It felt like a palpable sensation.
They saw darkness, seemingly whittling down their faces.
It felt like an endless void coming like a brainwave and hitting their damn brains.
They saw darkness.
It wasn't the regular darkness. This was different—grayishly dark and piercing to the eyes.
SWOOSH!
A gust of wind swept past them, but they were oblivious to it.
They were now floating in a dark place.
"Damn," Axel heard himself say.
Dan sighed. "Simply your fault."
Axel looked distraught. "How?"
"We're stuck in the portal zone," Dan began. "When I conjured the portal, you didn't enter immediately. And so, your wasting time and my tiredness, due to the strength of summoning the portal, caused this. Meaning we're stuck in the middle of the portal, seemingly an inter-dimension."
Axel was starting to sweat now.
His mind raced.
'How we going to be stuck here forever?'
'Christ!, we're doomed!'
'No!'
'Damn!'
'Shit!'
Finally, he exclaimed verbally:
"We're doomed!"
Dan was indifferent. Although he looked kind of angry, he wasn't, though. He thought that Axel must have been up to something, and them being here wasn't for nothing after all.
"How do we get out!" Axel asked Dan, alarmed.
Dan shrugged. "Don't kill yourself, mate. I've got a friend, also a superhero. He's got portal powers. I clenched my fists very hard thrice, and that has summoned him. He's on his way."
Axel almost exhaled out of relief. It was relieving, actually. Those words— 'He's on his way'— were soothing. He decided to wait and see what would happen, hoping in the words of Dan.
Darkness sprawled in front of them, and when Axel stared at it for long, it made him sick. He decided to close his eyes and not see it. Just to be plunged out of this damning reality into oblivion.
"How did you get your powers?" Dan asked.
Axel shook a bit at the question. He looked at Dan and then closed his eyes before responding in a cool voice:
"I reawakened them. Portals started to appear in the city, and my dad, knowing that they would lead to a place of power, brought up the idea that we should enter one. We did— more like we tried— because about two monsters killed my father on our way into one of them."
Axel paused now, his voice faltering.
"They killed my father. Those jerkful monsters. And then I ran into a portal and saw a sword. Having prior knowledge that I was to awaken a power, as my dad had told me, I took the sword, and instead of awakening new powers, I reawakened the powers of the thirteenth Inferno Hero, making me the fourteenth, I guess."
Dan looked sad, and he sympathized with Axel.
"Sorry for your loss, man. I dunno, actually. I doubt if it's true, but we all—superheroes—lose a loved one. It's a must. It's a superhero tradition."
Axel blinked now, the tears that were beginning to come out going inside again.
"Did you lose a loved one?" Axel asked.
Dan nodded in the affirmative and said in a somber voice,
"Yes."
He paused for just a second and then continued:
"I lost my daughter. She was only eleven."
Axel gasped.
"Christ!, I'm— I'm— your loss is graver than mine."
Dan only nodded.
"I had lost my wife just five years after we got married. But here's the crazy part— a villain caused the accident. Six years later, when I got my powers, I seemed to discover him, and then a year later, he kills my daughter."
Axel felt like vanishing. This was the saddest story he had heard in his entire life.
"Holy shit!, this..., woah, that's pain, man!"
Dan only smiled.
"I try to forget about it. At least I've gotten over it. But man, life was hard and difficult for me."
Silence engulfed the place. It was deep and very somber.
"What about the villain?" Axel finally asked, disrupting the silence.
Dan smiled— a grin, actually.
"You don't want to hear about it."
Axel shrugged and said,
"Next year, I'll be eighteen. I'm an adult already. Tell me. I mean, I've seen worse."
Dan kept the grin but said nothing.
"You killed him, I see," Axel said, at last guessing what Dan had done.
Dan shook his head sideways in the negative.
"No, I didn't. I wouldn't do that."
Axel had to laugh— a chuckle, actually.
"Oh, you let him be? After his vicious deeds?" he asked, the flames all over him going down slowly.
Dan maintained a smile and said,
"I tore his limbs, burnt his fingernails, drove my fists into his jaw, chainsawed his kidney, pricked nails into his brain."
Axel was in shock. He could only imagine the scenario.
"Gosh!, that's… well, shocking!"
Dan smiled and floated closer to Axel, who was still shocked. He held him by his shoulders and said in a soft voice,
"But, I—" He sighed. "I regretted my actions."
"You shouldn't. I'm shocked hearing you tell me, but frankly, I would have done the same."
Dan laughed.
"Being a superhero is very difficult. At least in reality—not what you read in comics."
Axel shrugged. "I see. I even lost my uncle, did I tell you? Technically, I'm now an orphan."
Dan sighed. "So what you did back there? I got mad at you, but what's the point? You're only a kid."
"But those villains… they are the only villains I've faced since I became a superhero. I've faced a monster, but those two were the only human-like villains I fought. And seeing them enter that portal and go back to Khaos Realm— it felt like my responsibility to take them out," Axel said.
Dan sighed and was about to speak when, seemingly like it traveled with the speed of light, a portal appeared in front of them.
WHOOOSH!
It was quite large, and before they could move, a figure came out of it.
SWOOSH!
It was so fast it seemed like the speed of lightning.
The figure swept them both off their floating positions and took them into the portal.
Zilch ~