Chapter 19: Draktos’ Secret
Draktos slowly ripped off his shadow form, tearing it off like it was a loose piece of clothing. As the shadow form Garion once saw Draktos as fell to the ground, disintegrating in the shadow storm, Garion looked up to see the same old Quishow; bigger, badder, and scarier then ever.
He was about a head taller then Garion, and had frightening skull jackets and dark, ripped leather pants on. His pale white skin seemed to counter the dark, sinister, evil face he had on. Also, Quishow didn’t look normal this time.
He wasn’t just that old school bully Garion used to avoid back at school. He had some sort of dark ora emanating around him; it seemed as though Quishow had some sort of shield, guarded by thousands of shadows ready to serve him. He looked down at Garion with a sinister smile as he prepared to lift off the shield and watch Garion perish.
“You never escaped the building that day...,” Garion realized in a soft whisper, slowly getting louder, “it was because, you formed a partnership with practically the devil himself?!”
“Thanks for reminding me,” Quishow realized.
He then closed his eyes and concentrated, seeming to try to bring some sort of being from inside his body into the outside world. Quishow’s nerves started to strain around his forehead, beads of sweat slowly dropping to the floor. Suddenly, a bright light shined from inside Quishow, seeming to be directly inside his stomach. The white light then seemed to move up; it maneuvered its way through his throat, finally reaching his mouth, until it escaped a big flash of light. Once the light cleared, all Garion saw after that was Quishow standing next to a dark, ominous, mist.
“What are you doing?!” the mist asked in shock.
“You have helped me a lot,” Quishow told it, “but I no longer require your service.”
Garion gasped as the mist screamed, “You can’t do that! You need me! You need my knowledge!”
“With you being inside me for all this time,” Quishow responded with a smile, “I’ve already gained all the knowledge I need.”
“These shadows will never follow you without me as their leader! You will be dead within an instant!”
“Not unless I have your energy, which I already absorbed from you when you were inside me.”
The mist seemed to attempt to change form, slowly changing to various shapes as it struggled to get back to what it once was.
“But how?” the mist asked. “You were just a stupid boy, a pawn!”
“You know,” Quishow replied, “there’s always something special about pawns. When they reach the end of the chess board, they can become an almighty Queen.”
With that, Quishow gathered all of his strength, creating a giant ball made out of shadows. Still in focus, Quishow shot the shadow ball into the mist, obliterating it from sight. Garion watched in awe as the mist simply vanished into thin air, never to be seen again.
“Well,” Quishow responded calmly, “now that Draktos is taken care of and you know my true identity, I guess your purpose in this world has ended. Also, thanks for the plane crash by the way. It really helped weaken Draktos’ inner presence inside of me, which made it very simple to get him out of my body.”
“But...you were just an idiot! Back at school you could barely tell positives form negatives! Now you’re able to take out an all-powerful evil god?!”
“It’s amazing what can happen in just a couple months, isn’t it? I consider it to be my personal rehab. What do you think?”
“So,” Garion asked in shock, “this entire shadow storm plan...was your idea?”
“Partly,” Quishow explained. “You don’t think I would try to destroy the TLS without anticipating some sort of guardian, do you?”
“You knew?” Garion asked, shocked. “All along?”
“Exactly,” Quishow responded. “I’ve done my research. I found out about Nightblader’s powers, his predicting abilities. You see, this was my entire plan. Threaten the TLS, get abducted by the man who can predict shadow storms, and find out when the next one hits. It was just pure coincidence that the next shadow storm was on Earth.”
“So your plan was just to simply go to the planet with the next shadow storm and use its energy to destroy the TLS?”
“That’s right.”
“Why? Why cause all this havoc? Why use a shadow storm, not just your original plan to create a portal?”
“Because a shadow storm is the perfect diversion.”
With that, Draktos lifted the shield off Garion as the drops of the shadow storm slowly started to resume, piercing his skin again. The agonizing pain Garion felt was indescribable, each drop feeling like a flaming knife to the back, slowly eating away his life as he tried to crawl towards Quishow.
“Now, if you need me, I’ll be at the V.V.”
Quishow then darted off into the sky, disappearing into the dark, ever-moving sky above him.
Garion knew he had little time left before his impending death. He had to leave this planet somehow, but he couldn’t muster up the strength to use his tentacles as a boost. He couldn’t die, he just couldn’t. It was in the prophecy or something, wasn’t it? Yeah, it said that Garion would be the one to save the world and defeat the evil god Draktos. But, if Quishow just did that, what was left for Garion to do? Even though Quishow became the new Draktos, he was still the one to defeat him. Does that mean the prophecy’s wrong?
“No,” Garion thought, “it means I have to now conquer my fears and defeat the school bully. I have to destroy my Draktos.”
He knew he couldn’t, though. Almost all of his tentacles were gone, and by the time the raindrops hit his human form, he was as good as dead. His life started to flash before his eyes, his friends, his school, everything he once knew and loved in his old life. His parents. His parents!
“I didn’t see their bodies when I looked around the mansion,” Garion realized, “and I didn’t see Max’s, either. Maybe they didn’t die! Yeah, they must have hidden when they saw the S.W.A.T. agents!”
“I guess it doesn’t matter, though,” Garion realized in his head, “they’ve probably already been killed by this vicious storm. If that didn’t kill them, the fire in the mansion must have.”
Why couldn’t he just live a normal life, in a normal school with normal people? Why was he destined to be some sort of alien bent on saving the world from an evil force fifty times stronger than him? He didn’t need this, he shouldn’t have this destiny. All he wanted was to become a science major at Harvard and make new discoveries throughout the land of science. He would have never dreamed for a fate as big as this.
“There has to have been a mistake,” Garion thought, “I’m only seventeen. How could they expect a seventeen year old to take on this kind of responsibility?”
His tentacles were just about gone. Garion could start to feel his normal clothing coming back to him, sweaty and reeking of filth since he hadn’t changed them in months. He started to feel his human form again and, for the first time, it didn’t feel so good. He knew it was over, he knew he was done.
“I’ve failed,” Garion whispered aloud right before a bright light swept him up from the ground and into the dark sky above, piercing the dark sky in the exact path it traveled in.