Origins of Blood Chapter 2: Chapter 1: Invasion

Read chapter 2 of Origins of Blood by Bloody_Potato on NovelPedia.

Elliot’s POV—Red Blood “I saw the future only to be blinded by it.” A few years ago … The bus’s light blinds me, but it doesn’t stop me from facing it; it warms my heart through pain, like a mother’s kiss. Around me, cars, trees, and buildings; they dissolve into layers of snow, but the light—scars what they are—always remains the same. I tap the alcohol bottle to my right and chuckle as it topples over. My hands crave the lights above, and my knuckles whiten. I aim for the seat before me but stop halfway and frown, eyes blurring; the alcohol speaks. “ Fuck it all … end the God-sucking world !” My pocket vibrates. Then rings; I don’t pick it up, just stare at my dirty shoes and force a smile, eventually breaking into a cry. “Big bro got fired.” I can’t face the picture of us on the screen, his right hand resting around my shoulder; he wears a big smile, too bright and innocent. A month or two should be possible. But from March onwards … one more year and he’d be out of high school. I close my eyes, ignore the phone, and prepare myself to face the fever dream yet to come. Scarlet deepens, turning black. But the images of light never fade. —break— Whenever I enter my dreams, my body sways like a feather in the hands of a giant—some might even call them visions, as if I were a prophet . Drugs … more likely, though I never took such. I scream without a tongue, invisible walls crushing me; my eyes seem to pop—an ominous darkness seeps into the void surrounding me. It’s strange to see the darkness deepen, but again, I’m the strange one to see all this. There’s no pain, only a sense of numbness. Everything starts flickering like heat mirages on a blistering summer day. White particles rise, consume darkness, and in the far distance, a crimson glow pulses weakly. I try to swallow but fail as the particles twist and coil, fitting together like puzzle pieces. A twisted cough leaves me bleeding, and I almost choke, but it stops with an eye watching me. No, many eyes . My body gives in, and everything moves forward: the entry of any vision where I’m watching through others’ eyes. Is tonight’s oracle that I die again? That a golden moon looms and explodes? That radiant beings hover midair? Or that I’m fighting in another coliseum— Screams echo through me; hands claw at my skin. But they don’t shout at me. They pray to me. I reach upward, toward that lonely light, a tear leaving me, rivers following. The burning light consumes the void with colors that blend into nothing and everything. It flows through veins, through people, their faces vivid, and thousands of others’ memories punch me all over. Once, masses of men paint battlefields. I’m lost in it all. In another scene, a blue sun rises over the streets of a foggy town; spires protect the roads, like I shield my eyes with one hand, the other missing. Then I am trapped in a cage, flying through storms on a bird as large as a whale. Below are tsunamis and thunderstorms that consume darkness forever. With my vision distorting, I sit in a carriage drawn by horses; the man in front of me reads the news of a King’s murder. Then, there’s me, in a grand bedchamber, having killed that very King in cold blood—an amber-skinned woman trembles beside. Yet she smiles. Under the eerie sunlight, I hang; the folk cheer. The pictures come too fast to comprehend fully, and I forget most of them with a breath. But then, burning red, a man wields a thin sword, his silhouette cutting through the Red Eclipse behind him, just as he breaks me: the end and the beginning of all. So familiar but fleeting like a childhood nightmare. I turn against the images that never leave me—my skull throbs. Tears sting my eyes, though I don’t know why. With a shallow breath, the light dims, giving way to a palace soaked in blood—a table remains at the center, unchanged for what seems like millennia: ten thrones, four on each side, one at each far end; at the end of the at least thirty-foot-long table, a figure with man