The Chaos Series by Kulmanari
Truth Seeker - The Chaos Demons - Legend of the Black Knight - Reflections In Time
"The Long Night"
I can't sleep…
Heck, I can't even think straight. Maybe writing all of this down will help? I don't know. I just don't know anymore.
What is it that keeps Zachary Martin awake during the early hours of the morning when he should be dead to the world you ask? The truth keeps me awake. A single, unavoidable, horrible truth…
In just a few short hours it will be up to me and the others to kill my own twin brother…
For the good of all mankind, Cody Martin must die.
It's not his fault, but he's become something that cannot be allowed to live in this world or any other for that matter. He has become the Black Knight. No, not the 'Dark Knight' as in 'Batman', I wish it were like that. No, Cody has become the embodiment of pure evil and will be the instrument that leads to the destruction of all the Realms in existence.
Have I lost you yet?
Yeah, I thought so…
Up until the past few days, the full truth of the extraordinary events that my brother and I have survived was known only to a select few people. Our identities were kept secret from the world at large and our family protected to ensure that we might know some small semblance of what it is to be normal again. Like all good things, it wasn't meant to last.
Soon, everyone will know what my brother has become and learn of the path of destruction he has laid out before us. Or rather, everyone will know of this if he doesn't survive. If we don't stop him however, it's not going to matter anyway because there will be no one left alive who can stop him.
I guess I should start at the beginning, but don't worry it won't be too long, I hope... I hate writing even though Casius says I'm getting good at it…
Whatever…
Anyway, Cody and I were just your normal (mostly) sixteen year old American city kids. We lived in a pretty swag five star hotel where our mother worked as the premiere Cabaret singer while our dad traveled around the country with his band performing for the masses. Yeah, they had gotten divorced when I was eleven. Mom was sick of moving around the States, she gave Dad the ultimatum and when he didn't give in she left him. Cody and I came to Boston with her as she started looking for a job that could support the three of us.
It wasn't a happy time, living in a crummy dump and barely having enough money to keep food in our bellies, clothes on our backs and gas in the car. But then, as if our life had suddenly become a Disney fairy tale Mom caught a lucky break! She was offered a job at the prestigious Tipton Hotel in downtown Boston after getting an interview and the chance to perform a few of her better routines. After learning of our rather poor living conditions, the Tipton's general manager advanced her two weeks pay and offered us room and board as part of her contract.
And so at the age of twelve, our lives took a turn for the better. Mom had a steady job that kept us afloat, Dad's band started hitting the big time which meant more child support money in the mail each month and Cody and I finally got to live in one place for more than a few months. We went to the same school with the same people for years. Four awesome years passed in what seemed like the blink of an eye.
Then we turned sixteen in August of 2008 and one month later the world ended…
Whoa, time out! I've gotta fill you in on some stuff real quick before I explain how the world ended. Don't you just hate cliffhangers like that?
We, being the people of the planet Earth, are not alone in universe. No, I don't mean that little green men from Mars really exist or stuff like that. There are other worlds inhabited by humans out there in the cosmos. Don't ask me where, I don't know. What I do know is that they are all interconnected by cosmic strings of energy and that if you possess the power to manipulate either of the two energies known as Light or Darkness, then you can travel between these worlds. If you're really powerful you can even open a gateway between worlds, or Realms as we call them, to allow the passage of people or creatures that couldn't normally travel there by themselves.
Imagine the darkest, scariest world full of creatures that look like they've come straight out of hell. Now multiply your vision by a hundred or so and you would have the world of Iratus. This place is much better described though as the Chaos Realm. I still have nightmares every time I go to bed wondering what that place really looks like…
Ok, time in! Where was I? Ah yes, the world ended shortly after Cody and I turned sixteen. In the month of September 2008 powerful assassins who could manipulate the power of Darkness called 'Dark Spawn' were sent to Earth from Iratus to murder my brother and me. We had no idea why they targeted us at the time. The truth is incredible, but we'll get to that later.
One moment we were having breakfast on a lazy Sunday morning, the next Demons from my darkest nightmares were storming the gates as they smashed into our suite. Mom threw herself between them and my brother and I to buy us time to get away. There was no way we were leaving by the front door, so we retreated into our bedroom chased by the screams of our mother and locked ourselves in.
This wouldn't stop them for long. We tore off the cover of the air vent in our room which was just barely big enough for us to squeeze through. I pushed Cody in first and followed right behind him, but I didn't make it. My jeans got caught on a loose screw and I barely had time to react before I found myself being dragged back out and thrown like a rag doll across the bedroom.
