Hellstinger

7. ...undeserved...

"Oh my God!" Marcus gasped, panting with such intensity he had to bend over and continuously beat his chest to catch his breath. "Oh God."

He sighed after a minute of panting, he finally let himself fall on his buttocks and rest.

The first thing that registered is the coolness that can only come from fresh air and green vegetation. Marcus frowned, still breathing heavily but now in regulated heaves. The last thing he remembered was seeing that old man rise from his mirror self's torn-up body. And now he is in a small clearing in the middle of nowhere wearing only tattered suede trousers and a pair of Dior sneakers.

"Where. The. Hell. Am I?" Marcus slowly stands on his feet. Although shaky from exhaustion, Marcus will himself stand straight.

"HELLO!"

No response.

"HELLO is anyone around here!?" Everywhere was eerily quiet, not even a bird could be heard. Even the stream just two feet before him made no sounds as it flowed past.

"Well, then it is official." He said with a half-hearted laugh, "Marc C Hellstinger has gone insane."

"But you are not." The voice sounded very familiar and perhaps too familiar. Marcus turns slowly in the direction of the cave and standing in the middle of its entrance is the Old man. And he is not wearing just any ragged clothing, he is wearing medieval-looking battle gear with the family crest of the Hellstinger generations bold on his chest.

"You!" He said simply. Marcus moved quickly, crossed the stream, and tried to attack the old man.

He tried a right hook that just went right through the old man as though he was holographic, making Marcus lose his balance and stumble into the side of the cave entryway.

"Ugh!" He groaned, panting in exhaustion and the idea of even trying to stand up was lost to him as he let himself slide down to the floor and rest his back against the wall. "Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?"

"You know who I am." The old man said simply and walked surprisingly fast to disappear behind the blanket of blackness that enveloped the insides of the cave. "Come, your destiny awaits."

"My destiny is out of this damn forest!" The Old man was already gone, leaving Marcus alone at the entrance of the cave; confused and fatigued.

"You...you what?" Marcus said, readjusting himself on the floor to rest as comfortably as possible in the forest floor. "I will just stay here for a sec. Come get me when you're done."

But one thing lingered in his mind as he tried to dismiss everything with nonchalance. The Hellstinger family crest.

He closed his eyes and tried to distinguish which of the memories playing in his head was actually his;

"Ah fuck." Marcus signed. He wasn't going to get an answer to his troubles by resting now. Although he has no idea where he is, when he left, or how long he trekked to get here, the least he could do is follow Old man and maybe get answers to what is going on with him.

"Fucking brain, always bringing up reasonable decisions when I don't need them." He mumbled to himself as he summoned the willpower to push himself up and enter the cave.

"Old man!" He called upon entering the pitch-black cave, "Where are you? I can't see shit."

Marcus took careful steps forward with both of his hands trailing along the cave walls;

"Old man!"

Marcus was just about ready to turn back out and find his way out of the forest, after a considerable sleepy time of course. He took the last step before deciding to turn around, but there was no ground.

Marcus yelped as he lost his balance and fell into pitch blackness, again. He screamed for fifteen whole seconds, falling head over heels down before he bounced on a stalactite and rolled to a watery floor.

"Ugh uh eh, Lexy!" He sobbed in pain and fatigue as he settled on his back, panting and shaking with adrenaline. "Lexy!" He moaned in pain.

For the better part of ten minutes, Marcus lay in the shallow water on the floor sprawled out like a rag, panting and groaning with an ever-present ache, tingling sensations from his bruises, pain and itch from his wounds, and constant discomfort in his eyes as something seems to be skittering around in his eyeballs.

He blinked several times, and the more he blinked the brighter the pitch blackness gave way to light. Turns out he has fallen several meters down into a cavern.

There is no opening from anywhere that could allow light into the cavern, and yet Marcus could see just as clear as day. The cavern he had fallen into is a huge one; several meters high and spanning a wide area with massive, as well as smaller, stalagmites shooting up. The roof had a weird glow to it, and even from his position meters away, he could see the intricate designs of eroded rock and a luminous fluid slithering around them.

"Get up son," the Old man's voice brought Marcus out of his observation. He sat up to see the Old man standing a few meters away at the center of the cavern with a single thread of the luminous fluid rising in a constant stream.

But that wasn't the sight that got Marcus hooked;

"That..." He pointed out behind the old man at the same bow he had seen in his memories. "That bow...that...I saw it."

He jumped to his feet and approached the Old man; "what is this place? Why do I remember a bow that is clearly magic stuff and I remember a whole lot of other stuff? What is going on?"

"You have come a long way son," The Old man said, stepping aside to allow Marcus to step out of the water and onto an outcrop. "Go and receive your answers."

Marcus followed the Old man's outstretched hand to the unstrung bow hovering in mid-air with a thin single stream of luminous fluid rising from the dry ground to coil around it and then continue up to the roof to slither around.

"This..." He hesitated. As he observed the bow and its loose string, he could literally see stories of war, battles won and battles lost, woven into the material of the bow. He could hear the shrieks of demons as they were struck by its magical energy, he could see the deaths of the Hellstingers who had wielded the bow for generations past, and he could see himself stringing the bow and becoming who he was born to become.

"Shit!" Marcus said, taking several frantic steps away from the bow and splashing water around as he trembled under its power. He didn't stop until his back hit a stalagmite;

"That...th...it is not right. I don't deserve that kind of power." He said, his eyes still fixated on the bow.

"No, you don't." The Old man said. "You are the worst of us Junior, the only Hellstinger without as much of a spine as a mundane human. But you are still one of us, the last of us, and whether you want it or not, the power of the Hellstinger bow now belongs to you. Accept it or watch your world burn."

As soon as the words registered in Marcus, his vision changed and the cavern terraformed into a midtown battlefield, destroyed and dotted with the bodies of dead soldiers, civilians, and demons.

>< >< ><

...he saw him, the demon god, smiling down at him with the Hellstinger bow broken in his hands.

"You have failed Hellstinger," The demon god said, "you have failed to to stop me."

But it wasn't over yet, there was still a last resort. He watched behind the demon god as his wife jumped into the portal that had brought the demon god into this plane of existence. He smiled.

"Guess what, you and I still have a lot to catch up on." Before the demon god could register his meaning, a blinding light shone from behind them, disarming the demon god and making him weak.

Immediately, he rose and pushed the demon god back into the portal…

>< >< ><

"No!" Marcus came back to his present. He remembers. He remembers that morning, the morning of the solar eclipse twenty-four years ago. He and his wife had sacrificed themselves to send the demon god back to the Ether life.

Except that wasn't Marcus, that wasn't his wife, and that wasn't his fight.

"This is your fight now Hellstinger," He heard the Old man say. he looked up but he was no longer there or anywhere, and yet, his voice echoed on. "Your protector will tell you all there is to know, arise Hellstinger, and protect us all."

"Ah, fuzz buckets." Marcus groaned, as he finally understood what was at stake. He doesn't know what is at stake, but he understands it. And that only made it more ominous.

"I should have just listened to Lexy and stayed the fuck away from this darn City."