The Alphabet Superset: Week 12: Lack of Empathy

Reference Link: https://stock.adobe.com/search/images?k=angel+with+sword

    Alexander and Blake watched as Kasen practiced with a beat maker, alternating between the buttons to find a beat he wanted. They sat in the front row of concrete benches in front of the outdoor stage while Kasen was up on the stage. The main lights were off since there was no official show or practice on. Instead, the stage and seat were dimly lit by street lights that lined the sidewalks around the theater. The theater itself was constructed like a hole in the ground, with the sidewalks at ground level.

    Alexander and Blake had managed to convince Kasen to drop the on stage sword fight, referencing that it might distract from his awesome music and lighting. Kasen agreed a little too enthusiastically before he had changed the subject. Alexander and Blake could tell that Kasen was still bothered by the fight a couple of weeks ago, so they tried their best to avoid doing things that might bring back the memories. The school's investigation was still ongoing and Kasen had made no effort to hide his concern about the school's decision.

    The investigation was bugging Alexander too. If there was one thing everyone agreed on, it was that Paladins never lied. If one sensed the presence of a demon on him, the school was bound to get curious. If the school found out that Alexander had made a deal for his magical powers, then his future at the school was in danger.

    Blake had ended up taking the reigns on the situation. He got Kasen hyped up for the talent show and busied Alexander with helping him out. While they had dropped the sword performance angle, Blake had taken the time to come up with a training routine for him and Alexander. Blake had told him it was because he wanted a workout buddy, but he suspected that Blake was worried about him freezing up during the fight. Alexander didn't question it and Blake kept up the act. All in all, it had been a rough couple of weeks.    

    "What is that?" Kasen asked, looking past Alexander and Blake. At the same time, the two stood when they saw streaks of sickly yellow light shooting into the air behind the stage. As the three glanced around, they watched the streaks become a massive eye in the sky above the magical circle that constantly hovered over the school. The eye closed and began to open. As the eye reopened, a wall of eyes was slowly revealed. Eyes of every color. Eyes that looked in hundreds of directions. A wall that seemed to move and pulse. 

    The sounds of chaos began to erupt around the three boys. They could hear students panicking as teachers began shouting orders. Soon, the sound of alarms began to fill the air. 

    "Let's go!" Blake ordered, immediately heading for the stairs out of the theater. Kasen gathered up his beat maker into his backpack as he started to run after his friends. The stairs were easy enough to go down. But running up the stairs was slow as every step became a slight jump. It felt agonizingly slow when there was a monster tearing apart the sky above them.

    Blake seemed to be the only one not winded by the time they reached the top of the stairs. The scene before the three of was absolute chaos. Students fled in every direction, most heading for the nearest building. Some staff barked orders to evacuating students while others seemed to be making haste somewhere. 

    Several streams of magic began to fill the sky, each with different colors to the yellow beams. Most of these connected to the magical circle in the sky between the campus and the monster in the sky. The boys could see that the eye in the sky was now completely open. The wall seemed to mold into tentacles that reached through the opening. An electric buzz filled the air as the tentacles reached the barrier.

    A paladin fully decked out in glowing armor grabbed Blake and Alexander's shoulders, forcing them to look away from the sight above them and him.

    "You boys need to pay attention. Go inside the nearest building and bunker down. Listen to the staff and the PA system until this over. Now move." The woman spoke with a calm commanding tone, gesturing to the nearest building. She gave them a shove to start them running, Kasen running after them when she flicked her head toward them.

    The buzzing grew louder and louder, as if the barrier was straining against something. The boys had barely made it to the doors when the buzzing culminated into an electric pop.

    A few blocks away, the Dealer had already sensed something was happening. A wave of foreign energy preceded the sounds of anarchy filling the streets. When he looked outside, he saw a car had crashed into a street light. This by itself was not weird, but what was was that everyone who stepped outside to help or gawk suddenly turned in the direction of the school, as if hypnotized by something over there. He suspected that whatever they were staring at was the source of the weird wave of energy.

    But as he leisurely made his way outside, new sounds began. Shouting, panicked voices seemed to come from all directions. They would steadily grow in volume until they were suddenly cut off, replaced with new voices.

    The Dealer stepped out into the street and looked around. His business was on the edge of a residential neighborhood that surrounded the campus. A neighborhood now turning into something out of a zombie film. At one house, a man smashed through a way with a bat eliciting screams from inside. At another house, the front door was open and the screams of children emanated from inside. A moment later, the Dealer watched as the parents dragged the kids outside. The children were forced to look in the direction of Myers High School. Suddenly, the children went quiet and the family marched as a group toward one of the nearby houses.

