Otherworld ventured anywhere near the endless black. Only Dana, as Mother Nature; Tempus, as Father Time; and Tanda, as Death, could travel the roads of infinity. Which is what the other two must be doing, Dana thought to herself, because they were nowhere to be found in Otherworld. “I had an epiphany. Finally. We need to talk. Come on, give me a break, huh? So I made a boo boo. It is not like you both have not been there and done that yourselves,” she yelled. Silence met her ears and she was just ramping herself up to taunt them again when a voice from behind startled her.
“I think they’re fucking with you.”
Dana yelped, spinning and sending some of her power outward in a defensive motion. The young man in front of her merely smiled and caught the raw elemental magic between his hands. “You …” Dana began, finding her mouth too dry to continue.
“My name is Gaias,” the man spoke once more.
“Gaias?” Dana repeated. Feeling a rush of air at her back, she turned to see Tempus and Tanda. The pair looked exactly the same as they had for eons. Tempus had a real silver fox look going for him with silver hair and a short, trimmed matching beard. His eyes were impossibly blue and the few wrinkles he had were on his forehead, around his eyes and near his mouth, attesting to a life lived with many smiles and much laughter. Tanda was almost his polar opposite. Dark skin, smooth and blemish free, with a completely bald, shiny head. His eyes were as black as obsidian, only lighting up with gold and silver when his powers were active. That was not to say they lacked warmth, however. Tanda was a good man, and an affectionate one. But he was very choosy with whom he gave his friendship to.
“What is going on?” Dana demanded, looking askance at Gaias.
Tanda didn’t smile with his mouth but Dana could detect warmth and humour in his eyes when he replied, “Don’t you recognise him?”
“Of course, I recognise him!” Dana snapped at one of her oldest and dearest friends. She turned to Gaias and held out her arms. To her relief, the young man stepped straight into them and hugged her just as hard as she hugged him. She was not ashamed of the few tears that escaped, and she gave a small laugh as she pulled back, taking in the visage of the fair-haired, green-eyed youth in front of her. “I do not understand.”
“Your daughter set him free when she killed Emmanuel. I simply helped him into a body,” Tanda offered.
Dana shook her head, unable to comprehend what Tanda was telling her. Once, many, many years ago, Dana had birthed pure souls. The souls were nothing but energy and never destined to reside in a physical body. The souls were like children to her because she created them with her own body. But she did not carry them as she had with Max, nor were they made with the aid of another. Custodians were made by pure power with the purpose of being pure power. She had intended for there to always be one custodian on Earth at all times. Their presence was to be a balancing factor for the rapidly changing nature of the planet. But after a time, when the vulnerable souls kept getting lost or destroyed, Dana had not used her powers to create more. But somehow, Gaias, the flesh and blood man standing before her, was the last custodian she had ever created. The custodian who had been consumed by the infected warden, Emmanuel, and cursed to live on inside of the beast for decades.
“Max set you free?” she asked Gaias directly.
“She did. When she went supernova. She set all of us free. All of the souls Emmanuel had been collecting,” Gaias informed her.
“And I, being in charge of where souls go, decided the custodian deserved a body of their own,” Tanda explained.
“And I, being in charge of all things time, decided now was the time for him to step up,” Tempus added.
Dana shook her head, “Step up? As what?”
Tempus smiled, “As your protégé of course.”
“And that is when I had a nervous breakdown,” Dana concluded to her audience of one. Bert scuttled around the back of her hand, his tiny legs tickling her skin and making her smile. “It seems I now have choices. Choices I had no idea were even a possibility. Is it not refreshing to