Lets read Everworld-Show me the way to go home.

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Lets read Everworld-Show me the way to go home.

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

quote:

Chapter
X

She was very calm, waiting, not exactly relaxed, but not ready to go Jackie Chan on me, either. I reined in well outside the circle of stones.

"Druid stones, like Stonehenge," Senna said conversationally, like I'd asked her a question, "They seem to have advanced quite a way since the days when they used these kinds of circles to plot the stars and the moon and
regulate the planting days and the holidays and the harvests."

"Yeah," I said, dry-mouthed. "They have calendars now, I guess. Probably those Tolkien calendars. You know... like... okay."

"What am I supposed to do with you, Christopher?" Senna asked, cocking her head to one side.

"Come back with me," I said as firmly as I could.

She smiled and shook her head regretfully. "I don't think so, Christopher. These folks are simple, but not stupid. They know that what happened to Lorg wasn't magic. They know we're involved in some way. And you or Jalil or April would have sold me out to them."

I could deny it, but what would be the point? "Yeah. Not me, though. Not that I wouldn't, it's just that I would never have had a chance: It would be a toss-up between Jalil and April. Me, I don't like you, don't trust you, but I don't have a major beef with you."

She nodded, accepting that. "I wish I could trust you, Christopher, I really do."

"Can I kill him now?" a voice asked.

That voice... familiar. From somewhere, not here, but from somewhere. I looked around, saw no one. Just the stones, the trees, the grass.

"Yes, you can kill him now."

Keith loomed up from atop one of the massive rocks, rising to his full, not-very-impressive height He cradled an Uzi in the crook of one arm. There was a pair of pistols bolstered around his waist. An ammo belt hung over one shoulder.

Keith, the sick little racist Nazi wanna-be punk who had threatened me over in the real world. I didn't pause to wonder how in hell he'd ended up here now, I just moved. Kicked my horse hard with both heels and rolled backward off him. Bang onto my back, thank God for soft grass, and still the wind was kicked out of me.

The Uzi erupted and the horse screamed. The horse hit the ground, kicked, then stopped kicking. I rolled up against the base of the nearest stone pillar. Tried to think. Keith. With a freaking Uzi. A little Klebold Harris psychopath working with Senna. And me with nothing but handfuls of grass.

I heard Keith above. He was leaping from stone table to stone table. Leaping heavily. He was weighed down with all
that hardware, not like me, no, boy, thank goodness I had nothing to contend with but empty freaking hands. If I ran for the trees he'd have a perfect, easy shot at me. If I stayed in the stones he'd have a harder time, but there was Senna to deal with.

All I had survived in Everworld and I was going to get shot?

Shot? With a gun?

I breathed hard, almost sobbing. How did David do this hero crap? What should I do? Slight vibration down through the stone pillar. Keith was directly above me. So at least he was no genius: How was he going to shoot me when he couldn't lean out far enough to see me?

Loud explosions all around me, clattering, chipping, exploding rock. I scampered around the rock. Keith was sticking his gun over the edge and firing blind and had damned near greased me. I crawled fast, elbows on grass, thinking, The stains will never come out, thinking it was almost funny, and when I came full circle there would be Senna and I'd be all done.

A blur that came to a sudden vibrating stop. Two fairies at the top of the rise. They stared hard.

"Run!" I yelled. "Get help, run!"

A stream of bullets caught them, spun one around. He was dead before he hit the grass. The other ran, but he was hit. Too badly to get away? Couldn't tell, couldn't see. I scurried around the rock and there was Senna. But she wasn't looking at me. She wasn't looking at anything. She was glowing like she'd swallowed a stadium light. Her head was thrown back, her arms spread wide in a parody of crucifixion, eyes staring up at nothing.

The light inside her shined right through her, she was translucent, insubstantial. She was hard to look at, she was so bright.

Keith was capering away atop his rock yelling, "Yee-hah! Yeah! Yeah!" and other hillbilly nitwit witticisms. "Now it comes! Now it comes down! It�s happening right now!"

And then he remembered his business and aimed a blast at where I'd been a few seconds before. I rolled over to look up and see if I could spot the muzzle before he could kill me. Help had to be on the way, right? Come on, MacCool, come on, David, someone save my sorry rear end.

The air around Senna was shimmering, a wind had whipped up, a wind that seemed to blow straight through her,
like she was an open window in a gale. The gateway! She was doing it. She was opening the gateway.

"Yeah! Yeah! Do it! King of the world!" Keith yammered.

And then, as I blinked in disbelief, I was looking right through Senna, right through her at a shabby room, a real-
world room. Maybe a dozen men, maybe twice that many, were somehow inside her. Men of various ages, all of them gaping in some mixture of terror and weird exaltation. All of them were armed, most with more than one weapon. They had dark green ammo boxes piled up around their ankles. One was wearing a swastika armband.
Keith yelled and just fired into the air in celebration. It came to me then that it was right now or never. Right this minute or I was never getting out of this place.

I jumped up and ran from my rock to the next rock over, expecting the line of bullets to shatter my spine. I raced around the far side and hugged rock, weeping. I hugged that damp rock, held on, didn't want to let go.

"Keep going," I told myself and damned if I didn't. I ran to the next rock. Now I'd be blocked from Keith's view, at least for a while. If I ran straight for the trees, quick calculation, he'd see me, oh yes he'd see me, but how much exposed space did I have to cover? He'd blown away the fairies at an even longer distance.

No choice, move, run!

I ran. Ran for the trees, bounding along over the springy grass, with the sound of a tornado growing behind me,
punctuated by Keith's mad ranting. Then...

A loud curse. BamBamBam. I jerked with each explosion. Saw the line of bullets hit the grass beside me, move toward me, no way to outrun it, the advancing line of bullets... stopped! Empty dip.

Another curse, frantic now.

I was still running, still laboring up the slope when he opened up with his pistols. Two shots. Then I was in the trees,
slid behind the first like Daffy Duck with Elmer Fudd on his tail. Bullets thudded into the tree. The far side of the tree. I ran again, this time keeping the tree between me and Keith and now the range was too far for accuracy. The shots were wild and I was out of the dell, over the lip of the ridge, and running like I was trying out for the fairy Olympics.

yeah yall weren't kidding when you said it was about to kick into overdrive!

quote:

Chapter
XI

"At least a dozen Maybe more. Lots of guns. A whole Keanu-load of guns. Boxes of ammunition. I don't know what all else,"

I was back in the castle, back behind walls that didn't seem nearly high enough or thick enough anymore. Etain, the king, Queen Goewynne, MacCool, Fios, and a representative from each color of druid, plus all my friends, were there. Everyone was scared. Or at least everyone who got it was scared. Some of them were not understanding the deal, despite the testimony of the second fairy, the one who had taken a slug in his scrawny butt but still managed to limp home.

"At least a dozen heavily armed electroshock cases. I mean, Jalil and I know Keith, all right? If he's an example of these guys, we're talking major meltdowns, whack jobs: cousin-marrying, beer-for-breakfast, swastika-tattooed losers who stay up all night stroking their guns and watching Saving Private Ryan so they can root for the Germans."

"Only twelve?" MacCool said with the slightest little smile of condescension. "Twelve mortals?"

"No," I said, pounding the table with the reckless rudeness of a man who'd just finally stopped shaking, "Twelve guys with sub-freaking-machine guns, all right? See everyone in this room? Here's how long it takes." I stood up and pointed my finger like a gun. "BamBamBamBamBamBam, you're all dead, all right? Keith killed the two fishermen. He killed your big old giant, all right? He smoked one of your fairies and almost got the other one."

David said, "He's right. The fairies are so fast and so accurate with their bows that you folks could probably put up a
good fight, especially if this little army is as disorganized and untrained as I suspect they are. But I'll tell you flat out: if the twelve of them are under the control of someone smart and organized and patient..."

"Senna," April said poisonously. David flinched. I wanted to feel sorry for him. He'd been bewitched by Senna � and in Everworld that's not just a cliche. But to some extent his continued devotion to Senna was his own choice. Plus he had it in his head that he was the brave platoon leader who was going to get us all out safely, come hell or high water. It's no joke being trapped in those macho fantasies, you know: doesn't leave you much room for being a normal human being.

"The question is where she gets these people," Jalil said thoughtfully. "I mean, how do you recruit heavily armed nuts?"

"NRA convention?" April cracked.

"She's recruiting these guys on the other side, in the real world," Jalil said. "Guys who'll give up home and family and job for what?"

"Adventure," I supplied. "The chance to swagger and point a gun and have people kiss their butts. Why do you think people do anything? They want power. You should have heard Keith up there, dancing around and 'yee-hahing.' I mean, he's a nobody. He's a loser. It's not exactly some software billionaire or boy genius who is going to join up with this kind of stuff."

I guess MacCool felt like things were getting away from him, so he stood up, drawing every eye. "The Fianna have
protected this land and kept the peace for generations. We have protected our shores from Vikings and Saxons, our skies from dragons and griffins, our forests from demons and goblins. No Hetwan has walked Eire's sacred soil and lived. We will meet this new challenge. I assure you of that."

The king's eyes lit up. He slapped the table. "Well said. Hear him."

Etain's eyes lit up, too. "I will go with you. I put my faith in the Fianna."

Oh, man. Great. Unbelievable. She was falling for that act? She'd get herself killed. That posturing tough guy MacCool would get her killed.

I was startled to discover Goewynne staring right at me. It was a laser of a stare. She'd seen my petulant eye rolling. But she'd seen my worry, too, I guess. With the slightest turn of her head she sent me a silent question, I met her gaze and shook my head slowly, emphatically: No, lady, you don't let Etain go or she comes back dead.

"No, daughter, you must stay with us. We require your help and sage counsel," Goewynne said.

"I'll go with you," David said heavily.

"I would welcome Galahad's sword," MacCool boomed expansively. Good grief, he was more David than David, and
that's way too much David. I swear I half expected the two nitwit heroes to start high- fiving each other. But David ain't stupid. I mean, he's dumb, but not downright stupid.

But instead David just snorted, almost contemptuously. "Galahad's sword? Up against machine guns? MacCool, I'm not going along because I think you'll succeed. I'm going because maybe I can try to influence Senna. And maybe I can help save some of your people. You people go up against these guys waving swords, you'll die. At least bring fairy archers along, a lot of them."

MacCool's cool MacCool eyes flashed. "The Fianna honor the fairy bowmen, but the Fianna fight alone."

"I'll go with you," I said, startling myself and earning an honest surprised look from Elf Mommy, and a look of warm
appreciation from Etain.

"You will?" April said, more puzzled than impressed.

"Yeah. Someone's going to need to show these two heroes how to run away."

Yeah, gonna have a bunch of dead fae next couple chapters I guess.

# ? Dec 23, 2023 01:34

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 3, 2024 12:57

Tree Bucket: Apr 1, 2016; R.I.P.idura leucophrys

I probably shouldn't bring real-world stuff into this, but I can't read the description of Senna's army without thinking "oh look, trump voters!"

# ? Dec 23, 2023 03:15

effervescible: Jun 29, 2012; i will eat your soul

Yeaaaaah same.

# ? Dec 23, 2023 16:00

nine-gear crow: Aug 10, 2013

Yeah, this brand of pathetic yet dangerous wannabe fascist loser in search of a strong leader who promises to hurt the people they also want to hurt has been around for a loooong while. This ships ain't new at all.

# ? Dec 23, 2023 18:58

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

quote:

Chapter
XII

Jalil and April stayed behind. They'd both volunteered to come along, falling in with the general mood of suicidal
stupidity that had overcome all of us. But David pulled Jalil aside and begged him not to. "We're going to get our asses kicked, and we're going to come running back here. Someone needs to get these people to prepare, or Senna's army will just roll right in. The fairy archers are the only hope: They're fast, they're accurate. Get to the
captain of the fairies and talk to him: Explain about guns. Don't take any b.s. And if they have some magic thing they can do, don't bitch them out about it, okay? Just for once, go with the magic."

Jalil agreed. And then David, looking guilty and worried, talked to April. "There's something Jalil knows, but the rest of you don't: One of their gods is over in the real world. One of the Celtic gods, I mean, a goddess named Brigid. She lives up on Sheridan."

"Say what?" I said.

"It�s a long story." He told April the address.

