“They threw the fight?” It did give Terrance an uneasy explanation of why he suddenly seemed to have gained competency in swordplay. “But I killed Lacey…”
Shannon hesitated a moment. “‘Kill’ is a strong word.”
“Excuse me?”
“Let’s just say this: what I’ve learned from hanging out with your friends—the Infinite—is that they don’t know a damn thing. I mean, they have absolutely no clue what they’re up against. They cobble together a few half-ideas from bits of ancient text and use that to try to take on forces with power their little brains can’t even begin to make sense of. It’s so pointless. I mean really, Ance, what do you know about all of this other than some vague platitudes about you being an ‘infinite being’?”
Terrance thought for a moment, and the answer came easily. “That what you’re a part of is wrong, and someone has to fight it.”
Shannon rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I get that it sometimes seems that way, but you don’t know enough to judge any of that. I mean, I did think for a time that all of this was awful, and you got me thinking that way again, but it’s just that we have small minds, and big things are scary. The Darkness is huge and powerful—so big, and beyond normal people, you aren’t even supposed to know about it.” She patted his cheek. “And that’s what you need to go back to. You’re going to forget all of this, and everything will be nice and safe and happy. And it will all be good again, because we love each other.”
The white light faded for a moment as a dark shadow passed overhead. A few of the faeries gasped. “What’s that?” Terrance uttered.
“Your friends are dangerous and spread nothing but misery with their interference—people are happy until the Infinite get their nonsense inside people’s heads. Along with these faeries, they have to be stopped. Just stay with me, and you’ll be fine.”
With barely a thought, Terrance drew his sword and ran back to the entrance of the palace. They had risked their lives to help him—to help Shannon—and he had led them into a trap. When he reached the crystal doors, they were open again. The cloud ship was still at the dock, but on its deck all he could see was the dark armor of the minions of the Darkness. A melee was going on, but since he couldn’t see any of the Infinite through the enemy, it didn’t look like it was going well. He noticed three griffins with riders flying about, but they were far outnumbered by the chimeras that also blotted the sky. Swaggerty stood at the helm of the ship watching the battle with what looked like annoyance—though it was hard to discern a bear’s expression.
For a few breaths, Terrance stood frozen on the crystal dock, unsure of what to do. It all looked hopeless. Then he was yanked from behind while a hand stripped him of his sword. He fell to the dock and turned to see Shannon standing over him, holding his sword. She was still in her jeans and the T-shirt she’d borrowed from Karen, but somehow there was something darker about her now. “Let it go,” she assured him, but there was no warmth in her voice. “It’s all going to be okay; just don’t do anything stupid.” With that, she chucked his sword over the side of the dock, and Terrance watched as it disappeared into a cloud, falling now into the infinite black starscape that lay below.
A giant form rose from the dark: Malcus. Two of the griffins with riders immediately dodged away, but one kept course directly for the beast. Terrance recognized the rider as Randolph, who held back his sword in preparation for a swing against the gigantic beast. But Malcus parted its terrible jaw, and from its throat came dark fire, which enveloped both griffin and rider. When the fire disappeared, Randolph and his steed were gone, as if they had never existed.
Terrance watched in stunned silence as the rest of the scene unfolded. The other two griffins with riders were soon overwhelmed by the chimeras and were forced to land on the ship, where what once was an active battle had now gone eerily still. Shannon strode past Terrance toward the ship, her face an impassive mask. The dark soldiers on the ship parted, and Terrance could see the rest of the Infinite looking bruised and bloodied, with their hands up and their weapons on the ground. Erica and Travis were being pulled off their griffin, which lay slain on the ship’s deck.
Curtis stood tall as Shannon approached, clutching a bloody wound on his face. “You’re making a foolish choice.”
They were covered in shadows for a moment as Malcus again passed overhead. “Foolishness is standing against powers you can’t even fathom. You saw what happened to the old man; we are done playing around with you idiots. And now the faeries’ palace is ours, and when we destroy it and the faeries inside, its protection of all who oppose us will also disappear.”
