Chapter 18: The Master Plan Launches
“We have to start. The shadow storm is 6 minutes away.”
“We have to wait.”
“If Draktos doesn’t show up soon, he’ll miss it.”
“We have to wait!”
“We can’t just let a once in a lifetime opportunity like this pass us by!”
“WE HAVE TO WAIT!”
Suddenly, a portal opened next to the two conversing shadows, it’s spiral pattern slowly opening up. As the borders of the portal continued to spiral, the actual portal itself showed an image of the top of the hill above Garion’s mansion, the grass slowly swaying against the gentle breeze of a spring day. The entire day looked so peaceful; birds chirping, trees blossoming in the background, but that was only if you took Garion’s mansion out of the picture.
The whole house seemed like a puzzle piece placed in the wrong spot. One half of the house was burned down, the other half currently burning. There were bullet holes in every little corner of the mansion; it felt as though the entire building was going to collapse just because of those small holes made in the weak, old, horrible attempt of planking up the burned area of the mansion. Not only were the sizzled spots still clearly visible, but there was more holes in those pieces of wood then there was bullet holes.
As the shadows looked closely into the portal, they noticed Garion and a large figure seeming to be entirely made out of rocks being dragged to multiple police boats surrounding the outside perimeter. Suddenly, Draktos appeared in the portrait frame and simply stepped through onto the misty terrain of the Bermuda Triangle, sniffing the air of where he had world domination in his grasps.
“This time though, I will not only grasp it, I will taste it as well,” Draktos thought to himself.
As he closed the portal he created with a circular device seeming to be shaped like a miniature portal (it’s metallic coating and tiny intricate wiring making it’s shape be about the size of the palm of a hand), he looked around at what he had teleported into.
Beyond the thick fog, Draktos couldn’t make out much; all he could make out though was his giant, beautifully metallic machine, standing propped up facing the sky, ready to absorb the shadow storms energy at any moment.
“When is the shadow storm?” Draktos asked.
“Five minutes.”
“What?!”
“It seems you were leisuring too much back at Garion’s mansion.”
“Don’t worry, it was all worth it.”
“It’d better be.”
“Quickly, turn on the machine and start the calibrations. I will start calibrating the Time Freezer to the appropriate settings.”
“Already done, sir. We were just awaiting on you to check our progress.”
“Good work to you, then. Now, off to your jobs.”
The shadows rushed off in opposite directions as Draktos walked towards the Time Freezer, a big grin forming on his face as he did so.
“Just five more minutes,” Draktos thought to himself. “Just five more minutes and it will all be mine.”
Draktos started to toy with the intricate wiring of the Time Freezer, making sure each setting is set for the appropriate date. He had to make sure he connected all the wires right so all the settings were done correctly, that nothing but time itself was frozen.
“Just a few modifications right here, some wiring to fix right there, and....”
Suddenly, a giant spark shocked the entire machine into activation. Draktos, thinking he had connected the wrong wire, watched as a flare was shot high into the far depths of space, seeming to move towards a certain location. Draktos then watched as the machine disintegrated onto itself; the glossy, metallic ball spinning so fast it went off its hinges and dismantled from the machine, as the rest of the machine slowly started to turn into dust.
...
“You don’t understand,” Garion shouted as he was loaded onto one of the multiple police boats surrounding his mansion, “we're innocent!”
“Innocent or not,” the tall, dark, bruised agent explained, “your trespassing on foreign soil.”
“Stop giving me all of this crap and let me help you find the real perpetrator!”
Suddenly, with a bang, a flare exploded high above the remains of Garion’s base, the ashy relics floating to the ground soon after the explosion.
“What was that?!” the agent screamed. “Was that a signal for an attack? Was that your people?”
“I’ll be back for you, Tyrone. I promise.”
Garion, gathering all the strength he had left in his 17 year old body, shot pieces of his tentacles at each one of the surrounding officers. Blinding them completely, the officers ducked down trying to get the leech-like substance prying away at their skin off of their faces. Before the other S.W.A.T. officers had time to react, Garion shot his tentacles to the ground with one big burst, shooting at least 1,500 feet into the air, soaring above the sky.
Garion slipped through his handcuffs with quick melting of his tentacles (that he picked up from Draktos while he was killing Garion’s team) and then attempted to spread his arms out and glide through the air, hoping the holes in between his tentacles could catch in the wind.
Garion started to plummet 1,500 feet as he realized how stupid of an idea that was. As he started to plummet towards the Earth at sonic speeds, he realized he was closing his fist by muscle memory.
Carefully opening his fists, Garion found the small item Rebolto placed into his hand: a pair of keys, about the size of Garion’s palm.
