Prologue
I was high above the Earth's atmosphere, I was scared, my god was I scared but I was the only one that could do it, and the only one that would. Jake trusted me, Jake knew I'd be alright…Ya, that's it, I'd be fine and tomorrow we'd all be back home with our families celebrating. I would be there, my mom, my dad, my sisters, and Jake's family including tom, Marco, Cassie, Ax, and Tobias. We'd all be there, just like the old times, just like the way it was supposed to be.
Cool it Rachel. I said to myself. By this time tomorrow you'll be riding thermals with Birdboy again, just got to make it through today. No problem, it'll be easy. Yeah, everything will be fine. I thought silently to myself. I knew I was doomed, I knew I would never set foot on earth again. But I wouldn't stop hoping, stop trying to believe that I would see them again, that I would live to see the end of the war.
And there I was, close to death. I was standing in the middle of the bridge in human form. I felt like crying. I had failed, I failed Jake and everyone else, they had counted on me but I didn't do it, I wasn't powerful enough, I failed. I looked at the screen and saw them there. I saw my best friend Cassie. Jake. Marco, funny Marco. Ax.
Tobias.
"I love you." I said to the screen.
And oh, god, how could so much regret and so much sweetness and so much sadness all be present in that single moment. I was already dead and missing my unlived life. I was already dead and Tobias was mourning.
I tried to smile. For him.
The Polar Bear said. You fight well human. Then he killed me with a single blow.
Time Stopped.
He came to me. The Ellimist.
The puppet master had come to my final act. It figured. He was in his saintly old man guise. As fake as everything else about him. The all-powerful weakling. The Mighty manipulator.
"You." I said accusingly.
"Yes."
"Who are you?" I demanded. "Who are you to play games with us? You appear, you disappear, you use us, who are you, what are you?"
And then, for what seemed like a very long time, the Ellimist told me. I saw, I understood. But I also knew he would not save me. That he couldn't under the arcane rules of the millennia long war with Crayak.
The Ellimist was there to honor me, and I guess that was nice of him. Wasn't going to help me much. I wanted so much to live. I wanted so much to stay and not leave. No answer would matter to me, but just the same, I wanted to know what I guess any dying person wants to know.
"Answer me this Ellimist: Did I...did I make a difference? My life and my...my death...was I worth it? Did my life really matter?" "Yes." He said. "You were brave. You were strong. You were good. You mattered." "Yeah, okay then. Okay then."
I wondered if – I wondered if we would win the war. I wondered a million things in those last few seconds of life. I already felt my thoughts diminishing as I started to fade away, become a distant memory from a distant planet out in the middle of space. I felt myself fading but then…it stopped. It just stopped and I was left there, suspended in time, mostly dead, yet still alive. Alive without a body to live in, without a form to call my own, what happened? Why was I like this? I was supposed to be dead, I was supposed to have died on that blade ship, and maybe this was death? Was death a slow torture where I was left here wandering suspended in time only thinking of what could have been, how things could have happened?
I felt a presence around me as I slowly was able to see…when I opened my eyes I saw so differently, I saw through space, I saw timelines fade, curl away, and then being reborn on a different planet, in a different time. I saw wars, nations, people, and species that I could never have dreamed of before. I saw all of this within a second and then it was gone, then I was standing in front of Crayak, in front of my worst enemy.
Even though he was there, I still didn't acknowledge his presence. What I had seen…it stuck with me, I now saw the rise, and the downfall of every species there was. I saw Tobias taking my ashes, living in the meadow, isolated, alone. Oh how I wanted to reach out to him, tell him it was alright, to tell him that I believed in him and that he shouldn't suffer just because of me. But all of that was gone now, and in front of me was Crayak. "Leave me be." I said angrily, I wasn't in the mood to talk to Crayak, not like anyone ever was but I was especially pissed, I mean since I just died and everything.
"If that is what you wish." His powerful voice silenced the memories I had just seen, as he stared at me with his evil smile. He was in the form of a human around 6 feet tall, black hair and blue eyes. Why did he appear to me as a human? He looked at me and grinned. "I could bring you back." He said quietly.
"I already told you to bug off." I sounded sure of myself, confident, but I wasn't. I wanted so badly to be able to see Tobias again, I wanted to live and to love and to just be able to live out the rest of the life I knew I deserved.
