“Then you need to change your perspective. Stop believing the pathetic schlub I see before me is all you are, or it will be all you are. Or less.”
Pathetic schlub. Now Terrance was self-conscious on top of the general fear. “And if I do decide to join with the Infinite, how do I start? Do I just sort of patrol the streets looking for evil to fight”—he chuckled to himself—“like Batman?”
“That’s part of it. You can consider me Batwoman. That’s a thing, right?”
Terrance nodded. “Yep. Has bright red hair. Is a lesbian.”
Talia paused, then said, “That doesn’t describe me.”
Terrance had been so ready to toss his sword, and then a monster had nearly killed him when he tried to wield it, so he was surprised to find he was still considering joining the Infinite. But he knew it wasn’t a choice to take lightly. “I think I met the Adversary.”
Talia looked surprised. “Really?”
“I’ve seen these things that hide in the dark and watch us. They ganged up and grabbed me. And then I was in some giant room with him. He wore a mask and said he wasn’t corporeal.”
Talia nodded. “Good. If he’s come after you, that means he’s scared of you. You may not be as useless as you seem.”
“It doesn’t seem like a good thing.” A touch of panic seeped into Terrance’s voice. “He appears capable of coming after me at any time and—”
There was a knock at the door. Talia jumped away from it, her hands going to the blades under her cloak. Terrance quickly rose from the couch and picked up his sword as he crept toward the door. “Who is it?”
“It’s me, Terr,” Lance answered. “Come on; I know you’re not busy.”
Terrance cracked open the door and looked out. “Actually, I am kind of busy right now.”
Lance narrowed his eyes. “What are you hiding?” He suddenly shoved the door open, knocking Terrance back. Startled, Talia drew a sword. Lance looked her over with a befuddled expression. “Terr, are you having an affair?”
“I told you.” Talia kept her sword pointed at Lance. “If a woman enters a man’s apartment alone, people are going to assume things.”
“You didn’t tell me that, and put your sword away.” Terrance looked at Lance. “I’m not having an affair. I’m just in an odd situation.”
Lance watched as Talia sheathed her weapon. “Odd how?” He looked at the sword Terrance was holding. “Faerie-sword odd?”
“It involves that.”
“Yeah, well I don’t care about that sort of thing,” Lance said. “Anyway, I wanted to tell you that Karen and I broke up.”
Talia scowled. “We were talking about matters of great import. You seem like a useless person, and we don’t care about your silly romances.”
Lance stared at Talia, then switched his gaze to Terrance. “Who is she again?”
“Oh…um…this is Talia. Talia, this is my friend Lance.”
The two stared at each other for a few seconds. “Do I know you from somewhere?” Lance asked.
“Um…you remember that empowerment ceremony at work?” Terrance said. “You know how they were going to feed a woman to that creature, but she got away? This is her.”
Lance nodded. “Yeah, you looked like an ass that day, Terr.”
Talia’s expression toward Lance turned even more intense, to the point that Terrance was a little afraid she was going to draw her sword again. “So you were one of those just standing there and watching…witnessing an evil and being complicit in your inaction?”
Lance looked at Talia, uncomprehending, then turned back to Terrance. “Want to go get a drink? You can bring the crazy chick you’re not having an affair with.”
“I don’t ravage my mind with alcohol,” Talia said.
Lance took another glance at Talia. “Yeah, she seems like loads of fun. So come on.”
“Please don’t bring up Shannon’s occupation in front of Talia. She doesn’t know about it, and it would be kind of a sore point.” Terrance said as he and Lance waited at the bar for their drinks. “Also, please don’t mention Talia to Shannon.”
“What do you have going on, dude?”
“It’s just there’s like two sides fighting over this world, with monsters and faeries and all-seeing powerful forces, and I’m kinda caught in the middle right now.”
Lance nodded. “You have really stupid problems. So are you carrying around that sword permanently now?”
Terrance looked down at the scabbard on his belt and shrugged. “I don’t know.”
They picked up their drinks—two beers and an iced tea—and brought them back to the table where Talia was waiting. She looked at them suspiciously. “What were you talking about over there? Were you plotting against me?”
Lance smiled and sat next to her in the booth. “I was just asking if you’re single.”
“Denby doesn’t know enough about me to answer that question,” Talia answered sharply. She turned to Terrance. “So this one you met that you believe to be the Adversary, what did he say to you?”
“Who are we talking about?” Lance asked.
“This…um…force behind trapping us in this”—Terrance looked at Talia—“what do you call it?”
“Sliver.”
“Sliver of reality. And he’s responsible for the evil creatures here and is somehow feeding off of us.”
Lance nodded. “Okay. Let’s talk about my problem. So Karen and I broke up.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Terrance said.
Talia frowned. “This is not of any importance.”
“Yeah, well things just weren’t really working out. I mean, she’s kind of stuck up, you know? Not an anything-goes free spirit like Sunshine here.” Lance motioned to Talia.
“So you broke up with her?”
“Yeah…didn’t go so well. Things were said.”
Terrance sighed. “You know we still have to work with her. This is why you have to be careful with office romances. She already doesn’t seem to like me for some reason, and now she’s probably going to hate me for being associated with you.”
