Original The Eternity Crisis

[The Phantarch]

Chapter 1 (Normality)

I remember it now...

This whole affair started one day in June 2029. Things had not supposedly changed much since the very start of the 21st century. One word came to mind whenever I looked anywhere. That one word was 'Grey'. The sky was grey, the earth was gray, the vast blocks of flats were grey. Everything was grey, even the sun had been veiled and thus too bore this uniform color.

Harlan, A friend of mine was coming, I could hear his distinct way of walking; a lazy kind of dragging motion, each step taking a little loner than it should.

"Hey, what's up?" He asked
"Nothing" I replied and snapped back with my back nearly vertical as I'd realised that I'd been holding my head in my hands.

"Okay, do you want to go to the pub and order a few rounds?" He asked.
"Yeah, okay" I replied and I stood up.

Manchester was really busy today so we went to The Didsbury, which was less crowded now and they did decent quality pub food good beer and nice cider as well. "Remember, Elle is meeting you tomorrow" Harlan said
"I know" I replied (which regrettably not the case at all, I'd completely forgot, too washed up in my own thoughts I guess)
"I hope it goes alright for you, Sam" He said.
"No worries there, Harlan" I said.

I went to order, I was having a steak and kidney pie with chips and peas, Harlan was having a chilli con carne. I also ordered pints of Budweiser for us both. when we started to eat our meal Harlan said,
"Is it just me or do you feel cold"
"You're right, we're in a pub in daylight in June, it's not supposed to be this cold"

That chill was a precursor to a very peculiar chain of events .

Chapter 2. (Apocalypse)

We left the pub, Harlan was a quick walker. I wondered if he felt the same way I did. A scream coming from within at a nameless fear that had not showed itself at present. The streets were deserted. I heard a sound and went to investigate. Harlan had heard it too. we proceeded cautiously to the source of the sound and I lie not as to what we saw. It was a great wyrm. Crimson scaled, cat-like slit-eyes. Horns protruded in eight directions off the top of its head like a crown of dark infinite majesty. Not taking a second glance we ran down Wilmslow road, as close to the sides as we could because if there was one thing everyone knew about such beasts it was the jets of fire to which even the sun's surface heat could not match.
We saw a flash and we ducked into a side street.
"We need to make it to Piccadilly" Harlan said, his eyes seemed otherworldly.
"Why?" I asked
"The answer lies there"
"The answer to what?!" (I must have been hysterical)
"Come" he said simply.

We zigzagged for about five miles, not running, not jogging but somewhere in between, a sort of purposeful jog I guess.
We met Elle close to the end of our trek, but now things had really changed. Blackness was consuming everything. We had to run the rest of the way into Piccadilly. The blackness seemed to cease near the Urbis museum for some reason unbeknown to us.

Then the sky seemed to shatter and a great whale-like beast fell through but hovered above us and probably the rest of Piccadilly as well. It was gargantuan.
A great breath pulled everyone and everything to it then consciousness fled me. Yet it was not quite death.

 

[The Phantarch]

Chapter 3 a new way of life.


I woke up in a bed, though I did not know where. It wasn't my room, that's one thing for sure. I cautiously went downstairs.
"Ah, look who's awake" said a voice from behind me, my heart nearly froze mid-beat.
I turned around and saw a woman. She was in her dressing gown with a towel wrapped around her head.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"Who am I? Consider, you are a stranger in my home, don't you think it would be polite to tell me who you are first?"
"You brought me here unconscious, but okay my names Sam, Sam Brown"
"Hmm, Sam, I am Emily, I did not bring you here, my boyfriend did"
"Hello" Said a booming voice and the man who I assumed was the aforementioned boyfriend came out.
"Pardon me for not making the first appearance, as it would have been more appropriate as I was the one who found you and brought you back here"
"Where am I?" I asked
"That is a very good question, I'm one of few that know about that, we are in a timeless dimension, neither Heaven nor Hell and not Limbo either, there are no religious connotations to this place whatsoever, you see technically you don't exist now, neither do we since we came in contact with Leviathan. It's a bit strange really because you may have existed, you may exist and you may have yet to exist this place was forged in the fires of paradox and illogic, the timeline has become unstable in between the manifest world and the spirit realm and things are spilling through from each realm into the next."
"Like dragons" I contributed
"No, at least they shouldn't be"
"But I was chased by a dragon in Manchester!" I almost shouted in frustration.
"Then its worse than I thought, paradox and illogic are, if you will, doing a lap back up the timeline meaning that Mythology is spilling into reality and vice versa. People are being sapped into their own imaginings, and the imaginings are coming out to great the manifest world. I wager that the dragon you saw was merely a wyvern, actual dragons would not fit through the gap, no matter how distorted the timeline has become, without plunging every realms-world into oblivion. You see the with the eternity crisis at hand_"
I cut him off "The what?"
"The eternity crisis, You may think that time is a set chain of events that leads to a set outcome, wrong, time is actually a random chain of events that generally lead to the most obvious outcome, subtle difference you may think but what if the very pith and core of eternity had been randomized, Potentially it could be more catastrophic than world wars 1 and 2 combined! There's a creature you see that resides in the realm and its strength is illogic and paradox, however, there is one iota of logic in its existence because if anything exists in complete paradox it cannot exist. This particle of logic, I assume is its Achilles' heel. Now it cannot be defeated by ordinary means, dozens have tried and failed, upon which they have been cast into madness, I believe that if we were able to delete or perpetuate the logic to its existence it could not be able to manifest anywhere" we need all the hands we can get so will you help us.
"Well, coming to think of it I've nothing better to do"

And so it was settled I would help them defeat this entity of nearly absolute paradox. From that day everything changed...