Terrance finally moved himself to action, running up behind Shannon. “You don’t have to do this,” he said, but when he looked at the rest of the dark soldiers watching him, and at the swords they were pointing at the Infinite, he realized what a weak protestation that was.
Shannon’s dispassionate mask melted away for a moment as she touched Terrance’s chin and smiled. “Just stay back; everything is going to be fine.” The menacing look returned as she turned back toward the Infinite. “I hope you all understand that you’re defeated.”
Talia stared back with defiance. “With every action, you march closer to your own destruction, but you cannot defeat us.”
One of the soldiers removed her helmet. It was Amber. “Remember me from the mall?” She put her sword to Talia’s cheek. “Did you think you accomplished anything by striking me down? We’re immortal, you stupid twits.”
“Immortal?” Terrance asked, looking Shannon over. She looked so much like a normal woman—albeit one holding a sword—but there was something unsettling about her that he couldn’t quite place his finger on.
“Yes, it’s…complicated,” Shannon told him. “It’s not a fact we like to flaunt, and it is apparently yet another important detail about how the universe works that these people you are following are completely ignorant of.” Judging by their expressions—shocked with a hint of despair—this was news to the Infinite. Shannon turned to address them. “You can’t win; I hope you finally get that. You’re just silly, ignorant fools fighting things you don’t even understand.”
“I know you want to believe that,” Curtis said, the resolve returning to his eyes.
Amber approached him. “You can win tiny battles from time to time, but we’ll always come back.” She put her sword to his cheek. “If we kill you, though, that’s it.”
Talia started laughing. “You fools think you’re immortal? The power of the Darkness may appear vast, but it is not infinite. We may slay you a million times and you may come back each time, but one day you will cease to be because of the doomed path you follow.”
Amber turned her attention to Talia, aiming the point of her sword between Talia’s eyes. “I think we may need to kill another one to get the message through.”
Talia looked unperturbed. “You have no power over my existence, silly thing.” In a blink, Talia was on the ground snatching up her swords and then rising with them and slicing through Amber, who disappeared in blue flame. Talia stabbed another soldier through the head before several of them descended on her at once. The other Infinite tried to make a move, but soldiers tackled them, held them to the ground, and beat them. Without thinking, Terrance ran to help, reaching for a sword that wasn’t there.
Talia cut down soldier after soldier, but Shannon approached her at a slow, unconcerned pace. Talia turned to face her foe. “Come on, betrayer. You’re nothing to me.”
It was such a quick strike that all Terrance saw was the spray of red that erupted from Talia’s torso. She stared at Shannon in disbelief, then smiled slightly before toppling backward over the ship’s railing, into the blackness below.
“Now what are you going to do, little man?” growled a voice behind Terrance. He turned to see Chet standing there, holding his axe. It was a good question. He couldn’t run. He had no weapon to fight with, and the rest of the Infinite were being pounded into submission, so there was no one to help him.
He looked at Shannon standing there in her white shirt stained with blood, and she smiled at him as if everything was right in the world. He turned back to Chet, who was now chuckling. Anger flared up in Terrance and he leapt at Chet and tried to wrest the axe away, but his actions were as useless as ever, and a simple backhand from Chet sent Terrance stumbling backward. Terrance hit the side railing of the ship and began to tumble over it, and the thought passed through his mind that he should have struggled to grab on to something, but his will was gone. Instead, he fell limply into the stars and darkness below, at least now putting some distance between himself and his own failure.
Chapter 30
The scenery kept changing from black to blue as Terrance tumbled through the air. Would he fall forever? He didn’t know. It was like a bad dream. All of it was. But it wasn’t so much that he wanted to wake up as that he wanted to go back to sleep.
