Juxtaposition
@itshighnoonmydude Hey sorry I’m late but I’m your Christmas Truce! I had technical difficulties that resulted in most of the thing being deleted so I had to do it all again but here it is now! I hope you like it ^^
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The garden had been torn to pieces.
Roses littered the singed lawn, crushed and wilting. The soft hedges, once so smooth and perfect, were now misshapen – one bush had been torn from the ground and hurled halfway across the street. The fountain in the fishpond had snapped off its base, and water spurted into the air in a half-hearted arc – the marble cherubim was nowhere in sight, although one of the French front doors had smashed as though something sizable and heavy had been thrown through it with devastating force. The pine tree in the corner was broken in two, its upper half embedded in the roof of the mansion.
The entire yard sparkled with dew, interspersed with congealing blood and ectoplasm that sizzled and released pungent tendrils of smoke into the still dawn. Beneath a shredded jacaranda tree lay a gasping creature, his body still save for a heaving, mangled chest.
In the branches above sprawled another figure, a grisly mixture of red and green dripping from his dangling hand. Drawing a shuddering breath, he shifted in an attempt to sit up. The branches supporting him crackled, a shower of purple blossoms fluttering to rest on the child below.
Cursing, the man shifted on the branch again, sliding away from the trunk while his fingers curled around whatever they could. The wood lurched, and he yelped as the branch slipped from beneath him. The ground slammed into his back, and Vlad fought to breathe through the winding. He lay there, his wheezing disrupting the petals that fell on his face.
“Daniel?” he gasped as soon as he was able to, rolling onto his side with a sob. “Daniel, answer me!”
The boy lay beneath a layer of flowers, his chest moving with sharp, gasping bursts and a glistening trail of blood streaking down from the corner of his mouth. The grass beneath him was dark and glowing, and tattered scraps of the signature black-and-white suit trailed across the ground. Danny’s eyes were closed, his torn, bloody hands limp where they had once been applying pressure to the parallel gashes that had cleaved his chest apart.
Vlad dug his own stinging, bleeding hands into the turf, dragging himself across the few feet between them. “Daniel, please,” he choked, lurching to rest next to the trembling body.
Up close, there was no prognosis. Danny’s chest was a mess of flesh and splintered bones, one of his lungs clearly pierced by the claws that had so ravaged him.
Vlad reached for the boy, clumsily clutching one of his hands and squeezing as hard as he could. “Daniel, I can’t… I don’t know how to heal this…”
Danny’s fingers tightened around Vlad’s in a weak hold, and Vlad closed his eyes, tears slipping from their corners. The world around them stirred in a gentle breeze, the acrid tinge of smoke washing across from the house.
“Just…”
Vlad’s eyes snapped open, and he drew himself up on his trembling free arm. “Daniel?!”
A dim green gaze met him, soft and resigned. “Just stay with me,” he rasped, blood and ectoplasm bubbling from the corners of his mouth.
Vlad sobbed involuntarily, the grisly puddle seeping through his clothing. “Badger…” he whispered.
The gold bloomed through the lilac sky above them, and the boy didn’t breathe in again. Seeping through the tears in his flesh, his core evaporated into the dawn.
It took some time for Vlad to move again – time enough for sirens to begin across town and move steadily towards his location. Daniel lay beside him, not moving, not breathing, and absolutely gone. Flowers continued to fall from the tree above them, a funeral shroud of soft purple that did little to hide the boy’s gaping wounds. Vlad ground his teeth, brushing the blossoms from himself as he sat up. His body smarted with the beginnings of a post-fight ache, the type that seeped deep into the bones and always lingered for far longer than anticipated.
He levered himself to his feet, using the trunk of the tree to lean against as his legs remembered how to work properly. The petals that fell into his hair simmered and curled in the sudden heat as Vlad’s core trickled back into activity, the inhibition of his powers - and the likely reason for their defeat – falling away as the moments slipped past.
The sirens drew closer still, lights flashing from down the street, and Vlad took one last look at the corpse of his friend before turning himself sideways and slipping onto the spectral plane without so much as a whisper.
The Ghost Zone rushed to meet him, like the waves of a gentle ocean, and Vlad allowed them to submerged him in radioactive green. As soon as he was completely engulfed, the barrier between worlds evaporated behind him, leaving Vlad in a boundless space of floating shapes and swirls of yellow and green. Doors rose into focus before fading away again, carried by the eddies of the Zone.
With a flick of his spectral tail, Vlad arrowed through the realm of the dead. All he could think of was Daniel’s torn, bleeding body, and the way his eyes had dimmed and his core slipped away into the fresh morning air…
The doors fell away as he drew closer to his destination, and Vlad soon reached a space of desolation. The Zone thinned here, spirals unfurling into ribbons that thinned into tendrils. Everything washed together into a pale green atmosphere, the plain vast and almost featureless. Ghosts did not come here – the whispers of fading, or of losing your mind, or even your core, were simply too much of a risk. The rumours spoke of other things as well, of ancient guardians and nests of behemoths.
Vlad, however, was no ghost. Previous expeditions to this place had revealed the truth to some rumours and the lack in others, although half the time Vlad really wasn’t sure if the things he had encountered here were really that much of a threat to a living thing such as himself. He was immortal in a way that no human or ghost could claim to be, fused with a living core that would never die.
