“Serve me well and I’ll never dispose you”.
That’s what Nicolas heard before everything turned dark and blank. He stood in panic and began walking backwards trying to grab on to something, then, a few more steps later, he bumped into something. His vision came back to normal when he turned around and checked what it was.
“Marcus?”, “Nicolas?”, they both said in confusion as they come face to face.
“What are you doing here!”, Nicolas angrily exclaimed but Marcus was more concerned about their surroundings than the ongoing conversation.
“Yeah, I would like to ask that too. Why are we here?”, he said in panic as he looked down the small street down below as both of them stood atop of a building.
Before they can even process what’s going on, something went passed their shoulder. It was fast but the size suggested it was neither a fly nor any insect.
“Don’t let them get away!”, a dozen men yelled as they come in pursuit.
Another high speed pebble presented itself just inches away from their feet and it finally registered to them what it as.
“Guns and bullets?”, they both looked at each other in panic as they immediately took cover behind what looks like a ventilation unit.
“What should we do?”, Marcus asked as sweat started to cover his forehead.
“Jump across”, Nicolas said intently looking at the other building.
“Are you nuts? That’s too far! If we mess that up that’s a hundred meter drop towards death!”, Marcus argued.
“Well if you want to stay, then stay here and wait for them to put holes all over you”, Nicolas replied giving not a single care to what Marcus thinks.
“But!”, Marcus argued but a bullet chipped a small piece of the ventilation he was hiding in.
“Your such a worry wart!, we can do it, like we once did!”, Nicolas blurted out without thinking.
“Once did?”, they both said in chorus.
“What do you mean once did, we don’t even know each other in the first place!”, Marcus yelled.
“Forget it!, either we die here, or we die trying!”, Nicolas yelled trying to convince Marcus but he’s convincing himself more.
Marcus too heard it and also impacted him. “But the ledge is still too far, we die either way!”, he replied.
Nicolas paused for a minute looking at the ledge. “Use your soul”, he suggested.
“Soul?, Why?”
“Use your soul and turn it into a shield!”
“My soul is a sword! How in the world will I supposed to do that!”, Marcus replied to what he thought was Nicolas’s ridiculous idea.
“I don’t know about you but I can!”, Nicolas replied. “Just do what you can do and run. Good luck!”
“What?”
“Now!”, Nicolas ran as he immediately called his soul and turned it into a shield preventing the bullets and changing his hiding place little by little to the ledge.
“What the hell?”, Marcus thought. “He really could?”.
A loud sound shook Marcus from where he hides. He never dared to take a peek but he knew what causes that kind of explosion. “Grenade!”.
He immediately stood in panic and ran, calling his sword, though a bullet was already heading for his head. “The end”, he thought as he shielded himself with his sword as a last resort for blocking the bullet. To his surprise he too had produced a shield.
“What the…”, he thought before continuing to run just enough to catch up to Nicolas who’s now ready to jump.
“What the fuck!”, Nicolas said in horror.
“I told you it was too far!”, Marcus came yelling at him as both of them plummeted down the street.
When they hit the ground, they were somehow on a different place.
Nicolas tried to sit but he could not. He tried grabbing the wooden railing on his side but his hands does not seem to have the power to do so.
As he raised his hand he discovered something. “Why are my hands small?”, he uttered but only a cry came out of his mouth.
He tilted his head to his side and saw a baby looking at him and is also crying. The sharp look in its eyes made him realize it maybe was Marcus. They both cried while failing to hold a conversation.
They are inside a room, with patterned wallpapers of animals. The wooden railing surrounding them is a crib making sure that they will not fall off. Over their heads and is a bit far from their reach are crib mobiles of bears as they are illuminated by the orange light coming outside the window.
It looked like a tranquil and normal night except for the voices making a ruckus outside, “We can’t let them live!”.
A lady can also be heard outside the door arguing with a man.
“No!, they are your sons!, your flesh and blood!”, she cried as she tried to pull the man as he barged in.
“This can’t be helped!”, the man tearfully cried as he pushed the lady against the wall, leaving her weak as she cried hopelessly.
The man looked at both of them and said, “Sorry Nicolas and Marcus”.
Nicolas and Marcus on the other hand was surprised that the man knows their name and their cries stopped.
“Forgive Papa”, the man carried both of them then gave them a kiss on the forehead before putting them back to the crib.
“Please don’t!”, the lady exclaimed as the man picked up something from the foot of the bed.
“Forgive me my sons!”, he said as his kind smile turned pained and guilty as he raised his hand into the air revealing a block of wood. He pressed it down together with gravity and Nicolas and Marcus could only wait as their tiny little soft heads were crushed. Though they felt nothing, it gave them shivers.
They again blacked out and they are once again thrown into an event one after another. It seemed like they are thrown from one nightmare to nightmare without a single second for a break. They kept getting stabbed or crushed, getting drowned in the river or be left on the forest to die, they kept bleeding or suffocating.