"Yeah, well, take five minutes and explain how you know that a goddess just happens to be living on the lake?"

David ignored me and focused on April. "Go to sleep, if you can, cross over, and go see this woman, this Brigid. Don't let her blow you off. Sometimes she passes herself off as a maid. Tell her what's happening over here. I don't know what her powers are, but tell her. Maybe she can... I don't what she can do."

April was obviously torn. She's not one to hide when the trouble starts. But she could see the logic of what David
proposed. "Anyway," she muttered, "maybe I'll be there for my own performance. Rent is tonight. Or yesterday � who knows with the weird time thing."

"This is messed up," I said. The whole thing had the feeling of a final farewell. David was worried and so was I. But then, worry is my life, so that was okay. On balance it's probably better to get shot than to be chewed up by a giant. Not that either was a good idea.

"You can stay here in the castle, help Jalil,' David said to me.

I gave David a respectful salute involving a raised middle finger.

MacCool had twenty guys with him. They did look like a fairly tough crew. There were few un-scared faces. There were a number of missing fingers and ears and even one nose. They all had that calm, cool, combat-veteran nonchalance. They checked their weapons and their saddles and made sure their water bottles were topped off � although it's just possible the bottles contained something a bit rougher than water. I wished mine did.

David and I were given horses and I was provided with a sword.

"All I need to do is learn that Wonder Woman thing where she blocks the bullets real fast with her magic bracelets," I said, trying the sword's weight in my hand.

"Stay toward the back," David said in an undertone.

"I'll ride with you," I said boldly. "I can be just as big a jackass as you, David."

Once we were all saddled up, the king and queen and Etain and a crowd of well-wishers came to see us off. There
were brave words and exhortations. And then Goewynne and Etain unwound scarves from around their necks. I groaned inwardly. I knew this scene: The hot medieval babe ties her scarf around the neck or shoulder or � if they're totally pre-Freudian � lance, of her hero.

Goewynne went up to MacCool and said some well-chosen words and tied her colors around the big goof's neck. I
almost laughed. Was MacCool getting nasty with Mom? No, no, her husband the king was applauding the gesture.
Then again, maybe old Camulos was playing Arthur to Mac's Lancelot. I considered a joke involving "a lot of lancing" and decided against it on the grounds that no one would laugh, and besides, I felt like throwing up.

I was busy mulling all this when Etain cleared her throat impatiently to get my attention. And damned if she wasn't
standing there with her scarf all loaded up for me. I almost fell off the horse lowering my head to receive the honor.

"Thanks," I said with terrific eloquence.

"I thought it might give you courage," she said, grinning with the kind of perfect teeth that are more rare in Everworld than cell phones.

"It'll take more than that," I said. And what was cool, what was so perfectly cool, was that she laughed along with me and we looked at each other and there was this moment, this true moment.

One of the druids came and chanted some stuff, a sort of blessing, I guess � I was focusing on Etain. And then, at a jaunty command from MacCool we rode off, "Hi-yo, Silver," clattering out through the castle gate, rumbling across the drawbridge, down the steeply down-sloping cobblestone street, past cheering, waving, admiring town peasants, all of whom were thinking, Better them than me.

Off we went at a nice gallop, David and me just behind MacCool and his number-two man, a skinny, gray-bearded,
mean-looking old guy named Fraich who could only count to seven on his fingers, and to one on his ears. We passed the cable car, running empty but for its crew. The two liveried hangers-on, footmen, I guess, gave us a bow.
Just as we reached the far edge of town MacCool broke out of the column to review us as we passed and to pull off a neat little trick: He whipped his sword up out of its scabbard, threw it twirling end over end way up in the air, and caught it by the pommel just as the point was about to plunge into his area. The suckers loved it. Big huge cheer and cries of encouragement from the onlookers.

Still all and all, it did prove that MacCool could handle a sword. Almost as well as Etain had done the night before.
Maybe she should have come along.

"You're jealous, aren't you?" I said to David. "Wish you could do that, don't you?"

A rare David smile. "drat right."

We trotted along the road out of town, out into the stone- fence-and-clumps-of-moss countryside. It was maybe two miles to the stone circle where Senna had opened herself up as the gateway. Between here and there the road followed the stream mostly. At places the road was shadowed by clumps of trees, or edged by tumbles of scabbed green-and-white boulders.

"What will she do?" I wondered aloud.

"Senna?" David sighed in that deep, depressed way he had whenever Senna was the topic. "She knows we're on to her. She knows we're going to try to counter her advantage. Given enough time we could neutralize it. If we reached the Coo-Hatch and shared all we know, they..." He fell silent.

"Yeah," I said. "We arranged for the Coo-Hatch to bail out of Everworld, didn't we? With Senna's help. No way to know how many Coo-Hatch have made it back to their own real world, but one way or the other, there are going to be fewer of them. You've been outgeneraled, General. Senna let us force her into removing the one bunch of people in this nuthouse who could have built guns for us."

He had nothing to say for a long time as we rode in morose silence, filled with the sphincter-tightening expectation
that we were in someone's sights.

Finally he said, "It would be a mistake to overestimate her. She's not ten feet tall. She knows guns are useful, doesn't mean she knows how to use them."

"We got swords, she's got machine guns," I said.

"She's going to ambush us," David said with certainty. "She doesn't count me for much, obviously, but she's scared of Jalil. She's going to try to go for a fast kill. Hit us hard, take the castle, kill all of us. She's not ten feet tall but she's smart: Her edge is technology. She knows that Jalil can eventually wipe out that edge. She's seen how quick these folks are to adopt modern technology, telegraph lines going up, that cable car, primitive electricity."

"You reading her mind now" I said. "Kind of late, isn't it, Maximus?"

"Yeah, it is kind of late," he said. He spurred his horse a bit and caught up with MacCool. "Listen, MacCool, I'm going to tell you what's going to happen. You can believe me or not, but when it happens you need to remember what I'm telling you."

MacCool gave him the condescending up-and-down look the serious hero reserves for the wanna-be. But he let David talk just the same.

"One of these little clumps of trees, like this very one we're riding into, they'll be waiting. They'll be on both sides of the road, concealed, you won't see them. Then all of a sudden it's going to be like a lightning storm: A lot of very loud noise and bright flashes, and your men and horses are going to start dying. But not all of them. The ones who aren't dead right away need to get down off their horses and run away, staying as low to the ground as they can."

"Run away!" MacCool yelled. "Run away, is it? And run away crouching low like beaten dogs, no less?"

"Yes, that's exactly right," David said.

"Listen, stranger, the Fianna do not run."

"I figured you'd say that, MacCool. But I had to try. Now my friend and I are going to drop back to the tail of this column. And when it happens I'll try my best to get some of your men out of here alive."

David turned his horse and rode to the rear with me following. I don't believe I've ever liked David more than at that
moment.

"Ride all the way back to the village and find yourselves a good root cellar in which to cower!" MacCool jeered at our
backs. "We need no �"

The burst blew a hole in his chest and knocked him off his horse. His horse died at the same time.

SHOT THROUGH THE HEART

quote:

Chapter
XIII

Flashes from the stone fence to our right. Flashes and yells from the trees on our left. A sudden, deafening clatter all around.

Fraich had time to yell, "Charge!" before a round hit his outstretched right arm. The man nearest to him slumped in his saddle and fell over.

"Dismount!" David yelled.

"Charge!"

Two more men fell. Horses, too. Some were trying to organize for a charge but they were dying before they could
spur forward.

"Dismount, drat it!" David yelled, and swung himself down just as his horse's head jerked sideways and an exit hole appeared beneath the animal's eye.

I rolled off, hit the ground, got up into a crouch, and scampered toward the rear. I heard the mad-buzzing of bullets
passing just over my head.

"Get off your horses, you idiots!" David roared.

"Get down! Get down!"

Most of the Fianna were still ignoring him, but I guess the logic of the situation was looking pretty convincing to others.

Men were climbing down off horses. Those that insisted on sitting high and proud were being ripped apart. And yet, three of them managed to spur their horses forward and charge straight at the fence. It was glorious, it really was. I saw one of Senna's killers rise up into clear view, take aim, and fire. The first horseman fell straight back. More fire, and men and horses died, still twenty yards from the fence.

"Down, down, use the horses for cover," David was shouting.

And all at once, David was boss. Men were listening. I saw scared tough guys crouching behind dead horses. I saw others crouch-walking like me, bailing out, heading for home, Fraich was one of them. He was dragging his useless right arm, trailing blood.

"Grab those horses," David instructed. "Grab the reins, lead them, keep them between you and the enemy." We backed away as fast as we could move, leading the kicking, rearing, scare-masked horses behind us as shields. They died and fell, but we only had to get over a slight rise in the path to be out of the line of fire. Fifty feet maybe. Already the fire was becoming less accurate and intense. The killers were yelling triumphantly, like sports fans smelling victory.

I ran, the others ran, we all ran, no horses left for cover, ran and topped the slight rise and ran all the faster. But then, just ahead, right across the road was a stone fence that had definitely not been there ten minutes earlier. A stone fence that was building itself higher and higher, like an army of invisible stonemasons were working. Stones flew through the air, flew like iron filings going to a magnet, zoomed through the air from the surrounding fences.

The fence was rising fast and behind us I heard a familiar voice crying, "Go after them! Finish them off!"

I�ll tell you something: Lots of guys have stories about ex-girlfriends from hell, but I was pretty sure I had a special case.

A whirlwind of head-sized rocks ahead, an advancing wave of flying lead behind. Another Fiannan caught a bullet in
the back, stood up, arched all the way back like he was trying to do a backflip, and collapsed. We were screwed, well and truly screwed.

"Get past the fence and we're safe," David yelled.

"What?"

"Cover your head with your hands and arms, run for it!" he said. Then he demonstrated and followed his own advice. A flying rock nailed him in the side. Another caught him in the side of the head and spun him around. He plowed into the rising fence, now nearly six feet tall, scrambled up the side, slammed again in the kidneys.

I was right behind him, arms twisted all around my head, crouching, running, staggering when the rock hit me right
between the shoulder blades. Up and running again, cover your head!

Wham. I was down, head swimming, sky and clouds spinning around and around, some guy leaped over me, rocks
flying like big demented crows. I rolled over and started crawling the wrong way. Turned again, staggered up, ran, was nailed in the butt by a rock. And now the rocks in the fence were being chipped and hammered by bullets.

Into the wall, legs climbing, kicking, scrabbling, one hand grabbing, the other trying to cover my head, and bang
something hit me in the face. But I was off the ground, climbing, all at once falling, rolling over onto the far side of the fence.

David was there, face bloody. He grabbed me by the arm and yanked me to my feet. I couldn't see out of my left eye.

Something hurt. Everything hurt. Me and David and half a dozen Fianna ran exactly like beaten dogs, tails between our legs, scared to death, bruised and bloody. Of the twenty-three men and horses who had ridden away from the castle an hour earlier, nine men came dragging back, reaching the gates just as the sun declined past noon. We rode the fancy cable car the last quarter mile through a town no longer cheering.

Yeah, we're getting a third chapter tonight.

quote:

Chapter
XIV

The town looked nearly abandoned as we lurched along. Windows were shuttered, although you could see eyes peeping out occasionally. A definite change from our happy send-off. News had traveled fast, faster than we ourselves.

"Jalil's been busy," David said approvingly, nodding his
blood-caked head.
We reached the castle and slunk through the main gate like the losers we were. Fraich collapsed right away. We had stopped most of the major external bleeding from his arm with jury-rigged pressure bandages. But after a while we'd noticed he had another hole in him, right through the belly.

Once we were in the courtyard they raised the gate and slammed home a big crossbar. I could see that David was right: The castle walls were lined with fairy archers. King Camulos came out to meet us. He was armored up and wearing a big, jeweled sword. He was a different guy now. Not the happy glutton, not even the concerned king. He was mad as hell in a cold-blooded kind of way.

"Where is MacCool?" the king demanded.

"Dead," David said.

"Fraich?"

"Over there. He's alive. But he won't be for long," David reported. "Where is Jalil?"

All the while we were staggering to the keep, the biggest of the towers. Inside, in a vast, echoing room alive with busy soldiers, human and fairy, I felt a little better. Now I had two sets of walls between me and Senna. Etain came running up, pushing her way past men who were suiting up in useless armor. She made a pained face on seeing me.

