I crumpled with a thump! onto a cold stone floor. Sparing no time to orient myself, I scuffled to my feet, as Nakia stood up as well.
"What happened?" she said, panting.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"Yeah I'm fine. You?" she said.
"I'm fine."
We stood in the huge stone cavern with the enormous blood pool in the center. Nakia looked around.
"Where are we?" she said.
"This is where BloodLust took me yesterday. Where he told me about the Blood Orb."
"How nice of you both to join us." a cold voice murmured from the end of the cavern.
BloodLust walked towards us in the light, the torches casting strange shadows on his metallic armor.
"I told you to come alone." he said, looking at Nakia. "Although," he smiled. "You posses True Vision too. Why don't you take a seat, my guest..." he flicked a finger, and Nakia was tossed onto the wall, and appearing from within the walls, a thick red, fleshy rope coiled around her arms and ankles, binding her to the wall.
"Let her go!" I yelled.
"I will... soon enough." he replied, marching to the arching entrance. "First, I have some unfinished business to attend to."
The door to the entrance opened, and Lila Crosby walked through.
She smiled at the sight of Nakia tied up to the wall.
"Alicia, thank you for joining us." BloodLust said.
"Alicia?" Nakia and I exclaimed in unison.
BloodLust turned to us and grinned.
"Yes," he said, "Alicia Hickman was one of the people with me in the cave. The night I became BloodLust. She's the only person whom I shared the secret of the Blood Orb with. The secret to immortality."
"Why am I not surprised?" asked Nakia.
Lila, or rather, Alicia, threw a dirty look at her. Alicia then turned to BloodLust.
"I did what you asked. I got Gabriel here, just like we planned," Alicia Hickman said, looking at the floor. "I did everything you told me to do, so now you will give me powers too, just like we agreed?" she asked.
"You did not complete the task I had set for you. You failed to burn down the school and its inhabitants. You'll have to be punished for this failure," BloodLust said, tilting his head to the side. "Certainly you can understand that you cannot be allowed to get away with insubordination. It would set a bad precedent."
I certainly felt no kindness or empathy for Alicia, but I hated seeing anyone being toyed with this way. I knew BloodLust had no intention of keeping his end of the bargain, why couldn't she see that?
"Unfortunately, your deeds are far too great to allow his life to be spared," BloodLust said easily, as if growing bored with the conversation.
It took a moment for his words to register with Alicia. When they finally did, her eyes widened and her jaw dropped.
"What? B-but...that's not what we agreed," she wailed.
"I'm afraid I've had a change of heart on the matter," BloodLust said in a falsely propitiatory tone. He walked towards Alicia, reached for her head and started twisting her neck.
As she screamed, the skin started to tear. There was a CLUNK!, as the Blood Orb fell onto the hard stone floor. I couldn't watch. I turned away and looked at Nakia. She had also closed her eyes. The sound of flesh ripping was heard, and the screaming ceased.
BloodLust now turned to me.
"Back to your ordeal," he stated.
"You promised to tell me the Calamitous Phrase." I said.
"Yes, If you join me."
"And how do I do that?" I asked.
BloodLust smiled. "It's quite simple really." He pulled out a shining sword from his armor and handed it to me. He pointed at Nakia.
"Kill her."
I looked with alarm at BloodLust and then at Nakia, whose face was filled with dread. I walked closer to her, and her eyes grew pleadingly wider.
"I'm really sorry," I said, and brought the blade closer to her. Her eyes brimmed with tears.
"Don't move." I whispered.
I dramatically held the sword over my head.
"Hurry up! Get on with it!" BloodLust roared impatiently.
I turned around swiftly and snatched the Blood Orb from the floor. I focused and tried to imagine the vision in my brain. Immediately the Orb started glowing and the entire cavern was filled with a blindingly white light, and we were gone.
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BloodLust, Nakia and I were standing on the summit of a high hill. The gigantic, weary red sun was setting, casting red shadows on that dreary, gray world.
Behind the hill on which we stood, there was a sprawling, empty city which cast sinister shadows in the light of that dismal sun.
BloodLust looked around in alarm. "No..." he panted. "It cannot be."
"It is." I replied gravely. "This is the vision that you showed me."
"There isn't anyone here..." said Nakia.
"Because he destroyed everything..." I pointed at BloodLust.
He looked at me with an indignant expression.
"I most certainly did not," he said, in a vexed tone. "Not yet, anyway."
"This isn't...real, is it?" Nakia asked.
"That's what I don't know," I replied. "Either this is the future, or an incarnation of the vision that BloodLust showed me."