“Yeah, something about you just puts her off.”
“I don’t get that. Everyone likes me. I’m easygoing.”
“I don’t like you,” Talia said.
“Anyway.” Lance folded his hands. “So what do you think of Shannon’s friend Amber?”
Terrance rolled his eyes. “Is that what this is about? You’ve decided to go after Karen’s friend instead?”
“Karen is friends with Shannon. And she kind of knows Lacey. She’s not friends with Amber. So if Amber asks about me…”
“Don’t tell her the truth about what a horrible human being you are.”
Lance nodded. “Yep.”
“Do you see what’s going on here?” Talia once again stared intensely at Terrance. It made him pretty uncomfortable. “You’re being drawn into the pointless dalliance of this empty husk that sits next to me.”
Lance sipped his beer. “Is she hitting on me?”
Talia ignored Lance and kept her gaze on Terrance. “You have a purpose…a duty. You can drift through this meaningless existence while you waste away to nothing, or you can fight. What is your choice?”
Terrance thought about that brief moment when he had first drawn his sword and everything had seemed to fall into place. He then thought about how easily he had gotten pummeled immediately after. “It’s not that simple. It looks to me like you’re talking about a life of being hunted by forces I don’t even understand.” He looked up and saw on the ceiling one of the dark things staring down at him. He lowered his voice. “He’s even watching us now.”
Talia stood up and drew one of her swords. The creature quickly scrambled away along the ceiling. Talia looked back to Terrance. “Don’t fear them. Make them fear you. Or just sit there and whine like a frightened child. Your choice.”
Lance leaned toward Terrance. “Man, I’m going to have to drink a lot more before I get the courage
to hit on your friend here.”
Talia looked at him. “I have no interest in you unless you’re also ready to fight and not just feed our enemy with your own soul.”
“I totally would, but I don’t have a faerie sword.”
“The swords don’t come from faeries.” Talia looked back to Terrance, pulled a pen and paper out of her cloak pocket, and handed them to him. “You left our meeting the other day before we could get your email address. We of the Infinite have a Google Group we use to keep in touch.”
Terrance sighed and wrote down his personal email address and handed back the pen and paper. “I’m not committing yet to any large-scale war.”
Talia motioned for Lance to get out of her way so she could leave the booth. “There are no sidelines. Both of you will one day take a side in this war. The only question is which side. I’ll leave you to your drinking.” With that, she left the bar.
“So we’re clear on Amber?” Lance asked.
“Yeah, sure.” Terrance looked down at his sheathed sword and felt the grip. It both excited and frightened him.
“And I really wouldn’t cheat on Shannon with that girl if I were you.”
“I’m not cheating on Shannon! But don’t tell her about any of this.” Joining the opposite side of a war, against his girlfriend, seemed potentially worse than cheating. “Giant forces beyond my understanding are trying to crush me.”
Lance nodded. “Yeah, we all feel that way sometimes.”
Terrance looked up to find that one of the dark creatures had returned and was staring at him. He put his hand on his sword grip and stood up threateningly, but the creature didn’t move. Terrance sighed and sat back down, finishing off the rest of his beer in a few gulps before heading back to the bar to get something stronger.
Chapter 19
Terrance thought he saw an elf in the break room. The little guy had disappeared into a cabinet when Terrance turned on the lights. Whatever he had been doing in there, it wasn’t making coffee, so Terrance started making a pot, since elf sightings were a bit much to deal with when you hadn’t had enough coffee.
While it was brewing, he went back to his desk to check his email. His work email was a bunch of boring company announcements that he didn’t need to pay any attention to, so he went to Gmail to check his personal account. He saw a number of messages from the Infinite’s Google Group, discussing various things. The number of people in the Google Group seemed to be much larger than those he had personally met. One thread was on sightings of evil creatures and their subsequent slaying by the members. Vampires, demons, and goblins had been seen and ended by the various men and women of the Infinite. Another thread was on dealing with the Hollow Ones. This thread was less cavalier, with many fleeing the conflict instead. And there was a thread on Malcus but it was only about sightings, as no one seemed to have yet tried to confront him. At the end was a mention of an attack on a gathering of one group of the Infinite. Apparently, Malcus’s fire breath had burnt off the side of a mountain, turning rock to ash. Two were dead. The email listed the names of a man and a woman, though they weren’t anyone Terrance knew. He wondered what it meant when an “infinite being” was killed in this world. He suspected it was no different than when anything else was killed.
Terrance also saw another email, this one from Shannon. Subject: Here’s my face. The contents were just a close-up picture of Shannon’s face, with her doing an over-the-top, comical smile as though she’d just had her name called on The Price Is Right. It made him smile. He replied, It is good to see your face.
A new thread from the Infinite appeared, this one with a list of meetings, though the locations were only vaguely referred to. He saw one meeting listed that would be headed by Curtis and Vivian Dayton at the “usual place” that evening. Terrance thought a while about whether he should go, and decided that this was the sort of thinking that required coffee.