"Jeez, do I look that bad?"

"Do you not know?" She touched my brow gently. "The flesh is torn. Hanging loose, here. It will need sewing up."

"Gross," I said.

Jalil came running up. "You guys okay?"

"Yeah, Jalil. We're great. Why do you ask?"

"King Camulos, with every respect, I need to be put in charge of defending this place," David said. "I need your
authority to act."

"I command here," the king snapped. Then he looked around at what was left of MacCool's elite troops and he
softened. "But I heed my good advisers. I have done all that your friend Jalil has advised me to do."

Jalil nodded. "We have every fairy archer we could find manning the walls. The armorers are turning out arrows as fast as they can. We've got the village locked up tight down below."

"That's good," David said. "Very good. But she expects us to wait here for her. She won the first round. She may get cocky. How about April?" he asked, changing gears suddenly.

"She's trying to sleep," Jalil said. "Not as easy as you might think."

"Okay, sir. King Camulos, here's what I need: a dozen of your best bowmen. Six to go with me, six to go with
Christopher."

"I volunteered? Man, I gotta learn to keep my mouth shut."

"You don't want payback?" David asked me.

"No, that's you, not me, David. But I'll do it anyway. You know why?"

"No," he admitted honestly.

"Because you're just so cute when you go all Napoleon."

"You're an idiot," he said, but he laughed as he said it. "Jalil, man, you know what's what here at the castle, stay on this end."

Etain unwound the scarf from around my neck. It was saturated with blood, most of it probably mine, and with fear-
sweat, all of it mine.

"I shall replace this," Etain said softly.

"Better wash it. Or maybe burn it," I said apologetically.

"Never," she said. "Blood shed in defense of my land can never offend."

She so totally wanted me. And I so totally wanted a shower and a meal and a case of beer. But after all that I'd have liked nothing better than to cuddle up with Etain somewhere, good lord, she was sweet. I felt drunk, you know, that emotionally vulnerable, sticky-sentimental kind of drunk, like I wanted to blurt "I love you," and then start boo-hooing.

I was kept from making a complete rear end of myself by the appearance of April. She looked matted and scrunched, having just woken up.

"Did you see her?" David demanded.

April nodded and yawned and said, "Yeah. I saw her."

I went to her, reached around into her backpack, and pulled out her bottle of Advil,

"What happened to you?" April wondered. "You look terrible."

"Big rocks hit me in the head," I said. I popped two Advil and swallowed them dry. I handed the bottle to David.

"We ran into some trouble," David explained in his usual Bruce-Willis-laconic style.

"Senna and the Wehrmacht shot us all full of holes. MacCool is deader than Hammer's career. On the one hand
guys with machine guns, on the other hand your lovely half sister throwing entire stone fences at us. It was a freaking massacre. And let me just say, I'm hungry."

Etain yelled, "Food! Bring food and drink!" She had that princess voice available when she needed it. You know, that voice you obey before you've had a chance to think about it. She would be great at a crowded Chili's.

April said, "Look, David, Brigid said �"

He cut her off with a look. But it was too late. The name Brigid had the same effect on the king, queen, princess, and assorted druids that the name Elvis would have on the checkout line of a Tennessee Wal-Mart.

"Brigid?" Etain said. "It is the goddess Brigid you speak of?"

David looked impatient, but managed to get a grip on that and said, "Yes, she's in the real... in the old world. She made contact with me. She wanted me to do something."

"What?" Fios the druid asked, speaking up for the first time. David hesitated and suddenly found his own shoes very interesting. Finally, in a soft voice un-like his own, "Long and short of it, I guess she wanted me to kill Senna. Or at least make sure Merlin got hold of her. Make sure the gateway was never opened."

"And you failed," Fios said.

"No," David snapped. "I didn't fail, I never tried."

"If this witch is a gateway between the old world and Everworld then the danger is greater than you can imagine,"
Fios said. "All the gods will sense the opening. All the gods will know that she has opened the gateway, even though she closed it again. Why did you ignore Brigid's warning? You have brought every curse down upon us. Every evil."

The mood had been bad, now it was worse. No one had anything to say. David couldn't defend himself, of course, that would be making excuses and in his twisted brain that was a no-no.

The fact that Brigid had talked to David gave him a certain extra importance in these folks' eyes, I could see that. But the fact that he had not done what she'd asked him to do, well, that was making people think he was either stupid or bad.

"Senna's one of us," I said.

April's eyebrows shot up. So did Jalil's. It was funny there for a moment, the two of them identically amazed.

"She was one of us, anyway," I explained. "Besides, she bewitched David. She put the magic moves on our boy here."

There was a universal sigh, a sort of unspoken "Ahh, now I understand" thing from the locals. That made perfect sense to them. They were pretty tech-friendly for Everworlders, but they still respected the magic.

"So, what did Brigid say?" Jalil asked April.

Every eye was on April, every ear listened, even as the food was carried in and David and I and the remaining Fianna went at it like lions going after the last wildebeest.

"She said it wasn't too late. She was glad we were here. Not in Ireland, I mean, but right here in Merlinshire, although she was sad because she said a lot of people were likely to die."

"There's some real Psychic Friends insights," Jalil muttered.

"Guys with machine guns pretty much means people are going to die."

A dozen fairy bowmen came zipping into the room and stood at attention against the wall.

"What else?" David asked April between bites of some kind of meat. "That's all mush � can she help us?"

"She wasn't exactly optimistic, David. She said its probably too late, that no man's sword or arrow will stop Senna: Her power is too great, Brigid could feel it, that's what she said. She could feel Senna's presence, like a weight on her soul, a darkness on her mind, a shadow over the future. That's pretty close to a direct quote. No man would kill her."

"Yeah. Well, an arrow will sure as hell stop Keith," I said. But my brave words had zero effect. King Camulos looked about three-hundred years old. The stuffing was leaking out of the old boy. Goewynne's cool gray eyes were sad. Fios looked like he'd just gotten the diagnosis and the doctor was talking about how he should make the best of his last few weeks.

Etain seemed shocked, angry, but even she wasn't arguing with the basic pessimism. David was bummed and guilty, April was bummed and pissed, I was bummed and worried about Etain.

Only Jalil wasn't buying into the gloom and doom.

"I have an idea," he said. "Let's build a tank."

lol loving Jalil, I'm so mad we don't get another book with him.

# ? Dec 24, 2023 00:34

Mazerunner: Apr 22, 2010; Good Hunter, what... what is this post?

quote:

that no man's sword or arrow will stop Senna

quote:

No man would kill her."

I think we can make some educated guesses, here

# ? Dec 24, 2023 01:40

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

Mazerunner posted:

I think we can make some educated guesses, here

# ? Dec 24, 2023 02:24

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

quote:

Chapter
XV

Senna had recruited us into this madness, she'd chosen us and hijacked us into Everworld to work for her. She'd picked David to be her champion. She'd picked Jalil to be her brains. She'd brought me along to keep the group from ever jelling and coming together. And she'd brought April because Senna is a sadistic bitch and wanted to pay April back for... for being a nice, normal, decent girl, I guess.

But now we weren't working for Senna. We were working against her. David's crazy-generalissimo thing was working against her. And so was Jalil's twisted-Spock thing. And April had turned out to be a lot tougher than Senna had thought.

As for me, I was no hero, never had been. But I wasn't the same guy I had been on that fateful day when Fenrir dragged us all into the deep end of the pool with no water wings. I still see the world as more funny than tragic, I still like a drink, I still admire a babe, I'm still not the ratcheted sphincter that David is. But I wasn't ready to play the screw-up anymore.

Keith was my problem, at least to some extent. I wasn't the reason why Senna recruited him, at least I didn't think so: It's just that Keith is registered at the employment agency for the hopeless lava-brains. And yet, I'd had my own involvement with Keith. He'd thought I was like him. That was enough. He thought I was one of him, one of them, and, man, there are few things more disgusting than discovering that some seething little hate machine like Keith thinks of you as a brother.

Plus the little bastard had shot at me.

So I figured at some level Keith was my problem. Let David handle the universe, I'd take care of Keith. I pitched in with everyone quickly, quickly outfitting Jalil's tank. And when David said we'd divide into two groups, one in the tank that would draw fire, and one that would cruise the roofs and upstairs windows, I said I'd do the tank. Etain had no idea what was going on with the tank, I guess, but she saw David's expression, the gloomy "Been good to know you, dude" look he gave me. She knew I'd just volunteered to follow MacCool into the Celtic afterlife, so I had my moment of misty-eyed hero worship.

Had to ruin it, of course.

"The tank has a beer cooler, right?" I said.

A fairy came buzzing up the street with the news that the bad guys were at the gates of the village.

"How do they look?" David asked.

The fairy was taken aback by that question. He considered, his shrewd little face twisting into a grimace. "Drunk. I would take them for drunks."

"Was the witch with them?" April asked. "Was Senna there?"

"Not that I could see," the fairy answered carefully. He knew better than to trust his eyes when it came to witches.

"Well, let's do this," David said. And then the cornball grabbed my hand in a manly grip and gave it a manly shake.

"Oh, great, now I'm definitely dead," I said.

David took off with his six fairy archers. Jalil and April headed back to the battlements of the castle. And Etain laid a quick kiss on my cheek. I was so dead. By all the Unwritten Rules of Movies and Television, I was dead: the reformed bad boy who does the heroic thing at last? I could not be more dead.

"Come on, boys," I said to my own six fairies.

They'd never seen TV, but they seemed to share my own grim assessment. As usual, they looked like real tough twelve-year-olds. They wore livery uniforms, with King Cam's purple- and-green color scheme. They had cute little tin-pot helmets that might almost cause a flying bullet to shrug before it went ahead and tore through their brains and blew gray fairy goo out the back.

We climbed up into the cable car. The tank.

Jalil had commandeered every piece of flat or not-so-flat steel that could be rounded up at short notice. It was roped into place, layered two and three deep around the front of the cable car, creating a kind of dull gray snout. Unneeded track had been torn up and the long I-bars had been hung along the sides with convenient bullet-sized gaps here and there.

Still and all, it was a tank. A San Francisco, Rice-A-Roni tank that could rocket along at an amazing five miles an hour � about as fast as a power walker. Yippee.

I inspected my troops. Fairly idiotic, since under normal circumstances they were the professionals and I was the amateur. But I had a clue as to what we were going into and they had diddly.

"Okay, men. Fairies, I mean. Here's the thing: They have guns, and guns make a whole hell of a lot of noise. Louder than anything you've ever heard before. Don't let the noise rattle you."

Yeah. Why would bang bang bang bother anyone?

"And, look, guns can kill you from a long way off, so we wait till I give the signal, all right? No one pokes his head above the armor till I say, otherwise they are going to blow your head right off your shoulders. When we get close enough I'll give the signal, then it's load up your arrow, jump up and shoot, and drop right back down again. This is important: Stay low to load, up and shoot, then get down again. If you stay exposed, you die, period."

As a pep talk it wasn't exactly inspiring. I was depressing myself. I was driving the cable-tank, but I had a couple of spears and a sword that King Camulos gave me from his own collection. Hard to say how that was going to be useful. But you want to have something.

The cable car was poised at the head of the street, just a few blocks off the main town square. The cable ran past the station, through the square, across the turntable, then down the main drag to the town gates. About twelve city blocks in all.

I sucked in a deep breath. We wanted to hit the bad guys in the narrow street, not in the square. Time to go. I grabbed the five-foot-tall lever and jammed it as I'd been shown. Down under the street the gear grabbed the cable and with a wild jerk we were off and cruising, armor rattling like my knees.

Past the station.

"What? No riders waiting?" I muttered nervously. "Okay, then we'll just keep going."

Through the square, and all of a sudden I heard a not-very- distant popopopopopop. Someone shooting for fun. Maybe they'd spotted a civilian peeking from behind a shutter. Or maybe they'd just blown a great big hole in David. Ratting across the square. Time to notice the pigeons. Time to notice the park benches. Time to wonder if the sun ever shined in this place.

And then, into the street, with buildings close on both sides, some almost leaning over us. Two, three-story, some built fairy-scale, some clearly for humans. All shuttered. All silent. Like the town was empty.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

There they were. Twelve, fifteen guys sauntering along in a loose gaggle, guns slung everywhere, ammo belts, and one of them pulling some rude little wooden cart loaded with green steel ammunition boxes. They hadn't noticed us yet, and just as they were about to I saw an arrow grow out of one guy's neck. Then a blur of arrows from two high windows. Two guys were down, pincushions, screaming, yelling.