He tried to steady himself to get an idea of where he was falling, but that only caused him to spin faster through the air, to the point that he couldn’t tell what he was looking at. He was getting dizzy and decided to close his eyes for a moment and hope that somehow the world would sort itself out.
But the world seemed to have trouble with that, and he felt himself being jerked in different directions as if gravity couldn’t decide which way to pull him. This went on for a few seconds until finally he shot forward in one direction for a while until a jolt went through his entire body as he slammed into something hard. For a moment he was nothing but pain, and then he was at rest, lying on his back on an unknown surface. He slowly opened his eyes to stare up at a clear blue sky. He wondered where he was, but to find out, he’d have to lift his head, and he was pretty sure a fall like that should have broken every bone in his body. Then again, he wasn’t sure how far he’d fallen or in which direction. He eventually decided to try moving his head, and though it ached a little, it seemed fine. Looking around, he saw that he was in a grassy field, which he soon recognized: the clearing in which he’d first been given his sword.
Terrance decided to get up, and all his limbs seemed to be working, though they were a bit stiff. When he fell out of the ship, he’d really thought that he was going to die, but he was too heartbroken to celebrate the mixed blessing of still being alive.
Something glinted in the sun. Terrance wandered toward it to find his sword stuck into the ground. He pulled it out and returned it to its sheath. It didn’t make him feel safer to have it back, though; it was just added weight. A thought struck him, and he looked around for Talia’s body, but saw nothing but the grass and flowers of the field. He hoped she had gone to a better place, along with Randolph.
There was a deafening crash and the earth shook so violently that Terrance fell to the ground. He spun around to see that the crystal palace had crashed into the earth about fifty yards behind him. It was barely recognizable—just a mass of giant, broken pieces of crystal sticking out of the ground. A shadow passed overhead and he looked up to see the jagged form of Malcus crossing the sky. He shuddered a bit as he watched the beast fly off toward the distant mountains, but there was anger mixed with the fear.
Terrance surveyed the shattered palace for a few moments more, and thinking of nothing else to do, he headed out of the clearing and back to the road.
With no phone, his only option seemed to be to walk home. It was a depressingly long walk in the not-very-comfortable sandals he had borrowed from Karen, giving him plenty of time to think about his failures. Of course there were the Infinite, who were captured or dead because of the mission they’d taken on for him. He realized he’d have to tell Vivian about how her husband had been captured; he wasn’t sure whom to tell about the others. And he wasn’t sure what to do now about Shannon. When he thought of her, what popped into his head was the image of her coldly cutting Talia down. He couldn’t be with her anymore; he was certain of that. Despite her assertions, there were certain things he could not overlook, things he would never be okay with. But were Shannon and he enemies now? Terrance felt the hilt of his sword; it seemed so useless to him. He wasn’t a warrior, and if he pretended to be one, the only thing that seemed to be in his future was a fate like that of Randolph and Talia.
After trudging for what seemed like hours, Terrance finally made it all the way to his apartment. He noticed that his car was parked in front of his building. He didn’t think anything of it at first, but then remembered he’d last left it at the Hobby Lobby near the Infinite’s meeting place. Terrance put one hand on his sword and slowly entered the broken front door of his apartment.
“Hey there, buddy.” It was Beauregard, sitting on the couch, smoking his pipe.
Terrance relaxed his hand on the sword and shut the door behind him. “What are you doing here?”
“I figured you’d have a tough day, so I thought I’d help out a little. I brought your car back.”
“Thanks.” Terrance tossed his sheathed sword onto the floor and headed for the fridge. The thing below pounded a couple of times, but Terrance couldn’t bring himself to care.
“I drank all your beer, though.”
“Dammit!” Terrance walked to the couch and plopped down opposite the elf.
“So…I told you this would end horribly,” Beauregard said.
“Yeah, but you also told me that I couldn’t trust you.”
