Making Heroes Ch.07

Chapter Seven: My Son, Endymion

“I couldn’t protect him!” Sookie wailed into her husband’s chest.

“Shh, Sookie,” Eric’s eyes leaked red droplets onto her crown. His heart felt as though it were breaking over and over. Not just for his Bonded’s despair, but for the loss of son. At some point, he had become a father, and not realized it. He ached and mourned their loss, but he could offer no words or feelings of comfort in His Sookie’s greatest moment of need. “I am so sorry I failed you, Sookie…”

“You didn’t,” she protested, clutching his shirt tighter. “We were both powerless! The Gods took him, Eric! They let that monster take our baby! I hate them! I HATE THEM!” she screamed toward the end, sobbing brokenly into his chest.

“Sookie,” he tried to calm the rage growing inside of her, “the Gods have just as little control over Fate as anyone else. That is why Divine Intervention exists.”

“I don’t care!” she told him as she hiccupped uncontrollably. “He could have told us sooner. When we first received Lukas! Endymion could have warned us!”

“Then…we might not have loved Lukas so deeply, Sookie,” Eric tried to explain. “We raised a boy into a man who understands and cherishes love. He will come back to us. When he has the power, he will come back.”

“When?” Sookie sobbed desperately.

“Soon,” he assured.

“I want him back now!” she took deep, ragged breaths.

“I know, Sookie. So do I,” Eric whispered, smoothing her bloodstained hair.

All his wife could do was cry, but Eric felt an inner peace settling into his heart. When she had cried herself dry, Eric could explain about Divine Intervention. He could tell her things to sooth her ravaged soul. It was only now that the vampire was able to think through the earlier altercation and grasp some semblance of understanding.

Something has happened, he thought worriedly. Endymions did not randomly decide to reproduce. Carnal pleasures were something they only participated in with the Goddess Selene by way of inhabiting human vessels. For Endymion to have sired a child, he would have purposefully done so.

Endymions did not retire, their immortality was absolute. They were the strongest and most magically potent creatures in all of Supernatural history. There were only two things that could kill Endymion; one of which was just dark whispers of lore that spoke of two hounds who brought forth the devouring of an entire universe. Eric was not sure about that myth, but the one he did know to be true was that of the Titan Chronus.

The head of Endymion’s Bloodline and the Black Cervine, Oceanus.

As Eric’s thoughts wandered, and his hands continued to stroke Sookie’s back absentmindedly; he was too distracted to notice the strange sound of wind chimes. However, the brilliant flash of light filling his dwelling quickly caught his attention.
Eyes still filled with tears, Eric and Sookie both fell into defensive fighting stances at the invader.

“Hi, Ma. Hi, Dad,” Lukas smiled warily at his parents.

Sookie frowned, her body tightening. She could not hear the trespasser’s thoughts, but those beautiful blue eyes and almost brown hair were very much her son’s. His voice only had a fraction of his usual accent, and she felt her body tense further.

“I know you can’t hear me anymore,” Lukas whispered. “It was part of my training as Endymion,” he explained. Looking at the coffee table, he smiled when he saw his cell phone sitting there. Reaching for it, he quickly unlocked the phone and showed Sookie the graduation photo they had taken earlier that day. “I wanted you to feel like it was your graduation, too. I wanted to make you smile,” he told her pleadingly.

“Lukas!” Sookie shouted as she leapt over the table and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “My baby! Are you okay? What did they do to you? How did you escape so quickly!? I’m so sorry I didn’t protect you! Forgive me!” she begged and sobbed into his chest.

“Ma, I didn’t escape,” Lukas chuckled. “I’m the new Endymion.”

“What happened to your voice?” Sookie demanded.

He laughed, pulling away to smooth her hair, “It’s a very long story, but I’ll make it simple. I can jump between dimensions and time. It may have only felt like hours since I was taken away, but for me… It’s been much longer.”

“It’s felt much longer than a few hours to me, too!” Sookie wailed as she pulled his face down to plant kisses against his cheeks and forehead.

“Seriously, Ma,” Lukas tried to explain. “It’s been almost seven hundred years for me.”
Sookie paused in her rain of kisses and pulled away, “You remembered your phone’s code after seven hundred years?”

“It’s your birthday. I’ll never forget that,” he laughed and pulled her in for another hug.

“How long do I get to keep you?” Sookie asked.

