The Campbell Chronicles

Chapter 12

Nicholas clapped his hands together as his duplicate disappeared. "So, when do we start? I'm eager to learn."

A smile lit up Trinity's narrow features as her blue eyes scanned him up and down, "I'm glad to hear that, but before you start learning, we need to give you a physical to make sure everything is okay after that exterminator left your body."

Releasing a breath, Nicholas pushed his will into reality.

The world shimmered as everything became made of crimson threads.

While he wanted to trust Trinity, he didn't know her. Reaching toward a ragged thread that flowed from Trinity's body, Nicholas's eyes widened.

The world around him fractured like a pane of glass; a dark space was revealed between the cracks as energy went wild.

Nicholas grunted, his hands curling into fists just short of the thread. His body shook as energy swept through him. He was used to the pain of energy flowing through his body, but somehow this felt different.

His veins glowed a familiar orange as he broke his connection with reality and stumbled backward, blood leaking from his nose.

Trinity appeared before him, frowning as the rush of air from her sudden movements ruffled his hair. "Well, well, this isn't good. It's interesting but not good."

Grunting, the veins around Nicholas's heart glowed blue as he used his bio-reality manipulation to push back against the power. His body shook as his energy slammed into what he assumed to be the residual energy from the exterminator.

It felt like hitting a brick wall, going a hundred miles an hour.

Trinity raised an eyebrow but shook her head, "It's interesting that your mother was able to pass on her mutant gift to you, but that's not going to work."

"How do you know my mother passed her gift on to me? I don't remember telling you that," he could have, but his mind was becoming fuzzy.

"Our gifts are connected to our souls just as much as our bodies, and quantum string manipulation is still in the shape of your mother."

Nicholas's eyes widened, "I have a piece of my mother's soul in my body?"

"Just a sliver; it would be about the size of a splinter and wouldn't hold consciousness, but yes."

Red threads emerged from Nicholas's orange veins. They waved in the air for a moment before beginning to crumble. Nicholas watched small red particles break off the thread and fade to nothing.

"Ignoring that right now, what's happening to my body?"

Trinity raised her hand, and runic symbols in the shape of eyes appeared around her, glowing with a golden light. Her eyes took on a golden glow as she stared at Nicholas. "It appears that the exterminator left a piece of itself behind inside you that is no longer suppressed by your soul. That piece is now devouring your powers and, in doing so, damaging your soul, which is killing you."

"How do I fix it?"

Sweeping her fingers through the air, Trinity drew a symbol similar to a Japanese kanji. Slapping her palm against it, she pushed it into Nicholas's heart.

A flash of light exploded from Nicholas's body, and within his mind, he could see Golden chains wrapped around an energy replica of himself, a thread version of his mother, and an orange mouth full of teeth.

When the light faded, Nicholas returned to the room with all the books, and Trinity sat on her throne-like chair.

"To save yourself, you must incorporate the energy left behind by the exterminator into yourself."

"How do I do that?"

"That's for you to figure out. Since you will be remolding yourself, I'm sure you don't want me to influence that."

Nicholas glanced at the symbol over his heart, "How long will this last?"

"A year and a half."

"So, I've got a year and a half before my body breaks apart."

Trinity grinned, "Look at it this way: you said you wanted to learn magic, and I think magic will be part of the solution. What better motivation to learn than certain death."

Ignoring her, Nicholas turned to Wanda, "You mind if we get started? It appears I'm on borrowed time."

"Just like that, you just found out you're going to die in a year and a half."

Nicholas shrugged, "I don't have time to panic, and this isn't the first time I faced death."

–XX –

Three Months later, Nicholas sat cross-legged on a marble floor in a large circular room.

Bookshelves lined the walls and climbed to the dome ceiling. Periodically, books floated off the shelf to phase through the floor and into the room where Nicholas first met Trinity.

Nicholas's gaze flicked from book to book as they spiraled in a tight circle around them, his mind taking in and categorizing the information thanks to the alterations he made to his body so long ago.

Wanda Nelson sat across from him, her eyes locked on his left arm, now riddled with cracks and bleeding orange-blue light.

"How's it coming?"

Nicholas glanced at her through the tornado of books.

"Fine," Nicholas raised his hand and made a complicated gesture with his fingers.

The symbol over his heart flared beneath his open button-down shirt, and the cracks in his arm slowly closed.

"The fragment of the exterminator is breaking down my abilities and my mother's, turning them into role potential, but luckily, energy manipulation was one of the changes it made to my body. Magic is a lot of things, but at its base, it is just another form of energy, so I shouldn't be too affected."

Flicking his fingers on his left hand, the books circling him flew back onto the shelves to be replaced by another group.

"Do you really think you can learn enough magic in a year and a half to save yourself?"

"All I can do is try, but I don't want to discuss that. I want to know more about the woman who can manipulate pure chaos."

Wanda brushed her Auburn hair behind her ear as she licked her lips, "What do you want to know?"

"Anything you're willing to tell me."

"Okay, but afterward, you must tell me about Brigadoon."

Nicholas stiffened, images of the exterminator destroying the city flashing through his mind, "What do you want to know?"

"Your people arrived on earth just after the dawn of early humans; I want to know how you changed our world's destiny?"

