The Darkest Hour
By Ultima66
Chapter 2
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They say that most of life is fate, and a small part of it is our will, but what will can really come of us, if fate wills us to do our will?
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I found a clean clearing in the forest. I knew I could do anything, anything that I desired, and no one would know. This tranquility, perfect peace, and isolation from everyone but the elves, which never strayed through the forest anyways in fear of monsters, meant that nothing done here would be recorded. On the other hand, only one thing held its grip on my mind: my mission, or to put it in better terms, my will.
I closed my eyes and held my arms in front of me. Suzu's body lay in the forest, still impaled to the tree where I had left it, soaked in blood, a dark, sadistic memoir.
"Someone will find it," I thought to myself, "But it will do them no good. I'll be long gone, and no one suspects me in the first place."
A blue circle appeared on the ground around me. Leaves started to blow around. The darkness that plagued me seemed impossible to tell, yet for some odd reason, to any passerby I would have easily been pointed out as pure evil. I don't know how I know this, but I knew that anyone could see I was evil, even though I seemed perfectly normal. And it wasn't the fact that I was here opening a time portal either. There was just an unexplained air about it. All I know is that as I look back upon my old self, I realize that something just wasn't normal. everything at a glance looked normal. You could draw a portrait and it would look just like any average person, or as average as warriors get, but once you actually got close, the darkness was chilling.
The blue circle began to form into a spell circle- a deeply intricate pentagram with flowered lines and flowing curves in perfect symmetry from just about any direction. Then, a hole ripped through the center, where I was standing. A pitch-black energy enveloped me and in a flash, I was gone.
It was like falling through an endless hole. Visible energy patterns covered the sides, and the time warp twisted and bended, but somehow, I kept falling straight down. Suddenly, a force shoved me to a halt. It wasn't a force that came from any particular direction. It wasn't pulling me from above, and it didn't feel like I was landing on anything. All I know is that it felt like I was free falling, then suddenly stopping. The vortex around me was swirling to a stop, and enclosing itself around me. It slowly shrank into a sphere, which was now surrounding my body, and vanishing. Slowly, the world of the past was revealed to my eyes.
I was in a small field. Apparently, the forest had yet to grow into this area yet, and I could see Ymir off a few dozen yards to my side. If I moved southeast, around the forest, I could go back up, travel east, then continue northward, following the mountain range in that area. Then I would reach the bridge leading to the famous island of Alvanista. From Alvanista I could travel eastwards, and after crossing some mountains, I would arrive in Cless' hometown, which at the point was named Beladum.
From there, I would go northward, to Klarth's hometown of Vennezia. That is where I planned to go.
On the other hand, there was a strait separating Ymir and the continent where Beladum lay. If I could get through that strait, I would just have to cross the mountains which surrounded Beladum and I would bypass Alvanista altogether, along with almost halving my traveling time. But at the moment, I couldn't figure out just what to do. Then the obvious rained on me, now more focused on getting there rather than accomplishing my goal, both of which needed to be done.
"Dammit! I'm next to a fucking forest and I can't figure out how to get across a few damn yards of water? What the hell was I thinking? Well, then, better now than later," and I got to work. I cut down a tree with my sword, coupled with my magic, searing a slice of a tree making it crash to the ground. After an hour so of dragging the tree over and cutting them up, I had a boat. I hiked for a few minutes, dragging the tiny vessel over to the water. The boat was not impressive, nor was the tree that made it, but I didn't care. I just wanted to make haste.
It was a tiny stretch, only about a half of a mile across. It wouldn't be hard to swim, but I couldn't not with my sword, and with what I could do with my magic anyways, I felt no need to swim. I cast off, using the sword as a makeshift paddle, as I was in a hurry and didn't want to bother with making a paddle. It's not like it mattered with this small of a distance anyways.