Beauregard nodded. “Yeah, I was lying about that. We elves can be tricky at times, but lying is such a simplistic way to trick people. Kind of beneath me, really.”
Terrance looked at the elf. He felt that he should be angry, but he was too tired. “So you knew this was going to happen?”
“I figured something like this was the most likely result.”
“Are you happy about it?”
“I wouldn’t worry about my feelings. Do you understand how grave things are, now that the crystal palace has been destroyed?”
Terrance slouched in his seat. “I don’t understand anything about anything.”
“The Adversary will have its minions move much more directly against those who oppose it. Are you ready for that?”
“No!” Terrance yelled. “Not even slightly! I’m not a warrior!”
Beauregard chuckled. “Aren’t you an infinite being of some sort?”
“Are you mocking me?”
The elf nodded. “Of course. Anyway, I tried to advise you before to leave all of this alone. You didn’t listen.”
“It’s hard to ignore all the evil stuff out there.”
“People do it all the time.”
“And…it’s too late now. I got some of the Infinite captured. Others…killed.”
“Not your problem.”
Terrance took a deep breath. “I need to at least get in contact with Vivian Dayton and tell her that her husband and the others were captured. And that Randolph and Talia were…” He couldn’t bring himself to complete the sentence; all he could do was watch their deaths over and over again in his mind.
“And once you tell Vivian this, what are you going to do? Storm their hideout—perhaps fight Shannon one-on-one—and rescue those still alive?”
Terrance glared at the elf. “What’s your game? What do you want out of all of this?”
Beauregard puffed at his pipe. “If I answered that, why would you believe me?”
Terrance thought about it. “I don’t like you smoking in here.”
“When an elf smokes, it makes everyone around him healthier.”
Terrance looked at the elf and his mischievous grin. “I think you’re making that up.”
Beauregard shrugged. “Maybe I do like lying.”
“The Imperial March” started playing. Terrance stared at his phone without moving.
“You going to answer that?” Beauregard asked.
“It’s Shannon. I don’t know what I want to say to her yet.”
“If you don’t want to fight her, you might as well embrace her. She’s a lovely thing when she’s not all murdery, isn’t she?”
&nbs
p; Terrance rubbed his temples. “Those are the only two choices? Fight her or join her?”
“Well…we could just forget all of this. You could stay away from the Infinite and from Shannon and her ilk.”
“Just ignore it all?”
“The Infinite are in a hopeless battle, as you’ve seen, and the forces of the Darkness are too evil for you, so you could just go back to work tomorrow and forget everything.”
It was the most attractive option Terrance could think of. When he’d tried to go back to normal before, he’d continued dating Shannon, which made all the weirdness difficult to ignore. Maybe if he stopped seeing her, he could forget it all. “I still need to tell the remainder of the Infinite what happened.”
“I can tell them,” Beauregard said. “You are now absolved from all of this.” Beauregard waved his hand around as if casting a spell on Terrance. “There, you are back to normal.”
“You’re still here.”
“Well…there is one thing you need to do if you want to be done with this.” Beauregard pointed to the sword at Terrance’s hip.
Terrance felt the hilt of his sword. “There is so much evil out there.”
“And you’re going to fight it?”
Terrance thought of the blood-splattered Shannon smiling at him. Something deep within him ached at the memory. “I tried to, but I was useless…less than useless. Everyone is worse off because of me.”
“Maybe because it’s nonsense,” Beauregard suggested. “This whole idea that you, Terrance Denby, computer programmer, are supposed to be taking on vast, universe-manipulating powers.”
“If I give up, then it’s destruction.”
“Because of the Adversary?” Beauregard asked.
Terrance nodded. “Yeah…that Caretaker guy I met, I guess.”
“That could be more nonsense, but I’ll tell you what isn’t: if you stand up against him, you will be killed. So really, it’s possible destruction—if the Infinite aren’t full of crap—versus certain destruction.”
Sidequest: In Realms Ungoogled Page 24