The Chosen: the Age of Corbin Tyler the Undying

Chapter 10

After that night, Tritan let me into the tower, which turned out to be a library. I spent a lot of time in there, reading and learning. I suppose it was because of what had happened, but I was able to retain information leagues better than I used to. I had read everything from Shlavada's Guide to Curses, Deadly Poisons, & Incurable Deadly Diseases: Volume 462, to The King's of Hell and How they Got There: a History in Manga Format by Ignis Gaolbringer, and I remembered everything about them. Shlavada must've been particularly evil to come up with the Eternal Minor Inconvenience curse.*

I had my daily training sessions with Katrina, Alexa, and Rebecca, but quite frankly, they were unable to challenge me anymore, so instead, they helped me learn how to more completely and accurately control my power.

"I don't have the same destructive power that you or Tritan have," Alexa told me. "But I do have a much finer control over my power. And with that, I was labeled the strongest in my school in Sere-" She stopped herself. "Back home."

We were sitting in a couple of adirondack chairs on the back porch of the manor.

"What were you about to say?" I asked.

"Something that I don't feel like explaining to you, so you will have to wait for Tritan to do that."

"Ok," I answered. I had learned early on that it was a waste of time to try and get Alexa to say something she was not going to say. "So teach me how to control my power."

She stretched a single strand of hair out in between us. "You mostly fire a blast of - you mostly use flames right? - out in front of you, and you don't control it after it leaves the palm of your hand," she explained. "And sure, that works on my cousin, aunt, and I, but your sheer destructive power may not work on every enemy you face." She touched the tip of the hair with her finger and a spark of electricity shot into it. "You have to be clever. People who can accurately and completely control their power are able to control where it flows, how it moves, where it stays, and how long it dwells."

She moved the spark back and forth through the strand of hair.

"You can also disperse it rapidly. Creating an effect similar to an explosion."

She made the spark expand. It didn't gain more power, it dispersed its energy and dissipated, but it did break the hair.

I held out my hand and summoned a flame. I held it there and then without moving my hand, sent it flying across the courtyard. Before it hit the wall, I stopped it and brought it back to my hand, dispersing its energy in such a way that it left a trail of flames in the air behind it.

She smiled a little. "You learn a lot faster than you used to."

"Who knew so much could change over the course of just a few days, huh?" I commented with a smile of my own.

She really was beautiful.

-

After that, Tritan let me go home for a little while to have a break.

My grandparents, siblings, parents, Diana, and I were all seated around a table in a favorite restaurant of ours back home.

"So, how close are you to being done?" Diana asked.

"I don't really think there is such a thing as done with this," I answered. "If there is, I'm not close to it."

"Well, ok," was all Diana said in response to that. "But I was talking about your math homework."

"Oh, that," I recalled. "I'll get back to you on that."

My grandfather laughed.

After we finished dinner and stepped out into the parking lot, we ended up talking for a while.

While we were talking, something appeared in the sky, something none of us noticed until people were screaming and running around us.

I looked around confused, and then turned to see what was going on. What I saw was something I lack the words to describe. What appeared to be a galaxy to our eyes, but I knew it was no galaxy. The way it looked was strange, like it was both right in front of us, and very far away. Like I could fly to the very edge of space and never reach it, but all it looked like was I needed to but reach out and take it in my hands.

I looked to see everyone else's reactions.

My family was a mixture of awe and horror, but Diana's was different. She looked at it with a mixture of sadness and disappointment.

I turned back to the thing in the sky. I watched it, and as I was watching it, a voice I had heard before echoed through my skull and through the air.

"Hear me, denizens of this miserable world," it said. "Thou hast lived in peace for a time, and the defender of your peace is an individual I call out too now. I speak to you, O Chosen." The voice held a mocking tone. "What you see before you in the skies of your precious world is a dimension, singular, and peaceful. Innocent. But due to your folly and stalling, I have elected to make an example of it."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Bear witness to the destruction and the blood that is about to be shed due to your inadequacy."

"Wait!"

The dimension began to spin, and it only got faster. It continued speeding up until it glowed brighter than the sun. Everything around me was lit up brighter than I had ever seen it.

Then there was a sound. A horrifying, terrible sound. The sound of trillions of people crying out to be saved, for there to be mercy. But there was none.

The screams went silent. No. They were drowned out by a screech I can only describe as the sound of each and every atom in a universe colliding and grinding against each other and getting hotter and hotter until it imploded. The proceeding rush of wind was enough to lift cars off of the road and throw them towards the restaurant.

I reached out in front of me and settled the winds.

We were silent for a while. Watching the sky to see if anything else happened.

"What just happened?" My grandmother asked, putting words to what was on everyone else's minds.

"We all just watched a universe die," I said.

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*Eternal Minor Inconvenience Curse: A curse that does exactly what it sounds like. Little inconveniences that aren't life threatening or anything like that. No. Stuff like running out of toilet paper while you're wiping, or even the TP ripping mid-wipe. Stepping on a plastic toy, or - if you see the toy beforehand and step over it - on a power cable. Stubbing your pinky toe on the corner of your bed at night. Little evil things like that. And the curse is incurable.