Guns blazed. Men scattered, right, left, hiding under the eves, looking around cautiously, shouting insults and challenges.

I saw one of my own fairies peeking. "Stay down!" I yelled. "Jeez, you idiot, I have to be up to drive this thing, what's your excuse?"

Taking my own advice I crouched low, kept my hand on the big lever, but brought most of my body down behind the armor.

David's fairies struck again, this time shooting around a corner from an alley. A dozen arrows flew before the creeps could return fire. And now another of them was staggering around bellowing, arrows in both thighs. A window opened, arrows, machine-gun fire, and a fairy tumbled out and landed on the pavement like a sack of cement.

"Shoot the windows!" Keith yelled in sudden manic inspiration. I recognized his voice. They cut loose, blasting wildly at every window.

But still they didn't shoot at us. I realized why. They saw us; they just didn't know enough about Everworld to know how weird it was that there was a cable car rattling down the street. We were closing fast. Two hundred yards. One-fifty. A hundred, and then...

A machine gun opened up on us. The armor rattled like a punk drummer was keeping time with a sledgehammer. The whole rickety car rattled and I dove for the floor, giving my boys the proper example. Then a bullet found its way through and entered one of my archers in the chest. He looked down at the little red hole and fell straight back. A fairy jumped up to shoot and spun around, his face a red mess.

"Not yet!" I yelled.

The hammer blows continued, sitting damned ducks, waiting to be killed, sitting here behind too-weak armor, helpless, wanting to shoot back, scared to shoot back, seconds dragging dragging dragging and any second could be the last one.

I was cursing a blue streak, filling the air with nervous, shaky, terrified, half-giggled words. Every word I could think of and making up some new ones. Had to peek, had to see where we were, oh. man, no, let's just cower right here, and gotta do it, up!

I looked and dropped and a stream of lead sliced the space my head had occupied. I had just four guys now.

"Okay. I'm going to count to three, then shoot and drop," I said. "One. Two. Three!"

Up they popped and bows twanged and they dropped. Say what you will about fairies: They aren't stupid. They learn.

"Ready," I said. "One, two, three!"

Up and shoot and drop.

Up and shoot and drop.

Up and shoot and now I had three archers.

Three dead bodies in the car.

Up and shoot and drop.

We were in them now, right among the bad guys, wild yelling and shooting and cursing, hammer blows and twanging bows and a flying tumbling steel ball.

Hand grenade!

The explosion ripped a hole in our armor ripped a four-foot exposure right across the front of Jalil's tank. Fire pouring in, another fairy dead, arrows coming from a high window, and I was yelling, "Keep shooting, keep shooting!" at the last two fairies.

I grabbed a bow myself and fitted an arrow into it. Pathetic, I didn't know what I was doing. A lurch, the car rocked, a beefy face appeared over the top of the side armor, an angry face, a grown man, for God's sake, trying to stabilize himself long enough to bring his rifle down on me.

I snatched up a spear and stabbed him. A shallow cut on the bottom of his left arm, but he yelled and wobbled uncertainly. My next thrust drew gushing blood from his chest and he fell back.

Then Keith's shrill voice yelling, "Fire in the hole!" and a second grenade went off and I was standing in the side yard looking up at the elm tree with my dad.

"It's the beetles," he said, and I yelled in rage and frustration and grabbed my head with both hands.

"Since when do you care about the yard?" my dad wondered.

good to see that Christopher is genre savvy

quote:

Chapter
XVI

It was the beetles. Those damned Asian Long-horn beetles that have been going after trees all over the Chicagoland, and every time the experts think they've beaten the beetles, the beetles battle back and out come the chain saws. If it wasn't the Dutch Elm disease it was the drought, and look at the lawn. No one wants to work anymore. Used to be neighborhood kids would come around pushing their own lawn mower and do the grass for five bucks, and that was generous. It was almost a relief that summer was over, the pain-in-the-rear end yard and all. I could scream.

I gritted my teeth while beads of sweat popped out all over my forehead despite the fact that there was a definite chill in the air.

Was I dead? Was I dead?

Well, obviously not dead here, not here in the real world, although I might be in some kind of Catholic purgatory wandering along behind my dad as he angrily pointed out the numerous flaws in the perfection of our yard. He was about a six-pack of the way toward toasted. This was the anger build-up phase. It was late afternoon, I was back from school, the sun was threatening to set way too early, and my dad had obviously bailed out of work early to come home and work out some personal crap with a warm-up six to be followed by a couple quick shots of Jack.

Maybe he'd stop then, but maybe not. If my mom came home in a similar mood it would be one of those nights, the two of them mad-drinking, glaring at each other as they drank to keep even, to pay each other back. Drinking like it was some kind of game of Battleship: I fire a Sam Adams at you! Bastard, you hit my destroyer! Fine, take this martini! You sank my aircraft carrier.

My head was going to explode.

"Need to repaint this area, look at this. The goddam dogs are pissing all over it, and it eats right through the paint. Forget your lazy Saturday, you and me are going to Home Depot, get some paint, and fix this."

"I gotta go," I said. I needed to find David. Jalil. April. Whoever was going to tell me what was happening over there.

"The hell you do. Your mother isn't even home yet."

"I have a thing," I said. My head was buzzy, weirded out, waiting for some slow-motion death to come zap me across the big universal divide. "A school thing."

He laughed. My dad's a screwup, but when he's sober he's okay. He has a sense of humor, at least. "Friday night you better be doing something better than a school thing. What's the name of that girl you were seeing?"

"Jennifer. Yeah, not seeing her anymore," I said. Not much point mentioning that her dad had threatened to kill me if I ever came near him, his daughter, or his wife again. I tried to wink and grin and leer and added, "I have a new target of opportunity in my sights."

"Well, go on," he said, looking deflated and lonely and disgruntled.

I fired up the Cherokee and drove off in search. David first. Not at home. No one at home. I drove to Starbucks where he worked. Not there, but I bought a cup of coffee, and that calmed me down a little. There was a pay phone at the bagel place so I called Jalil. Also not at home. Of course not, it was Friday night and even Jalil had a life. Probably seeing that Japanese chick. Heavy Snow or whatever. Deep Ice. Something. April. I called her house. Answering machine.

Then I remembered. "Rent!" I yelled. The play. April's stupid school play, it was tonight, and I was supposed to be there. I really did have a "school thing." Weird when truth rears its head amid the comforting network of lies. I looked at my watch. It started at what, eight? An hour. Yeah, April would be there at the auditorium. I hopped back in the Jeep and pulled away. School parking was always bad, and worse when something was happening. At least tonight's football game was away. I parked on the street, watched by three black guys in full hip-hop regalia.
Probably steal my car.

No, we don't think that way anymore, Christopher, I chided myself: That's Keith-ism. Loser-think. I locked up anyway and pointed my keys like I was turning on the nonexistent alarm. Yeah, that would fool the whole world.

I ran across the street, slowed to a herky-jerky walk across the scruffy prison yard that was our school quad, agitated now, what if April didn't know anything? I mean, what did I think? That she had fallen asleep over in Everworld, just dozed off while we were having our little gun battle?

This was stupid. Unless David was here, too. That's who I needed: David. If he was back on this side then we were both probably dead, which meant no going back at the very least.

"Would that be a bad thing?" I asked myself, and earned a dismissive eye roll from some theater-type girl. "Hey. Do you know April?" I yelled to her.

She hesitated, stopped. She held the door open for me. "Yeah, I know April."

"Do you know if she's here yet?"

"She probably is," Theater Girl said. She looked me up and down as if assessing whether I was April's boyfriend.

"Well, where would I find her? She's having a baby and she forgot to take her special prenatal vitamins." Another snotty, dismissive eye roll. "Down the hall, go around down that back area, you know where they always pile all the tables? That leads backstage."

"Thanks. We'll name the baby after you." I ran for it.

April was there all right, in street-hooker costume and slut makeup, practicing a song at half-volume while other kids
walked around looking scared or self-important and the theater arts faculty dithered and stormed and yelled orders that no one obeyed.

"April."

She broke off in mid-note. "Christopher. What are you doing here?"

"First let me just say that whole 'want a date, sailor?' look works. I never pictured you doing the fishnets-and-spike-heels thing, but now I'll never picture anything else."

"Always glad to contribute to your little fantasies, Christopher. What's happened?" She took my arm and guided me out of the way, into a dark little corner.

"I think maybe I'm dead," I said.

# ? Dec 25, 2023 01:28

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

quote:

Chapter
XVII

"Back up. Last thing I know is I was told to talk to Brigid. Which I did, for all the good that did."

"Yeah, well, things are moving right along. David and I are in the middle of a fairies-versus-Nazis thing that isn't going real well. I think maybe I got blown away."

She stared at me sideways.

"I like the tube top, too," I said.

"Well, we've always wondered what would happen. You know, if something happened to one of us over there. But you know what, you may already be back over there. It's not like you can tell."

"I can tell. At least usually. Not always. Mostly, though, I get this feeling, this, I don't know, this whole kind of checking-out, not-quite-there thing."

She nodded. She knew. But of course she was right, too, we didn't always know for sure.

"Have you seen David?" I asked. "I mean, if I'm dead he may be, too."

"If you're dead over there you're still alive here. You noticed that, right? Hey." She snapped her fingers in my face. "My face is up here. Talk to my face, not my boobs."

"Sorry." I ran my hand back through my hair. "I don't know what to do. I mean, Senna's got Keith over there and a bunch of other inmates from his asylum, and I'm thinking maybe there's some way I can help out, you know?"

"How?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. Sorry, I know I'm, like, messing up your big night. Although basically, just walk out onstage looking like that and you won't have to even sing. Maybe I should go see Brigid. I'm totally lost. I am messed up. I've never been dead before. Normally it's not the kind of thing you have to actually deal with. I mean, you're dead, bye-bye, all done, troubles over, and no school tomorrow. Now it's like, I'm waiting for it to catch up with me. Like there's a time delay, you know? Like it's one of those domino things and we're just waiting for all the dominoes to knock each other down, and then I'm the last domino."

"Okay, listen to me, you're babbling. You're not dead. I mean, you are not dead."

Some guy brushed by and gave me the kind of look you'd give someone who was being reassured he wasn't dead.

"You're not dead. Maybe you are dead over there I don't know. But maybe it just means you're free. Maybe you won't have to go back. Ever. Maybe it's over for you, that's a good thing, right?"

"What? No. I mean, yes, okay, in theory, but no. You guys are still over there, maybe getting shot right now and I'm over here all safe." I didn't mention the fact that Etain was over there and clearly had a thing for me and it wasn't like beautiful half-elf princesses were just hanging around waiting for me here in the real world.

"Yeah, but you're missing the whole point: If you're dead and that means you're free, then maybe the quicker all of us die, the better. And by the way, I'm still up here. Up here! What is it with you? Do I have to wear a sack?"

"Sorry. I was thinking of Etain."

Then, all at once, every muscle in my body gave way, like I had no bones, like I was a jellyfish. I collapsed at April's feet and rolled over onto my side, not even aware of her spike heels or her legs, just aware of the fact that I could not move.

"Get up," April snapped.

I tried to speak. No sound. Tongue not moving. Lips not moving. Eyes... couldn't quite focus them, tried, couldn't... I could see her bones. Oh, gross, I could see the bones inside April's legs, she was a skeleton wrapped in bloody muscle, a pulse in the big arteries of her thighs, woosh, woosh went the blood, right through her body, through the stage floor, equipment, could see through everything, nothing real, everything like some kind of schematic drawing, roughed-in, with details in saturated color, beating hearts all around me, beating hearts floating inside ghostly bodies.

I couldn't move. Paralyzed.

Oh, Jesus, it was happening.

Far-off voices yelling. Hands lifting me up, a sack of dirt, a side of beef, no feeling except very slow and far away and nothing to see but the insides of my eyelids with jumpy animated figures like those old, old Mickey Mouse cartoons, everyone jerking and then slowing, all in rhythm to the rust-red hearts.

