The Alchemist's Children: Panacea

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  With the pale moonlight, the serenity of the midnight forest stretched around him. He felt cold grass beneath his feet and a refreshing breeze danced across his skin. He looked out over rolling hills. He placed his hand on the gnarled tree and looked down cliffs that plunged into the slapping waters of the dark ocean.

  The bark was rough to the touch, but the wood was strong. He heard the crow and he turned towards the forest. There was no song that followed, but he could see the woman moving towards him. She moved with purpose, avoiding the darkening shadows behind her.

  When she reached him, she wrapped her arms around him. He touched her soft skin with his fingertips. She smiled lovingly, but the ominous look on her face couldn't be ignored. She pointed to the ocean as dark clouds rolled over the moon. In the flickering light, he saw alien shapes moving in the growing shadows.

  From the crashing waves, a viscous slime crawled using stick fibers. Up the cliffs it climbed and through the forest, ever consuming. Between the layers of fibers, he saw distant images of ghastly limbs and faces twisting in pain. The void had devoured them, innocence and love were but memories that only fed their torment.

  The first of the inky fingers of the writhing blackness dug into him. Helplessly, he watched them eat him, and when he tried to scream, they filled his throat. Even as needles dug into his eyes and filled his lungs, the swarming darkness didn't end him. Instead, among the rhythmless sounds of gnawing, he heard the foreign whispers come to violate his mind.

  Overlapping images, both moving and still, rolled through his mind. Chronologically patternless, spastic flashes of desolated civilizations and death raptured him into the throes of humanity's sins. He felt the dark network of mold slowly working its way into the foundations of society, suffocating a civilization in twilight as it lay on life support in glowing neon. On the black tides came the violent death of his world and in its wake, humanity's final breath.

  Fruitlessly, his brain struggled to understand and what little he put together pulled at the threads of his sanity. Between the whispers, the silence called to him. It welcomed him, with open arms. For a moment, he didn't feel alone. Derrick hadn't lied, and it was as he said it was. It appealed to the abandoned places in his soul, seductively filling them with an alien peace that came after the end of man. However, in that peace, he no longer was and all he loved lay dead at his feet, tangled in strands of dark sinew. The feelings tore at him, freezing him in indecision. But, as the visions rolled through his mind, he felt himself push them away.

  With caw from the crow, he felt the woman's arms around him. He felt the cool air and she plucked him free with the snapping of dark threads. He was weak, but she granted his strength. Her fingers traced the patterns of panacea as they floated towards the star painted sky and away from the churning sea of nightmares. "You see?" She whispered in his ear.

  "Yes...but...what is it? I don't understand...any of it..."

  "You're beginning to see what's coming for your world." The woman said. "You must prepare...you must learn to understand..."

  "What is it?"

  "You know...there was no piece of you that it didn't call to...and it's plans lay fragmented in your mind."

  "Fragmented?" He still felt them, but the darkness in its entirety had left him. Beneath his feet, the calm of the forest returned. He didn't remove his hand from her waist and he swallowed. "It...it felt like...it was looking for something...something that wasn't there...like, my brain wasn't enough..."

  "Or wasn't ready..."

  "How do I stop it?" The fear made him sound desperate. "Or can I even stop it?"

  "You resisted it's call didn't you?"

  He stayed silent and wondered if he did. The horrors still hung on him. He looked into the woman's green eyes. "Did I?" He asked.

  "Only you can answer that, my love." She whispered. "And, if you did...that means there's hope...and more will come with greater understanding...so, you must learn. No matter the cost."

  He nodded. Even if he could barely understand the fragments and couldn't pull any meaning from the whispers, he knew, that the harbingers' form of peace couldn't be allowed to be. They had to be stopped. No matter the cost.