    The Dealer looked in the direction of Myers High School. Massive tentacles covered in eyes were bashing against the barrier of the school. One of the many eyes locked onto him and the Dealer could suddenly feel a foreign magic trying to invade his mind. The Dealer could see why the chaos around him was suddenly taking place. If he had been human, his mind would've been overwhelmed. Instead, he simply chuckled at the presence before ignoring it.

    He slowly walked toward the school, ignoring the chaos around him in favor of watching the tentacles as the literally tore apart the barrier over it. It was then that he sensed something new. 

    His deal with Alexander had formed a unique mental connection between the two. Nothing special, just a sort of constant awareness of Alexander's feelings. Through out everything, he had felt Alexander's panic through their connection and it was bringing him a lot of amusement. But when the barrier fell, that panic disappeared. In fact, the entire connection had been cut off, as if Alexander's mind had disappeared.

    "Well, that's interesting. Alex must've been outside." The Dealer wondered aloud as he began to stroll casually towards the campus. It wasn't often that the air was so emotional. Sure, there were riots, protests, battles, but humans were largely a boring breed of creatures. Despite their beliefs to the contrary, they were little more then animals, refraining from trouble unless trouble was forced upon them. It was rare that humans allowed themselves to cut loose emotionally like this.

    And it was delicious. Like being able to buy one of everything at your favorite restaurant. Fear, betrayal, terror, anger. All of it filled the air like a thick smog in Beijing. Families awoken by the screams of their neighbors, debating whether to hide in their homes or to go out and help. Some fleeing the safety of their homes, failing to realize the true threat before succumbing to it and joining the ever growing mindless horde.

    The Dealer watched as a crowd of enthralled people surrounded a front porch, banging on the door as gun fire erupted from within, knocking a couple of people onto their backs. A Molotov cocktail explodes on the roof of another house, driving the family inside to run out of the house, oblivious to the chaos around them. It was only when watching a mother, who he sensed was enthralled, trick her kids into leaving the house under the guise that they were going to get out of town that it occurred to the dealer that the thing coming through the portal was learning, and quickly.

    "And these are just the self-proclaimed normal people with no abilities. I can't wait to see what's happening at the school."

    The Dealer was a little disappointed at first by the time he reached the school. The grounds themselves were mostly empty as most people outside had been turned. But an explosion from one of the school buildings told him that the chaos had simply moved into the buildings of the school. As if to affirm his suspicions, an emergency door nearby was thrown open. He watched as a girl was dragged outside kicking and screaming by four of her classmates. She had clamped her eyes shut, but the students forced them open to look up at the sky. The Dealer looked up to see that the creature was spreading across sky, past the confines of the portal like a cloud of eyes. He then turned his gaze back to the girl who had quieted down before rising and following her classmates back into the building. The Dealer decided to follow them inside, following the pull of his power from within Alexander's body.

    The halls of the building echoed with the sounds of battle. Those who weren't enthralled were now trapped and cornered by those that were. Their only choice now was to fight back to protect themselves. He followed the five students as they stepped through a rubble filled hall. It looked someone had made a wall of dirt to block the hall, only for someone else to blow it apart. The hallway itself was devoid of windows, instead lined with doors to class rooms. Smoke and dust shrouded over what lights remained in the hallway. 

    The five students he was following scattered in different directions. He watched two run into two branching hallways ahead while the other two raced into a nearby classroom. As he walked passed the classrooms, he caught glimpses of the various battles taking place. In one, a student had used some kind of binding spell to wrap up the ankles of another. In another, desks were piled into makeshift walls as the students threw various colored bolts of energy at each other. It was like watching a snow ball fight. In a hallway, he watched as a Paladin knight and a teacher fought with magical swords while two students dragged another one away.

    Finally, he found Alexander. Him and two other boys were on the third floor of the building, dragging another student into a class room with windows. The Dealer walked in behind them and was met with immediate begging and pleading.

    "Please, help me, mister. Don't let them do this to me. Please, I don't wanna be one of them. PLEASE!" The Dealer simply watched with a grin as Alexander forced the boy to look at the creature in the sky. The Dealer let the other two pass him by to return to the battle filled halls, but stopped Alexander.