A great atrium rose from the haze, and Vlad slowed his approach. In the past he had never dared approach this structure, knowing full well what likely lay within and not trusting himself to make it out. The creatures inside were no longer ghosts – they were something else entirely, and even with the security of his halfa core, he hadn’t wanted to risk it.
This time was different.
With the Ghost Zone calling from behind him and the atrium looming in front, dark and oppressive, Vlad pushed forwards and rose over its wall.
The circular bowl was ringed with tiers upon tiers of benches, each space occupied with an identical being. In the middle floated an array of mirror-smooth circles, iridescent like soap bubbles. Images flickered across these screens, some faded like polaroids and others clearer even than Vlad’s high-definition television. Some made sound, some did not, but all moved too quickly for him to fathom what they meant.
Although his arrival had been silent, the images on every circle stopped, each one showing his exact location in perfect clarity and colour. He braced himself, twin charges crackling in his hands as he readied himself for a fight, but not a single cyclopean creature moved.
Down before the screens, a single Observant stood at a dais. It, too, remained fixed in position, staring at the images as they mirrored Vlad’s every move. Gathering his nerve, Vlad floated down the tiers, coming to a stop before that lone creature.
As one, every eye in the room trained on him.
Silence stretched across the open space, still and stifling, and Vlad’s heart pounded. Sweat prickled beneath his collar and along his hairline, and he swallowed thickly before clearing his throat.
“I-”
We know why you are here.
The words were not so much a sound as a feeling, and burned through Vlad’s already-aching bones with an icy heat that left him trembling.
We will not act.
It took Vlad a moment to find his voice. “Then tell me where to find the one who will.”
The only one who can act is yourself.
A flicker of irritation wormed its way through Vlad’s anxiety. “The Master of Time,” he hissed, willing his fangs larger and his aura hotter and smiling wickedly as he felt his core respond. “Tell me where to find him.”
The request sent an almost imperceptible ripple through the atrium’s tiers, and Vlad’s bravado dissipated as quickly as it had flared.
Do not ever seek this place again, for you will not find it.
Vlad struggled not to gasp as the air around him grew thick with crackling light, and once he could see again he was floating not before thousands of creatures straight out of nightmares, but a blacklit purple clock tower that seemed to teeter between reality and the haziness of oblivion. The building seemed less-defined in places, like a fading spectre.
Doors rose in front of him, as tall as his own home and thicker than Vlad’s forearm. They were ajar, and he knew better than to assume that it was for any other reason than that he was expected. He moved through the gap, finding himself in a gloomy foyer. The walls were lined with clocks of every imaginable shape and size, their faces all showing different times Some even had too many numbers, or too few, and some were adorned instead with shapes and symbols that Vlad couldn’t even hope to understand.
From the dark spaces between clocks, thousands of tiny red eyes gleamed.
Chewing on the inside of his cheek, Vlad floated up the spiral staircase the rose from the middle of the floor. He was careful not to stray too close to the walls, the clocks ticking in one synchronised sound that made his core tremble with its weight.
The only thing that drove him forwards was the thought of Daniel’s cold, dead body, and the grief that tightened around his ribs.
The staircase emerged through the floor of a large room, its space scattered with mirror-screens similar to the ones he had seen in the Observants’ lair. The edges of the room were dark, and Vlad could feel the oppressive power of another powerful being radiating around him.
He cleared his throat. “Master of Time, I ask for your aid.”
A shadow shifted in the corner of the room, materialising into a figure draped in a voluminous purple cloak. A hood pulled low hid the creature’s face, and clocks seemed to cover every part of its being. The largest of all was a clock that took up most of its chest, pendulum swinging behind a glass case in time with the incessant ticking that pervaded the entire lair. The creature’s arms dripped with watches, and more hung from its waist and tipped the staff clasped in its hands.
“You know that I cannot act.” The creature’s voice was soft but powerful, like a distant chime, and Vlad drew courage from its gentleness.
“I’m not asking you to,” he responded, spreading his hands wide in what he hoped was a gesture of goodwill. “All I want is a way to go back in time, to stop Daniel from… from dying.” The word sent a pang through him as tears welled in his eyes, and Vlad took a deep breath in an effort to control himself.
The Master’s sigh was like the whirring of gears. “Vladimir,” he said, “that will not be as easy as you think.”
Vlad shook his head, a single tear slipping through his defences. “I don’t care!” he growled, “I’ll do whatever’s needed to get him to maturity. After that, Daniel won’t even be able to die.”
The creature’s head tilted, and Vlad jolted as something cold wrapped around his wrist. Tearing his glove off, he stared at the simple gold watch that now rested there.
“This is all I can do for you.”
Vlad looked again at the Master, the tightness in his chest loosening ever so subtly. “I give you my thanks,” he responded.
The creature shifted, its form beginning to slip back into the shadows. “Do not,” it said, something melancholy ringing through its tone. “The path to success will be the most difficult thing that you have ever faced.”
Before Vlad could respond, the figure was gone, and the lair around him dissolved into nothingness. He was left standing on his front lawn, the stench of burning ozone in his nose and staring at the watch on his wrist.
