A Hero's Song (Darkest Secrets Volume 1)

Chapter 11 - Old Family and New

That was the night the dreams started.

This one started innocently enough. Gabriel frolicked through the clouds, twisting and looping in the sky like an eagle when the sun went dark behind him. He spun, perplexed by what was happening. Since he'd had lucid dreams in the past, he knew he was sleeping.

The sun going out like that wasn't normal. When the world went black, he began to feel an unnatural force pulling on his psyche. It was weak at first, insistent. Then it tugged harder. Then harder. Gabriel lost control of his metaphysical state. With a snap, he surged forward through the blackness, unsure of what was about to happen. The pull stopped suddenly, and he felt himself slow. Alone in a world of darkness, unable to move. He stayed that way for what felt like hours.

Gabriel began to panic.

The hours turned to days, then months. He was losing his mind, beginning to doubt whether everything he had ever experienced was the dream. Maybe this inky void was his actual reality. The people he'd met and interacted with started to fade from his memory, and his panic turned to terror.

It could have been years later.

Gabriel could feel the thoughts and feelings that defined him lose strength, all coherence of the material world lost. Yet still, he battled - he knew there was right and there was wrong; love and compassion; nurture and safety. Comprehension and understanding came slowly, as he coexisted with everything around him.

It was a hard struggle - there was nothing in this plane of reality to understand - and as time crawled by, the pieces of his consciousness fell deeper and deeper into nothingness.

All at once, everything he was rushed back into his being. His soul burned in agony forced back into alignment. The darkness remained, but he no longer felt alone. A presence surrounded him, the most tangible thing Gabriel had felt since falling into the abyss. It felt familiar.

Emotions and feelings began to rush into him. He was sure they weren't his own, although they carried the same sense of closeness as the energy surrounding him. He felt rage and pain. Fear and resentment filled him, along with a sense of hopelessness. Then came a deep yearning, a longing for something lost. No, not something. Someone.

With that knowledge, Gabriel understood who it was communicating with him. To test his hypothesis, he radiated a feeling of safety. He focussed on how he had felt as a newborn - cuddled next to his only surviving relative. The energy around him recoiled immediately, then flooded even more information into him.

It was Lucian, though how he was contacting Gabriel was a mystery. The messages he received made him feel that Lucian was sorry for what he had done. More than that, Lucian was calling Gabriel for help. He kept sending a sense of impending doom and urgency. Gabriel couldn't understand what his twin wanted to tell him. He emitted a feeling of curiosity, but his brother seemed unable to elaborate past emotions.

All at once, a second force invaded their space, enveloping Lucian's presence and ripping the siblings apart. Gabriel felt panic from his brother but couldn't do anything to help as the aggressive force flung him back.

He felt the two energies getting farther and farther away as he tumbled through space when a tendril of power reached out across the void and tore into him. His Being exploded with pain, and he lost all logical thought.

Gabriel's alarm saved him more pain and fire. He rose from his bed, shaken by his experience. Slowly, he walked to the bathroom for a cold shower, pausing at the mirror for a moment to gaze at his appearance, trying to take his mind off the dreams.

He looked the same, unaged. I felt like I was there forever. Well, at least I'm not an old man, he thought. His ribs and back were nicely healed, showing a slight bruising remained as evidence of his battles. His black hair was getting a bit too long for his taste, he noticed. It was close to reaching the top of his finely curved nose above his eyes.