Parallel II: A New Ordinance

11-TRUTHFUL DESPAIR

As my eyelids slid open slowly, I saw a burst of colour. A familiar one. As my eyes adjusted to the flash of light, I gradually realised that I was once more on the Parallel plane. I had fallen unconscious in the real world, or so it seemed. I planted my hands on the ground and hoisted myself up so that I was standing, then cautiously moved along the endless field of reality that surrounded me. As I looked around myself, I saw more floating shards of glass than I ever had upon previous visits to the Parallel, which caused quite the concern within my mind.

"What are you doing here, my child?" Suddenly, I heard a voice. I turned to see that it was the Keeper, who was covered in a long, flowing robe that seemed to draw in the nearby floating glass shards. "Um... I don't know... I closed my eyes and tried to bring myself to safety, but when I opened them..." I responded, before trailing off. "You found yourself here?" He asked. I nodded my head and he chuckled. "Tell me about it, my son... How has your battle for the Parallel progressed?" He asked. I didn't even know where to begin, but I started by walking toward him. "Well," I said, walking past him and beckoning him to follow behind me, "I've discovered some of what you were talking about... That evil in the outside world." I looked back and saw him smiling. "So you've encountered the Order, have you?" I was shocked. "Yes... How do you know that?" He laughed once more and prepared for a careful response. "I haven't quite been blind to the world down there, I hope you know. I knew that you'd be heading to Colorado after finding out about who exactly had saved you... I know more than you think about everything and everyone down there." He looked up toward nothing and back down, I could tell he was thinking about how to continue. "The folks you're around right now, Hælend, I know about them, and I knew quite well where they'd likely be bringing you. It just so happens, the Order is right there. It may seem like a gruesome surprise, but just think of it as the next step in your important journey." He gripped my shoulder and met me with a wide smile. "So... You knew that they'd be bringing me here... and you knew that the Order was here... and yet you did nothing?!" He grimaced lightly. "Yes. It wasn't something I necessarily wanted to do, but I needed you to face them. If I had told you ahead of time... Then perhaps that Troy fellow could've found out and wouldn't have let you get near that kind of danger. I needed the element of surprise to get you into the next step in our fight for justice, son!" He responded, trying to underplay the egregious quality of what he had done.

I swiftly brushed his hand off of my shoulder in anger. "I can't believe you'd just send me into danger like that... These fiends are even more ferocious than the ones I have previously been around, they're truly powerful. And now that you've sent me into harm's way, in our attempt to escape it, we've found ourselves cornered by a group of men with guns who want to slaughter all of us!" He shook his head and solemnly placed it down. "Well? What do you have to even say?! I could have gotten killed! Hell, I still probably might!" At this point, I was furious. I had suspected some negligence over my safety coming from him since our last conversation, but this solidified the idea in my mind. He didn't seem to care at all about my safety, just about the safety of the Parallel. "Listen, I didn't know about any of that... I really don't wish any harm upon you, I hope that's clear but-" I couldn't stand such a lie. "NO! You just said..." I chuckled in anger "You just said that you know far more about what goes on in the regular world than I thought. How would you figure out the identity of the man who saved my life, the man who stopped the Ordinance, and yet not know that I've been cornered by barbarians who threaten my very life?!"

"Him?! He is hardly the man who stopped the Ordinance. YOU stopped the Ordinance with my help!" He shouted out, finally growing some strength through retaliatory anger. "Nonsense. He risked his life, everything he had, all of the men who worked with him just to help me out. And that's because he understands what it's like to be me. He knows what it's like to lose those closest to oneself. You have no concept... You have no idea what the things I've been through are like! You just push me and push me and push me to keep going at any cost! You didn't stop them. It was he who risked everything and fought with his own body and weapons to end that cult, and it was me who did all of the work of escaping!" I was hyperventilating very hard after letting out that amount of rage. I had a typically passive perspective with regard to the Keeper, but his comments just now felt like true insults to my efforts and Troy's alike.

"Don't forget who made you, Hælend. Don't forget who even got you the knowledge that helped you to go on this quest, the knowledge that saved you from being just another pawn in their machine!" He spat back with vitriol. I stepped back and could feel my face start to well up. I had trusted this man with so much, he had been my mentor for so long... But the very moment I began to grow weary and weak from his demands, he treated me like a disobedient animal. "Oh yeah? Then why didn't you give all of the people in that cult visions?! Why didn't you liberate them all with that power of knowledge, huh? Think of how many lives that would've saved! I have seen so much blood spilled, so many souls sacrificed in the name of the Parallel, but if you wield the weapon of truth, why not use it?!" He closed his previously opened mouth which had flared in anger. Now it was shut securely with the truth of his actions hidden inside it. Slowly, he opened it and began to serve what I needed to know. "That's just not how it works, my child... I can't go around trying to tell them all the truth, it would cause pure chaos!" He responded. He had not unlocked the door to the truth, he had barricaded it with lies.

"And the compound burning with the corpses of officers and cultists alike strewn about is not chaos?! I have seen the pinnacle of violence and chaos within the past few weeks and months, and I think that's exactly what you wanted. You want to use someone like me, someone whose life has been utterly horrific, to achieve your goals for you. Is that it? Are you just too lazy to spread the truth any further than one carefully selected soldier?" He grew upset and began to release tears, but I didn't care. "Huh?! Is that what you like? You like to play out your little underdog stories down there, seeing violence play out just for you?! Is this what I am to you? The performer in your entertainment?!" He wasn't responding to any words of mine at this point, hiding away in a shell of emotions. I began to walk away. I didn't know where to, but I just wanted to get far away from him. Unlike the many other times I had been there throughout my life, the Parallel plane was no longer such a warm, perfect beacon of hope. If anything, I wanted to go back to the real world, as crazy as it sounds.

I looked back to see that he was no longer standing there, but as I turned back around in confusion, there he was. "Here, step into this to get back to the regular world." He pointed down to the ground in front of me. I glanced at him with searing fury before turning my focus to the ground. I stepped right over to it and looked down to see a cracked shard of glass. "Just... don't forget what it is you're fighting for, Hælend." He said. I looked back at him to find a threatening face that revolted me. But through the split and mangled bits of that glass hole in the ground, I could just barely make out the sight of Troy and John up against a wall. They looked defeated and badly beaten. I continued to look at it as I began to step down into it. Without looking at him again, I fell right into the hole and responded swiftly and definitively to what he had said. "Yeah. For them."