“No. No! Just food…if you don’t have plans.” He looked at the others. “You guys can come, too.”
“Food sounds good,” Erica said.
“I’m in,” Travis added.
Talia shrugged. “I’m not that hungry.”
Terrance glanced at Talia. “I guess I’m not really, either, but you guys have fun.”
Donald, Karen, Travis, and Erica headed off together as one of the soldiers of the Darkness approached. Lance.
“Who’s that with Karen?” he asked Terrance.
“Does it really matter?”
Lance gazed up at the sky. “So what’s happening? It kind of feels like the world is ending.”
“The Adversary is coming for those who oppose him,” Talia said. “So you’ll probably be fine.”
Carmen came up behind Lance with her helmet off, looking scared. “Do your friends know what’s going on? No one seems to know what’s going on.”
“It looks like the world is ending,” Lance told her.
Carmen’s eyes grew wide.
“You probably shouldn’t be alone during this,” Lance told her. “Hey, why don’t we go get some drinks?” He put his arm around her, and they walked off.
“Your friend is not a good person,” Talia said.
Terrance grimaced. “Who is?”
“Well, some try harder at it, at least.”
Terrance looked at Talia. There was just a bit of worry creeping into her normal resolve. “So…what are your plans?”
Talia stared back at him with suspicion. “I’m not going to have sex with you because everyone thinks the world is ending, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Terrance sighed. “Know what? I have this video game at my apartment I’ve been really wanting to play. Might be a good time for that.”
Talia almost frowned. “You want to be alone?”
Terrance shook his head. “No.”
“I don’t like video games.”
“Of course you don’t.” It felt like the shaking in the ground was growing heavier. He looked up at the stars, and they weren’t only blinking rapidly but now seemed to be swaying. “Want to walk? Let’s at least get away from the dead dragon and demon soldiers and whatnot.”
“Okay. Let’s walk.”
They had made it only a short distance away when a familiar voice called out, “What are you two up to?”
It was Shannon, her face a mix of bitterness and worry. A few yards behind her stood Lacey and Chet. Terrance regarded them cautiously, then turned to Shannon. “Just walking to clear our heads. The Adversary is coming and is going to crush us or some nonsense.”
“Not nonsense,” Shannon said. “You have no idea what’s going to happen to you.”
“And what does it matter to you?” Talia asked. She motioned to the people behind Shannon. “You chose your side. Nothing to worry about for you; perhaps the Adversary will bring you a nice present wrapped in a pretty bow for your loyalty. But when you open it, you’ll find the box empty—same as all his other promises.”
Shannon stared angrily at Talia, but again Terrance noticed a little more in her expression. “Are you scared?” he asked.
“Of course I’m scared!” Shannon shouted. “You fools broke the world! We have no idea what’s happening now! This affects everyone, not just you. And we don’t know what the approach of the ruler of the Darkness will bring.”
“We stand against him, that’s what,” Terrance said. “You can, too.”
Shannon laughed, though there was no mirth in it. “Oh yes, I’ll switch to the side against the all-powerful entity just in time to be one of those in the path of its wrath!”
“It would show him we don’t fear him,” Terrance said.
Shannon frowned. “The fear is all over your face.” For a moment, it looked like she had something more to say, but she turned and headed back to her chosen company.
Terrance and Talia continued on their walk, taking a faded path that led down the mountain. Talia turned to him. “You do look scared.”
“I’m guessing that has something to do with how I feel really scared.” Terrance took his glasses out of the hard case in his pocket to get a better look at the sky. It was no longer black but a sort of purple, while the stars shone even brighter as they flickered. Terrance could also feel that the trembling of the earth had increased. “I never quite had the confidence in this that you do, that we’re some sort of powerful beings who can’t be defeated.”
“And yet here you are, ready to oppose the Darkness and all that controls it.”
“Yeah…well…I guess I just want to believe it can be defeated.”
She took his hand in hers. “It can. You know that. We all do. Somewhere deep inside the real us that doesn’t reside only in this world.”
Terrance smiled at her, but he could see fear in her, as well. As they moved further along the mountain, away from the fortress, the land looked less barren and foreboding. There were grass and trees bathed in a blue light from the odd sky. Terrance saw a big rock and sat on it, and Talia took a seat next to him. He stared up at the red moon and could almost swear that it was revolving. “He’s going to be here soon,” Terrance said. “I can feel it.”
“Quite soon,” another voice answered. “So I am out of here.”
Terrance turned to see Beauregard standing next to him. “Out of here to where?”
“I believe you saw the pathways to other realms,” Beauregard answered. “I have many choices of worlds that are not about to be destroyed. You know, I told you people this would happen, but no one ever listens to me.”
“We’re not about to be destroyed,” Talia insisted.
“Fine. Ignore the obvious. Luckily, I’m used to traveling to other realms, so it won’t affect me.”
“What are in these other realms?” Terrance asked.
“That’s not a simple question,” Beauregard said. “We’re talking radically different universes. Places beyond your comprehension.”
Terrance rolled his eyes. “Yes, I know; everything is beyond my comprehension.” He thought for a moment. “Are there others like us fighting against the evil in those realms?”
