Chris NightOwl's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

The night the moon turned red, Chris NightOwl rose two feet off his own kitchen floor and dropped his coffee mug. It shattered on the tile. He stared at his bare feet, hanging in empty air. For a week he had felt the change coming, the way you feel a storm before the clouds. Something was wrong in Owlroost. He didn't know what yet. He only knew, deep in his gut, that he was the only one who could feel it. He was forty-four, tall, with a scruffy beard going gray. He fixed roofs for a living. He was not the kind of man who floated. His two dogs barked at him from the doorway, ears flat, unsure whether to run. "It's still me," Chris said. His voice shook. "I think." He drifted down slowly and touched the floor. Then he tested it. He crouched, thought about rising, and shot straight up into the ceiling. Plaster cracked. He came down hard, laughing and scared at once. The dogs bolted for the yard. Chris followed them outside, into the dark. The red moon hung low and huge above the tall hemp field behind his house. The stalks swayed higher than his head. He walked between them, and the leaves brushed his arms. He needed room to try again, somewhere the neighbors wouldn't see a grown man crash through his own roof. He planted his feet in the dirt and lifted a heavy stone from the field's edge. It rose easy as a pillow. He crushed it in one hand. Gravel rained down. His arms felt like they belonged to someone twice his size. Then he ran. He tore down the row of hemp so fast the plants blurred into a green wall. Wind screamed past his ears. He reached the fence and couldn't stop. He jumped, and the jump became flight. He climbed above the field, above his modest house, above the whole quiet neighborhood. Up there, the red moon filled the sky. Light poured down and soaked into his skin. His hands began to glow. Thin white lines of starlight ran along his fingers and wrapped his wrists. He opened his palm, and a spark leaped off it and burned a hole clean through a cloud. The power was real. All of it. Flight, strength, and something older that came straight from the stars. And with the power came the feeling again, sharper now. Not a warning of a storm. A count-down. Somewhere below, under Owlroost's rooftops, something was waking up. It had been waiting for this same red moon. He could feel it turning toward him. Chris hung in the cold air, glowing, terrified. He had the powers now. He had no idea how to use them. His dogs barked far below, small as toys. He had until whatever was coming arrived. He set his jaw and dove back toward the hemp field to practice. He had a lot to learn, and not much time.