"That's not true, but you can go crazy if you don't come with me."

"What does it mean?"

"I'll explain everything! Let's go!"

"How do I know you're not like him?" I nodded to the goblin, or the Marker, as this guy called him.

"You have no reason to believe me, but there's no other way. If you leave, then the Force will soon absorb you. It will grow, killing you from the inside. You won't understand what's going on. I'm sure you think you're going crazy, but I can help manage it until the debt is paid and you're released."

"What debt are you talking about? What should I be released from?"

"Come with me!" he persisted. And it was obvious that he was not going to answer my questions.

On the one hand, it was scary, but on the other hand, I did not know what was happening to me, and this man could help me. In any case, living in such a state would be insane. Strangely enough, I was not scared.

We entered some glowing hole. The stranger called it the "portal", but for me, it was more like a long glowing tunnel.

"We use it for instant movement in space. This greatly simplifies our work."

"Ok!" I only managed to utter. Traveling through the portal was like the worst turbulence ever. The stomach was long rolled up to the throat, and lungs were squeezed under the external pressure.

"Time stands still in the portal. It may seem like you've been here for hours when it has really taken you a split second to travel."

"Charming!" I almost didn't hear what the guy was talking about because my ears had already been popped.

"You'll get used to it!"

"WHAT? Get used? To this? Oh! No-no-no!" I agreed to this journey only because I wanted to get rid of obsessive visions and horrible creatures. However, I got the feeling that someone had different plans for me. "I need to get out of here!" I started looking for the way out, but there was none. Everything seemed exactly the same.

"There's no back entrance from here! You can only get to your destination point!" the guy did not even move. He paid zero attention to me, peering into the sparkling material, as if he could see something there.

"What's your name again? You haven't introduced yourself!"

"You can call me Eugene. This nickname is easier than the real name."

"Okay! Listen, Eugene. I guess you have misunderstood me. I just want my life to get back to normal. That's all. I don't want to get used to anything."

"You'll get back to your life as soon as you do what you have to. There's no other option. You can relax now. We are almost there."

"Why don't you fill me in? For example, start with who you are and how you have found me."

"I am the Guardian. I found you on the trail that Charon left when he gave you his Force."

"The Guardian? What do you guard?"

"The Source, the Balance from anything that can harm them – from Gods to demons. It depends on what kind of force wants to influence or use them."

"What Source?" the talking distracted me a bit from the feeling of being like a squeezed ball.

"The Source is the place where the River of Times takes its roots from."

"Is it that River of Times from the myths? Why should one protect the Source?"

"The Source has heavenly power. One drop can extinguish the fire of the Kingdom of Hades or fill the World Ocean. It is the source of life for the Gods of Olympus. If its power is seized with bad intentions, the Balance will be broken, and the Chaos will set in.

"Eugene, do you understand that your explanation only raises more questions?"

He did not answer and just shrugged.

"Get ready! We arrived!"

Next second, the increasing vacuum weakened, as if an inflatable balloon had been pierced with a needle, and it exploded. Change in pressure caused me a headache. My knees buckled and I fell down. It made me so sick that I could go crazy. It took me a few minutes before I was able to breathe normally again. The feeling was as if I had been at the height of several thousand feet under excessive pressure without a pressure suit and an oxygen tank.

Eugene was standing motionless with a bored look on his face.

"Can you help me get up at least?" I asked.

"NO!"

"I see that the Guardians are not familiar with the basic rules of etiquette…" I sighed.

"You are both right and wrong. The Guardians are taken from their families at the age of five. We spend all our time here, training, fighting, learning the martial arts, and studying the details of legendary battles. But when we take up positions, we get acquainted with the human world from afar and certainly watch the people. You are pretty entertaining creatures, I must say. There's so much excessiveness and senselessness in your lives. Rules and etiquette, I believe you call it. Let's look at you, for example. You can easily get up by yourself without help. Men can iron shirts themselves, and women can pull back a chair when they sit at the table. But you persist in portraying the need for these manipulations, wasting your short life's priceless time on it, instead of filling it with something more important."

"You sound like you have no rules!" I teased him.

"We have them. Though, they are not made for influencing someone or to live up to boundaries created by yourself but to protect what provides life to all creation. People make rules out of boredom. You are a parasitic species that multiply and make no sense of their existence. Even your inventions, which seem to be great, are only meant to let you spend your meaningless life in comfort."

"Yeah… Look, I'm not eager to be here either."

At this point, I no longer wanted to continue the conversation with this guy. He behaved very rudely, not hesitating to humiliate the person upon whom something depended. He was clearly annoyed by my presence and that he had to take care of me instead of his great mission! He may be from a superior race, but obviously not the best one. I was not treated this way even in junior high when I was covered in pimples and weighed, probably, a ton! At this moment, more than anything else I wanted to get over everything as soon as possible, go back home to cuddle with Jackson, unless he had already run off to a far end of the country, and fall asleep without dreaming.

As we walked, I was able to see the surroundings. Moving here, I somehow imagined a dark hole, in which I would be tormented to extract that something from inside of me, but I found myself in a real palace instead. I had never seen anything like this before, even in documentaries on TV. The ceiling was ten meters high. The halls were of a vast area. The mighty columns held an incredibly beautiful arch. I looked up to the ceiling, and it suddenly seemed to me that I was looking at the sky, because the picture was moving, though it was much closer than the sky should be.

Eyes could not catch where this hall ended and where another one began. People, or rather creatures that looked like them but in a different way, were walking around. I knew right away that they were the Guardians. They had the same sheath on their belts as Eugene had, and their hair shimmered in different shades matching the weird eyes. Some of them were fighting. It was difficult to call it "training", as everyone was making shrill warlike cries, beating at full strength, and some were even injured. Certainly, these guys had a serious attitude to their job!

Finally, we turned the corner and found ourselves in a small room. There was nothing but a table in the room, at which a man was sitting, reading the manuscript.