The travel between Aeyis and Earth hadn't gone as planned.
The spell spit him onto the pavement of a somewhat familiar street. He felt like he should know it - the designs of the buildings were almost right, the street layout nearly identical and the stores familiar. But there was something wrong with everything; the colors were off, and names were replaced with slightly different ones.
And then there was the matter of his hair.
His clothes were already suited for a trip to Earth, but his hair wasn't its usual mix of black and white, or even blond. It was entirely black. The length was the same, and so was the thickness, but the coloring was entirely thrown off.
He unsteadily got to his feet.
He didn't know where he was, but he had to figure out soon - if he didn't, then he would miss the small window of time he had to check up on Matt.
The steady rhythm of drums and a melodic bass line rang in Matt's ears as his feet pounded against the pavement, his world having become enveloped by the movement and the sound. The fear, the confusion, the feeling of disconnection he'd become so used to living with, all melted away into the intense physicality of each and every deliberate movement.
It'd been almost a year since his return from Aeyis, but somehow he still felt so...separate from his home. His life here--his relationships, his work, his school, his everything--had been stalled for the better part of a decade. Yet, the world had kept moving on without him. The iPhone was several versions ahead where it'd used to be. There was a new president. Every game he'd been so involved in was at least two generations old. His friends had made new ones, gone to college, began a career.
Then there was Matt. Still alone, except for his father, who cared for his son and worried about him but couldn't understand his troubles. Still behind the times, still trying to catch up in school so he could have a life, still not sure who he was or what he was supposed to do or what things were supposed to be now that the singular goal he'd lived on for years had finally been achieved. He was in a new body, a new world, a new track, in the continuation of a life he no longer lived. The only person who could even begin to understand his troubles was the one who'd gotten him into it in the first place, and though Matt found himself beginning to forgive Kartiel, facing him still seemed more daunting than anything. What were is troubles compared to the god's? How could he hope to make things up? Could he find it in himself to trust him again, after he'd turned Matt's life upside down and thrown it into a chaos that he'd never really recover from?
Could Kartiel forgive him for how Matt had treated him at first?
Could Matt even blame himself for that?
He had more questions than answers. He felt like a spectator in his own life. His father had tried to help him, talk to him, figure it out. His mother had, too, though somehow her presence had just made things worse and more complicated. Eamon had even tried getting him into therapy, but after two sessions Matt had told him that he wasn't going to go anymore. That he'd be fine.
He wasn't, but, in moments like these--when it was just him, the music, and the movement--it seemed like maybe he could be.
The streets were silent at this time of night. Everything seemed a little more muted around him. A bit more gray, monotone, subtle. Quiet, even as the cars hummed below him. It reminded him a little of how things had been on Aeyis on those wintery, twilit evenings, with the green and violet ribbons of whatever its version of the Aurora Borealis was and a few stars twinkling on the horizon like candles glittering in some deep subterranean cavern. No matter what world he was in, it seemed like dusk was a time that demanded reverence. It was when the day gave way to night and when the nocturnal creatures made their way from deep caves and great trees to traverse the surface world and the beasts of the day sought shelter. When a soft, comforting blanket of tranquility fell across everything, be it man, monster, or beast.
Matt slowed as he reached the top of the hill the winding trail led him over. A bench sat nearby--one that he wouldn't trust with any weight at all--and the trees whispered secrets only they knew in the breeze. He pulled his earbuds out and breathed in the crisp air. It was cleaner up here, than down in the city, something he'd never really appreciated until his journey through Aeyis and the other worlds that he'd never quite learned the names of. He slipped his spectacles off and took in the sight below him: the vast, sprawling cityscape scattered with brilliant lights of countless colors, a modern rainbow that seemed so distant now.
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
That was going to make things difficult. Without knowing what this Earth was like, he couldn't begin to guess how he was going to get where he was supposed to. He'd have to find artifacts, or rely on unpredictable magic - it was hard to tell how (and when) he was going to get back home.
So he resigned himself to getting a hotel room in a place near where he had ended up, and went out to do a little more digging.
The sky twisted around him in a sudden spell of vertigo, flashes of color spinning around him as his feet slipped away. Green, gray, neon lights, dark branches, twisting and turning about him--
And then it was over. He sat on his knees, palms against the grassy earth as his breath came out in short bursts. What happened? He blinked and slowly stumbled back to his feet. Everything seemed more or less the same. Maybe he just hadn't had enough water, and pushed himself too hard.
But something felt wrong. Too wrong.
Mattathias wished for a fleeting moment that he still had Nerezzar's wings, or even his eyes, just so he could understand his surroundings. Maybe a spell, so he could assess things on another level. But now he was a mere mortal. Nothing more, nothing less, and so instead of wasting time with such flights of fancy, he turned around and ran back down the twisting trail to the city.
