Chapter 4: Chapter 3: A Colorful Void

Aiden’s POV

 

Ok, so maybe I didn’t end up making the robot or anything, but I did at least put the storyboard for the fight together, and I drew up some concept art, so it wasn’t all bad. Either way, class was over before I knew it, and now it was time for coffee with Willow. I wondered what she might want to talk to me about, especially if it couldn’t be handled over text. It didn’t really matter much to me what it was, I was just happy to get to see her.

A twinge of pain in my gut reminded me that I hadn’t had lunch yet. I’d been so wrapped up in my own thoughts that I’d just forgotten about it. Oh well, I figured I’d just grab a bagel or something before Willow arrived, I was early anyway. Toasted bread for breakfast and a slightly different toasted bread for lunch, maybe I’d make it a blueberry bagel just to say I’d eaten fruit too. I rounded a corner and began to make my way to the campus coffee shop, Beans Plus. It was situated in an open square that was used as a kind of gathering spot between most of the campus buildings. 

Then there was a flicker.

It wasn’t much, I barely even realized it happened. One moment, it was an ordinary clear day, the next it was the deepest pitch black followed by blinding white light, then in what was probably less than a quarter second, everything had returned to normal. I paused for a moment, wondering if maybe I’d just imagined it, but then I saw that other people had stopped too. We all stopped what we were doing to ponder the strange light show that had just taken place. Seconds ticked by, everyone slowly began returning to what they’d been doing, it was as though nothing had happened at all.

Then reality caved in around me. The world turned to watercolor, and those colors smeared and blended together. I collapsed onto the ground as wracking pains coursed through my body, but the ground wasn’t the ground anymore. It was a pulsing void swirling with all the colors imaginable, and plenty more besides. I felt fire pour into my lungs, as though the sun from my dreams was right on top of me again, I coughed and heaved, and a splash of red entered the void I had collapsed onto. Red mixed with blue as blue mixed with yellow, but somehow neither purple or green were the result. The colors overlaid and flickering on top of each other as my brain tried to process the impossible. I closed my eyes in a vain effort to shield myself from the collapse of everything I knew, and then just as quickly as it all began, the pain and confusion faded away. There was solid ground beneath me again, and colors once again held meaning, my body was sore, but it no longer felt like splitting apart, and the agonizing shrieks that stretched on to infinity gave way to the screams of ordinary people, crying for help.

Correction, the pain had faded, but the confusion was still very present. What the hell was that? Why do I taste iron? And perhaps most importantly, why is everyone still screaming?