He had brought his sword today, but had left it in his car, as he didn’t want any conflict with his boss, who was apparently an evil demon. He thought once again about holding the unsheathed sword and confronting the creature the previous night. During that moment, he had felt so righteous…and then he got smacked around like a kitten fighting a gorilla. The fact was that he wasn’t a warrior. But somewhere inside, he sort of wanted to be one.
Terrance didn’t see an elf in the break room this time, but instead something scarier: Karen. She was pouring herself some coffee as Terrance cautiously approached the pot with his mug. She turned around and looked at him, her expression perfectly neutral. Terrance wasn’t sure what to say to someone his friend had just broken up with, so he settled on, “I think I saw an elf in here earlier.”
Karen’s expression was no longer neutral. It was now taking a firm stance on the pro side of Terrance suddenly bursting into flames. “Don’t pull me into your weirdness, freak.”
“What exactly did I do?”
“I’ll tell you,” Karen said, stepping forward right into Terrance’s face, but she bumped him with her mug, which then spilled its contents right onto Terrance’s crotch.
The sound he made was not very manly.
“Sorry, dude.”
Terrance sat in his cubicle, his coat tied around his waist to hide the stain that was still drying. He had considered driving home to get new pants, but it was a long two-way trip and he just didn’t feel like it. He looked up at Lance, who was standing at his cubicle entrance. “Why is she angry at me? You’re the one she should hate.”
“She just doesn’t seem to like you. More so since you’ve been hitting it off with Shannon.”
“I don’t like her either, but I’m guessing I can come up with more concrete reasons to explain that. Can’t believe she did this.”
“I thought it was an accident. Didn’t she apologize?”
“She handed me paper towels and walked off,” Terrance fumed. “That’s not an apology. And this happened because she was being hostile. I should report this to HR.”
“She is HR.”
Terrance shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I mean to whoever her boss is in HR…I don’t really know the hierarchy.”
“Know who does? Karen, since she’s in HR. You could email her to ask who to complain to.”
“This isn’t funny!” Terrance shouted. “I mean…I can see how this could be funny and probably will be later on, but it is leagues from funny right now.”
“What you should do is forbid Shannon from being friends with Karen anymore.”
“I don’t think I’m at the ‘forbidding’ phase in the relationship, or that that actually is a phase. It seems like a bad idea.”
“No, girls like it when a guy takes charge. They love it when you forbid stuff.”
Terrance nodded. “That sounds like really terrible advice. I don’t know why I ever talk to you. In fact, being your friend apparently subjects me to splash damage.”
“Maybe the reason Karen doesn’t like you is because you whine too much.”
Terrance turned back to his computer screen. “This isn’t funny yet.”
“Okay. I’ll come back later and hopefully it will be then.”
Lance sauntered off and Terrance checked his email again. There was a message from Talia with the subject line: IMPORTANT. The message read: Meet me at the mall food court at noon. Be armed. Terrance considered replying “no,” but he didn’t have lunch plans anyway.
Terrance stood next to his Hyundai for a few moments, staring at the sheathed sword in his hand. The scabbard and sword were both simple and practical things, yet he’d still feel pretty flamboyant walking around with them in a public place. He thought of the monster he’d seen the other night, threatening the two kids. There are things out there that need the point of a sword in them, he told himself. And that will only happen if you have your sword with you.
With only a little difficulty, he attached the scabbard to his belt over his left hip. He took a deep breath and turned to head toward the mall, but as he did,
the scabbard slammed into his car. He inspected the spot where it had hit, and there was a tiny dent. “Dammit!”
He adjusted the scabbard so that it was more perpendicular to the ground, then headed for the mall. As he went inside, he passed a couple of people. He couldn’t tell if they were staring at him and his sword, because he did his best to avoid any eye contact. When he reached the food court, it was crowded with the lunch-hour rush. That actually made him feel more comfortable, as with that many people, no one was paying attention to him. Now all he had to do was find Talia and figure out what she wanted him and his sword for. He hoped that whatever it was, there actually was time for lunch, since the food court had a Chick-fil-A.
He found an empty table and took a seat. He felt less exposed sitting—because people couldn’t see his sword or the stain on his pants—and figured he could just wait there until he spotted Talia or she saw him. He noticed someone was watching him, though: a little boy at the next table over. The boy stared at Terrance’s weapon with wide eyes. “Is that a sword?”
“Um…yeah,” Terrance answered hesitantly, as he didn’t think strangers were supposed to talk to children.
“What do you have it for?”
“Well…in case of monsters.”
His eyes grew wider. “You’ve slain monsters?”
“Sorta. So…um…have you seen any around the mall?”
The boy shook his head. “I did see one at the park yesterday. I ran away from it.”
“That was a good idea. If you see monsters, run away and tell your parents.”
He frowned. “My mom won’t listen to me when I do.”
“Don’t bother that man,” the boy’s mother said, and gave Terrance a suspicious glance.
Terrance turned away and looked back at the crowd in the food court, scanning for Talia. Everyone appeared to be absorbed in their own business, not worrying about monsters or evil or giant forces out to suck dry everyone’s life force.
Sidequest: In Realms Ungoogled Page 15