Betrayal of the Light

This must be it. I got back to… where am I, exactly? Everything around me seems anything but familiar. How did I end up here? The coordinates, I could have sworn they were calibrated to the church, before it burned down; before… it all burned. The grass under my fingers is frozen to a crisp, but not scorched. I run my fingers along it in disbelief. Am I dreaming? The ground chills the touch I lay on it. No, this is very much real. But… This means I have returned, and I still stand a chance of changing the final moments of humanity. I retrieve my hand to a horizontal stance in front of my face. Extending it pulls away the cuff to reveal the watch, still ticking my current position in the continuous timeline. Unbroken in my travel, it proves useless, nonetheless. It seems the alteration has left it stuck, although the mechanism promised to function perpetually, at my point of departure. No matter, I ended up sometime before the apocalypse. That should be enough. The remnants of a barely visible sunset captivate my gaze. Slowly fading into a dark background with bright stars that shelter the imposing full moon rising. Watching those two battling over the same sky, it appears to be a ghastly, immortal war. “We did it, my friend,” I shout into the emptiness of space enfolding above my head. “Did you hear that, you old bastard? We did it!” Sadly, there is nothing but deathly silence to answer me; I wish he could see I made it back alive. No one ever dared cross the threshold before us… before, me, that is. Yeah, I guess I am on my own from this moment on. Argh, my body does not seem to agree on how successful I thought this trip. Resting painfully on the hard ground, a bitter headache pierces through the back of my skull, impairing movement for a moment. I clench my jaw until it passes. Our experiment was not without consequence, it seems. I push my body back until I feel a hard wall resisting against it. Sigh, maybe I should rest for a moment, but a creeping stench of decay awakens my senses. Looking around, I see no source of it. There is but the peaceful flow of a clean river under the ruined bridge offering me alone some sort of shelter. To me, alone, among a deserted land that the night is slowly claiming through its shadow spreading. Arms pressed as they are against the rough stones, I feel sharp edges cutting into my flesh. I turn the right cuff inside-out. Hidden daggers. Poisonsteel, I presume, forged into blades no longer than a finger, with tips as sharp as the fangs of a snake. These should come in handy soon. Looking for more weapons, I find another dagger tucked inside of my left boot. This one is the length of my forearm, but… strange, how my right boot also has an identical strap, but empty. Hold on… I almost forgot about the prophecy. That was fully tattooed on my arm before the departure; just in case my memory would suffer any damage. I take off my coat and throw it on the ground without a second thought. Then, I roll up my left sleeve as far up as I can. Yeah, the ink is still very dark under my skin, but… the hieroglyphic runes are utterly intelligible to me. What on earth has happened in my mind that I cannot understand them? I remember sitting down with Kain and drawing up both maps of this place and characteristics of the four horsemen I am after. They were somehow altered in my travel. Or, has my mind altered to such extent, that I do not recognize them anymore? Darker than the sky is only my mind. I shiver disappointed with a fixed glare in the vague distance under the weight of a thousand unanswered questions. The cold seizes me, as it had seized the lifeless grass with its icy grip. I wrap the heavy coat back around my body, hands clenched around my shoulders in the desperate attempt of warming my body back up. Tick…Tick… Hearing the mechanical grind of gears close to my ear, I reveal the gleaming surface of crystal covering the dial under the pale moonlight. The scratches over its rim make it look as though it had been through hell and back to me. It calibrated itself to this period. Some lucky bastard I must be, I thought in a rush, before realizing where the dial pins me on the timeline. No... no, no. This must be wrong, but this cannot be wrong. The stellar data gathered is never wrong. Tick. I am one year early of preventing the apocalypse. Tick. Two years too late for preventing the ascension of the first three horsemen. This leaves me one shot at saving this world. Great, we still managed to screw this up somehow. The seconds pass right through me; I can sense them rushing, though the continuous ticking had been muffled by the cuff pulled back over the watch. Could not say I mind the silence though; it helps ease the lingering headache and spinning of my thoughts, but I cannot stay here forever. Or, can I? If I would sit back to relish it, I would be frozen by dawn from the night that bites on my flesh, more ferocious now, as the light has faded. With my frozen fingers wrapped around my constantly numbing body, I still shudder. It is all in vain, for my body cannot withstand this consuming cold. I would sell my soul for a small fire to scare away this night. “What to do?” I whisper to myself. “What to… Oh,” Wait. There must be… I pat my coat, feeling something that was tucked away in one of the inner pockets. I reach inside, eager, where I find a container of glass encased in steel. The frame has been just as tarnished, for some odd reason, but its contents seem intact. I twist the top off and take a sip, unleashing a burning, tingling sensation that fills my mouth, before it runs down my throat. The liquor does not settle thirst, noted, but it does warm me up better than everything else I tried so far. In consequence, I take another mouthful, then place it back. In the other pocket, sewn symmetrical on the piece of leather covering my chest, my findings are insignificant; amounting to a single cigar, a matchbox and… an exploded shell from a bullet? Curious thing, as this was not in my pocket before I left. Then again, neither was the cigar, which I presume Kain slipped in as a reminder of him; as I always taunted him for smoking. I stroke one of the matches over the grit of their envelope. The flame sparks up, dancing to the same breeze that beats against my face. Caught between my lips, the cigar glows, alive as cinders of the fire I was longing for. The smoke I blow out melts the snowflakes in front of me; hoping desperately to reach the ground, frozen to the core. It eases my mind and covers the stench that is lingering. Still.  So, having convinced myself that the shadows are truly empty and offer neither salvation, nor threat, I brave the challenge of standing up on my own feet. But, when I do, the daze hits me so hard that I am brought helplessly down on my knees, then pushed flat on my chest. Half of my face is drenched in mud and I am too weak to stand up again. Something rigid and cold presses against my skin. I roll on my back and reach in through my shirt. Swiftly, before my cold hand would chill my core, I pull the object out. With my bruised fingers, I hold it up against the dying light, where it reflects a shard of brightness. A key! I found a… key? What would it unlock? Strange, how I do not remember having it before arriving here. Memory loss, another side effect; noted. God, I hope it opens the door to a place where I can rest my mind and body. But, where could that place be…? I cautiously get up; leaning against what is left of the bridge until I regain my strength. I wipe the mud off my face with my sleeve, careful not to cut my wrist in the knives. Thoughts whirl through my head as the stray snowflakes blending in with the stars. They melt down my cheeks, chilling them. The church; I must get out of here and find it or else… Why do I not remember the reason, though it weighs heavy on my mind? Damn, more side effects, I suppose. Maybe there is no way; out of the thoughts in my head or out of these realms. Captivating realms, those unseen save through the lens of the mind. Though, they offer no shelter to my weary body. I must leave; go anywhere but here. Upstream, there shivers a dense forest, its burgundy, purplish-black leaves faltering to the wind unwelcoming. It must be spreading out far beyond my sight until God knows where. Without a map, getting lost is a sure thing out there. So, downstream, towards wherever the sun had set, I will follow. One foot in front of the other, steady as can be, I manage to hold my balance. Barely. The stains on the wrappings around my legs tucked into leather boots have frozen into rigid, sparkling patches. The wind howls, loosening leaves from the trees along the river to throw them in my face, as if to forbid my journey. I oblige and stop to look back at how far I have come. Though the distance not great, it seemed endless.