I arrived a few minutes later. Unfortunately, that was the easy part. The hard part would be traveling all those miles to Vennezia. I knew it would take days, so I decided to tell others that I was simply a wandering traveler and swordsman, wandering looking for a job. Unfortunately for me, I still had absolutely no clue as to how I was going to get Klarth and Arche alone anyways, but I kept my own priorities at a maximum. Sadly, those priorities were not exactly decent, wholehearted ones, with murder as a top. I began my trek up the mountains. This stretch wasn't so bad, but mountains are tough terrain regardless.
It's just as I said, I knew I had potential. It was just wasted potential, living a shell of a life, tearing that shell to pieces every time I killed another, yet never stopping, never ceasing, for that dark soul. Some are perfectly pure, I was perfectly impure. I wish I had found the light. Darkness should not have guided my actions, darkness should never guide anyone's actions. My heart bound by deep hyperbole: a full bodied nothingness, a perfect imperfection. I was a loner, so lonely I was unsure of whether I threw myself out from this world, or whether I was simply rejected. So much shrouded in darkness, so much unexplained. The only warmth I ever felt was the warmth of blood, flowing down my hand, a silent sign of murder. I cannot question why any of this happened, though, it was simply loud, overbearing, screaming silence. I have no clue why I impaled the young girl to that tree back in Ymir of the future. Life for her might have been perfect, she was, as it was apparent, a great warrior, and of only 13 too. It is, as you might say, fate that wrought her deathbed, or something else. Everything is apparently guided by fate, shrouded by a mystery that none can ever unravel. It was perhaps fate that I was so dark, so pitiful, and so murderous.
After several hours of trekking, I arrived at Beladum. I found the inn, and asked for a room. A few questioned me, saying that I seemed kind of like the travelers that saved the world from Dhaos. Little did they know, of course, that Dhaos would be back, to plague the future twice, not that it mattered at all, as the heroes would defeat him. Klarth and Arche would have already saved the world by now, no real harm would be done; Cless, Chester, and Mint would simply miss out on ever seeing Arche again. A dark humor surrounded the thought, and I laughed at it. Why the subject of friends never being able to see each other again was amusing to me I had no clue of. As I saw them say, Arche said that at least she would be around in the present, seeing as she's a half-elf. I knew she was wrong, and simply destroying some people's dreams were far more to laugh at for me than was appropriate.
I got to my room and went to bed, still feeling the humor in me, the dark humor that was nowhere near appropriate. The thought would make most people cry, in fact. I set down my sword, recalling the evil that I committed wielding it for a second, picturing dead bodies, and most of all, the image of Suzu stuck in the tree, and went straight to sleep.
"Please. Don't hurt her. Take me."
A voice, faint and weak, pleaded for mercy. A sound of a sword slicing through flesh was heard. A man's voice yelled out. Something fell to the ground. A sickly feeling spread over me, the same as when any murder is committed by me.
"I will take you both," another said.
"You're evil. Damn you. Damn you," were the man's last words.
Then, a third voice cried out. A girl's voice.
"I know what lay ahead for me. My life will end, but that is not end for me. I cannot say the same for you, however. A plagued soul does not rest, and sooner or later, you shall be no more on this earth. Did you ever consider that?"
"You talk of saving me when you're the one who is about to lose their life? You are quite pathetic."
"Pathetic? Am I? You can say all you want, and do all you want, but there is one thing you cannot erase. Whatever happens..."
I awoke. Light was feeding through the windowsill, and it was time for me to get going. "What did that all mean?" I wondered to myself. Everything was so blurry. It could have been something that had happened before, but I didn't recall anything distinctly like that situation. I had never targeted a couple, or whatever that was.
"It's probably just something my mind is making up," I said quietly. I stepped out of the hotel and left the quiet town. I started traveling north.
Some say isolation and wilderness bring out the worst in us. Some say the best. There didn't seem like there was much left for me, seeing as how futile it would be to picture someone worse than me. And as far as better, that was quite ridiculous. I even dreamed about murder. My isolation gave me time for my mind to wander. Time to breathe and think for itself, separate from my heart and soul, filled with emptiness. My mind created that situation, my mind shed light on what may have been a glimpse of the future.