Soon, the unkept asphalt beneath his feet turned to smooth cement and finally into sidewalk as he made his way back home. Something had changed, somehow. Maybe it was just him. Get home, get some sleep, get some food and some water, and he should be fine.
Right?
Finally he came to a stop in front of his apartment. He grabbed his keys from his pocket and put them to the lock--
It didn't fit. He frowned, and tried again. Once more, the key stopped before it was even halfway in. What...?
He descended the stairs and made his way to the parking lot. Maybe he could stay at his father's house for the night, since it was too late for him to contact the office. Was it just him, or was his car not there?
Was he going crazy?
He needed to get somewhere. At this point, it didn't matter. He just needed to figure out if things were...right. For a fleeting moment, he contemplated calling Keith, but something stopped him. If he couldn't figure this out in twenty-four hours, he'd revisit the idea, but until then...he could jog to Eamon's house. It was about ten minutes away by car, so it shouldn't take too long to arrive on foot. He'd just have to keep moving so he wasn't viewed as an easy target by the human predators that roamed these streets at night.
Matt picked up the pace again, the adrenaline that came from the edging fear beginning to kick in and giving him the energy he needed. Down the street, take a left, around the corner, a right, past the motel.
There was a muffled scream. Many might've dismissed it as some strange sound in the night, but after living as Nerezzar for so long, he knew a scream when he heard one. That was a human, in distress, nearby.
He spun around, searching the shadows and making his way towards the noise. His senses heightened and everything seemed to go in slow-motion as he approached and his heart pounded in his ears.
Another squeal, this one more muffled than the last, but definitely coming from the alleyway.
Matt crept closer, listening. There were footsteps, deep chuckles, the voices of men--multiple men. How many? Three, maybe? Four?
He wished he had a knife. Claws. Anything.
But he didn't, and someone was getting hurt, and he couldn't just let this happen. Come on, Nerezzar...I know you're still in there. Just let me remember how to fight, for real, even in this body.
Please.
And with that final prayer to some being that didn't even truly exist, he stepped around the corner.
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
He didn't go far, at first. He just lingered in the hotel's lobby. He was thankful he had packed so much money on him before heading off to his Earth - the hotel was incredibly high class, and its people were elite. He despised the culture of Earth's rich, but there was one thing he never could get enough of.
The gossip.
He listened in to the different conversations, trying to sort out important information. Most of them were talking about scandals, but there was a surprising lack of cheating stories. There should have been a plethora of them; there always was.
And that's when he first heard the word.
Soulmate.
He had heard the word before. He had even used it himself, back after the experiment. But the way the people were talking made it sound like everyone had a soulmate, and all you had to do was write on your arm to find them.
Which didn't really help that much, since he wasn't from here.
Still, he had a little bit of curiosity he needed to satisfy. He got a pen from a table - the room seemed to be littered with them - and wrote as neat as he could in black ink, "Hello."
Then he rolled his sleeve back down and departed from the lobby, having exhausted his sources of information there.
"HEY!" The word left his mouth with unexpected force, echoing in the alleyway and ringing back at him. Four men in the back of the alley turned towards him, and the shadow of a girl slunk away. She looked a little knocked around, but not seriously injured, and she still was fully clothed--he'd at least averted the worst of it.
The moment of satisfaction was quickly replaced by a flash of fear as he suddenly began to realize what he'd walked into. The four men were much larger than him, far more muscular, and had he been facing but a single one he would've been concerned. With four of them, against him...
S***.
Too late to back out now, though.
"That's no way to treat a lady," Matt continued, moving into a more balanced stance. "Didn't your mothers teach you manners?"
"This ain't none of your concern," one snarled as they fanned out. "You shouldn' have gotten involved."
"What can I say, I'm a gentleman," he replied, heart pounding in his ears as the one who'd been speaking came up in his face. Matt neared his height but he somehow still felt looming.
Things became a blur. He wasn't sure what happened first. All he knew is that a fist was flying towards his face, and that's when he went on the move. Everything became instinct, pure and simple, the muscle memory kicking back in from his skills he'd learned as Nerezzar. Dodging, weaving, slipping in and out of the melee.
But not fast enough.
One of the men seized him, slamming him into the wall and slamming his fist into Matt's face. He fell to the ground, a boot met his rib, the wind left his lungs. Everything sharpened, slowed, and he felt something...click.
Something familiar.
Talons met the calf of the man who'd kicked him, and crimson blood spilled to the ground. Someone yelled; another screamed. They fell back, they ran, he went after them, and the next thing he knew he was kneeling over a body with blood covering his hands and arms and body.
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
The world outside was dark - even with the somewhat improved senses that gods had compared to humans, he still struggled to make out little more than figures in the darkness. A figure - a young girl, maybe - slipped off farther down the street as the screams continued to ring out until the world was plunged into silence.
He took a deep breath and readied a spell on the tip of his tongue. He wasn't sure what kind. It was just the beginning syllables; he could change what he was going to say when he got closer and figured out what was going on.
