“I guess we’ll see about that.”
“You will see nothing. You will simply watch as everything you treasure—”
Terrance sighed. “I get it; you’re a huge douche. You don’t have to keep reiterating it.” Terrance’s entire body ached and he really did not want a fight, but he also was not feeling the least bit scared of Chet. “Just shut up and swing your silly little axe.”
Chet stood silently for a moment, then roared and charged. Terrance met the attack with a swing of his own, and Chet’s axe blade flew off its handle. Chet was briefly startled, then spun around and ran away.
“Yeah! That’s right!” Terrance shouted. “Run, you little twerp!” Terrance turned and saw that the army was now only a few yards away from him and charging. “Oh, crap.”
These enemy forces appeared human but were well-armored, with skull-shaped helmets. Terrance chose the running option once again, but it did not turn out well, as he almost immediately tripped on a rock and fell. One of the soldiers was soon standing over him, pointing a sword down at Terrance’s head. “Terr?”
It took a moment for Terrance to place the voice. “Lance?”
“You know this guy?” asked a female soldier standing next to Lance.
“Yeah, he’s a coworker,” Lance said. “Hey, Terrance, this is Carmen. I met her on the charge up the hill.”
“Hey.” Carmen waved at him with her hand that wasn’t holding a jagged sword. “So isn’t this weird…whatever is going on here?”
“What are you doing here, Lance?” Terrance shouted.
“Oh, well, these people were going around saying that there was big trouble up on this mountain and the whole world was threatened and they would make us into invincible warriors to fight back.”
“It was a little confusing,” Carmen said, “but everyone seemed to be going along. This is all kind of new, though; I mean, I’m an aerobics instructor. I’ve never even held a sword.”
“Dammit, Lance!” Terrance yelled as he slowly pushed himself up off the ground. “Talia said if you didn’t join us, you’d end up against us.”
“Yeah, I guess she did. I didn’t really take her seriously.”
Terrance shrugged. “I guess I thought it was just bluster at the time, too.”
“Who is Talia?” Carmen asked, then leaned close to Lance and said more quietly, “Are we supposed to stab this guy?”
Terrance was now surrounded by enemy soldiers. “Well…I kind of have to go,” he said, but they didn’t move.
Talia suddenly came bowling through the circle of soldiers, knocking a few of them over. She swung her two swords around menacingly, and the others backed off.
“I found my swords,” Talia said.
“That’s good; we should run.”
“Agreed.”
Terrance and Talia dashed away toward the dead Malcus and the remains of the stone gate, with the enemy soldiers in hot pursuit. Ahead, a group of cavefish tried to block their way, but Talia quickly stabbed two of them while Terrance cut down another.
“I think I’m getting better at this!” Terrance called out to Talia as they ran.
“Pat yourself on the back later!” Talia yelled back.
They were soon at the gate, and between Malcus’s massive carcass and pieces of the giant stone gate, there was only enough space for a single person to fit through at a time. Terrance let Talia go first, then took one last glance back at the soldiers charging them before heading in after her to confront whatever lay beyond.
Chapter 44
A few dozen of the Infinite were standing before Terrance. The first he recognized was Krampsky, in his now-torn police uniform. They were in some sort of dark valley, with stone walls stretching far up above them. “Anyone else coming?” Krampsky asked.
Talia turned to face the small entrance they’d just come through, with her swords drawn. “I doubt it. That army was right behind us.”
“The army was just regular people,” Terrance said, facing the entrance as well, assuming that attackers would emerge at any moment. “It’s like they just assembled everyone off the street to come after us.”
Krampsky nodded. “They must have been desperate to stop us. Let’s find out why.”
It didn’t seem like the enemy was coming through the gate, so Terrance turned back to the group to find his friends. He spotted Curtis standing with Karen, Donald, Felicia, and Travis. “I found my sword and slew Malcus,” Terrance informed Curtis.
Curtis smiled. “Sorry I doubted you for even a moment. You’ve found yourself, I think.”
Terrance looked around. “Where are Vivian and the kids?”
“She texted me; they’re hiding in a cave,” Curtis said. “I think they’ll be okay for now.”
“Did you see Erica?” Travis asked Terrance and Talia with desperation. “I lost track of her on the battlefield.”
“I’m sorry…no,” Terrance answered, now feeling guilty for bragging of his triumph.
“She’s strong,” Talia assured him. “She’ll be okay.”
“We can’t go back,” Curtis said. “The best way to help everybody is to move forward and put an end to all of this.”
“Then let’s do it,” Travis urged. “Let’s do it now.” He took one last glance back at the entrance.
“Everyone ready?” Krampsky called out.
There was a collective shout in response, and the group marched forward, weapons drawn.
“So what’s happening now?” Karen asked, holding her axe carefully.
“No idea,” Donald answered. “We’re in new territory.”
“Quite literally,” Felicia said, looking up at the sky. Terrance had noticed the sky as well; it wasn’t a normal night sky, seeming to have thousands more stars than usual. Colorful nebulas were brightly visible, and there were even some planets, including gas giants that hovered nearby, much larger than the moon ever was. “Where do you think we are?” Terrance asked.
