Call of Kerberos: Twilight of Kerberos, The - Jonathan Oliver Page 0,66

very little of what had been said. All his questions and doubts had been replaced with new questions and doubts. He was no more aware than he had been of who was right about the nature of the azure giant; the Final Faith, the followers of the Many Paths, or the priests of the Allfather. In a sense he knew that there was a grain of truth in all of their beliefs but, at the same time, he realised that they all had a long way to go before they could claim to truly know Kerberos.

Silus rose into the void and looked towards Twilight. To his left the sun blazed away, great geysers of fire shooting out into the eternal night. Twilight caught the light and reflected it back and, feeling the pull on his body, Silus moved towards home.

However, something was rising over Kerberos's horizon. Something that Silus only began to see as a deeper darkness moving against the sea of stars. Then, as it rolled towards him, he could see that it was a pitch-black sphere. It was about an eighth the size of Kerberos and utterly featureless, its smooth surface reflecting the light of the sun like polished onyx.

This was the blight that marred the face of Kerberos.

There was a sudden sense of disorientation and Silus found himself looking down on the black terrain of this strange new world, with Kerberos now looming above him. He tried to will himself towards home and his body, but the dark moon dragged him down until he came to rest on its surface.

He sensed movement behind him then. Silus turned to see an arm reaching up through the ground. No, that wasn't quite right, he decided. The arm was in fact forming itself from the ground, the very terrain shaping itself into the semblance of a limb. Another arm rose beside it and then the ground between them bulged as a head, and then a torso, pulled themselves free.

The thing looked up at him as it coalesced, and its face was as smooth and featureless as the dark moon itself. As it rose to stand over him, the only thing to define it against the night-black background was the reflection of the stars on its obsidian flesh.

Silus prepared to defend himself before realising that there was nothing for the creature to attack. He had no body.

"What are you?"

The thing's blank face began to form itself into his own.

"Please, don't do that. You don't know me."

There was the sound of the ground breaking behind him and he turned to see another figure pulling itself together from the surface of the moon. This one coalesced into Katya's form. Something crawled out of the ground beside her and when she picked it up, he saw that it was a mockery of his son. As Zac looked at him with its eyes of pitch, fear overtook Silus and he desperately tried to find the link to his body, but when he reached out, there was nothing.

"What do you want with me? What are you?"

We are the Great Ocean. The three figures said with one voice. We are the endless sea. We are the father of the creatures you call the Chadassa. The creatures whose blood run in your veins.

"But I don't understand what you want with me."

Silus, your birth was the start. You are the herald for a new age of the Chadassa. The time of the endless ocean.

"How? Look, you have driven me from my home. You have caused the deaths of people I care about deeply. You owe me an explanation."

We agree. Too much has been hidden from you. It is only right that you are made to understand. Maybe then you will submit to us with gladness when you realise just how important you are.

"How can I be so important?"

Look, said the Katya facsimile, holding out the thing that looked like Zac.

Silus didn't want to look at the thing. It wasn't his son. But when it smiled and said his name, he found himself falling into the bottomless pits of its eyes.

As Silus was dragged far into the past he tried to scream, but he had no mouth.

It felt as though he fell forever, but he didn't fall far.

As he came out of his tumble, he saw that Kerberos still turned slowly above him and Twilight still sat against its blanket of stars.

Something was different though and it wasn't just that the dark moon was no longer there to cast its