"Deion, wake up; I'm not telling you again." A voice spoke to him as his eyes creaked open.
It was a familiar voice, and from the outline alone he could tell it was his mom, but as he opened his eyes wider, the intense light following behind her assaulted them, forcing him to blink harder.
Finally, after enough blinks, he could slowly start to see again, revealing the light shining from the opened door being devoured by a sea of black that engulfed his entire room, leaving only the upper half of his body untouched by it.
He wanted to panic from the sight alone, but the feeling was oddly comfortable, almost reminding him of the way cold dirt is comforting to lie in.
But why was it there? He didn't activate his ability. Now that he thought about it, why was it so bright behind his mom? She never wakes him up; she's normally either asleep in the mornings from guarding the town so late or still there.
"Where's Dad?" he just managed to leak out from his groggy morning voice.
But she was gone already, left behind now by only the intensifying light clashing with the darkness.
Something was wrong, and he needed to get up, but his body fought his every command, only making a thumping pain appear in his head.
With every pulse he could feel the light getting brighter, warming every area of his body exposed to an almost burning intensity, but as if to counter its assault, the darkness began advancing up his body, chilling the areas affected by the heat until finally it covered his eyes and he was back in the familiar cold of the shadow.
The comfort of the darkness didn't last long before the thumping pain in his head returned. He placed his hands on his temples to try to mitigate it as best as possible, but it wasn't going away any time soon, he could tell, and without even realizing it, control had returned to his once limp body.
He opened his eyes to find a dark room once again, but this one was tiny; with the stretching of his legs, he could feel the door, and since he could see in the dark, he had no trouble making out his surroundings, which consisted only of some brooms and a few mop buckets. That entire sequence of events was just a weird dream.
"Why am I in a supplies closet?" He muttered to himself in hope that it would spring forth dormant memories, but all he could recall was that he went to the school's atrium in the morning by himself for a town meeting about the extracurricular activities since Mom was busy and Dad had to go to the next town over to buy parts for the car we were working on, but anything after that was a fuzzy blur that only struck the ache in his head, making it all the worse.
He gave up trying to use his memory in hopes the pain would leave his head alone, which did at least help a little bit.
Slowly he rose to his feet using the bucket that was just barely within reach of his arms and pushed open the door.
A long hallway revealed itself to him, and with only a little bit of backlash, he could remember the posters, lockers, and doors that sat adjacent to a row of windows stretching along, leading to another door, and even though it hadn't been very long since he started attending the school, it was his classes' floor, yet still the reason he was there eluded him.
"Yo, is anybody here?" He yelled down the hall in hopes that somebody would answer from the only open door on the floor, but it was met with silence.
He walked towards the window to see if anybody was walking outside; although he didn't see any people, he did see some large black cars left alone outside the school. Despite the fact that it was night, he could see an orange glow from over some of the houses, and it wasn't until he connected the plumbing to the smokestack accompanying it. Something big was on fire. He hurried towards the door at the end of the hall, which opened to stairs leading down.
He hurried to the atrium on the first floor since that was the last time he remembered seeing anybody, and his parents could have gone back there to find him.
He burst open the doors, and a metallic stench wafted through the air, hitting him straight in the nose. He looked around to find the source, but he couldn't stomach looking long. The left side of the court was littered with bodies, some of which he could instantly recognize as people who lived in the town, while others he could tell were attacked by the way their bodies were dismantled, but he didn't recognize them. He could tell they were probably soldiers of some kind since they had uniforms and guns.
He left after what were only seconds in the room and vomited most of whatever was left in his stomach.
"What the fuck was going on?" He shouted as the panic set in his heart at even the thought of his parents being part of that pile of corpses, but even the thought of that was ridiculous to him. His mom was the most powerful light Animo user in the entire town; there is no way some losers with guns would ever be able to harm her, and his dad wasn't even in the town.
He remembered the time 4 years ago when he was 13 and they took him camping far into the woods; she had taken out 3 fire bears by herself uninjured in not even seconds. No one can hurt her.
The memory brought him comfort, but he couldn't leave without making absolute sure that at least his dad wasn't among the bodies, since he could have come back at any time, so he took a second to gather himself before he rushed back into the room, straight toward the bodies.
He stepped through the sticky puddle of blood coming from the dismembered parts of the soldiers over towards the people who lay under the basketball net, and from looking around, he could quickly tell that his dad wasn't among the bodies since he was the only person with thick dreads in the entire town.