I made it to Euclid Pass, a was through the mountains to get to Euclid. From there, Vennezia was close. There was a man selling his wares there, and a statue of a man next to him, and a small pass behind the statue. I asked him for directions, not that I entirely needed them, and he told me to head on forward for the long way, or to go past the statue for a shortcut that takes me over the mountain. Naturally, I took the shortcut.
"Aren't you going to at least look at what I'm selling?" he asked me, as I turned and started walking. I was silent, and moved on, and he understood.
The view from the mountaintop was quite nice, but I had no time to bother with this. I found a few pouches with some supplies in them just lying there, but I left them alone. A bugbear stood in my way, and by now the "path" had become a small 3 foot long cliff edge. The bugbear was hunched over and held a small club, having the features of a bear, only humanlike. It swung at me, which I met with my sword. Then I swung downwards at him, which it had to fall back to avoid. I simply gave him a swift kick, sending him sliding off, like a ragdoll off a slope.
"Pf... dumbasses," I said to myself. The bugbear had landed, making a cloud of dirt at the foot of the mountain. I moved on.
I arrived at Euclid. It was a lively city, much more going on than the lonely Beladum. Children were racing in the streets, and there was a minstrel in the city square. I stopped at the cafe, found a seat, and sat down to take a breather.
"I'll have a cup of coffee, please," I said, even though it was a bit late for coffee. It was a few hours past noon, and everyone had already eaten lunch, so the place was relatively empty. A waitress brought in my cup, and I sat, drank, and thought. It was almost disturbing how someone who appeared so normal would be really out on such a horrible mission. I wondered if the people who saw me could tell I was evil or not, but I came to the conclusion that though they could tell, they banished the thought. I, being so solemn and silent, would seem mysterious enough to be shrouded in such an evil air.
I moved on. Euclid was fine, but I still had a job to do. Moving north, I arrived at a bridge. It led to ruins, ruins of a city Dhaos' followers had destroyed called Harmel. It would be gone forever; no future ever held plans for rebuilding it.
Moving through the silent city, I headed on north. This would be Bart's house. Klarth spent a lot of his time here, and since Arche was now always with him, she might be here, too. If so, I'd save the time it took to go on to Vennezia. Bart himself wasn't tehre, but I found an all too familiar sight- a girl riding on a broom, seemingly very relaxed and casual, sitting on it sideways- Arche. She was gazing at the Sylph's Mountain, where the Sylphs lived, until Klarth brought them into his control, creating their contract.
"Arche Klaine," I said, loud enough that she would notice.
"Hm? Who are you, sir? A friend of Klarth's? Why are you calling for me?" she responded.
She was a cute, bubbly girl. She always seemed casual, relaxed. She had bright pink hair and it was tied up in a long but rough ponytail. It was quite interesting how this 18-year-old was so innocent and immature, while Suzu, only 13, was so focused and determined.
"No, but I am calling for you, because I am going to be the one that is going to determine your fate,"
"What? Come on, I don't know you," she said, casually, still having no clue about the situation.
"Arche, I am here... to take your life,"
Her expression suddenly turned to shock.
"You're kidding, right? You better be," She said, sounding a bit more serious. A tiny bit worried.
"In fact, I'm not," I said.
"I need to find Klarth," she said, to herself, jumping on her broom and flying off into the valley.
I knew Klarth was at the Sylph's Mountain. I slowly followed. Haste was needless. I had those two just where I wanted them, and nothing warranted their escape. Their deaths were approaching, and nothing was to stop that.
"Take your sweet time. It's more important than you realize," I said, once Arche was off in the distance.
The darkest hour was rising, and no one could do anything about it. Fate had guided my hand, and it was going to guide me to kill these innocent people. Nothing was otherwise. If I was to be nervous, fate would guide me to be nervous. On the other hand, I was perfectly calm. I knew that it was over for them, and nothing can stop that which is inscribed in fate.