Lukas frowned, “Not long. I can only stay in a dimension for short times before things start getting screwy. If I need to stay for extended periods of time, I need to inhabit a vessel.”

“But-but-”

“Ma, it’s okay. I’m fine, and I promise to visit from time to time. But… I have a lot of responsibilities. Everyone’s counting on me. I only came back to this time to let you know I was safe and happy. I think about you a ton, and it’s really fun seeing you in some of the different dimensions.”

“I exist in different dimensions?” Sookie asked in surprise.

Lukas nodded with a mischievous grin that Sookie knew all too well, “Yup, Dad, too.”

Eric smiled at his son, but remained by the sofa. He had never shed a tear in front of Lukas his entire life, and the evidence of his earlier sorrow still dried in Sookie’s hair was too much. If he embraced his son, he would be unable to keep the tears at bay.

“Am I as much of a badass in the other dimensions?” Eric asked jokingly.

Lukas rolled his eyes, “More of a handful than a badass, but you keep Ma in line.”

Sookie’s jaw slung open, “Lukas!”

The Voice of the Pantheon shrugged, “What can I say, Ma? You’re a troublemaker, or trouble finds you a lot of the time.”

Scowling, Sookie crossed her arms over her chest, “So, short period? Is that a day? A week?”

“Only two hours, Ma,” Lukas smiled apologetically. “If I push it that far, though, I can’t return for a month in this dimension’s time. I can’t risk being locked out for that long, so I’ll only stay a few more minutes.”

His mother pouted at the limited time she had with him, but she slowly appreciated that she had him at all. Only minutes ago, she had thought he was gone forever.

“I will cherish every second, Baby,” Sookie told him, stroking his face.

“Me, too, Ma,” Lukas assured, holding her hand to his cheek.

“So,” Eric cleared his throat, feeling as though he was invading a private moment, “what have you been up to?”

Lukas shrugged, “A little bit of everything.”

Eric smiled, “Anything involving your mother or father?”

Lukas smiled back, giving nothing away, “Maybe here and there. After seven hundred years, I was bound to run into you guys at some point.”

“Lukas,” Sookie asked slowly, “are you able to take things with you wherever it is that you go?”

“A few things,” he told her. “Why?”

Sookie smiled and ran to the den. She grabbed a picture from the mantel, and came jogging back, “I want you to take this, so you remember us.”

Lukas gazed at the photo. It was from his first Christmas. Pam had taken the picture of the three of them sitting in front of the tree.

“I’m sorry my biological father took me away like he did,” Lukas whispered, still staring at the picture. “He figured it would be quicker to fight and defeat, rather than to explain and persuade you to let me leave.”

“Because he can only stay here for so long?” Eric asked.
Lukas shook his head, “No. He was going to die, and I needed to be… I needed to start my training before he died.”

Eric’s shoulders tensed, “What took him?”

Lukas looked up and frowned, “Two hell beasts. Garm and Fenrir. They were going to devour one of his dimensions, and he had already lost one to them. He couldn’t bear the pain of it again.”

“They are real?” Eric asked in surprise.

Lukas nodded, “Very.”

“Is there anything I can do to keep them from coming here?” Eric asked angrily.
Lukas laughed and shook his head, “Don’t worry, Dad. They’re taken care of now.”

“You destroyed them?” Eric sounded impressed.

“No,” his son laughed again. “I gave them to a woman who really needed someone to love and to love her back. They love her so much that they never want to leave her. So, they decided that as long as she exists, they want to stay with her.” Before Eric could point out that only bought them a few decades, Lukas told him, “She is vampire.”

“Impressive,” Eric nodded approvingly.

“What can I say? I’ve seen love do some pretty impressive things,” He gazed at his mother sadly.

Sookie gasped at the look her son gave her, “Lukas,” she whispered, “you can’t see the past, too, can you?” He nodded slowly. “You looked at mine, didn’t you?” her voice was barely audible, but he could hear her disappointment in him.

“I did,” he said in a hushed tone. “That’s why, when I left to come see you, I thought I’d bring you something.”

Frowning when her son stretched out his hands, Sookie tentatively took them in hers.

~ “Sookie! My sweet girl!” a woman with Sookie’s eyes laughed while she lifted a small blonde girl into the air. “My sweet, special girl!”

~ “I love you so much, Peaches,” a man whose hair was the exact shade as Sookie’s kissed her head over and over.