Beauregard snorted. “Oh yes, but none yet with this rousing level of success. Have fun dealing with the Adversary in person.”
Talia’s interest was piqued, as well. “Can you get in contact with them? Maybe we can join forces.”
“This isn’t like some sci-fi alternate-universe thing,” Beauregard said, “where it’s just like here but everyone is wearing cowboy hats. They are places that differ from this one in ways your brain wouldn’t even be able to process. Entirely different constants rule their physical laws…if they even have physics.”
“Well, it’s hard to accept that there are others opposing the Adversary and we can’t do anything together,” Terrance said. He thought for a second. “Can we…at least send them a message?”
“What you mean is, can I deliver them a message,” Beauregard said. “I’m not your errand boy.”
Terrance looked him right in the eyes. “Please. If you can move between realms, you need to help.”
He laughed again. “Need? You think I want the Adversary’s wrath? Still…I guess a single message won’t hurt.”
Terrance turned to Talia. “What should we tell them?”
“I’d recommend, ‘Don’t oppose the Adversary, or you’ll get destroyed like us,’” Beauregard said.
Talia ignored the elf. “We need to tell them what we’ve learned so far. What we know about the power of the enemy, the Caretaker, the—”
“Whoa whoa whoa,” Beauregard interrupted. “You need to keep it simple. And I mean really, really simple. Again, we’re talking radically different universes here. You give me too much, it will get lost in translation. The best I can pass on would be a single simple statement.”
“One statement?” Talia exclaimed. “What knowledge can we pass with that?”
Terrance considered it. He
had defeated a giant dragon and finally come into his own against the forces of the Darkness, but he wasn’t overwhelmed by any great sense of accomplishment. Instead, he just felt comfortable, like this was what he should be doing. “Tell them that…that they have to understand what they truly are. They have to remember that they are more than what they seem.”
Beauregard was silent a moment. Finally, he nodded. “I can work with that. I’ll get it to who needs it. Have fun with the end of the world, you two.” And the little elf walked off, disappearing into some nearby brush.
Terrance and Talia sat silently, nothing left to say as the earth continued to shake beneath them and the sky shuddered above. He could feel her gripping his hand tighter, and he squeezed back.
And then it arrived. The sky turned red and the stars disappeared. All before them was pulsating red, with blackness at the center. It took a while for Terrance to understand what he was seeing, but soon it became obvious. It was an eye—a single eye so large it filled the entire view of the sky. He could tell there was more to the creature, but it was so enormous that the rest of it was beyond their sight. As the eye stared down on them, Terrance was filled with such an oppressive dread that he had to fight to not collapse to the ground. He looked over at Talia, and tears were streaming down her face. She turned to him and briefly regained some composure. She nodded, and he nodded back. Then, hand in hand, they stood up, facing the creature immense beyond anything they could even attempt to imagine. Terrance drew his sword and pointed it at the Adversary. With great force of will, he uttered, “Bring it!”
And the world shattered beneath them.
Epilogue
An ear-piercing noise jolted Terrance out of unconsciousness, leaving him disoriented and confused.
“No bad noise.” A hand weakly slapped Terrance on the face. “Stop bad noise.”
He pulled himself from the bed and turned off the alarm clock. He looked at Shannon, who still lay there, her head buried in a pillow. “You need to get up, too, you know.”
She grunted and reached out with one hand, blindly waving it in the air in an attempt to slap Terrance again.
Terrance headed to the kitchen and fumbled with the coffeepot, then plopped down on the couch and stared at the turned-off TV. Something was bothering him, but he had trouble putting his finger on it.
Shannon came in and sat down beside him, dressed only in panties and his Legend of Zelda T-shirt. “What’s wrong, Ance?”
“Nothing…just had a weird dream last night.” He leaned back. “I was a warrior or something, fighting evil.”
“Ooh. Sounds like a neat dream. Was I in it? Did you have to rescue me?” She frowned. “You’d better not have rescued some other woman.”
“You were in it. But you were actually like…a demon warrior fighting on the side of evil.”
“What? Is that some crack about my being in law school?”
“No, it was”—Terrance thought for a moment; it seemed like there were some important details from the dream that he was forgetting—“just a dream.”
“Well, I don’t like it. If you have any more dreams, you make sure I am a good guy in them and am awesome.” She shook her fist at him. “Or I will wallop you. I will punch you so hard, you will spit out blood and teeth and you will forever after be deformed and ugly.”
“You’re taking this a bit too far,” Terrance said.
She stuck out her tongue at him, and he smiled at her. He didn’t know what he was worrying about. Everything was fine. Great, even.
Terrance actually got out the door early. He wasn’t sure why; he just had a constant feeling that he was after something. Something important. Nothing he could put his finger on, though. He listened to a rock station as he drove to work, and a news break mentioned a woman who had been shot while holding her baby. The woman had died, though the baby was fine but motherless. It was the sort of violence Terrance was used to hearing about every day and that usually rolled off him like water off a duck’s back, but this time a sadness suddenly gripped him. There was so much violence and hate that he heard about constantly, but now that he thought about how numb he was to it, it made him a bit disturbed.