Nicholas relaxed, a smirk turning up the corner of his lips, "How do you know we did?"

Wanda shook her head, "Chaos magic allows me to understand probability, so I know that just your presence in this world would've changed things."

"Fine."

Taking a deep breath, Wanda exhaled. "I guess I'll start from the beginning. My father was Clement Thyme, an amateur archaeologist and history professor who studied the arcane. Somehow or another, he got the attention of my mother, Thessaly, a centuries-old which."

Wanda's Emerald eyes took on a faraway look as she spoke, "Together, they push the boundaries of magic further than any sorcerer before them. The power and skill they were gaining wasn't enough."

"They devised a plan to take the place of a being of chaos, but it required my mother to get pregnant."

"Why?" Nicholas asked as he sent another collection of books back to the shelf.

"They plan to use a ritual to murder the chaos being and take its power."

Nicholas's brow furrowed before his eyes widened, "They were going to…"

"Yes," Wanda's gaze drifted down, "my parents were going to have a being of chaos enter my body and then kill me to take its power." She looked at him, "As you can guess, it failed.

Kent Nelson, a hero known as Dr. Fate and a servant of the Lords of Order, saved me after my parent's ritual went awry. He and his wife Inza raised me as their daughter and trained me in the Mystic arts."

Wanda started as she felt a hand placed on hers. "I'm sorry you had to go through that." Wanda looked up to find Nicholas's yellow eyes shining with compassion. " It can't be easy to know that your parents only saw you as a tool."

Wanda sniffed, her eyes shining with unshed tears, "It's okay; I had a good childhood; I couldn't ask for better parents; I just wish…" She shook her head, "never mind. It's your turn, tell me about Brigadoon. When you talk to Trinity, you mentioned something about your people having a history with the Martians, Kryptonians, and Malthusians. All that sounds interesting, but I'm more interested in how your people affected the Earth."

"I can do that, but first, what is a Malthusian."

"A Malthusian is the race that makes up the guardians of the galaxy. They are demigod-like beings that can manipulate energy on a reality-altering scale. However, most people know them as the guardians of the galaxy, leaders of the Green Lantern Corps, and the founders of the other emotional spectrum organizations."

"I want to hear more about this emotional spectrum."

"Oh no, we had a deal. I will tell you about myself, and you will tell me how Brigadoon affected the Earth's history."

"Fine, fine."

–XX –

Nine months after Nicholas discovered that the exterminator's energy was destroying his powers, he lay on a bed in one of Trinity's many rooms.

The matron of the tower stood beside the bed, her hands outstretched over his body. Golden energy billowed from her hands, taking on complex shapes while forming a spell over him.

"You want to know where your meridians are?"

"Yes."

Trinity's lips pressed into a thin line as points on his body lit up.

Trinity removed her hands and slowly shook her head, the points on Nicholas's body still visible to the naked eye. "I see what you want to do, but it won't work."

"Why?"

"First, let me see if my assumption is right. You want to use these meridians as a blueprint to guide you in reforging your body."

"That's right."

"While it could work, there are a couple of problems with doing it that way."

"And those are?"

"Right now, those points in your body," she gestured to the glowing lights, "have nothing to do with your powers; if you reforge your body in such a way, your powers would be tied to those points so that anyone who knew about meridians could take you down."

"The second problem is that meridians are almost always open. If they become blocked, that could affect your powers, and with them open, we don't know how your reality-warping abilities could affect the world."

Nicholas lifted his feet off the bed and sat with his hands on his knees, facing her. "So, what do you suggest?"

"Use the meridians as a basis. Regardless of our mutant abilities, our bodies differ from humans, and certain portions resonate with our powers better than others. Those spots will resonate with you as you reforge your powers."

Nicholas nodded slowly as his eyes traveled up her body. "You've done something similar, haven't you?"

"Sort of. My siblings and I were different; my mother was an Atlantean goddess. Our mutant abilities became entangled with our inherited divinity."

"I know you wanted me to learn magic independently, but I'll need your help. If it works, this could be a way for our people to get stronger, and the stronger mutant/meta-humans are, the safer they are."

"I'll help you, but I don't know how I feel about passing this on to our species. While most want to live normal lives, some would abuse power for their own ends."

"I'm not saying we force it on people; we give them a choice and vet those who choose to do it carefully if they have hostile intentions…" Nicholas looked into her eyes. "Accidents happen."

Trinity shivered; despite being thousands of years old and no stranger to violence, the firmness in Nicholas's gaze made her stomach drop.

"I know what you're thinking." Nicholas tapped his temple. "Despite what's happening to me, the alterations I made to my body so long ago still work; it was the law of Brigadoon. While you could use your powers to make a living, and combat competitions were allowed, any empowered person using their powers to harm another was put down hard."

"I understand that, but the world has come a long way since those days."

"It has, but humanity, whether human, mutant, or meta-human, has not changed. We are still capable of committing the same atrocities today that we did millennia ago."

Trinity turned away, "Let's not talk about this anymore. I'm a scholar before anything else, and your idea intrigues me, so let's get to work; we don't have much time left."

'Nine months,' Nicholas thought as he followed Trinity out of the room, 'nine months to find a way to save my life.'