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Character profileOmen Trace
Currently offline Story of the character ood Omen? The universe sometimes gives certain perceptive people cosmic or maybe even divine signs about the future. Little hints, which, if interpreted correctly, can be used to predict certain events. Agnes Trace - despite being convinced of the opposite - was no such person and the fire that burned the neighbor's farm was no cosmic sign of the universe and neither a divine intervention. In fact, Agnes herself had been the cause of the fire. Yet, this simple little fact did not prevent the pregnant woman to ponder over the ways of life and the course of the universe as a whole, when she watched the flames eagerly eating through the roof. She smiled, but not in a cruel way, no no. Her smile was that of a sage, who had figured out something those around her just couldn't grasp. Well okay, that something may or may not have been the insight that, in order to protect her neighbor from a terrible death, she had to set her house on fire. And sure, maybe she should have made sure that said neighbor was not currently at home, when she did. But these facts pale when you do the right thing. The moment she had realized that Muriel was indeed inside these four - by now only three remaining - walls, came as a little shock, of course. Yet, once the screams had stopped, she started to smile again, relieved that the vision she had received the previous night in her dream hadn't come true and Muriel did not suffer the terrible terrible death she had foreseen. She patted her belly and silently thanked destiny for the gift she had received. Another bad fate prevented, another good deed done for society. Looking up towards the stars above her, she sighed. The visions - most would call them random dreams or imaginations - had started with the pregnancy and she knew with certainty that this child was directly sent by the stars. Or Gods. Or the universe. Or maybe even a mix out of all of these? Admittedly, she was not sure whether that was actually a thing that could happen. Did the stars and the gods debate who they would send insights into destiny? Either way, she knew an omen when she saw one - of that [i]she[/i] was sure. And thus, as she stood there, enlightened by the flames and a deeper understanding of the universe, the name of the yet to be born child became blatantly apparent to her. The truth was suddenly there and the inevitably of the fact that this child's name was predestined hit her with the force of a burning piece of debris from her neighbor's house. And as the stars above her faded in a sudden surge of unconsciousness, caused by the not-so-metaphorical burning piece of debris from her neighbor's house, she breathed her son's name for the very first time. "Omen." Wonders of Birth The morning of the day, at which Omen saw the light of the world for the first time, wasn't just any morning. Not if it came to Agnes Trace, anyway. The rooster cackled for exactly 5 seconds - at least by her count in retrospective. For anyone else it remains a secret, whether there was any rooster to begin with. Honestly, for all we know, it might have been the wind whistling through the trees. Huh. Anyway, we're trailing off here. The rooster had, as formerly established, made noises for exactly 5 seconds and it was, of course, the 5th of Eldas in the year 49 after the fall of Kharud. Now, you'll obviously realize that this date was special, given that 5 is also the result of 9 minus 4. To understand this math, you need the old-language number 49, which is read as "neun-und-vierzig". By ignoring the "und" and also the "zig", you get 9 minus 4. Doesn't make sense? Well, to Agnes, it did. And that's all that matters when it comes to Omen's birth. But, for a few minutes, just after the new born baby had started to cry for the very first time, all this didn't matter to Agnes either. For a few minutes, a few merciful and sane minutes, she was just a mother, holding her baby boy and that was all she needed. Time, being a weird concept, uses to play tricks on the mind. And for Agnes, she held on to her dear son for a lifetime, before they both eventually fell asleep. A lifetime of joy and happiness, without fantasized visions, without the responsibility of the universe weighing down on her or the guilt of killing six innocent people - of which we know anyway - during the pregnancy lingering. For a few minutes, Agnes could be a perfectly normal woman, holding her perfectly normal son after a perfectly normal birth. Things were about to improve. Or at least they would have been, if this hadn't been the last time, her mind had aligned with reality. The Rule of Three Here is the thing about prophecies… The knowledge about the contents of a prophecy has direct influence on the prophecy