"Why on earth did you bring us here?" BloodLust asked.
I pointed across the horizon. "To show you that."
Far in the distance, in the area of Los Angeles where BloodLust's cavern was located in the past, built into the side of the hill, stood a huge citadel.
Everything was dark around it, the ground and the sky, but it was illuminated by light. Lighter indeed than the dim sunset it was, cold and blowing like an expiration of wither, a dead light, a light that lit nothing. Contrasting the giant quartz walls, the tower windows looked like countless black holes staring into emptiness. It was an unsettling sight.
"What is that?" asked BloodLust.
"Your citadel." I replied. "In the future."
BloodLust straightened up promptly. "Aha. Let us go at once."
"What.. you don't mean to go there?" Nakia asked, nervously.
"What else?" He grabbed both of our arms and flicked his finger. Nothing happened. With frustration, he flicked again.
"I don't think your powers work here."
He looked at me with a contemptuous look.
"Fine. We shall walk if we have to."
We started walking towards the citadel. Everything was going to plan. For now.
Soon enough, we found ourselves standing in front of the looming citadel. The entrance was marked with a giant wooden door.
"Quite medieval for the future, I must say," BloodLust said, his eyes running along the entire building.
"Well," I said. "I guess we should... knock?"
A cold breeze blew around us, and the doors swung open.
"I think that means we should go," Nakia said.
We walked up the steps of the citadel, between gleaming white quartz pillars, through a stone doorway, and into a opulent hallway.
The entire chamber had a polished quartz floor, which seemed to shimmer in the reflected torchlight. There was no ceiling save for the cavern roof, far above.
In the far end of the room, seated on his throne, was the future BloodLust. But he looked different.
He looked younger, even though this was the future, his face looked as if it had regained the youth of many years.
He was adorned in a sleek, black metal suit, with deep red streaks, and lodged inside his chest was the Blood Orb. His face was littered with scars, he had medium-length, wavy brown hair, and dark-brown eyes.
BloodLust lounged on his throne of fused human bones, looking graceful and dangerous.
His armored hands clasped a long silver sword, which had words engraved on the blade.
"Memento Mori." I said, realizing. "Remember you must die. That's The Calamitous Phrase, isn't it?" I asked, turning to Pietro. He nodded.
(To make things easier, I will refer to the future BloodLust as BloodLust, and the present version as Pietro).
BloodLust stood up hastily. He pointed his sword at me.
"Where did you come from?" he barked. "I don't recall time travel being invented."
"We used the Blood Orb." I replied.
His eyebrows raised.
"I wasn't aware of this function," BloodLust said. "Intriguing. Tell me more."
I told him all about the True Vision, the dreams, and the vision that Pietro had shown me.
"Ah," BloodLust said, smiling and raising a finger. "In this great future, it has come to pass."
"Yes," remarked Nakia. "That's why there isn't anyone else here."
BloodLust nodded. He stood up from his throne and dislodged the Blood Orb from his chest.
"Let me show you."
"What?"
"Let me show you the day I spoke the Calamitous Phrase."
He lay his hands on the Orb and so did the rest of us. I visualized the vision in my head. There was a flash of blazing white light and the scene was swept away from our eyes.
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The four of us, the two BloodLust's, Nakia and I, were standing on the top of a hill, the same hill where we had arrived to the future. But it was much different.
Sprawled all across the city of Los Angeles, were tanks and blimps of different sizes. The sky was murky, blanketed with clouds of smog and emission from industrial factories. Hither and thither people darted, civilians and soldiers were being shot, and fighter-planes fell, crashing to the destroyed city in a gust of smoke
"See how war had spread its hideous face across the globe," future BloodLust stated, looking down at the scene.
"I realized that since masses of people were dying, it was a waste for me, and therefore, I would die." he said, and pointed at a dark shadow standing on a lone street near the base of the hill, staring at the war.
"That is me," he said. "This is the moment when I spoke the Calamitous Phrase."
The dark shadow which was BloodLust, held up the Blood Orb above his head, and shouted, in his raspy voice. "MEMENTO MORI!"
The Blood Orb radiated with its scarlet energy.
The world trembled beneath us.
It was as if some primordial force had been reawakened.
All of us were knocked to the ground, and held onto each other for life.
When the rumbling ceased, except for us there was no one alive on the earth. Scattered all across the horizon, were dead bodies, bloody and mutilated, as if with the Calamitous Phrase, they had exploded.
"L...let's go back..." I stuttered.
BloodLust placed his hands on the Blood Orb, and following a flash of light, we were back inside the citadel.