He only met them on a few occasions when he had actually come into the town since his parents and he lived just outside of the town, but since he had started coming to school recently instead of being homeschooled, he met more of these kids and the elderly, and many of them had bullet holes all over their bodies; they didn't deserve this. He clenched his fist; he couldn't just allow whoever ordered this to get away with it.
To his left next to the bleachers he could see a hole in the wall leading to the parking lot, and from it he could hear cars driving by. Was it more of these soldiers? He picked up some of the weapons left and kept one in his hand while the rest he opened his shadow, placing them inside since he never knew if he could have uses for them later.
He rushed towards the hole to get away from the bodies since he didn't know how much more of the intense metallic smell he could take.
From the parking lot he could see more of the street, and it seemed to be way more of a mess than he had initially thought, as some cars were flipped while others were caved; even most of the houses on the side of the street were completely crushed. By the looks of it, it had to be a giant beast who did this since these houses were reinforced to take attacks most under 10m, since this was an ebony tree mining town.
"Sir, the location of the woman and man has been pinpointed at a house just outside the wall of the town, about 10 minutes down the road. We'll be instructing the telepaths to relay the information since he personally wanted to finish this." spoke a man in a similar outfit to the rest of the soldiers.
Quickly he hid behind a house to continue eavesdropping since, for some reason, they were talking about his house, but what did they want with his family? They've been here as long as he can remember.
"Where is the first team sent in? We stopped receiving reports from them quite some time ago." The man speaking this time was smaller and not in nearly as tactical gear.
"We aren't quite sure, Sir. We received some reports from the telepaths we sent in earlier, but they stopped after we got a shaky report of a massive creature attacking, and from the looks of the bodies, it must have also had telepathic abilities since, along with some being mutilated, others had their minds crushed." The man who seemed to be the second in command said it, but he seemed visibly worried.
"Shit, and we had sent a sizable force in to deal with the civilians. Ok, take back what we can, and since it seems like there aren't any survivors, follow protocol and raze the town." The smaller man giving orders seemed to be the one in charge of this operation.
He noticed a small group of soldiers begin walking through the parking lot right by the car he had chosen to use as cover, and since he couldn't risk being seen, he held his breath and jumped into the shadow of the car being cast by the moon to wait for them to pass by.
Inside the shadow it was always cold and dark, but so long as he was in another shadow, there was no reason they should realize he was there, but using his ability like this had made his start to hurt again, so he couldn't do this for long.
He waited for about a minute for them to pass since he couldn't see or sense them yet, and when he went up to check, they had passed him; it seems they had found the hole. They started to make their way inside, so he took this as his opportunity to come out and head towards the wall around the town. He needed to make it home fast if he wanted to make sure his family was ok, and he probably had some time since they were probably waiting for whatever boss was behind this.
He ran out past the field behind the school and slipped through the old guard tower door for the wall; he remembered that there was a way outside from here that the other kids had used sometimes, and he was right. An old door was there that seemed to have been locked at some point, but it had degraded over time so that just hitting it made it fall, opening the door.
He ran east towards his home with every ounce of strength his legs could muster; he thanked his mom for all the physical training she forced him to do, since according to her, she wasn't about to raise a weak son. But now that the thought passed through his head, was she preparing in anticipation of a time like this? All those years she kept him homeschooled and trained him in forest survival, telling him nature was the greatest teacher, were all a front so he wouldn't question why he had always been training in survival. She was getting him ready to run away.
He sped up as much as his legs could handle, and finally he could see his house not too far away, and from what he could see, there were some cars in front, but they were destroyed, but this time it seemed like they were hit with something and not crushed like before.
"Mom, Dad!" he yelled as soon as he got close to the house, and it was met with a beam of light shooting out from the side of the house and a man crashing through the wall. He could feel tears well up in his eyes; he knew that light anywhere.
He jumped through the recently made hole, and there she was with her long brown hair, standing at about the same height as him. "Mom!" He jumped into her arms and felt the tears start to release from his eyes; everything that he had been holding back felt as if it melted away the second he felt the warmth from her.
"Mijo, we waited here for an hour praying you would come back. Where have you been?" She embraced him back even harder, almost to the point that he couldn't breathe, but he didn't want to let go ever again.
"D, where have you been? We searched the town for so long before coming back here in hopes you would make your way here." The voice was his dad's, and it wasn't long before he could feel his arms wrapped around him as well, with his scruffy beard rubbing against his arm and his thick dreads in his eyes.
He wanted to stay within their arms forever, but something was wrong; he could smell dried blood coming from a bandage around his dad's head, and his mom was missing an arm. Those bastards hurt them. He could feel an intense rage pump up his blood; if he had ever met the bastards that did this, he wouldn't let a single one live to regret what happened.