“What the hell is this?” Garion screamed out loud.
Garion, realizing he was going to die, decided there was nothing better to do then click the button on the keys. He heard a small beep resonate from them, then nothing more.
Garion really started to panic now. He was now about 500 feet away from the ground, and he didn’t want to go out like this. His life seemed to flash right before his very eyes, but mainly the death of his team. One by one he watched them each plummet to the ground, each one of their last calls for help, their final cries. He even left Tyrone back there to possibly die. All of his team gave their lives for him, and he made them do so. All because of his selfish actions of watching and waiting, Garion let his team die. Now he had to pay the price. Probably 150 feet to go.
Garion was about to vomit right before a jet with an open cockpit caught him in midair, continuing to head straight forward on some sort of autopilot mode.
After Garion spilled his emotions onto the bottom floor of the plane, he quickly wiped his mouth and observed the jet. It looked very familiar, seeming to have the same surroundings as a previous model he once used. Then Garion remembered the only time he had ever used a jet before.
Looking out onto the window, Garion noticed a small envelope taped onto the windshield. He grabbed it and teared it open, dumping the scrap pieces of paper onto the floor. He opened up a small, folded piece of paper and took a quick glance at it. It was a note from Rebolto, and it said:
I found this outside the hill behind your mansion after you returned from your little “trip” to the Triangle. I thought the advanced technology of this jet should come to some sort of use with your ‘plan’ that I managed to glance at minutes before the Time Freezer was grabbed. Also, I’m sorry. He had my family.
Rebolto
Garion stared sternly at the last sentence, all of his fears being instantly confirmed. He tucked the letter into his tentacles, the last relic he had of Rebolto’s existence. As he looked out towards the sky, a stern look on his face, he said to the jet “Take me to the Bermuda Triangle.”
...
“What the hell was that?!”
“Sir, I....”
“It just...disintegrated!”
“I’m not sure, sir.”
“Is this your sad excuse for calibration?!”
“You were supposed to....”
“Enough! I’ve had it! I’ve waited too
long for this day, and I refuse to wait any longer. We move on with the plan. Once the first drop of the shadow storms falls into my machine, we will have to find another way to stop the machine from being destroyed by the shadow storm.”
“What about us and our invincibility?”
“Screw the invincibility! Once the army is here, that will be the least of our worries.”
“What about Garion, sir?”
“Garion...Garion doesn’t have a chance. Fire up the machine.”
The shadow walked up to the machine and flipped some switches, lighting the entire metal plating up like a Christmas tree. The lights seemed to spread from the bottom to the top of the machine, until finally the cylinder-shaped part of the machine itself started to light up. The machine then started to make many heating noises as it seemed to prepare for the one drop of rain as it’s power source.
“Now what?” the shadow came back over and asked.
“Now we wait,” Draktos expectantly replied. “Garion will be overjoyed to watch the takeover from whatever cage he may be sitting in.”
...
“5 miles away. ETA 2 minutes.”
Garion dismissed the computer as the jet started to near its destination, Garion starting to get increasingly worried as it approached.
He knew he had to do it, but he couldn’t. He wouldn’t have the courage to. He had to somehow muscle it up inside of him, because if he didn’t then his jet would get shot down and he would be an easy target for Draktos. But he just couldn’t find that type of courage.
“I’ve already been through all the scenario’s,” Garion thought to himself, “this is the only possible way.”
His heartbeat started to race faster and faster as he neared his destination. As the computer notified him his destination would be arriving any minute now, he almost threw up again. He knew what he had to do, though.
“Computer, turn off auto pilot.”
“Auto pilot off.”
The jet suddenly started to swerve around as Garion quickly grabbed hold of the steering wheel and thrust it downwards as the computer told him that he had arrived at his destination. As the mist started to clear Garion saw a small shape in the distance, along with a lit up machine.
Before Garion knew it he saw something small, about the size of a raindrop, falling out of the sky before it landed on the machine. The machine then shot up a giant beam of darkness, enveloping the sky above before starting to consume the sky around it slowly, eating it away like it was breakfast. Garion knew he had to act fast, and he had to act now. He had to do it now.
“Warning. Collision approaching, 500 feet away.”
Garion let the plane slowly tumble to the ground as he banged on the glass repeatedly. After around the tenth try the glass shattered, a clear exit point for Garion. He managed to make his way out of the cockpit seat and onto the nose of the plane, the now 100 feet drop coming ever so closer staring at him in the face. Suddenly, he froze.
How could he do it? It’s hard enough in the movies when the main character has to jump out of a moving car, how about a moving plane?
Garion couldn’t do it. He just stared at his impending doom right in the face, until it was about 50 feet away.