April was there. Two Aprils. And Etain. And Some old dude with a beard and a doctor with curly hair and nurses and bright fluorescent lights and candles. Ceiling tile. Stone arches. Needles, druids. Chanting. And a creature made out of light. Cold, hard light that shined from far, far away, Etain?

No, I saw Etain now, more clearly, and the light was beside her, casting no shadows, a light that was felt more than seen. Goewynne. The elf queen. And yes, Etain, too, but her light was not so bright. And now April, but dressed in her mismatched Everworld duds.

drat, I really preferred the tube top. "I was almost dead," I said in a raspy, unrecognizable voice.

"Yes," Etain said.

"We sewed up the shrapnel holes we could see," April said wearily. "But there was internal bleeding. I... you know, I'm not exactly a doctor. And their regular doctors here are, you know... not exactly doctors either. You were unconscious the whole time, but then, all of a sudden your breathing got very weird. You started shaking. I didn't know what to do."

I took a deep breath and realized I hurt in more places than I could count. "I saw Mom. You know..."

Etain said, "Yes, my mother used her powers and the magic summoned by the druids, and together with April's knowledge, your life was saved."

"Tell her thanks," I whispered

"Sleep now."

"No. No," I murmured. "I messed up the show for you, April."

"Thats okay, Christopher."

Etain laid a cold cloth across my forehead and held my hand. April smoothed my hair. And I thought, Well, at least this hospital has great-looking nurses. And I woke up in a real hospital where the real nurses didn't look anywhere near as beautiful.

I woke up in the real world again, happy, healthy, hungry, and a huge frustration to the doctors who had found nothing wrong with me at all � aside from the fact that I'd almost died.

quote:

Chapter
XVIII

My real-world body was fine. My Everworld body was not so good. Goewynne and the blue druids did what they could, but I wasn't the only wounded person. A series of rooms had been outfitted with cots and turned into a sort of hospital. A weird-rear end hospital run jointly by Dr. April, Goewynne, the druids, and the lovely Etain.

April ran around insisting that everyone boil instruments and clean the sheets and wash the floors and stop picking their noses while working on open wounds. At the end of each rotten day she would grab a couple of hours sleep and, once across, would take her most recent questions to the university medical library for answers. I was pretty sure she'd be doing heart transplants before long.

Etain was the chief nurse. She held hands and read poems and wrote letters and telegrams for the wounded men and fairies. She changed bandages and gave sponge baths. She gave me a sponge bath and it was a pretty clear indication of how badly I was messed up that I didn't even leer, let alone make any kind of a move.

Goewynne worked with the druids, coming in to do some chanting and laying on of hands and some signing and some stuff involving candles and various stones, herbs, weeds, flowers, and stuff you don't want to think about.

Their big thing was "purging." They were very big on purging, which at first I took to be some kind of harmless mumbo jumbo. Guess again. Let me just say this: When the druids give you a laxative, they aren't kidding around. Phillips Milk of What? Forget that, man, try the Nasty Blue-gray Druid Shake.

Somehow this melding of primitive herbal medicine and primitive real medicine and mumbo jumbo deedly-deedly- deedly psycho wand-waving medicine all worked together. After a week I was able to get up and totter around the hallways leaning on Etain's arm. I was eating bread and soup pretty well. And I was starting to think that beer was in my future in a few more days. .

But things weren't going well overall. There were thirty-one people in the hospital. Now there were even women who had been attacked and savaged by Senna's army, which now occupied the town and had the castle entirely surrounded and cut off.

The good guys had taken out a lot of her people, but she seemed to be restocking with men and ammo. Our spies thought she might have thirty guys now. They hadn't figured out how to get over the castle walls yet, but it was just a matter of time. They'd tried to climb over using ladders, but their guns were not as big an advantage in that situation. Hard to shoot through a rock slit while you're hanging on to a ladder with one hand.

David and Jalil's Double-F army � Fairies and Fianna � repelled the attempt and did it in such a way as to discourage another attempt. Jalil had figured out how to brew up some seriously awful sulphuric acid. He was now a god to the druids.

Since then it had settled down to a siege. Senna's creeps had the town pretty well under their control. They had enslaved the town's people. The townspeople were used to perform hard labor, building bunkers to create machine- gun nests covering the main roads. They were robbed of everything they had. They were used for target practice.

The hospital was not a happy place.

David and Jalil came to see me. David was weary, bruised, bandaged. Jalil was no better.

"Hey, Christopher. How you doing?"

"Except for Etain's and April's constant sexual demands on me, I'm fine," I said.

David managed a fleeting smile.

"How's the war going, General?"

"One of the people in the town, a woman, got loose and made it to the gate. We got her in, just barely. She had information. She heard Senna and Keith and a couple of the others, some guy called Graber, talking. Senna's trying to get some of her people back in the real world to line up some heavy hardware: mortars at least, maybe cannon. Keith and Graber want her to send them back across to the real world. Senna says no. She says the guys on the other side, the real-world guys, have a line on some heavy stuff. I don't need to tell you that if they bring in even one mortar it's pretty much all over. Let alone hard-core artillery pieces."

"Why do Keith and this other guy want to go back?" I wondered.

"They figure whoever comes up with the heat to take us is going to be the big man among the Sennites," Jalil explained.

"Sennites? They have a name now?"

"I guess so. Is that water? You mind?" David reached for my pitcher.

"Help yourself. So the next question is, why doesn't Senna send them back across the divide to get whatever she needs?"

David shrugged. "I don't know. Jalil has some theories."

I gave Jalil a sour look. "He always does."

Jalil said, "Look, this name came up: Mr. Trent. He may be the guy on the other side who is going to help Senna get the heavy ordnance. That's your guy, right? The one at the copy shop?"

"My guy? I don't think he's exactly my guy. I tried to put Keith in jail because Keith was threatening me. And why? Because Trent told him to, that's why." I peered at David and then groaned. "Oh, man, you're kidding, right? He'd shoot me on sight if he could."

David nodded. "Maybe. Maybe not. Thing is, April can't do it � she's a girl and they don't trust girls. Me, I'm a Jew; Jalil's black. He's not going to let either of us get close. Besides, the other you, real-world Christopher has already agreed to go along with the plan."

"Yeah, well, real-world Christopher is an idiot if he's agreed to go up and talk to Trent again. What am I supposed to do? Just ask him whether he's got any tanks for Everworld?"

"No, actually, you're going to shoot Jalil."

"Excuse me?"

"With blanks. Better be with blanks," Jalil said darkly. "When you get back across, you double check that you've pried the slugs out."

"I'm not shooting anyone."

"With your dad's gun," David said. "Trent sees you shooting a black guy. He figures he owns you after that."

"My dad doesn't let me borrow his gun to kill people. He's very strict about that."

"That's the same thing real-world you said. I mean, to the word," Jalil marveled.

"April will supply fake blood, you know, theater blood," David said. "She'll do some screaming and all. You do the shooting and throw in some well-chosen words..." He gave me a significant look.

"N-word," Jalil supplied. "It'll be like old times for you, Christopher."

"You just need to pry the slugs out of the bullets and jam cardboard in," David said.

"I want to emphasize that part and make sure we're real drat clear: Take out the slug," Jalil said "Take out all the slugs."

David nodded. "That would be the main thing not to forget."

�Take out the slugs," Jalil repeated.

"You guys are crazy."

"Yes, we are," Jalil said. "We're desperate. Mortar shells will sail right over the big walls out there and all the chanting druids in the world aren't going to stop them from blowing everything in here apart. They have Senna's magic stalemated for now, but they aren't real good at stopping bullets."

"When am I supposed to do this?" I asked. "And why are you bothering me if you already have real-world Christopher all lined up?"

David put the water cup back. "April needs to give you the fake exploding blood sacks and we can't find real-world you."

"He's probably running for Wisconsin about now," I said.

"Tell real-world you to call April at her home, first thing," Jalil said.

"Yeah. And fast. Let me put it this way: Go to sleep, Christopher. April?!" He yelled her name and she appeared, harassed, hurrying, eyes rimmed red from lack of sleep.

"Here. Goewynne made it. She says it will put you right to sleep." She handed me a tin cup full of something that smelled like old-lady perfume mixed with fertilizer.

I glared but what could I do? I was useless here, still too weak to move. I had to do what I could, right? I drank the drug down in one gulp and tried not to shudder at the taste.

"So you're saying real bullets?" I said.

"Pry out the slugs," Jalil said.

"Extra big slugs, got it."

"Screw you, too."

And then I was across.

Oh hell, this is a bad idea, kids!
Page 85 of 128

# ? Dec 26, 2023 03:23

Zore: Sep 21, 2010; willfully illiterate, aggressively miserable sourpuss whose sole raison d�etre is to put other people down for liking the wrong things

Yeah this is a horrendous idea, but it definitely helps sell the desperation and how much the balance has shifted for all of them that Everworld is their primary concern at this point.

Its a certified grade A insane Animorphs style plan so lets see how well that works out without essentially unlimited healing

# ? Dec 26, 2023 03:46

The Ninth Layer: Jun 20, 2007

So yeah he was for sure gonna die if he expired in Everworld, wasn't he.

# ? Dec 26, 2023 04:04

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

it sure seems like it!

# ? Dec 26, 2023 04:32

Fritzler: Sep 5, 2007

Yeah this is worst idea they have had in a while. I assume not all bullets are unloaded and last one does something bad. Christopher is growing on me, it is nice to see him becoming better (although still by far worst member of the group). Also good to know that if they die in the game they die in real life.

# ? Dec 26, 2023 04:51

Coca Koala: Nov 28, 2005; ongoing nowhere; College Slice

man this is an utterly severe burning of christopher over in the real world

# ? Dec 27, 2023 03:07

Zore: Sep 21, 2010; willfully illiterate, aggressively miserable sourpuss whose sole raison d�etre is to put other people down for liking the wrong things

Yeah 'pretend to shoot Jalil to get in good with a neo Nazi militia' is loving wild

# ? Dec 27, 2023 03:16

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

quote:

Chapter
XIX

Real-world me was not running for Wisconsin. Real-world me's phone was accidentally off the hook. Real-world me was having a jumpy fit waiting around while it got dark outside and no one contacted me. I hung up the phone and eight seconds later April called.

"Where the hell have you been?"

"You've been looking for me to give me some blood sacks," I said. "I'm psychic."

"Do you have the thing?"

The thing was in my pocket. I had already pried the slugs out and stuck wads of chewed-up cardboard in to replace
them. Then I'd checked the whole thing over about six times. "Oh yeah, baby, I have the thing you need. Uh-huh."

"Are you actually standing there leering and rotating your pelvis like some kind of arthritic Elvis impersonator?"

I froze. "No. Of course not. How did you know?"

"I'm on a cell phone. I just drove up, for which I'll be grounded, by the way, since it isn't exactly my car. I'm right
outside on the sidewalk."

I looked through the window. She was under a dim streetlight. I hung up and went outside. Went back inside to grab a jacket. Back out.

"You know this is a total screwup in the making, right? You know we're the Titanic Twins and there's a big-rear end iceberg out there waiting for us," I said.

April sighed, but in agreement not exasperation. "Come on, let's get going. No, let's walk. I'm not getting a bullet hole in my dad's Mercedes. Besides, there's never any parking."

"Any acting tips for me?"

"Don't act. Be in the moment," she said, then laughed. "That's why you get the blood sacks. Jalil will have his own to pop and look like a bullet wound. But we figured you should have some blood spattered all over you. The blood will do the acting for you."

She handed me a sort of little pellet, a tiny water balloon. "Hold it in your left hand, right? No, like this. Gun in your
right hand. Bang, bang, bang. Squeeze the blood � it'll spray back on your shirt and face."

"You know, when you talk all Hollywood like this, it so totally gets me hot."

She didn't laugh. "Christopher, I think Etain may actually like you. No one can imagine why, but she does. So why are you going all lizard with me?"

This was cool news. My heart actually skipped a few beats. That happens fairly frequently, but it's always been from terror before.

"What, I can't have different girls in different universes?"

"Focus on this, okay?" she said. "We don't get to retake the scene."

"I'm trying not to focus," I grumbled. It was another five blocks to downtown where we were supposed to enact our little idiot play. My palms were already sweating.

I looked in the bright windows of the houses we passed. Way too many framed posters of old French advertisements, way too much Pottery Barn. Nice, nice TV light. The comforting blue glow. Oh, man, I would so like to be watching TV.

