30(S3E4)-The Hard Part

30

(Season 3, Episode 4)

The Hard Part

2 days before the instant…

Anyone who has spent any part of their life battling depression knows that the hardest part is waking up.  When suffering from depression, sleep is the last bastion of peace for the victim, a true and pure escape from the voices in his or her head that look to destroy them from the inside out.  Waking up is a conscious decision to return to that world of self-torture.  While this most recent sleep had been forced on him, it did not make it any easier for Zachariah to open his eyes.

Slowly and steadily, Zach propped himself up from the hard, cobblestone ground on which he was laying.  He was in a church in severe disrepair and abandon.  He laid eyes on the ninja with whom he had come to have a very heart felt love/hate relationship.  Kahn was staring down at him.  Her emotionless face gave away nothing as she saw Zachariah awaken.  “He is awake.”

“Good, good.”  Zachariah turned towards the face and saw Mel standing there, looking at him.

Zachariah groaned.  “Not you two again.  Every time you two show up, shit goes to hell.”

“So this isn’t the first time shit like this has happened?”  The voice came from Scott who had been relaxing on a church pew, waiting for Zachariah to come around.

Scott looked more than a little confused and Zachariah cringed.  “Well, there was some stuff…  I may have not told you.”

Scott nodded.  “Yeah, I should say so, like ninjas, druids and monsters made of bugs.”

Zachariah shrugged.  “In my defense, that last thing is new.”

Scott’s face became a brick of hard stone.  “How about the suicide?”

Zachariah looked away from Scott’s gaze in shame and a hush fell over the church.  The silence was broken by Beven.  “Well, this is awkward.”

There was a crackle of what seemed to be lightening and Mel doubled over with pain.  “We don’t have the time to work out your friendly trust issues.”

Kahn went to the dwarf’s side and helped him to his feet.  “The Dahaka has arrived.”

Scott stood.  “That bug thing?”

“Bug thing?”  Zachariah was confused.

Scott turned.  “Yeah, your bed bugs tried to kill us.”

Zachariah shrugged.  “They have been trying to kill me for weeks now.”

Scott shook his hand.  “NO!  I mean they talked and tried to kill us with the collective hands.”

“That is confusing.”  Zachariah said while standing up.

The lighting crackled again and Mel seemed to be in pain again.  “It is alright but I can only protect you for so long.”

“What the hell is going on?”  Scott finally asked the important question.

Mel nodded.  “It is time… time to be honest with you, Zachariah.”

Zachariah took a deep breath.  “Come on?  What more could there possibly be Mel?  Huh?  You tried to feed me to a wyvern.  You tried me for murder, which I did commit, or at least ‘evil, other dimension me’, oh and to top it off, my soulmate was a succubus.  What else could there possibly be?!”

Mel took a deep breath.  “Your soul is a prison for the four horseman of the apocalypse.”

Zachariah stared for a long time in silence.  “The, what now?”

“The four horsemen of the apocalypse.”  Mel repeated.

“All four of them?”  Zachariah asked.

“Kind of a package deal aren’t they?”  Bevan scoffed.

Mel ignored Bevan.  “Well, three now.  One has already freed itself.”

“Bug guy?”  Scott asked, still confused.

“Bug guy.”  Bevan quipped sarcastically.  “The horseman of Plague is the bug guy…nice.”

Scott managed to give him a hard look.

Zachariah remained locked onto to Mel.  His wheels began to turn.  “The wyvern, Zersch.”

Mel could tell Zachariah had come to the right conclusion.  “It was never about keeping a monster at bay.  Sure, Zersch was powerful but a tank would have put him down easily enough.  It was about making sure the Rognaithe never made it to his twenty-fifth birthday.”

Zachariah shook his head.  “And why is that?”

Mel sighed.  “Because it would be then, that his soul would weaken enough that the Horseman would be able to escape and reform here on Earth.”

“So, I am literally a walking Armageddon?”  Zachariah asked.  No one answered though, because no one had an answer.  When it came right down to it, that was exactly what he was.

Mel put up his hands.  “Everyone, calm down and listen.”

When he felt he had the room, Mel went into it.  “In the time that humanity and the creatures of magic had only begun to find there place in the world, unaware that even the smallest action had consequence, a creature was created out of the negative energy that was created in the wake of Death.  This creature named himself after the phenomena, in order to give himself even more power over the beings of Earth.  This creature hungered for Death and the energy created by it.  He sustained himself with it and when he realized he could only do so much on his own, he sired three offspring; War, Famine, and Plague.  These creatures, imbued with almost the level of power of death, helped to create more with their own forces.”

Mel broke for a second to wince in pain again.  This time, Zachariah was concerned.  “What the hell is doing that to you?”

“I’m getting there.”  Mel said, gritting his teeth and continuing his story.  “The most powerful Nexs in the world banded together to stop the Four Horsemen.  They found destroying them to be impossible, so instead, they bound them to a soul, the first Rognaithe, who then gave himself to Zersch in order to stop the madness of the horsemen.  This was only a temporary solution, however, as the soul attached to the horseman was so powerful it would remain in the life stream and be reincarnated every 1000 years. Knowing that a human soul would not be able to maintain its hold over the beings after its twenty-fifth birthday, the Druid’s decided they would have to find the soul and destroy it before that happened.”

“Cathleen.”  Zachariah said as a twinge of pain and guilt hit him.  Another body, another lost life because of him.

Mel nodded.  “But that is not all.  There was a group of the most powerful Nexs in all the land.  They worked for years to invent a spell called the ‘Dahaka’.  They stepped into the Time, a chamber where all time intersects, and cast the spell trapping themselves in that state for eternity.”

Zachariah eyeballed him hard.  “What does the spell do?”

Mel took a deep breath.  “It is said that when the first Horseman reveals himself, the spell will summon a creature, a creature made of the energy that makes up the universe.  That creature will seek out the father of the horseman, and when it finds him, it will erase him from time itself.”

Zachariah stared and Bevan felt the need to chime in.  “Heavy, huh?”

“So, let me get this straight.”  They turned to Scott, having forgotten he was there.  Being an outsider, they had dismissed him as unimportant.  “Zach is the Rognaithe.  That means he has the four horseman inside him and on his twenty-fifth birthday, they are strong enough to break free, which is why the Druids…”

Scott pointed at Bevan and Bevan nodded, “Yep, us.”

“…were supposed to kill him, but they failed.  So now, there is a time eating monster attempting to get to him to erase him from time before the Horseman can get free and that is what you are protecting him from?”

Mel reviewed the summary then nodded.  “Yeah, that is about it.”

Zachariah watched his oldest friend process the complete and total rearranging of how he believed the world was.  Zachariah himself thought back to when he had first learned of magic and Zersch and how hard it had been for him to process, he could only guess at-

“How do we stop it?”  Scott said abruptly, stopping Zachariah’s train of thought.

They all stared and Zachariah questioned.  “Buddy, you seem to be handling this pretty well.”

“Look.”  Scott said with purpose.  “This is all insane, which could mean I’m insane and none of this is real, but I don’t have time to consider that option right now.  I’m assuming he can’t keep this spell up forever from the grimaces he keeps making, so we need to resolve this as fast as possible.  If I wake up along the way I get my answer.”

Bevan chuckled.  “Oh, he’s a fun one, isn’t he?”

So, the gang is set to quest one more time to save Zachariah’s existence.  The question remains, does Zachariah want to be saved?  Can they outrun destiny and the Dahaka?  Can they do it before Zachariah loses control and releases another horseman?!

Hey, there were some jokes this time!

Find out next time on…

STRANGER THINGS-Zachariah’s Death

TO BE CONTINUED…