Out of pure fear for his life Garion leaped from the colliding plane, gliding through the sky as the plane crash landed onto the ground in a fiery explosion. As Garion hit the ground hard, he wobbled a bit before falling to the floor and spilling out his emotions again.
“I did it,” Garion thought out loud. “I somehow did it.”
Garion slowly got up and looked at the sky, seeing if he managed to destroy Draktos’ machine. The sky still continued to blacken around him though, as the darkness grew ever so farther from the starting point, continuing to envelop the bright sky around him.
Garion walked over to the burning scene of the crime only to see an untouched machine, but a fatally weak Draktos on the ground beside him. Garion looked around him. Their were bits and pieces of the jet all over the island; covering every inch of it, some pieces even seeming to start some sort of forest fire. It felt as though Garion was in a movie, the sole survivor of a plane crash left to wander the wilderness in hopes of survival. He could even smell the burning of the plane, exciting yet scaring him even more.
“You fool!” a weak Draktos shouted as he got up from off the floor. “You idiotic fool! Do you realize what you have done?”
“I see the Time Freezer ‘overreacted’,” Garion sarcastically replied.
“You little...I was talking about the plane! That was you that rigged the Time Freezer?! Your dead!”
“You and what army?”
Draktos, smiling, looked up at the sky as Garion followed his eyes. Above them, the shadows started to form again as Garion saw Draktos’ massive army of shadows scouring the sky gather right before his very eyes, each spec of the sky seeming to be an individual shadow ready to strike on our planet. Each of the shadows seemed very eager to explore Earth, their bodies constantly moving as Garion started to see them all as one giant, moving blob.
Though, as the shadows started to chatter, so did the rain drops that followed. They each fell down at once, seeming frozen in midair as they made their decent towards the ground.
“No!” Draktos screamed.
He quickly darted for his machine and turned himself back into a shield for it, his now circular formation with a dark, sinister face in the middle completely blocking the machine from the approaching raindrops as they reached our planet.
Garion attempted to run after Draktos and stop him, but when the raindrops hit, they felt like acid. Each drop seemed to make Garion weaker as he slowly fell to the ground, a tentacle inside him seeming to disintegrate with every drop that poured onto his back, Garion being collapsed on the grass floor below him.
The raindrops disintegrated everything from trees to mountains, seeming to simply destroy anything that was blocking its path to the ground. The storm continued to thunder throughout the sky as the shadows started to get even more anxious.
Draktos then heard a beeping inside his machine, faint through the sound of the raindrops thundering towards the ground.
“The transfer is complete,” Draktos smiled, “the darkness has spread all around the globe.”
Suddenly, all the shadows poured out of the sky like a mob, as if a bucket of water had been dumped out onto the floor. Except, in this case, each individual shadow was a particle of water inside that 5 feet full bucket.
The shadows poured out like bees to a beehive with honey dripping out of it, spreading like madmen throughout the world as they started their reign of terror among humanity. Garion, still not being able to see much with the acid disintegrating him slowly, managed to make out the herd of what appeared to shadows in the shape of some sort of...mythical creatures. Garion didn’t know what to call them except non-human, some having horns while some had claws for hands. They spread around in various shapes, sizes and forms. Garion even managed to see a shadow floating as a 6 foot beast, flying through the air ready to cause havoc, club in hand. Garion reached up for the sky in an attempt to help the situation in anyway, but fell to the ground in anxiety.
Draktos then changed back to his normal, cape-less form as he watched his machine turn to dust like the Time Freezer did moments ago.
“The portal transfer is already complete,” Draktos thought. “All the shadows have already broken the TLS and there is nothing Garion could do to stop that. Now, I get to watch my shadows fly.”
Suddenly, Draktos seemed to shoot a shield of shadows like the one Draktos himself was now made of, shooting it around Garion. The shield enveloped him in the mystical shadow force that seemed to block out all the deadly raindrops, saving his life in the process. After a minute of heavy breathing and screaming in pain like a hyena, Garion looked at Draktos with shock.
“Why did you save my life?” Garion asked in amazement.
“Because I wanted to
show you one last thing before you die, something that I have been waiting for the right time to tell you.”
“What could be so important that it was worth saving my life for?” Garion asked, still in shock.
“My true identity,” Draktos responded softly.
“Your identity?” Garion asked, confused. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Remember that one boy you left back at the school,” Draktos told him as he looked over his tiny shield, Garion lying on his back looking back up at Draktos, “the boy who liked rubber-bands?”
“Max?” Garion asked in shock.
“No, no,” Draktos shrugged, “the other boy.”
Garion’s blood ran cold as he pronounced the name slowly, “Quishow.”