Downtown was quiet; it usually is. I was in that forcing-myself-to-breathe thing you get into when the dread is trying to choke you to sleep before you do something stupid. Not looking forward to this.

"Okay, I have to split off," April said. "You okay?"

"Sure. You okay?"

"No," she said. "It's different when it's here. This is the real world. It's not right. This crap should all be over there, not here."

Then she walked away.

The plan was simple enough. Trent parked his car in a back alley a block away from his shop. We were supposed to
wait for him to lock up the shop and head toward his car. David would be watching and call me on April's cell phone,
which she had loaned me. Then Jalil and I would go into our act. Mr. Trent would happen along in time to witness our little play. I'd be all freaked out and beg him to help me escape. April would wander by and do some screaming. Trent would figure now that he had seen me do the Big Crime he would have me cold. I'd be welcomed into the warm arms of the psycho-freak fraternity.

And that's pretty much how it worked out.

Pretty much.

Jalil and I waited two hours, shivering in a dark alley, avoiding the dubious looks of students taking the alley shortcut to campus.

At last April's Nokia rang. "Yeah?"

"He's on the move."

I put the phone back on my hip and wished my heart would slow down. "Okay, man, we're on," I said.

"You took out the slugs, right?" Jalil asked me for roughly the two-hundredth time.

"Okay. Count to ten. One. Two. Three. Screw it. Here goes." I started yelling at Jalil, and Jalil started yelling at me, the two of us going at it like Pat Buchanan and Louis Farrakhan on The Jerry Springer Show. I was up in his face, he was up in mine.

A slight noise. Someone entering the alley.

I drew my gun, shaky, shaky, and Jalil jumped back and yelled something unpleasant.

"Stop it! Stop it!" a woman's voice cried.

What?

A middle-aged woman wearing a peasant dress. "What are you doing?" she cried.

And then, right behind her, Mr. Trent.

"Do it!" Jalil hissed.

BANG. Pause. BANG.

I fired. Jalil staggered back. The woman screamed. April, coming out of nowhere, screamed. I totally forgot the blood pellet. Too much screaming.

I hid my face and pushed past the woman. And Trent, wild-eyed, said, "Do the woman, you can't leave a witness."

I shook my head violently. I was doing a pretty good job of playing the hyped, frazzled, stunned killer. Trent gripped me hard and pulled me into him. "Do the woman, you moron, or she'll ID me, too, and I'll have to testify against you."

Yeah, kind of like we planned.

"I'll take care of it," he said.

And in my dazed-idiot state I said, "Okay," having no freaking idea what he was talking about. Till I saw him pull out
his own gun. When the brain is frozen, sometimes sheer dumb instinct is all you've got. Sheer dumb instinct swung on Trent, caught him with my own gun barrel under the chin. Jalil jumped up off the ground and came running. Trent was staggered, fumbling to get his own gun out, and I was pretty sure he had not pried the slugs out of his bullets.

Jalil took a flying leap and down went the three of us. The woman ran for the street screeching. April came running up. David was crossing the street. Cops would be there in two minutes. I had Trent's gun hand and Jalil pried the weapon out of his hand.

David loomed up. "Get his keys out of his pocket."

I did as I was told, glad to have someone tell me what to do.

The four of us hustled the future Fuhrer into his rusty old Econoline van and kicked and shoved him into the dirty,
crowded back.

"Plan's working pretty well," I said, wincing as I banged my shin on a wooden crate.

"Does this stuff wash out?" Jalil wondered, looking at the bloody mess on his shirt.

"What are you punks after?" Mr. Trent managed to ask around his split lip.

"I'm trying to raise money for the school band by selling magazine subscriptions," I said. "And by the way, this is your gun I'm pointing at you, not mine. I shoot you, you won't get up like Jalil here."

David cranked the wheezy engine, April in the passenger seat buckled her seat belt, and we lurched away just as the sound of sirens got really loud.

"I just want to say, hell of a plan, guys, just a hell of a fine plan. It's like Mission: Im-Freaking-possible. Why did I let you two talk me into this? Am I stupid?"

It took about ten minutes of driving around without a clue, me bitching nonstop, before one of us � Jalil, naturally �noticed what we were sitting on.

"These are crates, man," he said. "Look: stencil markings."

"I can't see anything."

The back windows of the van were painted black. The only light came from the windshield. We found a place to stop, in the parking lot of a twenty-four-hour Dominick's grocery store on Green Bay. It still wasn't light in the back, so April went into the store and bought a pair of small flashlights while we all sat and stared at Trent.

"What's up with you?" David asked the man.

"You get nothing from me but name, rank, and serial number," Trent snapped.

"Rank? What rank?" David asked. "We have your name, you don't have a rank, and you don't have a serial number.
What are you, an idiot?"

"Is that Jew I smell?"

Before David could answer, April returned. Using the flashlights and the tire iron we found in the back, we opened
one crate. A row of shells lay in a molded plastic form. There was a long moment of silence, and a slow exhalation.

I looked at David and Jalil, both smirking. �Don't even look smug, you two. It doesn't count if the plan works by accident."

In the next crate we found a mortar, broken down in pieces. And then a second crate of mortar rounds.

"Now what?" April asked. "We can't just dump this stuff somewhere."

"Sure we can," Jalil said with his slow, reptilian smile forming, "I know exactly where we can dump all this stuff."

Later that night the FBI office in Chicago got a call from a pay phone. They discovered a parked van outside their
building. The van contained a hog-tied Nazi and a large cache of illegal weapons.

That could have gone a lot worse!

quote:

Chapter
XX

Everworld me was getting better. I could walk normally. I could eat. The fever was gone. I was well enough to bathe
myself. Which was a shame because I was also well enough that I'd have enjoyed having Etain give me a sponge bath.

See, there's the Catch-22: If you might enjoy it, you don't get it. Pretty well sums up life as we know it. The hospital was no longer as full. The men and fairies had learned how to keep their heads down. And for now Senna was stopped at the castle gates. So Etain's visits with me could take a little longer. Mostly she asked about the real world.

Mostly about stuff I didn't know much about.

"Light has a particular speed, then? And how do you know it doesn't go faster or slower depending on whether the spirits are agitated or calm?"

"I don't know. Scientists do this stuff. I just get tested on it. Doesn't mean I understand it."

"One hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second," Etain marveled. "Faster even than one of your bullets."

"Yeah. And faster than sound. That's why you see the flash of a gun and don't hear the sound till a second or so later."

"Is that true, then?" she said excitedly. "Come, let us go to the walls and see."

"You want to get shot at so we can see if light travels faster than sound? I'm thinking, no."

She smiled. "There is something in what you say."

Mostly that was it: a lot of talk about cars and internal combustion engines and jet engines and medicine and space
shuttles and DNA and phones and television and why Survivor had been a hit and so on. But that was okay, she liked talking about the real world and I liked talking to her about anything as long as she'd sit close to my bed and look beautiful and smell great and be nice to me.

When you've spent a couple of months wandering around lost in Weird World, running from one evil mess to the next, and finally getting up close and personal with a hand grenade, you are desperately, giddily, puppy-dog grateful for a pretty girl who'll sit there and give you a lively sense of what you're living for.

But still, nothing had gotten personal. No kiss, no grope, no exchanges, shall we say. I knew I had to get up serious nerve. But things were so nice I just didn't want to mess it up by trying for the next level. Plus, of course, there was the omnipresent fear of Etain's fairy bodyguard.

But eventually I had to make some kind of a play. I was right on the edge of being the kind of guy some chick's father would approve of. That couldn't last. It was to be my last night in the hospital. The last time when Etain could legitimately come to see me as my nurse, without it being some big thing. She mentioned that she'd be by after
supper. She mentioned it casually. But she blushed when she mentioned it casually, so I had my hopes up pretty high. As it happened, she came by earlier than usual. Two hours earlier. I figured, hey, if she's showing up two hours early she must actually like me. Clearly the time had come to make a move.

She asked me how I was doing. She asked me how I felt. And with the grace and subtlety for which I am justly famous, I said, "So, Etain, on another topic entirely, do you have a boyfriend?"

"A boyfriend?"

"A squeeze. You know, some guy you're involved with."

"A betrothed?"

Hmmm. "Okay, sure, a betrothed."

"I was betrothed," she said without too much sadness. "He was a prince of Blackpool. But alas, he died. He was gored by a boar and infection set in, the wound mortified."

"Alas," I said with some genuine sympathy; When you get blowed up real good you discover you have a lot of sympathy for anyone who's suffered something similar.

"He might have been saved with April's mold," Etain said thoughtfully.

I nodded. "Yeah. April needs to see about patenting her mold. The girl's looking at some serious cash flow."

"April is an inspiration," Etain said sincerely. "The druids fairly worship her."

April's mold was crude penicillin. Not all that hard to grow in a land where it seemed to be damp pretty much all the time. Between boiling everything in sight and demanding that everyone wash their hands and introducing antibiotics, April had moved medical science forward about a thousand years. She had used up her stock of Advil, but now she was at work figuring out how to make aspirin.

"Yeah, well, watch out for April: She'll have you all eating broccoli and saying the Rosary if you're not careful. But enough about her. The thing is, if we don't all get killed, is there any way you and I could see each other?"

"Do we not see each other now?"

"Yeah, but I mean see as in 'see.' Hang. Do things together. Date."

"You mean court?" She laughed, trying to cover for a blush that reddened her cheeks and extended down her neck.

"Yeah, it's like courting, but less serious. I mean courting is about getting married, right? Dating is like courting except you don't get married. I mean, maybe in Utah you get married, but mostly not."

"No?"

I shrugged. "Well, no, probably. I mean, someday. I guess." The fever seemed to be coming back. "But what you do is you go to places and have fun. You take a drive in the car. Or the... horse. You go horse riding together. You catch a movie or possibly a druid ritual, depending on what's showing, or you grab a burger. You talk about stuff."

"Just talk?" she asked.

I hesitated. Was that a signal of some kind? Was Etain a couple of steps ahead of me? "Talk, mostly� I said cautiously.

"Do you never embrace?"

"Embrace?"

"Do you never kiss?"

Yes, yes, she was a couple of steps ahead of me. She leaned close, leaned right across me, and kissed me on the lips. Right away it wasn't right. I knew what I expected. I'd spent a few hundred hours thinking about kissing Etain, and this wasn't it.

I felt strange, disturbed. I felt as if I was getting sicker. As if someone was drugging me, that was it, like someone had slipped me a Demerol or something. I tried to pull away. But it was too late. I opened my eyes. And now I was too far gone even to register surprise. Of course it was Senna's face, Senna's eyes so close to my own. Laughing,
contemptuous eyes.

"Hi, Christopher," she said as she drew back. "Long time no see."

I felt muzzy, fuzzy anger and fear way, way down inside me. But on the surface of my mind, in the brain that actually
controlled my rawest emotions, my actions, I felt only helpless surrender.

I knew it was Senna now. Senna, the shape-shifter. Senna the witch. I knew what Senna was. I knew exactly what she was doing. And still I reached for her. Still I leaned to kiss her.

"One more to seal the bargain," she breathed.

And I was lost.

Oh no!! Third chapter again, gotta see how this plays out!

quote:

Chapter
XXI

"You'll see this is for the best, Christopher," she told me. "All this fighting and killing has to stop. Too many people are getting hurt. And why? Because David wants to play the hero. You know it's true."

A grain of truth. Not the real truth, not the complete truth, but a grain.

"Everworld is a mess," Senna went on. She was pacing beside my bed, alternately wringing her hands slowly, glancing nervously toward the door and favoring me with syrupy pity looks. "My creatures forever killing one another. It needs to be organized. I mean, how is it ever going to become a decent place unless someone comes along to guide them toward the kind of life that we all believe in?"

Yes, that was true, Everworld was a mess.

She was working on me, I knew that. Part of me was still there, functioning. Part of me was still skeptical, still aware that I was being fed a line of b.s. But that part of me was wrapped in gauze, a mummy. That part of me mumbled and shuffled and blinked nearsightedly, unable to quite focus.

"I know you want to support your friends, but aren't I your friend, too?" Senna asked. "We were close once, Christopher, before David came along and pushed you out of my life."