That was when he stepped into the blood.
There was a body on the ground before him, and its killer so close that he could hear the quiet, soft breaths. He looked up from the body into an all too familiar face.
His breath caught and he stumbled back, reeling from the disorientation and the adrenaline and the wild torrent of fear and anger and that visceral, predatory drive that wasn't his. Or maybe it was. What was he, anymore?
His shoe slipped in the slick blood and he fell, red staining his pale shirt and sweat shorts. Its metallic scent pierced his nostrils and he felt himself beginning to panic, flashes of memory from Aeyis going through his mind one after another. Smoke, fire, blood. Death, screams, shadows. The night closing in, the yells of pursuit, the bodies--
"Matt?"
Mattathias' head jerked up and he came face-to-face with Kartiel. His eyes widened and he stumbled back a little, his chest rising and falling in quick, shallow breaths. "K-Keith?"
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
He stepped over the body, trying his best to ignore the nauseous feeling in his chest at the sight. It didn't matter that he was thousands of years old; he had never been comfortable with seeing death.
"Matt, it's okay," he reassured him in a soft, soothing. The nausea was getting replaced by something else - guilt. There was no way Matt could have done what had been done to the body. That had been Nerezzar. And if it really was that part of Matt, the death was just as much of his fault as it was Matt's.
Because he had been the one to give him that form in his actual body.
"What happened?" he asked. He took a few more steps so he was closer to Matt, muttering the words to a spell underneath his breath. The bloodied clothing was quickly cleaned by magic - there was no reason for an onlooker to ever think that Matt was responsible for the death.
Matt struggled to breathe through the tightness in his chest. He was shaking, trembling, from some mix of the adrenaline and the overwhelming sense of fear that flooded his senses. He got to his feet unsteadily, glancing at the body before quickly turning away, pale as a ghost.
"I...I...H-h-h-he...I-I c-c-couldn't--th-they w-were h-h-h-h--" he cut himself off, unable to get the words out through his stutter. "Wh-wh-wh-what's h-happen-ening?" He asked, finally making eye contact with Kartiel despite everything.
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
Matt was so startled that he was stuttering. Kartiel couldn't remember the last time he had heard him do that - Matt always seemed so calm and collected now, or at least less terrified than he had been before and during Aeyis.
"Matt, I'm..I..." He faltered, his gaze dropping down to the ground. It lingered on the body. He had to remind himself that it was his responsibility to own up to his mistake - a mistake that hadn't been entirely his own, but one that he had never fully addressed. "It's all my fault. I-I..."
He took a deep breath.
"I spent time in different bodies than my actual one," he said, "but it was never as long as it was for you. I don't know how or why, but being in another body left a mark on your soul. It...It changed it. You haven't changed as a person, but what you are has changed...."
He kept staring at the body.
"...I don't think you're as human as you were before," he said, gaze focused on the claw marks. "I...I saw the differences when I was transferring your soul back to your actual body, but I...I thought it would be okay. I thought that it wouldn't ever affect you, or that it would show up if you were danger to protect you. That's...That's how magic always works."
He finally glanced up at Matt.
"I'm sorry," he apologized. "I know I keep telling you that, and I know that it never cuts it. But, god, I'm sorry for always-"
There, on Matt's arm, was a very familiar looking word.
"Hello," it said, in handwriting that Kartiel knew all too well.
No, no, no. This was all some cruel joke. Matt, his soulmate? That was impossible - Matt had no reason to care for him anymore, and what had just happened certainly proved how terrible of a combination they'd make.
He made sure his sleeve was rolled all the way down, and hid the offending arm behind his back.
He looked down at his shaking hands, the ones that had been covered with blood but a moment before. The assassin was still there. Still a part of him. His talons, his wings, his darkness.
Keith's words rang in his ears. It felt distant, almost, echoed in his thoughts with a stark, painful reality. It wasn't the first time he'd killed but it was the first time since Aeyis, and it was the first time he felt so...possessed. Before, he'd made a choice. This time it just...happened.
"We need to go," he finally said, voice steadying a little. "Before the police show up."
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
His body was moving on autopilot as he led Matt away from the body and towards the hotel, trying to ignore how terrified Matt was with the whole situation. "I have a hotel room," he said. "We can go there. But...just be alert. We're not on your Earth anymore. We have to be on another one."
Matt nodded mutely, trying to push the fear and confusion and guilt away. Right now, he had to worry about getting caught. Another Earth. Another world. Again.
That should've made it all come pouring back. The panic, that he'd only barely subverted, but somehow it didn't. He didn't feel...anything. Just numb. That happened, sometimes, when crisis hit, like when the demon hunters had caught him on Aeyis for the first time.
He had no doubt his emotions would be back soon enough, for better or for worse. The young man fell in behind Kartiel and followed him down the street in silence.
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
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