~ “You’re so clever, Dear,” an old woman crooned proudly while the little girl held up a picture she had fastened to a string so it would hang on her door. It was a crude drawing of her parents, grandmother, brother, and her.

~ “I’m thinkin’ of a number between one and ten-”

“Four!” the girl chimed, making her brother laugh.

“I’m thinkin’ of a color-”

“Blue!” she giggled, her hands over her mouth. ~

Sookie stared up at her son in wonder, “They all really loved you, Ma. All that was before Brigant, Compton, and André stepped in, and ruined everything. They knew your gift was real. Their love for you was very, very real.”

A wide grin split his mother’s face, and Lukas enveloped her in a tight hug, “I love you, Ma,” he whispered into her ear. “I’ll come back again as soon as I can.”

Eric finally closed the distance between himself and his son. Slowly, he wrapped his arms around Sookie and Lukas, until the younger-looking man pulled away.
“It’s time that I left,” Lukas told them regretfully.

“We love you, Lukas,” Eric told him.

“We love you so much,” Sookie emphasized. “I’m so proud of you! Thank you! For the memories, and coming back to us as quickly as you could!”

“I love you, too,” he told them. “I’ll see you soon.”

With that, an arpeggio of chimes rang merrily, and a bright flash swallowed their son into oblivion.

“Are you all right, Sookie?” Eric asked softly.

“Yes and no,” she confessed. “I’m glad he’s okay, and happy, but I wish he was here always.”

“I know how you feel,” Eric agreed.

Taking a deep breath, Sookie looked to her Bonded and requested, “Tell me about Endymion? Now that I’m not fallin’ apart, I would really like to know what it is my son does.”

Smiling, Eric took Sookie’s hand and led her to their bedroom. He pulled her into his arms and began to speak quietly, “Endymion is the Voice of the Pantheon. Mostly we call him The Voice, or humans call him Divine Intervention. When the Gods or Goddesses need the world to move in a different direction, it is Endymion’s job to encourage that action without interfering in Free Will. It may be actions as simple as introducing two people or as complex as arranging a wide series of events to occur. Mostly, Endymion acts of his own accord, but he must obey the commands of the Gods and Goddesses when they have voted on an event unanimously.”

“So, he’s sort of like an architect? Buildin’ the world by carefully plannin’ events?” Sookie asked.

“Very much,” Eric agreed. “There are many dimensions, and many Endymions, but they all have specific dimensions they rule over. Mostly they are worlds very similar to each other with only moderate variations. However, some dimensions are more important than others. Ours would be important because it has a healthy Elfyria, which is the origin of all magic. One healthy Elfyria may sustain the magical needs of many, many different dimensions because the Door of Time and Space exists there, and the magic can be siphoned and exported.”

“How did I never know any of this?” Sookie asked, surprised.

Eric smiled and stroked her hair, “Because it is not something one would randomly consider. I only know this because I have been around a very long time.”

“Lukas is nearly as old as you,” Sookie whispered. “The next time he visits, he could be older than you!” she realized forlornly.

Eric nodded, “Yes, it is more than possible.”

“What if he forgets about me?” Sookie whispered sadly.

“Dear One, he has spent seven hundred years away from your side, and still remembers your birthday. A child never forgets his mother,” Eric assured her.

“That’s something I don’t quite get,” Sookie admitted. “How has he been away seven hundred years, but it’s only been a few hours for us? Is it like how Elfyria moves at a different speed?”

Eric shook his head, “No. Elfyria has a definite correlation in time with our realm. How Lukas experiences time is very different. He could be in his realm, watching the worlds unfold, awaiting instruction, or setting his own plans into motion. Then, he chooses a time and dimension to appear, performs his task, and returns to his own realm to see how it plays out.”

Sookie groaned, “That seems tedious.”

“It probably is,” Eric agreed. “However, Lukas can only interfere in an event once, and then he may never return to that event. Therefore, if he messes up, he cannot return to undo what he has done. He has to go either ahead or backward from that event to then try to change it.”

“Oh, Gosh, that’s very tedious!”

Eric laughed and nodded, “Yes. Nonetheless, that is why so much time passes for him. He must be very meticulous in his plans and decisions. Timing is crucial for him.” He pressed his forehead to her temple and whispered, “I feel your pride swelling.”

“I’m very proud of our son,” she smiled.

On To Chapter Eight!