“Someplace they very much don’t want us to be,” Curtis answered.
They continued through the valley until the gate was far behind. Eventually, in the distance they could see a thin tower that was so tall, it seemed to never end but to simply disappear into the night sky. As they got nearer, they exited the valley and entered an enormous clearing. It was surrounded by steep cliffs, but cut into the cliffs were what appeared to be hundreds more pathways like the one they had just emerged from.
“I hope someone took note of the one we came out of,” Donald said.
Everyone paused for a moment to wonder at the sight, but soon began moving again toward the obvious destination: the tower. It was light-colored, as though made of marble, and it was actually quite wide at the base, not as thin as they’d thought—just impossibly tall. A golden door was visible just ahead, so Krampsky led the way, then opened it.
As they headed inside the tower, it was immediately very familiar to Terrance. And there on a throne at the other end of the room sat the Caretaker.
“So you’re here,” he said, wearing another golden mask of an impassive face. “What now?”
Krampsky pointed his sword at the Caretaker. “You leave our world, and you take your evil with you.”
The Caretaker floated off his throne and down toward them, chuckling softly. “Or what?”
“Or we destroy you,” Krampsky answered.
The Caretaker was silent a moment. “Okay, I choose destruction. Go ahead and destroy me; I’m terribly curious to discover how you plan to accomplish that.”
There was silence. As Terrance had suspected, no one did have an idea of how to destroy the Caretaker. Finally, Talia cried out and charged, stabbing the Caretaker with both swords. All that accomplished was to cause his robe to rustle, as there was nothing solid to stab.
“I believe I have already explained my noncorporeal existence to most of you,” the Caretaker said, “so this is a rather useless battle. You cannot remove me—which is good, because there is no world without me. As I’ve ex
plained many times, everything collapses without my intervention.”
“Surely you can tell by now that we’re not interested in the lies you feed us,” Curtis answered. “We want to be free of you, and we will not stop fighting until that happens. We will not just sit still and perish.”
The Caretaker laughed. “Then I guess you’ll perish by more active means. Weren’t there more of you when this started? What do you think happened to your dead?”
The Infinite were silent for a moment. Finally, Krampsky spoke up. “We do not know for sure, but—”
“Yes, you do know,” the Caretaker interrupted, anger in his voice. “They’re gone. Forever. You know this in your hearts despite whatever nonsense you’ve bought into. If you only had my perspective and could see the destruction left in the wake of the entities you know as faeries. Whole worlds destroyed. After we rid your realm of those creatures, I thought perhaps we could bring your world back to order in a peaceful way.”
“You mean by your forces attacking us constantly to try to cow us into submission?” Curtis asked bitterly.
“Yes, it doesn’t seem that peaceful to you,” the Caretaker said. A hint of malice seeped into his voice. “But believe me, there are much, much harsher ways of dealing with you.”
“Bring your worst!” Talia shouted. “You are less than nothing to us, and we don’t fear your power.”
The Caretaker chuckled. “It will not be me who shall deal with you now. That you are here means I have failed. So another comes.”
Terrance tried to imagine whom this might be, and he could see from the expressions of the others that this was new information to them, as well. Karen looked particularly confused. “Aren’t you the so-called Adversary guy behind all of this?” she asked.
The Caretaker floated toward her. “I’m guessing you all think that. By the way, we haven’t met yet, Karen Hunter. I am the Caretaker of your world and of countless others. I’m sure that on your way in here, you saw the other pathways to my tower. Each one of those leads to another universe that I am in charge of. But in the scheme of things, I am what I believe is called middle management in your world.”
“If you’re not in charge,” Krampsky said, “then bring us to whoever is. Bring us to the one behind this all, and we’ll deal with him.”
The Caretaker laughed. “You have no idea what you’re asking. This is like a bacterium demanding an audience with the president. That which you ignorantly call the Adversary is a being completely beyond you—so far above you that you could scream your feeble words up at him and they would never reach his hearing. I know that you imagine this evil entity plotting machinations against you and feeding off of your ‘infinite selves’ or whatever lunacy you’ve settled on, but the one in charge of this all is no more aware of your world than a man who owns a beach house is aware of each grain of sand on his property.”
The Caretaker floated back a bit from the group. “Or I should say, he was not aware. Victory is yours, people. You have his attention. He is coming. And when he arrives and finishes with you, I assure you that despite all your bravado, you will finally have no more will left to fight.” The Caretaker floated back to his throne. “We are done here. You can show yourselves out. If you wish to meet your adversary, simply take the pathway straight ahead and return to your realm. My forces will stand down now; you won’t have to worry about them. No, they certainly are not what you should be worrying about.”
They all stared silently at the Caretaker.
“Or stay here and keep pointlessly trying to stab me,” the Caretaker added. “I have nothing but time.”
“All right,” Krampsky said, “if the Adversary is coming to our world, we will go meet him.” He led the way back out of the tower.
“Should we have left him there?” asked a woman whom Terrance didn’t know. She wore an apron and looked as though she’d come to the battle after a shift at a supermarket. “It seems like we should have done more to try to destroy him.”
“He has no real power over us and is not worth worrying about,” Curtis answered. “Let’s finally confront the true evil behind this.”