In one occasion eaten alive by wild animals and being forced to fight for a war just to be taken down mercilessly by a sniper, but mostly they are killed as an infant or a toddler by their own family while looking at them like a monsters as they sleep. Or grow into their teens just to be killed by strangers with swords and bow, and if they are too unlucky to what decade they are in, even guns. Despite all that, they are reborn each time just to repeat the cycle.
A drop of rain woke them up again and as their reflections showed on the showy windows in an alley, they are exactly the same age for when they fought to death the other day at the waterfall.
“What’s happening?”, Marcus exclaimed as a mechanical entity tends to the laundry and clothes inside the building.
“I don’t know… I think I just had a…”
“Nightmare”, Nicolas replied and Marcus jinxed him by the end of his sentence.
The voices from the distance frim the rainy alley confirmed that they are still on a nightmare, “Again?”, they both looked at each other.
“Let’s just run for now!”, Marcus proposed.
“As if we have a choice”, Nicolas agreed when a single hot ray of light burned his leg. “What was that!, Ow”, he uttered reaching for his leg. It had no blood but there’s a hole.
“Marcus did you see what that was?”, he turned around and saw Marcus falling to the ground. The left side of his stomach has a hole. Nicolas felt concerned for this boy that he doesn’t even know. He felt worried for him and at the same time angry about their pursuers.
Out of his frustration, his eyes glowed blue calling forth a bow. He fired a shot thinking just one thing, “Die”. He pulled the strings of the seemingly luminous bow as their pursuers drew closer and closer.
“He’s firing!, scatter!”, one of the man on the front yelled while all of his comrades went to the sides in a hurry.
“Try evading this”, Nicolas thought as the bow glowed even brighter, enough to illuminate the whole alley. Once he had let go of the arrow, it sent a blue stream of light to the narrow alley liquefying anyone it came in contact with.
Though their comrades dead down below, the snipers kept shooting, almost getting a head shot out of Nicolas if he had not evaded. Only his right ear was the casualty.
“What are you doing?”, Marcus uttered weakly as he watched Nicolas counter the shots with his bow and the light beams came raining from above.
“These lazer beams are pesky aren’t they?”, his eyes also glowed blue as he produced a shield for protection and sat up. “You should just save yourself while you still can” he whispered changing places with Nicolas.
“I don’t know what am I doing, and I don’t even know what was going on”, Nicolas replied.
“Me neither”, Marcus said trying to act cool despite his injury.
“Have you somehow saw a past memory of mine before all of this happened?”, Nicolas asked trying to pinpoint the sniper from the darkness.
“Like that time when you thought that girl died?, and other not so important events that happened in your life?”, Marcus said coughing blood as his soul began to flicker out of commission. “You’ve had a horrible life didn’t you?”.
“Yeah and so were you”, Nicolas replied as they both slowly backed away from the sight of the enemy.
“So am I?”, Marcus felt discombobulated.
“Don’t tell me you can’t remember?”
“Remember what?”, five beams came hitting Marcus’s shield causing it to break. Nicolas had no other choice but to give up shooting and handle the defense.
“Don’t you have any recollection of your childhood?”, Nicolas asked.
“What?”
“Anything that happened?, deaths?, killings?, that you may have forgotten?”
“Deaths?, Killings?”.
“Forget it, let’s just get away from here”, Nicolas softly said recalling his soul as he helped Marcus walked. They looked like two drunken dudes who just got out of a bar that can’t walk straight.
With the pursuer dead and them out of the sniper’s view they managed to hide behind another alley beside a dumpster as the rain started to pour heavily.
“What’s really happening here?”, Nicolas murmured as he sat opposite Marcus.
“What do you mean earlier? Am I forgetting something?”, Marcus asked. “What did you saw in my memory?”
“Do you really want to know?”, Nicolas asked tending to his lost ear and hole bearing leg.
“After all the words you used to describe it do you think I’d just sit here and be oblivious?”
“Fine, I don’t know how this will work but call you soul. Any form will be fine this might give away our location but if you insist”, Nicolas explained as he too called his soul shaped like a ball.
He stood up and went closer to Marcus holding his sword.
He kneeled, placed his hand on Marcus’s head and closed his eyes. He showed him what he saw, all of it, no cuts, all the screams and the blood. By the time he opened his eyes Marcus is silently crying.
“I always thought that I’ve had forgotten something. That old man said he just found me somewhere and that I owe him my life and soul”, he uttered as he sat weakly beside the dumpster.
“What a sad life. My family dead, father possessed by something, and my soul is corrupted”.
“Turns like it”, Nicolas sat back down.
Marcus stared at his own sword with curiosity, “This is only the reflection of our soul right?, one side of the equation?”.
