Introduction
by Jernard
“Do you know the difference between a hero and a
villain, Jernard?” Paronis asked as he took his boot and scraped a line in the
wet sand between us.
Everything seemed real as I glanced
around—the scent of saltwater, the waves breaking on the shore before ebbing
near my left foot. I even felt the sand squish between my toes as I took a step
forward. Looking down, I realized I was barefoot—and that my feet were those of
a child.
At that moment, I knew that I was
dreaming. Paronis had died almost a thousand years before Rhaynan and I left
for Earth. Yet here I was looking at him in his black Hannarian Guard uniform,
and my mind refused to let me wake up. Having no other choice, I decided to
play things out.
“A hero has a solid moral line that
guides him,” I replied, hesitating a moment because my voice sounded childlike
as well. “He can push himself and get right to the edge of it—but if he crosses
it, it’ll wreck the very core of his identity.”
Paronis forced a smile and nodded as
if my answer was acceptable but not what he’d wanted to hear. Then he took the
flat part of his boot and blended the line into the rest of the sand.
“A villain doesn’t worry about crossing a line he doesn’t have,” he replied. “Not unless he creates one by choice…”
He took several steps closer to the ocean and made another line in the sand. The waves overtook it within seconds, and he made another one like it. After he did this several times, I sighed and walked up next to him.
“So what happened to you?” I asked,
the resurfacing feelings of guilt and anguish making me forget none of this was
even real. “Was the wave that hit you too big, or did you just get tired of
drawing that line over and over again?”
“It was both, kid,” he replied, and
he turned away from me and looked out at the horizon. “I took for granted that because I was doing a lot of good that I didn’t
have to maintain a line anymore. The earthquake was bad timing, but my choices
were still—”
At
that moment, he groaned in pain and clutched his chest, collapsing face-first
into the ocean. I rushed over to help him out of the water but stepped back as his
body started to convulse and mutate.
“This
isn’t real,” I told myself. My defense
system wasn’t convinced as I felt a surge of energy hit my body. “Paronis is
dead, and I’m on Earth. I have to wake up.”
“You
stopped me,” Paronis growled as he rose out of the water, now towering over me
at almost nine feet tall. “The question now is can you stop yourself?”
The
monster leaned over until we were face-to-face, water dripping off its gold
reptilian skin. Its exhale blew my hair backwards, and my heart pounded as I
saw my adult reflection in its shiny black eyes. Its eyelids narrowed into a
glare, and my own eyes glowed blue in terror. My friend was gone—replaced by
this evil creature that had killed over a thousand of our people before we
stopped it.
“I’m
not you!” I shouted at the monster’s face, furious at my own subconscious. “You
hear me? I’ll never be like you!”
The
monster looked down at me without making a sound. Then it smirked, and I
realized it wasn’t Paronis inside it anymore.
The
monster was me.
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