Strangely it didn't hurt. Stranger still was the sense of great power that filled me from head to toe. I felt like a million bucks at that moment, no a billion bucks. I felt like nothing could stop me and so I lashed out with devastating punches and kicks, barely noticing what I was pummeling. I had bought myself just enough time to slam the cover back into place on the vent and say goodbye to my twin brother before the Dark Spawn sent to kill us finally made his debut.
When the Dark Spawn attacked, it DID hurt and left me gasping for breath collapsed against the wall. I looked up into the face of the man who I would later learn was called Chiam and felt a hatred beyond anything I've ever felt before flow through me. The intoxicating power within my body seemed to lift me up and I started to glow like a chem light, but before anything could come of this strange occurrence my life was cut short.
Chiam had inflicted a fatal wound upon me with the obsidian sword he carried and left me alone in my bedroom to bleed out and die while he pursued Cody. Through all of the pain and the blackness that began to consume me, I prayed that my brother would survive. Just before I died I met someone who seemed like a long lost friend of mine.
His name was Casius. He is the Realm Lord of Earth and the leader of its Light wielding Guardians. My leader…
From this point on things get a little crazy. I'll do my best not to confuse you too much.
Cody did indeed survive that horrible day. In fact he survived for another two years as our world became a literal 'Hell on Earth'. I don't have all of the details. Cody doesn't like to talk about what happened.
What I know for sure is that Cody eluded the Dark Spawn sent to kill him for a time as he began to develop his Light powers and eventually killed a couple of them along with hundreds of the Demons they had brought to our world. He made friends and lost them just as quickly. He'd save people only to see them die later on.
After two years of enduring this living nightmare, Cody quit fighting and retired to a cabin in the Appalachian Mountains with Lily, a girl he'd rescued early into the invasion of our world and came to love deeply, to live out the rest of his days. He would remain there until he was paid a visit by Jarran Noh'Malkiri, the son of the very man who had launched the invasion to begin with. Jarran was a Dark Spawn from Iratus, just like Chiam, but unlike that murder Jarran had a vested interest in seeing Earth saved and his father stopped.
Again, the details are sketchy at best. Cody is the only one who has any idea of what really happened and even he's not too sure on the chain of events that brought us to this point (I'll get to that in a moment, I promise).
There was a hell of a battle in what remained of Boston, Jarran died defeating his father and Cody almost bit the bullet as well, but he managed to pull through. He came back through a rift in time, using some sort of machine and arrived on a completely intact and untouched Earth a week before the invasion began.
Cody set in motion a chain of events that eventually led to a final confrontation with Ashani Noh'Malkiri and saved our world. He died protecting us all and a part of his memory still lives on within the Cody Martin of THIS time line. For that matter, my other self perished protecting us all as well.
Man that's heavy…
So what happened to me? I died right? Yeah, but long story short Casius took me to another planet in the cosmos called Haven where I was healed, revived, rapidly nursed back to health and given a crash course in combat training. It was the most grueling week of my life and the most important.
I returned to Earth in time to fight in the final battle against Ashani. Cody may have set the events that led to Ashani's downfall in motion, but I was the one who ended the threat posed to our world once and for all. The blood of Iratus's Realm Lord stains my hands.
It was the first human life I'd even taken and I had hoped it would be the last.
Six months later I still hoped that it would be the last, but seeing what my brother Cody has become and what he represents makes me believe that I will have to kill again. I don't see any other way to end the threat he now poses, but god I wish there was an alternative…
Maybe we can think of something in what little time we have left.
Maybe…
Zachary Martin
27 March, 2009
"Zack…"
"Mmm, I'm up, I'm up!" Zack mumbled as he turned away from the person disturbing his sleep.
"No you're not," Casius disagreed sharply. Groaning, Zack sat up and stared at his mentor bleary eyed. Then he caught sight of the golden sunlight flooding into the room through the window that signaled the arrival of dawn and he was instantly awake.
"It's time."
Zack nodded soberly, gathered the scattered pages of the journal entry he had fallen asleep while writing hours before and neatly stacked them in order on his nightstand. If they didn't survive this battle, at least there would be some record of what had happened to them. He wished he could have included all of the more current events leading up to this point, but he didn't have time.
Swiping what appeared to be a small piece of paper off of his nightstand and stuffing it into his pocket, Zack ignored Casius's questioning look and made his way to the bedroom door.
"And so we go…"
A/N: And so we begin the third installment of the Chaos Series. If you have enjoyed the story thus far, you can follow its production, ask questions, give your opinion on my ideas and leave feedback in The Chaos Realm forums here on . To my new readers, this story is a continuation of my previous works, Truth Seeker and The Chaos Demons, which will give you a great read while you're waiting.
As always, please read, enjoy, review and stay tuned for the next exciting chapter: "The Dream"