"Don't worry, we're ok. We got these injuries from that beast that had attacked the town. We're lucky it wasn't any worse." His mom told him after finally releasing him.
"We need to leave now before Cain shows up, babe." His dad ushered them as he started to head towards the garage.
"Your dad's right. I know you don't understand everything that's happening right now, but we can explain to you on the way to my father's place." She followed him towards the garage.
They were right; he hadn't even told them about overhearing the soldiers in town. He took one last look around the house he had grown up in; it had dead soldiers lying on the floor now, but once it had been a place that brought him comfort when everything was wrong, but now it was just going to become another building among the trees.
He followed behind them.
"Here, take the bags and put them in your shadow so we have less to carry." His dad threw two bags towards him as they surrounded the car in the garage. They were quite heavy bags; no wonder he wanted them put away. He slid them into his shadow one by one, and on the second one he stumbled quite a bit since the pain in his head was making him feel weaker.
"Are you hurt as well?" His mom said with concern, holding his arm to make sure he didn't fall. He simply nodded.
Finally, they were in the car and ready to leave. The garage door opened, and his dad drove the car out, and immediately three cars came down the street attempting to block them in.
"Ram them if you have to," his mom said as his dad began accelerating faster towards the little gap in between the gaps in the cars when suddenly a beam of light shot through the front of the window, hitting the car.
This time it wasn't his mom's, and from the back of the driver's seat, he could see a hole about the size of his fist. He tried to say something, but his throat felt dry, and he couldn't formulate words; all he could do was look into the front to see the hole punched through his father's chest.
"Now don't leave yet, Maria; we haven't even spoken, and I've been looking for you everywhere. It was smart to hide so close yet so far." A man in a suit Deion had never seen before came down from the sky on a golden disk of light.
"Cain!" His mother retched out a bloodcurdling scream as she jumped out the front of the car to lunge towards the man, and in the only arm she had left, she summoned a golden sword almost twice her size to slash through the soldiers who jumped in her way.
"Dad" He finally managed to just barely squeak out. He reached over to touch him.
His father wasn't quite as strong as his mother or even him, but he was still one of the strongest men he knew. The time when he was a child and he got lost in the forest, a bear began hunting him. It was close to 3 meters tall, but his dad managed to fight it off. Even though he got permanently scared from it, he never gave up once.
Deion now sat alone in the car as the sound seemed to drain out of the world. His father's body was already starting to lose heat. And it was his fault. The man finally was on the floor and stood a little taller than even him at 6'1"; Deion looked straight into his eyes, but he was still only focused on his mom. His face was sharp and his eyes felt cold.
His rage grabbed control of his actions, and he put his hand forward to summon the shadows to attack him, but every effort put forward was met with more intense pain pulsing through his head until he almost felt the veins in his head about to burst. The pain was interrupting his call to the shadows, and for a second he thought he was out of options, but then he remembered the guns he had put away for another time.
He hadn't checked if there was anything left in them, but he stepped out of the car and reached into his shadow all the same to drag them out; at least he still had a connection to his own shadow.
He pulled the trigger on the first gun, but nothing happened. Without a second's delay, he threw it and reached for the next one. Success! This time the bullets sprang out of the gun and raced towards the man, but with almost no effort, he swatted them away, but that didn't deter him as he continued.
"Is this offspring between you and that man? Why would you degrade yourself so? You were perfect in every way, the very incarnation of beauty and power, and yet you chose to sully your role by my side with that pathetic man! He couldn't even survive a single beam, yet you would produce his offspring in secret!" The once perfect-looking demeanor was infected by the rage of his words.
"Shut the fuck up, Cain! You're so pathetic that you couldn't even accept one woman choosing how she wanted to live her life! Don't even look in the general direction of my son; he is the result of the love between me and the man who treated me like I had every choice in the world. You don't get to talk down to him." She raised her sword as her head swiveled one last time towards her husband and then back to Cain.
This time Cain couldn't calm down, and with just a look in Deion's general direction, he shot a beam of light twice the size of the one that hit his father.
But this time his mother was fast enough to jump in its way and block it without it hitting Deion, but she wasn't so lucky herself, and some of it pierced through, hitting her through the stomach.
"Mom! Please no," Deion cried out as he reached out to grab her.
She didn't even speak this time as she looked up into his eyes and kissed his forehead; from her mouth, he could almost hear her say sorry. With the last of her strength and 1 arm, she lifted Deion and threw him over the treeline.
He couldn't even stop her before he was in the air and viewing his parents and home for the last time, with his last sight being his mom running towards Cain and glowing bright.