"Rachel, Rachel, Rachel…" He paced back and forth on the floor of stars underneath us. "If that is what you wish…" he said darkly. "It's yours."
I felt wind suddenly rush around me, I blinked and when my eyes opened I was in a meadow. I had been here before…this was Yellowstone Park. I went here a couple of times with my dad when I was little, but it was more than that…it wasn't just the memory from my dad.
I walked around for a while and reached a small cluster of trees where I saw campers, one of them was playing the flute. The melody was so soft, so beautiful, for a strange reason it reminded me of the harmony of flying. I looked at the sky then saw something…someone too familiar…it was a red-tailed hawk perched on a tree listening to the music. He eventually moved closer and stared at the two campers. This was no normal hawk, no way. I watched him and suddenly day turned to night then night once again turned today.
Don't kid yourself Tobias. I heard him say as he once again watched the campers. They were in love, you could tell by the way they held each other and looked into each other's eyes. Your all you have, your alone. There's no one for you. Don't kid yourself. He spread his wings and took off as he started to fade away.
I felt my thoughts diminish and my life slowly fade once again as the surroundings I had just been in disappeared. When they were gone I was left again suffering, the pain, the loneliness...I was dying. But then suddenly I felt a spark of light touch me, I knew that it wasn't Crayak…it was something else, something more powerful…suddenly I.... I saw through everything! I saw Tobias crying and Toby running into the bridge talking to them. I saw the Visser surrender and Tobias take my ashes. I saw Jake, alone, apart from the rest of the world sit, staring at my memorial. I saw Marco, laughing throwing parties, finally getting dates. I saw Cassie working for the white house, helping the Hork-bajir and meeting someone...his name was Ronnie. I saw Ax, or Prince Aximilli, as he was now called, on the ship, the blade ship where I was killed...he was examining a hair when everything exploded in a suddenly white flash and he was gone. Jake remained depressed but eventually got better, Marco still needed a reality check...and tobias.... tobias was living as a hawk, no one but Cassie and Toby ever heard from him, I wanted to reach out to him, to touch him. But all of this information was hitting me within a millisecond. I saw them name the ship, name it the Rachel. Yes I though happily. I would approve. I saw their journey through space, how Tobias was distant, Marco was unbelievably loud and then I saw The One, he had started off of me. He was a part of me. An evil that I thought no one could touch. When I died, he expanded, he took over everything he found, he was the rage that had built up inside of me. The hate, the anger, the intelligence, yet he was insane. Actually I shouldn't say he, I should mostly say it. Then, suddenly, as soon as Jake ordered to ram into the blade ship, it stopped, everything stopped and I found myself, in my human form, standing in a vast emptiness, pure white surrounded me.
"Show yourself!" I demanded as I once again felt a presence around me, but this wasn't Crayak, or Ellimist. It was something else, something more powerful if it was possible, it was something not in the game, someone that didn't have to play by the rules…
"I know that you're here. Show yourself to me at once." I sounded like a spoiled brat but I was scared, if this was something bigger than Toomin, bigger than Crayak, we were in trouble whether it was good or bad…there's always an opposite. If this was similar to the Ellimist then I knew that somewhere out there, somewhere out in space there was something even more powerful than Crayak, and possibly crazier.
`You speak to me as though you aren't afraid.` the voice surrounded me, pressured me, sunk into my soul and yet did not affect me. `You are very brave; we have been watching you humans. You with your strange emotions, your feelings, your morals. Who are you humans?` the voice scattered and echoed as each word came to being.
"I asked you first." I said daringly. "Who and what are you?"
`You are worthy.` This time it was a different voice. This one sounded more feminine and gentle. A figure appeared in front of me, it was human. She was very tall and had bright red hair that fell down about two inches under her shoulders. Her eyes were a hazel green and had a certain glow to them. `You have not given into Crayak.` She smiled. `Crayak, our brother had left us, he had abandoned his people and came here, he came here and you destroyed him. You greatly weakened our brother.`
"Your brother?" I asked as four figures appeared next to the woman, two on each side.
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A/N: Yo! I hope you enjoyed the prologue to this really weird long twisted story about Crayak and Rachel! PLEASE R&R…unless of course your Marcus :P
And Thank you Ali for helping me and telling me what stuff sucked and what didn't!!!!!!!!!!