itself. The knowledge influences your very actions and thus might – under certain circumstances – just be the thing that leads to the prophecy coming true. Is that confusing? It might be. Let me give you an example: Imagine the night after you found out about your pregnancy, you had a dream in which poor old Irwen Sullivan was kicked in the chest by a horse and died immediately. A horrid thought, I know, but bear with me. Imagine further, you woke up, bathed in sweat, confused and frightened. Now imagine, you shrug is off as a dream, nonsense, forgotten in the morning. But then, when poor old Irwen Sullivan was seeing to your horse’s hourseshoes the next day and made fun about people, who have visions and receive prophecies, you gave the horse a strong startle on purpose, making it kick out, right into poor old Irwen Sullivan’s chest, killing him immediately. In her defense, Agnes was in shock about her action and terribly sorry. She even tried to help the poor old man and cried and shouted until her husband – an alchemical medico – came rushing out of their cozy little farmhouse. Of course, poor old Irwen Sullivan was way beyond saving, but at least, her husband was able to calm Agnes down and reassure her that destiny had chosen this and that none of this was actually her doing. Even though it was, of course. But that is not the point here. No, the point here is that prophecies have a tendency to be self-fulfilling. Does that make prophecies and visions generally wrong, inconsistent or misleading? At least for Agnes, it does not. At all. Not in the slightest. Dear Diary, "Last night, I had a vision again. Oh Gods have mercy. I cannot put my terror into words. My own husband? How could he? Or how will he could have? No wait… How can he not have done what he did not yet do but will have done in the future? Does that make any sense, dear diary? I am so confused. When someone has not yet done something bad but, in the foreseeable future, will have done it, has it already happened then? Am I getting crazy? Maybe these visions are just dreams. Harmless, innocent and nonsensical dreams. However…" -_-_- Agnes stood at the edge of the cliff, she had just pushed her beloved husband off from. Granted, this one wasn’t one of the visions she has had. At least this event in particular. Vividly, she could see the vision she has had a week before, in which her husband had cheated on her. Not daring to glance over the edge as to save herself from the horrific imagine, she turned her back on the cliff and thus on her past, the last 9 years with her husband, and, grinning maliciously, headed back to her now empty farmhouse. How could things have gone so wrong after all this time? And how could she do something terrible like this? These were the questions that most definitely spun around in her head as she walked away, echoing louder and louder and louder, slowly but surely eating what little sanity had been left inside her mind. Agnes Trace, let it be said here, is not a good person and, if you, dear readers have not figured it out yet, it will not have a happy end. Not even remotely. In fact, the end of this story will be as far off from a happy end as it can get. The end of this story is going to be gruel and horrible. Bad things Bad things happen to good people. That seems to be a natural law. Of course, there are instances where bad things also happen to bad people. What happened to Caroline Smith was a bad thing. Even though, she wasn’t a particularly bad person. As a merchant, she had sometimes held a thumb onto the scales, when weighing flour, sure. But isn’t that what you’d expect of merchants anyway? I ask you, dear readers, is this enough to sentence this poor soul to death by multiple stabbing in order to avenge her betrayed costumers? I ask you, did this woman deserve to feel all these stabs until the 26th eventually put her out of her misery by puncturing her heart? You may find another answer than Agnes Trace did. Even though, she could not remember doing this and only saw the act itself in a vision. It had to be true, though, considering the considerable amount of blood at her hands, clothes and at the knife, that lay next to her bed. Oops. Agnes couldn’t explain how this had happened, but she figured that fate would eventually always find its way and that destiny was not to be fooled. After a few minutes of hysterical crying, she accepted the inevitability of certain things in the universe. What could she, a mere human, do against the will of gods, fate and destiny? A mere human, who had already killed her husband in cold blood, who had burned her neighbour’s house to the ground and killed an old man for making fun of her? She acknowledged how powerless she was in the great scheme of things. To be continued...
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