The news ended and music started playing, and Terrance went back to focusing on his drive. But when he got to the small, forested area he passed through every day, he slowed as he neared that unmarked road that he had always seen but didn’t know where it went. He was extra curious about it today for some reason, and since he was early, he went ahead and turned onto it. The tree-lined road twisted further into the woods, going on for several yards until it stopped at a small clearing of dirt. Terrance parked his car and got out. Ahead were a few more trees, and through them he could see the back of a large building. Running the map of the area through his head, he figured it was a Home Depot. So, there was the mystery of that road; nothing special about it.
He noticed movement on a nearby tree trunk. A tiny ladybug scuttled up the bark to purposes unknown, though it seemed quite intent in its actions. Terrance then spotted a mushroom growing near the base of the tree. It was a perfectly sculpted little white umbrella. It was something so simple, yet Terrance realized how unbelievably complex it was, as well. It arose out of the ground in the shade of a tree, somehow feeding and tending itself and taking on its perfect shape with no knowledge or help.
Near the mushroom, ants scurried about, each working independently yet all with a similar goal. They were a whole community working together, and like the mushroom, they had simply arisen out of the ground. A long time ago, there were no such things as ants, and somehow they came to be as they were now—fully formed creatures, each working toward a purpose.
Terrance looked up at the trees towering above him, green leaves rustling in the wind. These enormous things had each started as a tiny seed, yet somehow had grown to their enormous size using nothing more than the material they found in the soil and the air and the rain that fell from the sky. It seemed almost absurd to him that this was possible.
Terrance shook the thoughts from his head. These were all ordinary things, things that he saw all the time and never paid much attention to. The only absurd thing was the strange, sudden interest he had in them. He went back to his car and headed to work.
At work, Terrance trudged to the break room and filled his mug with coffee. Karen walked in with her usual frown. He met her eyes, and for a brief time they stared at each other. There was some thought just out of Terrance’s grasp that he knew was sitting in his mind, but he couldn’t fathom what it was. He turned away from Karen before things got awkward, and left wordlessly as she went to the fridge.
He paused at the aisle to his cubicle to sip his coffee, taking a moment to look at the window at the far end and the light shining through it—light that had just finished traveling millions of miles in its journey from its source. He headed to his chair, moved his mouse to wake his computer, entered his password, and opened a browser. On the home screen were some news highlights, including a mention of some new slaughter over in Africa. It was the kind of news story Terrance usually never gave a second thought to, but this time he stared for a moment at the image of a crying child standing in a war-torn area. What is wrong with the world?
Terrance shook the thought from his head and minimized the browser. The background of his desktop was of some rural landscape—or, to be more precise, a series of small colored squares creating an approximation of a rural landscape. His screen was made up of millions of these little squares being constantly redrawn sixty times a second at the command of the processors inside the computer. It was only a hundred years or so ago that humans were just figuring out how to use electricity to light a room, and now it was dancing around at their command, calculating math equations and playing cat videos for people all across the world.
“You’re staring at your computer screen like a weirdo.”
Terrance turned to see Lance standing at the cubicle entrance. “Just having a weird day.”
“Problems in bed?”
Terrance shook his head. “No. Why do you always go there?”
“You just seem like the sort of guy who would have problems in bed.”
“Thanks, Lance. This is a good talk. But no, everything is good.” Terrance moved around his mouse pointer as if to prove to himself there was nothing special about it—nothing worth contemplating. “Everything is great.”
At lunch, nothing seemed appealing to Terrance, so he left the office building and wandered around downtown. A long time ago, this area was dirt and grass, and now structures made from stone and steel and glass blocked the sky. To someone a hundred years ago, these sights would be amazing beyond belief, but now these buildings were commonplace. Boring.
He looked straight up at the blue dome above him. It was a beautiful day, with a few clouds drifting in the sky. The clouds were the size of mountains, yet they floated effortlessly through the air. Peeking out from behind one of the clouds was the sun—an immense inferno so hot that even though it was millions of miles away, Terrance could feel its heat. It was so bright that it lit up the entire world.
A car horn honked, and Terrance looked down to see two cars stuck at an intersection and a driver yelling profanities. Eventually, one car screeched off in rage. It was a common display of anger—not even directed at him—and yet he felt bothered for some reason.
Terrance walked to a nearby vendor to get a hot dog and a Mountain Dew. He looked around for a place to sit and eat, and there was a bench nearby on which sat a young woman in a gray suit, eating a salad. He sat on the side of the bench furthest away from her and began to eat his hot dog. He glanced again at the woman; she had large, doe-like eyes that were intently gazing at something in front of her. He followed her gaze to a squirrel that sat in a small tree, apparently staring back.
“I never trusted squirrels,” Terrance said.
The woman slowly turned to look at him. “Do I know you?”
“Uh…no. Sorry.” He took a bite of his hot dog.
“I didn’t mean I was offended by your talking to me. It’s just a woman alone has to be careful of men approaching her. But you don’t look like a rapist.”
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