    "Why can't I learn from you like I can the others?" Alexander's body asked. The Dealer decided to entertain the question, flaring his eyes with fire as he spoke.

    "Because no creature born of man can possible hope to stop something like me." With that, the Dealer used his power to search Alexander's mind for him. It didn't take long to track down the mind that had been contracted to him. When he opened his eyes, he found himself looking at Alexander's mind restrained by a living wall of flesh. As he looked around, he realized that he was inside one of the many eyes of the creature. He turned around to see that the creature and Alexander could see through the eyes of Alexander's body. The body was locked into place, staring at the Dealer's physical form.

    "What? How?" Alex asked behind him. His voice was hoarse, as if he'd been screaming. The Dealer turned to him.

    "I was curious and wanted to see what happened. Now that I have my answer, I guess I can go." The Dealer said in a bored tone.

    "No wait, please don't leave me here." Alex pleaded. The Dealer looked at him annoyed.

    "Why? I can finally take back the power I gave you and move on to greener pastures."

    "But what about the school?"

    "What about it?"

    "You have to save it."

    "No, I don't. In fact, everything happening now is the most fun I have had in a long time." The Dealer said with a smart-alecky grin. "The streets are filled with terror and malice and violence. You humans are killing each other to avoid succumbing to this thing. Even if someone brings this creature down, it will only cause more mayhem as the survivors question who can be trusted and who can't. So compared to that, what can you offer me to save you?"

    "Please, I'll do anything. It's not just me but my friends are also trapped by this thing. I can't let it hurt them."

    "But are they actually you friends? After all, you have been lying to them." The Dealer asked critically, taunting the poor boy.

    "I... uh..." Alexander bowed his head, then shook it. "It doesn't matter, please save them. I will make whatever deal you want, just please save my friends."

    "Interesting proposal. So in favor of anything I want, you want me to save your so called friends and the school from this creature. Is that right?"

    Alexander swallowed, realizing that he was stuck in a corner. The Dealer's tone seemed sinister, like he was about to really test Alexander's loyalty. "Yes, sir."

    The Dealer appraised him as if he were a vegetable in a marketplace. "Fine, I will save your friends and this school. But..." He raised his voice and hand to cut off Alexander before he could say a word. "You have to confess to the School and the Paladins that you made, not one, but two deals with me."

    The Dealer grinned at the face of pure anguish that Alexander made. "But why, wouldn't that just get you in trouble?" Wouldn't that get me in trouble, was Alexander's unspoken question.

   "That's none of your business. Now, do we have a deal?" The Dealer asked. He held out a hand to Alexander. The creature screamed as the wall of flesh holding Alexander boiled away. Alexander looked at the offered hand, tears in his eyes. Finally, he took it slowly and his voice was quiet.

    "Deal."

    In a blinding flash of heat and light, the two were back in the classroom, their bodies back under their control. A unified chorus of screams filled the halls, as hundreds of people screamed in terror all at once. The Dealer looked to the sky where the creature was retracting itself back through the opening like an octopus. The Dealer basked in the fear. In the control.

    Alexander, the nobody who wanted power so he could make friends and impress his parents, had given him the ultimate idea. There was only one thing better then watching the school be destroyed by a creature of their own creation.

    The Dealer was in the mood to show off. He phased through the wall before shedding his disguise. In a blinding flash of radiant light, his clothes turned into a solid white robe. Four wings sprouted from his back. A massive fiery sword appeared in his hand. He grew taller and bigger than the buildings around him, the light from his body turning the night to day like an explosion.

    The creature screamed and continued to flee, but the Dealer could not be escaped. He drove his sword through the portal, into the abyss, into the heart of the creature with over a million eyes. He could feel parts of the creature's mind racing into a couple of vessels below, but he didn't care. He watched the rest of the creature burn from the inside before the fire erupted out of it, filling the void it called home.

    As the fire burned out, the portal closed. The symbols on the walls were scorched into black marks. The enthralled found their minds returned to their bodies. The Dealer returned to his disguise and returned to where Alexander stood. Alexander seemed to be trying to hide himself in the wall behind him as the Dealer walked up to him. He kept a calm smile as he put a hand on the boy's shoulder.

    "I am sure the boy who attacked you is desperate for you to bail him out of the trouble he is in over your little lie. You have twenty-four hours to confess." With that, the Dealer walked out of the room, ignoring the way Alexander seemed to sink to the floor in despair.