“And then what?” Karen asked. “What do we know about him?”
“Well, obviously not much,” Donald said with a rueful laugh. “Most of us thought the Caretaker was him.”
“He did say that the forces of the Darkness were going to stand down,” Felicia said. “Maybe we can find who we’re missing when we get out there.” She looked pointedly at Travis and Curtis.
“Hopefully, she’s waiting out there,” Travis said, managing an unconvincing smile.
Karen looked worried. “But what do you think this Adversary is going to do to us?”
There was no answer, and Terrance figured everyone was as clueless about this as he was. The threat was not to kill them but to rob them of their will to fight, and he shuddered at all the things he could imagine that meant.
“We may not know exactly what lies ahead,” Curtis said, “but we know we’ll be fine. He can’t do anything of lasting significance to us, no matter how much power he pretends to have.”
“They are all kind of a broken record with that power-beyond-our-comprehension stuff,” Terrance commented.
“Okay, we will resist him, but then what?” Karen asked. “Can we defeat him?”
“We are defeating him,” Talia answered. “That’s why he’ll be coming to put on some big show to try to scare us away from the fight. But we can’t be defeated, because our power is unending. He, on the other hand, no matter how large and powerful he seems, is a finite being. If he must use his power to try to crush us, then he is that much more weakened. And we will keep fighting until we force his hand again. As long as we continue this battle no matter what, he will one day have no power left, and will finally be defeated.”
Karen looked somewhat assured. “And how long will that take?”
Talia shrugged. “It will take as long as it takes. The important thing to remember is to always keep fighting. We lose only if we decide to lose. If we never give up, then our victory is assured.”
They reached the gate and the motionless, spiky corpse of Malcus, and carefully made their way through one by one. Back outside the crumbled fortress, the forces of the Darkness were still milling about but no longer looked ready to attack. In front of them stood Despina, who stared at the Infinite angrily as they emerged from the rubble. “Find what you were looking for?” she asked in a mocking tone.
“We were looking for the Adversary,” Krampsky said, “and he is coming here.”
“Yes,” Despina said, her anger fading into what looked more like fear. “I can tell.”
It was then that Terrance noticed that something was a bit wrong with the world. All the stars in the sky twinkled rapidly as if in a panic, the full moon began to take on a reddish hue, and there was a slight shudder in the earth as if it were having trouble holding itself together. There was a sense of doom in the air, almost weighing Terrance down under its enormity.
“You’ve destroyed everything,” Despina continued. “I guess you call that victory, but you will soon know fear and suffering like you have never—”
“Daddy!”
Curtis’s kids broke through the straggling forces of the Darkness and ran toward their father. Behind them were Vivian and others of the Infinite who hadn’t made it to the gate. They all ignored Despina and went to each other.
“Erica?” Travis called out, searching desperately through the crowd.
“Here!” Erica answered, hobbling near the back of the group, clutching her arm. Travis ran to her and held her tight. “Ow,” she gasped. “Sorry, I got surrounded, so I ended up surrendering, since this new army that came isn’t exactly a kill-happy group. Actually, I met a girl in the army who works at this vintage clothing store I hadn’t heard of. I might want to check it out if”—she stared up at the sky—“if the world isn’t ending or something.”
Curtis finished hugging his children, then emb
raced his wife. She smiled at him but didn’t hide well the worry in her face. “What happened in there?”
“The Caretaker was not the Adversary,” Curtis answered, “but the Adversary is now coming to crush us…or something.”
Vivian took a deep breath and looked up, as if the sky might fall on them at any moment. “Almost hoping for a little bit of a break from all this.”
“Can we get ice cream?” Grace asked, apparently not picking up on any of the doom.
Vivian tore her gaze away from the sky and smiled at her children. “I don’t see any reason why not.”
“Can I get two scoops?” Daniel asked.
“You can’t eat two whole scoops,” Curtis said in a teasing tone.
“I can!”
“I guess we’ll see.” He turned to address the rest of the Infinite. “We will see you all…later, I guess.”
“Hard to know what the future brings,” Krampsky answered. “But we will meet up again one day, of that I am sure. Good fighting.”
“Same to you all.” Curtis headed off with his family, and most of the remaining Infinite began to depart.
“I’d better get home,” Felicia said. “I have a paper due tomorrow.”
“Will there be a tomorrow?” Karen asked.
Felicia shrugged. “If there is, and I don’t have the paper, I’ll get a zero. I’ll see you guys later.” She took another glance at the ominous sky. “In this world or another.”
“Good luck with the paper,” Terrance said as she headed off.
“So how long will it take for the Adversary to get here?” Erica asked.
“No idea.” Travis said. “I think he wants us to have time to properly dread his arrival, or something.”
Erica laughed. “Yeah, that sounds about right.” Her smile faded a bit as she looked at the sky again.
“Hey, uh, Karen,” Donald said, looking nervous, but not because of the doom enveloping them, “you want to maybe get a bite to eat?”
Karen eyed him suspiciously. “Is this one of those ‘The world is going to end, so we might as well—’”
Sidequest: In Realms Ungoogled Page 34