Is that what happened? Kind of. No, no, it was more... that wasn't it. But kind of, right?

"David and Jalil are in this together, you know that, don't you? Jalil thinks he's so great. He thinks he's better than you. You must know that. You must know that secretly, behind your back, he laughs at you."

She was lying, wasn't she? She had tried to kill me. Jalil had saved my life more than once. But there was truth in what she said, too. Of course there was truth. David was a jumped-up martinet. Jalil was an arrogant smart-rear end.

"And what about April? She's just a tease, Christopher. I mean, you're not stupid, Christopher; you know it's not an
accident when she flashes a little leg or some cleavage at you. You know she's playing with you, and there's no chance she'll ever be yours. No, no, it's Jalil she wants. You know, some girls are like that."

Jalil and April? I searched my memory, but memory was a slow, slow, slow-loading file. The software all frozen up, couldn't quite reach it, couldn't quite get it to boot up.

"Nice boy like you, Christopher, you don't have a chance with April, not with that smart-rear end Jalil in there, taking what
should be yours."

No, that was... that wasn't right. But it was true, wasn't it? April did like Jalil. And of course he liked her, of course, who wouldn't? And everyone knows how they are. Everyone knows. Senna was still close. Close enough that I could smell the perfume of her; God, she smelled so sweet, so beautiful. The most beautiful girl in the world, a movie star, a shining angel. I wanted her She cared about me, oh she didn't always show it but she cared about me.

"Etain is the same way," Senna said. "But she wants David. She wants to be taken, you know, taken by a strong, dominant, aggressive man. And David will do it. He'll do it."

I blinked. No. No, there was no truth there. Was there? No. Senna was just wrong. That wasn't it at all. Senna didn't know Etain. That fact stuck. As loopy as I was, that fact was I solid: Senna had not been here these last weeks, she didn't know Etain.

Senna peered closely at me, looked at my eyes with the detachment of an optometrist checking for glaucoma. She
pressed her lips together, angry at herself, sensing that she'd played her cards wrong. Then she relaxed into a smile.

"I can give you Etain," she said playfully, teasing. "That's what you want, isn't it?"

She was changing tactics, changing approaches. Trying to come at me from a different direction. Come on, Christopher, shake free. Shake free.

"We'll get rid of David and Jalil," Senna whispered. She laid her hand on my arm, on the bare skin, and I felt a shiver run up and down my spine. My brain, my memory, just surfacing, just coming up for air, just emerging from the smothering water, was thrust back down, pushed hard, back under, back under. Couldn't hold on. She was talking again, talking to me close, so close, so beautiful, and I was slipping, further than ever.

A song was in my head, a song going round and round.

Santana?

"Better leave your lights on. Because there's a monster. There's a monster living under my bed, Whispering in my ear."

"Now, go."

The word "go" snapped in my head. Electric. Irresistible. I stood. I fumbled for my sword. "Go, Christopher. Be my true hero."

I went.

"Help me, Christopher. You want to help me, Christopher, and it will all be yours. Etain will be yours. Etain will be yours forever."

And then she was Etain, she was Etain, and she was pressing her body close, covering my face in hot kisses. Etain.

Etain.

"It's time to go," Etain breathed in my ear.

"Go where?" I mumbled.

"You must go," she whispered.

There's a monster, Christopher, a monster whispering in your ear. "Wha... where?"

"To the gate of the castle. It needs to be opened. You would be my hero, Christopher."

Not Etain. It was...

"Be my hero, Christopher, and you'll have me, all of me without reservation. Go to the castle gate. You must open the gate. Take your sword. Lift up the crossbar. Then cut the drawbridge rope. Do those things, Christopher, do them and I am yours forever and ever."

Etain kissed me again. No, the monster. Etain.

I should have stopped at the last chapter because I really want to go on. But this is enough for tonight!

# ? Dec 27, 2023 04:38

bird food bathtub: Aug 9, 2003; College Slice

Well that sucks for him, trying to ask someone out on a date and ends up getting mind-whammied. Where's Merlin in all this? Sure would be nice to have Senna get that table turned on her and if she just brought over an entire platoon of guys every big player in the world, and apparently between worlds, should know she's doing gateway stuff in Merlin's back yard.

# ? Dec 27, 2023 12:51

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

quote:

Chapter
XXII

I closed the door behind me. Stepped into the hallway. A passing fairy nodded at me, the respectful nod due to a
wounded fighter. What was I doing? Open the gate. Drop the drawbridge.

Why?

Um...

Open the gate, drop the drawbridge.

The monster whispering in my ear. But Etain was no monster. Etain was not Etain.

That damned David. Freaking glory dog, that's what he was. Him and Jalil working together to cut me out. Laughing at me behind my back.

Jalil wanted Etain. Or was it David? One of them. Both of them? Etain and April and everyone.

Down the hall. Down the turning, turning stairs. Like Sleeping Beauty's castle. I'm Sleeping Beauty, that�s what it is,
I'm sleeping, way down here inside my own brain. My sword. I was wearing the sword old King Camulos had given me.

What was going to happen to the king and to Goewynne?

Oh, it would be okay. Senna would be decent to them. She wasn't going to hurt anyone, not the monster, not the monster Senna.

Out into the courtyard. Weird, fresh air. Fresh cold night air. First fresh night air in a long time. It was good to be out of the hospital.

Still a little shaky, though. Shaky. Weak. Walking like an action figure, stiff, unnatural.

Like a puppet.

Across the courtyard. There was the gate, massive timbers bound with iron straps. Two things: the inner gate and the drawbridge beyond it. Had to open both.

If Keith and the Sennites just made it across the drawbridge but ran into a locked gate, they were screwed. There was a narrow passage between the drawbridge and the inner gate, high walls looming over it all, firing positions everywhere. Come in the drawbridge and get held up by the inner gate, you were toast: crammed into a space twenty feet long and six feet wide with fairy archers above you, pouring arrows into you. Or worse, some of Jalil's acid bath.

It had to be both or Keith couldn't come in. But if they were both open, that would be okay. Then the little psycho could come in, run through the gauntlet of arrows. Keith. Senna. It was Senna. Senna was Etain and Etain loved me, wanted me to save her.

The gate. A fairy and a man on guard. Had to take out the fairy first. Take him by surprise, otherwise he'd be too fast. Then the man. The fairy, then the man. How? If I drew my sword wouldn't they freak? What was I supposed to do, take them both on? That wasn't me, man. Not me, man.

Don't be afraid, Christopher, it's all going to be fine. Etain will be yours. Happy. Everything as it should be.

The man was looking at me. Bored. A guard pulling late-night duty.

"Hi," I said. "Hey, you're probably a real expert and me, I don't know anything about swords. What's the handle part
thing here called, this part?"

I drew my sword hesitantly, unsure, an amateur handling a complex tool. The soldier smiled, smug and superior. The fairy ignored us both.

I drew and slammed the handle directly back into the fairy's face. Then I swung the blade in an arc, aiming for the man's neck, but he was quick.

He jumped back and the blade sliced him across the chest, right through the leather jerkin, biting flesh and spraying blood.

The fairy was staggered. The man just surprised. He was trying for his own sword. I kicked him where no man wants to be kicked. I swung my sword pommel again and caught him hard on the side of the head. Down went the Fiannan. I spun and stabbed at the fairy and the blade point hit bone. The fairy fell on his back and I could see he was out cold.

"Let's see David do any better than that," I crowed, wishing Etain were there to see how well I'd done; man, she'd be proud.

The gate's crossbar was heavy. Like a tree. I had to crouch under it and use my legs to lift. Slide it away. Slide and heave till it toppled off. It still blocked the left gate, but I'd be able to open the right door all right. I pulled with all my strength and the gate swung inward.

Now, there, a big pulley holding the spooled rope. The rope taut up to the guide that led it to the drawbridge.

"Who goes there?" a man's voice yelled from above, up on the wall.

I swung my sword hard and sliced through the rope.

"Alarm! Alarm! To the gate! Alarm!" A spear flew and nicked my left arm and stuck into the ground and the drawbridge didn't drop, it still stood, balanced. I ran straight at it, yelling, hit it with all my weight and bounced back.
I landed on my back, winded. The drawbridge creaked and slowly, slowly, then faster, fell away. I rolled over, winded,
on hands and knees, tried to stand, tried to get up, saw a rush of fairies rushing at me, zooming, blurring.

Then behind me the sharp sounds of the old world. Pop. Pop. PopPopPopPop. Red flowers appeared in the fairies' chests and they fell.

I turned, bleary, lost now that I'd done all I'd been told to do, confused. I caught a Doc Marten in the head.

I was in the shower: "No!" Staggered back against the cool tile, rocked, uncomprehending. CNN Breaking News:
Christopher bewitched by Senna. Christopher gets everyone killed.

"No way, no way." I denied it, but no way to deny it.

Everworld me was there with an update. Everworld me had been taken over by Senna, a wholly owned subsidiary.
But not real-world Christopher. The fuzziness, the confusion, none of it affected me now. Now I could see it all with perfect clarity.

I had handed victory to Senna. She would kill us all. David and Jalil and April. And Goewynne and the king. And all the brave Fianna and the fairies and the druids, too.

And Etain.

I turned off the water, numb. What could I do? What had I done? What could I do now? I wrapped a towel around myself and ran for the phone. I grabbed it and dialed David's number. Ring. Ring. Someone picked it up. Not David. My brother picking up the extension.

"Dammit, get the hell off the phone right now or I'll beat you till you can't walk!" I screamed, panicked, hysterical. I couldn't be the cause of all those deaths, no, no, I couldn't be the one, I couldn't make Etain die. Had to be some way.

Ring. Ring.

"Levin residence, talk to me." David!

"It's Christopher."

"Yeah?"

"David. David, man. David, I..." All at once I was sobbing, unable to control my voice.

"Calm down, Christopher. Take a breath."

I took a breath. Took another. "I screwed everyone, David. Senna got to me. I opened the gate. Senna got to me. I let Keith into the castle, David."

"What?"

"David, man, they're in. They're in the castle."

A long pause. Then, "Yeah, they are," David said. "Yeah. Something happened. I'm down, Christopher."

David had just had his own breaking news. Everworld David was down, at least unconscious. Maybe dying. And now, thanks to my own recent close call, we knew what for so long we'd wondered about : Death in Everworld was death all the way around.

Call-waiting on David's line.

"I better get that," he said grimly.

He clicked over to the other line and I waited, trying to breathe, waiting to fade, waiting few death to reach me across the gap.

A long wait. Then David was back.

"That was Jalil. He was in and out. Unconscious, but then he thinks maybe he regained consciousness, he doesn't know for sure. You know how it is."

"Yeah. Jesus, David. I'm sorry. She was there in my room. I thought she was Etain. I mean, she was Etain. She got to me."

�I know how it is, Christopher. No one knows better than me. Jalil says it looks bad. He doesn't know what happened to either of us. Its chaos over there."

"April?"

"She hasn't called."

"So maybe she's fine."

"Or dead," David said. "Don't give up. Don't wimp out on me."

I realized I was crying into the phone and that David could hear me.

"Let's go see Brigid," he said.

"Okay, man. I'm okay. I'm okay."

"I'll be there in five."

And I guess I was there when he drove up, I guess because Everworld me had just woken up in a world of hurt.

Like realistically based on having an entire other book left, I knew Christopher would open the gate, but I kept hoping he'd be stopped.

quote:

Chapter
XXIII

I was alive, but felt like I'd rather not be.

I was lying on my side. A dead man was sprawled beside me. Two dead fairies, one draped right across me. Dead
people all around. They thought I was dead. I'd been dragged and dumped with the dead bodies. And just then a druid and a servant from the castle came shuffling along carrying another dead man. They were supervised by a jeering, swaggering punk I'd never seen before. He had a Kalashnikov propped on his hip. He was eating a roll of some kind.

Everything was lit by fire. Night had fallen, but the village was burning, and the glow of orange reached up to dim the stars, I closed my eyes to slits. I felt the thud as the body was slung toward me. I saw another of Senna's boys, a big bruiser of a guy, head scraped bald, tattooed, a pair of automatic pistols in a leather belt, a machine pistol in his left hand, dragging a dead fairy along by the hair.

The punk said, "Hey, compadre, you ain't gotta be carrying them yourself. Get a couple of the prisoners to do it."