“I think so”
“I wonder what the other side would look like”, Marcus said closing his eyes while his soul began to change colors. “Wow”, he laughed. “I am really corrupted”, he said upon seeing the pitch black sword.
“What would you do now?”, Nicolas asked.
“I don’t know, but none of that matters now that I’m dying”, he looked up the cloudy dark sky then looked back down and saw his reflection on puddle. “Isn’t this sight look familiar? I felt like I’ve been here before”, he blurted.
“How could that be?”, Nicolas dismissed the idea finding his statement ridiculous. “We never had guns on Aquilos nor lazers or concrete buildings this big in Drasyl”, he explained gesturing how tall the buildings are.
“I don’t know but don’t you find it strange that you know what a gun or a lazer is despite seeing it the first time?”
Nicolas felt uneasy as he too have only now realized. “Maybe you’re just delirious”, he sarcastically replied while still trying to dismiss the conversation.
“I’m dying not delirious”, Marcus laughed before coughing blood.
“No, you’re just badly injured so you should shut up”, Nicolas replied.
“I’m just stating a fact”, Marcus turned serious.
“No you’re not, unless I get help”, Nicolas scaled the wall to stand. “Stay here and I’ll get some help”.
“I’m already pass savable don’t you think?”
“How could I just sit here and watch you die? What kind of a…”, he paused trying to re think what he’s about to say.
“Why are you acting like a hero? You don’t even know me”, Marcus disagreed once again.
“For some reason I can’t accept that”, Nicolas thought as he turned his back towards Marcus and started walking.
Marcus just watched him as he vanished into the rainy night. And as his vision began to fade something became clear to him.
“As I thought, I… no, we’ve already been here. You’re always like this”.
He felt the surroundings going cold and all he could here was the fading beats of his heart.
“Don’t you remember Nicolas? This is where we parted ways, me sitting here beside the dumpster as the trash that I am and you leaving me here to die”.
“I never really wanted anything else. I did not want you to save me. All I wish you could have done was to be here by my side… This was not the first time that I have felt death so I grew accustomed to it already… But dying here alone is another kind of horror”, he cried as tears ran down his cheeks.
“You could have at least seen me off… brother… Tell me to ‘see you or wait for me’ in the next one”
Nicolas who’s already a bit far of in a clearing felt like he heard Marcus’s words as his presence slowly fade. The sudden raising of his heart beat made him decide to go back and tearful. But when he turned around he stumbled to the ground and a bright light was hurdling towards him.
He tried to get up and felt metal on the ground. He looked back up again and the light is already in front of him. All of their passed lives flashed through his vision as he realized what that light was.
He was on a train track and that light is the train running a thousand kilometers an hour towards him and evading is not an options.
“Forgive me brother”, he cried before kissing the metal front of the bullet train.
And as he was pulped like a tomato on the train’s windshield he remembered the root and caused of this never ending hell loop they are in.

“Stop what you are doing Nero!”, said the man engulfed by pure bright light while crossing swords with the pitch black entity.
“I will kill everyone, rule every plain of reality and you can’t stop me!”, Nero exclaimed, “I will kill these things you love, and even you! No matter what happens, I will return!”.
“Then I would do anything to prevent that from happening”, the man replied. “With all the power I possessed, I split your soul in three!”, he called upon as he locked Nero’s head with his arms.
“What are you doing!”, Nero said in distress. “Stop!, to do that you’ll need to sacrifice you soul too!”, he explained
“I am more prepared to do so. As your soul split in three you’ll not be able to have your full power you’ll become a wandering lamb and using the fragment of my own soul It will cancel the evil you possess thus preventing your will to ever surface!”.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?, let me go! Let me go!”
“Be gone! And even if I is no more, someone will be born and stop you again in your attempt to be whole! With all my power this is what I want! The world should have peace and evil shall not prevail!”
Nero felt his very soul splitting in three and each and every bit tormented him.
The clouds that night were mad together with lighting and thunder. The children of light just watched in circle as the God of Good and Light fought for their sake.
Nero’s voice echoed the mountains, seas, and plains as an explosion of light occurred from above. “No!”.
“No!”, Nicolas also exclaimed as he sprang out sitting on the bed he was on. He was tense and breathing heavily.
Alisa who just entered the cabin was startled dropping the vegetables she was carrying.
“Nicolas!”, she exclaimed cheerfully before wrestling him with a hug.
“A…Alisa… I can’t breathe…”, he cried as he’s too weak to push her off from all the sleeping.
“Sorry…”, she responded before recollecting herself and stood up. “I was just happy. You’ve been unconscious for two days I thought you’ll never wake up again.
“Two days?”, Nicolas immediately looked outside the window.
“Yes, but don’t worry, we are in our cabin in the woods. We are safe here”, Alisa assured picking up the vegetables. “Do you want to eat?”
“I would be delighted, but, could you call your uncle first? I have a pretty bad news to tell”.