The Before - 00

Prologue

An inconceivable stretch of time was trapped inside two figures, barriers, two human beings.

The boy imagined, his eyes trailing them as the two forms that resembled boys, or perhaps men, began to point at something that he couldn’t see. The bigger figure flared with a bright red light, which licked at the air threateningly like the tongue of a live serpent. As if the inside of him was full of lava, a wave of heat coiled and uncoiled. There was a white flare, which soon faded into a red coverage of blinding light.

Water seemed to have built the smaller form, who was only slightly shorter. It was something that only someone who had studied him and the red man for a long time would notice. Waves after waves of turquoise and blue crashed into the humanoid barrier which contained the power of the limitless seas. Unlike the red man, the blue figure did not emit any light. Instead, it as if he were sending out silent, suppressed cries of seabirds, dolphins, and the sound of waves roaring in white fury, crashing against black rocks.

The red man’s mouth opened. He let out a gigantic roar of pain, clutching his head. It seemed as if he was not in any physical pain, but a mental one. The blue man flinched forward, then retracted his outstretched hands. They had begun to hiss and steam once they got into a certain range of heat, which had the red man as a center point.

The observing boy couldn’t hear anything, yet he imagined that he could hear a question being shouted. Why? Why? Why? Closing his eyes with effort, the boy slouched, the silent cry of anguish echoing in his head. Why?

Reaching out with a visible, malevolent purpose, the red man clutched the other figure’s shoulders tightly. The coiling and roaring crimson lava acted like a whip, snapping toward where the red touched blue.

Blue waves slowed down, and a sickly shade of rotting green replaced them instead. The relentless motions dulled. The blue man’s hands shook as he reached up in an attempt to get the red man off of his shoulders. A silent howl resonated inside him.

Three silver tracks made their way down from where the blue man’s eyes would have been, if he had any. The tears glinted against the murky green that had finished spreading.

The sea, the ghost of the blue waters whispered, bring me.

The silver tears began to smoke and turn a sickening shade of black and ashen gray. The blue man’s head slowly drooped unnaturally to fall against his own chest. A last drop of silver joined its brethren.

Bringing one hand up to clench the place above his heart, the boy sobbed for the two men. He opened his mouth, yet no sound could come out. He shook his head, feeling what the blue man had felt. A crushing longing of the sea, water and waves crashed into him heavily.

The boy could no longer see the blue and red man. He didn’t look up in time to get a glimpse of how the light around the red man faded slowly into a silent memory of shock and horror. The boy failed to observe the blue man’s last silver tear hardening into a drop of black.

Despite it, the boy’s lips moved. He clawed at his chest in a futile attempt to tear out what was bringing him a terrible time of suffer.

The sea, he managed to mouth to the terrifying silence, bring me, the sea.