GARGOYLES: Re-Awakening

Betrayal: 3

Goliath was numb. He could not process what he had seen. Instead, he simply watched Demona as she climbed the castle steps up to the wall where her fellow Gargoyles had been perched. He saw her anguish each time she came to a pile of rubble that had once been her brother or sister. Goliath watched her as she descended higher, coming to the Gargoyles who had not been destroyed—those with whom he now knew he was destined to awaken, one thousand years from the terrible scene he had just watched unfold.

One thousand years of this, Goliath thought to himself. One thousand years of going over this scene in your mind. How terrible it must have been for Demona, he thought. His heart went out to her as he watched her. It was no longer any mystery to him why she was so different. To live with this for so long would change anyone.

"What you have shown me only doubles my resolve," Goliath said to the children. "This must not be allowed to come to pass."

His face hardened.

"We must return and prevent this!" He said.

"No Goliath," the blonde haired sister said. "You feel much for her, and much with her."

"Her anger," said the white.

"Her bitterness," continued the black.

"You wish to rescue her from this pain, and that is noble. But you ignore that which is most accordant," said the blonde.

Goliath turned and looked at them, a flare of anger in his eyes.

"Her guilt," the three said in unison.

Goliath felt his stomach drop. He was seeing something for the first time. The Demona he had seen in the future, the one that he felt so estranged from, was not new, not the product of one thousand years of pain and suffering. Goliath had watched that Demona here now, in this time. The Demona that he had loved then betrayed him. She had lied to him and acted behind his back in order to usurp his authority as the leader. She had conspired to bring about death and destruction within the very castle she was charged to protect. She had learned to consider other life expendable, to see it as nothing more than an obstacle in the way of her own desires.

Suddenly a strong wind began to circle Goliath. It intensified rapidly until it obscured his vision. The stone walls of the castle faded from view until a vast darkness flashed over him. He felt as if he was floating. In the next moment he heard voices. Then images began to flood his consciousness. They were flashes of people—a woman, then a man, children playing, a family sitting together. It all came in a rush. Goliath felt overwhelmed by the sensation that his mind was being crowded with the din of countless lives. He felt both that it was a mere jumble, like being trampled under the feet of a herd of wild horses, as well as a sense that he could pick out and know them all individually. As the seconds passed he started to feel the presence of this boundless living. As a few more seconds passed he began to feel that he somehow knew these people, like he had met them all face to face. A warmth spread within him, like being connected to the entire world.

"Yes, Goliath," the white haired sister said.

"All this life," said the black haired, "exists now."

"But if Demona is allowed to alter what has been," the blonde haired sister said. "All will be lost."

"Erased," they said in unison. "As if meaningless."

Goliath closed his eyes and shook his head. No was the only thought he could focus on. He did not, however, have clarity. Was this no for the people he had just heard, or for the Demona he wished to save? Or was it for himself? Was it his mind crying out, telling him not to think, not to move, not to do anything?

"He is ready," the white haired sister said.

"The choice is now yours, Goliath," the black haired sister said.

"We can influence what is and what will be," continued the blonde haired sister, "but we can not directly act upon the mortal plain. In the end, only a creature within can determine what in the mortal realm shall be."

"Choose well, Goliath," they said in unison.

And with that, the three sisters faded into the blackness that surrounded Goliath. For a few more seconds he was alone, and then, as if awakening from a dream, he suddenly found himself looking at Elisa. Elisa had fear in her eyes, because she was looking down the barrel of a steel Gargoyle's weapon.

Demona gave a smile, then brought her bottom lip to her teeth to say the word 'fire.'