest in was standing alone on a balcony of the Imperial compound, looking outward at the city of his citizens.
The moment played out over and over again, Daire reaching out into the stars searching for Nicca, reaching out for any of his lost loves to come and bring him solace. For his children, or for anyone whom could hear his plea for help, to mend his shattered heart after the trials of the War. He had thrown himself into the thick of the War, fighting to repair the stream and paying the ultimate price, much of his past destroyed and all but removed save for the memories. He was alone, his children lost in their own moments for he was the last to be frozen. The scene came to it’s conclusion as it always did; with Daire, succumbing to the insanity of all he had experienced, sacrificed, and lost. A pistol came to his hand easily with the savage rage that often filled those whom break from reality. The weapon swinging upwards as though it pulled Daire’s hand and urged it to squeeze the trigger as it reached the end of its rise upward at Daire’s temple. The bullet bursting from the chamber and crashing through the man’s head to spray his life and intelligence on the balcony floor and the body falling afterwards, blood pouring from the wound like a cascade of sadness, staining everything around it.
Darius heaved the shard back into the stream, he knew it would be removed, he didn’t have to contemplate it, yet it disturbed him how much of a price Daire had paid, and that the memory of that moment would remain with Daire, for he was well attuned and aware of the Eternium and while he would remember it all and that it had never really happened, it would haunt him for all his days. Darius could remove them from Daire’s memory if he chose and he may at some point, yet it might prompt Daire into even greater heights. Some many things would have to be seen when the stream was fully restored.
“Enough, it will happen as it will, we can only wait, watch, and see” Darius said to himself firmly, his hands reaching out for another shard, hoping for a happy moment, rather than more pain, more hurt caused by the War he and his brothers had had to engage in before it destroyed the Eternium. His fingers curled around another shard and brought it forward, his breath caught as he looked into the replaying scene. More death, more pain waited in that shard. Daire’s children, Orchid lay broken and not yet dead in the background, Teirnan crawling across the floor of the palace, his life flowing out of him from a long slash across his chest. Ashanna, the love of his youth lay beyond him in a lifeless heap. More destruction, it brought Darius’s to weep at how much it really had come to pass, for the architect of that scene stood looking victorious. Damascus, Teirnan’s twin brother from another, twisted reality that had been forced into the stream by the enemy, part of the contamination, gloating over the terror he had inflicted. The truth of Damascus however remained with Darius, for Damascus has originated in the stream he had been sent into as a saboteur. Perhaps the restoration would restore all the damage done to Damascus and Teirnan. Darius could only hope it would bring the boys to where they should be.
Darius forced away the shard; his hands reaching for another only to have it disappear as he touched it. The restoration had removed the scene before he could fully view it taking Epiphany with it and perhaps one of the clearest signs of true temporal restoration. Her timeline never coming to pass, it removed her valiant role in the War, while at the same time hinting at changes that would occur that would not bring about her very existence. A pity for she was one of the bravest of the family he’d seen over the countless generations. A true grand daughter of Daire, for she had fought with every ounce of strength and determination she possessed to make the traveling throughout time to combat the contamination, armed only with her abilities and Erasmus’ manifesto. Perhaps she would come to pass eventually, though different and hopefully her world would be much more secure rather than the wasteland and emptiness she had sought to change.
Another shard passed before his eyes, but he turned away, his heart unable to handle more than a glance at Violet’s face, for she was weeping and calling out for him, trapped in a place he could not reach and he knew he might never see her again. She was beyond him in time and space and he could do little more than call out for a voice that might never reply. Turning his eyes to another shard, his own son, who had become trapped in the fracture, yet not part of the war, but in the arms of his beloved Ellesin. The woman whom had captured his very soul and made him reach towards the brilliance Darius always believed lived within him. Gentle his finger tips glided over the shard, the tears continuing to trail down his face. He wanted to grasp that moment and protect it from the storm of change. As though of their own accord, his fingers curled around the shard to bring it closer, only to have it shatter in his hand. The pieces of temporal energy swirled about before being drawn into the stream once more.
“No, no, please no, let that not mean what it could. The prices have been too high, there is too much loss already don’t take that.” Darius shouted in futility, he wanted to grasp what remained and force the pattern to retain moments he felt worth saving. Yet he could do no such thing, time had to restore itself, if he interfered it would be as though everything had all been for naught. He wept in frustration, in hope, in anguish, and in relief. The stream broke free of his confining partition and rejoined the Eternium, its restoration nearing completion. Through everything within that reality into chaos as it sorted itself out. New experiences, new stories awaited those whom lived and died in that stream. Darius took a long shuddering breath as he carefully put himself into the stream, piercing the wall of Linear time, dropping through the corona of reality and planting himself at the edge of the gazebo, a recreation from his home in the Null.
He wanted to be subject to the changes found within, not just observe them, but feel them taking shape. He had to know, he had to feel, he had to breathe in the changes and know that everything was aright. Even as he shook off the dew of temporal waters he heard a voice, ever faint reaching through the corridors of time, calling his name. Something new was brewing in the stream, some different yet familiar, something he could truly take into his hands and hold on to, no matter how briefly. The tears set aside; he spread his arms wide and inhaled the fresh mountain air as he settled himself on the steps of the gazebo, his mind reaching across time, looking to reply, looking for the new and changed, the wonderful and the terrible. Time flowed again, a stream among many, coursing in its path through the Eternium, adventures yet to occur lay ahead, new stories to tell, new majik filled the world and a voice filled his ears.