"The little ones don't weigh much," the big man said.

"No, but they're fast," the punk said. Then, with a laugh added, "When they're alive. Ha-ha-na, not too fast now."

The two of them walked off laughing at this wit and embellishing the joke further. Variations on the theme of "dead
people are slow."

I figured now was the time.

I felt for my sword. Gone. But the nearest fairy still carried his sword, more like a dagger, really. I slid it from his belt,
whispering an apology for robbing the dead. I slithered across the corpses, sick at heart, sick in every way, crawled and slithered across the drawbridge. If I was seen I'd have to run. Outrun bullets. No problem. But better than waiting around till someone noticed I wasn't exactly dead.

No popopop. No explosion of pain in my back. I got up and ran. Ran and ran, down through the burning town, gagging on the swirling smoke. I tripped over a charred body, got up and kept running. I was crying from smoke and weak rage. What was happening back up in the castle? What were Senna's monsters doing to my friends and Etain?

One thing was sure: David was either dead or unconscious. Couldn't pawn this off on David. Not his turn to play hero, not this time. This was on me. But what the hell was I going to do? No gun, no army, nothing but a knife.
This was so screwed up. And it was my fault. I should have been able to resist Senna. Should have been able to keep her from playing with my mind. All the times I'd made fun of David for being her sock puppet. And now whose hand was up my butt? I was the new star of Senna's very own Sesame Street.

I saw a column of men approaching and ducked into a black, charred, smoking alley between two hollowed-out
buildings. A dozen men, real-worlders, loaded up with guns. They were moving in a parody of military style, making the moves they'd learned from watching too many war movies. A dozen guys playing out their Action Hero Schwarzenegger fantasies, swaggering, poking guns here and there, imagining themselves on film, no doubt playing the background music in their heads.

Easy to ridicule them. But their guns were real enough.

One guy seemed to be in charge, a crew-cutted, beer-gutted guy of fifty who looked like the old Navy guy on Survivor. He was yelling orders the others occasionally heeded, "Secure that doorway! Cover that alley!"

Others were marveling aloud: at the castle, at the destruction, at all the cool burning, at the dead men and women.

At the dead fairies.

I didn't have the energy to run and hide anymore. I had the energy to breathe, that was about it. Fortunately, these weren't real soldiers. Some imagined movement down the street set them all to firing wildly and yahooing. Then they were past, and I wasn't dead.

So, Senna was still bringing in more men. How? Wasn't she in the castle? These guys had come up from the countryside to join the party, Johnny-come-latelies to the big party. The gateway must still be open.

Senna was back out there, out there in the countryside. Why? Had the ring of druid stones held some magic she could use? Was she really back there in that weird little dell? Shouldn't Queen Senna be in the castle?

No, she had to bring in more men. That was her top priority: She was in a hurry. Why? Because it wasn't over, that's
why. She was in a hurry to raise forces. She was expecting trouble. Not from us, we were beat, but from someone.

Merlin? Loki?

The opening of the gateway would send shivers through all the powers of Everworld. Brigid had said that. Loki would know. Ka Anor would know. Huitzilopoctli and Hel and Zeus and Athena and Neptune, they would all know. They were all on the same psychic-magic e-mail list.

But none of them would suspect what was really happening. It wouldn't occur to them any more than it had occurred to us, that the traffic through the gate was Chicago- style: one-way the wrong way. One way out. One solution, that was clear: Senna had to be stopped. Permanently. The monster I used to date had to be stopped.

No problem, Christopher, I thought. After all, you have a fairy sword, and what's Senna got, aside from magic powers and a bunch of guys with Kalashnikovs?

What should I do? What should I do? Go to the druid stones. Maybe because I could do something to stop her. Or maybe because her enchantment was still strong and I was like some low-level vampire drawn inexorably to the boss vampire. I couldn't even trust my own motives.

And anyway, I knew this: I wasn't going to kill her. Not my thing, you know, killing. It was different if someone was attacking you directly, trying to kill you. Then, in the absence of cops or troops or even a vice principal, you had to defend yourself, no other way. But to lie in wait for Senna and jump out from behind a tree and stick my fairy sword into her? Not me, and not anyone I wanted to hang around with.

Besides, Brigid had said it, right? No one was going to kill Senna.

Still all and all, there I was, walking down the too-well- trodden path like a man with a plan. Heading for the dell. So,
like I say, I had to question my own motives. Senna's hook was still in me: I was a trout and all she had to do was reel me in and fry me up in the pan.

Out into the countryside. Out into stone-fence and scruffy- tree country. The moon was at the quarter and sliding in and out of the clouds. ,

"What word, stranger?" a voice asked. A voice in the darkness.

I jumped approximately my own height.

"Peace, brother," the voice said. "Or if not peace, then at least have no fear of me."

When I had swallowed my heart again I peered into the darkness and saw a cloak and a beard. The face was obscured. But the voice was familiar.

"Merlin? Is that you, man?"

"Merlin indeed," he said.

"Yeah? How do I know you're not Senna pretending to be Merlin?"

The wizard laughed softly. "You have begun to learn the ways of Everworld, Christopher."

"Yeah," I said. "But that's not what's up right now, man. What's happening right now is that Everworld is learning the
ways of the real world."

He stepped closer. "The witch has opened the gateway. This I know."

"She's importing, not exporting," I said. "Senna's bringing over well-armed guys from the real world. Guns. Lots of guns. You want the short version? Lorg the giant? Dead. MacCool? Dead. Pretty much all the local Fianna are dead. Most of King Cam's fairies? Dead. My friends and Goewynne and Etain and all, I don't know, but Senna's people have burned the town and taken the castle and we're all pretty well screwed. So, what's new with you, Merlin?"

He stroked his beard and considered. "MacCool is dead, then? That is a terrible blow."

I was still not in the mood to hear how great MacCool was.

"MacCool didn't like to listen. He thought he knew what was what, and he ended up all full of holes."

Merlin looked up sharply. He looked like he might just decide to put some magic whim-wham on me to teach me not to back-talk him. Then his expression changed.

"Come. I will listen," he said.

quote:

Chapter
XXIV

So we sat down well off the road and damned if Merlin didn't brew up a pot of tea. Made himself a little fire out of
damp twigs that shouldn't burn and whipped a little teapot out of his rucksack. It was a Yoda moment. I expected him to start talking backward and moving like a Muppet. "Screwed we are, yes."

But the old wizard didn't get to be an old wizard by being stupid. He clammed up and let me pour out my whole tale of woe. And boy, did I pour. I gave it all to him.

He gave me some tea.

When I was done he did something that endeared him to me: He puffed out his cheeks and shook his head and said, "It looks bad."

Yes, indeed, it looked bad,

"It may be that the witch's power has grown too great for me to counter. She has learned much. She has great natural talents. And, of course, her armed men give her very great power."

"But you have it worked out, right?" I said. "I mean, you know how to stop her, right?"

He shook his head and made a slight, rueful smile. "No. Some of what you tell me, I knew already. A mutual friend on the other side, in what you call the real world, had alerted me to hurry."

"Brigid?"

Merlin nodded. "Yes, Brigid has done more for her people than will ever be known. Her powers are limited in the old
world, your world, but she has over these many centuries reached across the barrier to defend her people."

"Yeah, we noticed Ireland is doing a little better than the rest of Everworld."

"It is in large part..." He stopped. Froze. Seemed to be listening to something far off. "The gateway has closed."

I nodded. "I guess she's brought over all the guys she can find."

Merlin dumped out the last of the tea and made me give him back my cup. Then he stood up. "I can allow us to pass among them, but I do not know the form of them. I do not know their costume."

It took me a minute to get that. "What? You're talking the shape-shifting thing?"

"It is not shape-shifting, my young friend. It is mere illusion. The ignorant call it shape-shifting. The shift is only in their minds. But I must know the look of these armed men in order to allow us to pass among them."

"Us?"

"Us."

"You can do it to me, too?"

"I could make you appear to be a troll or a wolf or a wench," Merlin said, not without some cockiness.

"Yeah? Could you make me appear to be somewhere else?"

No answer.

I sighed. This was a disturbing idea, but I didn't see how I could decently weasel out of it. So I set about telling Merlin how to dress the part of a gun nut.

I drew pictures in the dirt. I painted word pictures. And when it was all done the old man turned himself into an extra
from a Mad Max movie.

"A little less flamboyant, maybe," I suggested. "The pants should be looser. Longer. The boots are black, not brown."

He adjusted.

"And the gun... well, it looks too smooth. You need more, I don't know, like slots and stuff. You know what, it'll pass in the dark, and then you can adjust when you see the actual guys."

"Yes, that is what we shall do," he said, again with a not- too-subtle emphasis on "we."

Then he did a kind of cool little trick: He swirled his hand in a tall oval, and there, shimmering, hanging in the air, was a mirror. In the mirror, a reasonably convincing version of a skinhead. I ran my hand over my scalp. Weird. I could feel hair, but in the mirror I saw shaved scalp. In my hands I cradled a gun I couldn't actually feel. Air gun.

"A tattoo," I suggested. "Here, on my arm. A dragon swirled around a Confederate battle flag and the words 'Born to Raise Hell.'"

The tattoo appeared, although the flag in question was closer to the British flag.

"Good enough. Now what?"

"We wait," Merlin said. "They are coming."

Sure enough, when I looked down the road I saw a ragged line of torches.

"Shouldn't we hide?"

"No. We should merely be silent."

They came on, and we stood there in plain view, but apparently invisible. They came on, maybe twenty men, all
armed to the teeth and favoring the camouflage look. They were singing as they went, and I kid you not, they were singing "Dixie."

"Dixie." A bunch of guys from Chicago, for God's sake, singing "Dixie" like they were somehow the natural heirs of
Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, the jackasses. And there was Senna at their head. Senna but not Senna.
This was an enhanced Senna. Senna on steroids. The action figure of Senna. She had turned herself into the Frank Frazetta version of Senna: rippling muscles and costume straight out of some maladjusted comic-book reader's sadomasochistic fantasy. She was swaggering in a very un-Senna sort of way. Wearing a sword and a winged opera helmet. A Valkyrie, I realized. We'd seen the actual Valkyries, and she had copied their look.

I almost giggled. I mean, come on: Even in Everworld there should be some kind of a limit on fashion choices. But I guess she was giving the troops what they wanted: some overblown, Edgar Rice Burroughs heroine. Big Babes on
Mars.

She came nearer, lit by high-held torches, keeping step with the shouted, defiant song, high on her own power, pumped both physically and psychologically.

The illusory gun I was holding changed subtly as Merlin saw some of the real thing. Senna came level with us. A frown. A look of uncertainty in her eyes. She felt our presence. She was going to kill me. She was going, I swear to God, going to kill us, going to see us, reach right over and kill me.

I held my breath. Glanced nervously at Merlin. He was watching Senna, eyes glittering, focused. He didn't look too
relaxed himself. Then Senna shook off her doubts and marched on. The column passed by and at the end, we stepped onto the road joining the column. We were visible now. The guy immediately ahead of us turned and gave us a suspicious look from under the brim of his Wehrmacht cap. Merlin smiled at the guy and the guy went kind of blank and then nodded, like we'd known each other all along.

Merlin went to work with shocking efficiency. He stepped up behind Wehrmacht Cap and calmly cut his throat. I had to cover my mouth to stifle the surprised yelp. Merlin bent over the body, yanked the guy's Uzi away, and handed it to me. "I take it we need this instrument?" he said.

I nodded and tried not to think about what I'd gotten myself into. "I need the guy's ammo belt, too," I said.

Now I was carrying a real weapon, not an illusion. That was comforting. Not real comforting, but all in all, if you're going to end up in a gun fight you want to avoid carrying an imaginary weapon. Pointing your finger and going, "Bang! Bang!" is not all that effective.

We marched on our frolicking way: 'Roid-Senna in the lead. Merlin and me in the rear, and in between twenty or so living proofs that white people aren't really superior. Through the countryside. Into the town, mostly charred rubble now. Over the bodies. Up the hill to the castle. In the gate.

And there it was, the scene Senna must have dreamed about for a long time: The courtyard was filled with her soldiers, all cheering wildly at her entrance. They lined the walls of the courtyard and the tops of the walls, poised atop the crenellations, many if not most holding torches. How many? At least fifty, seventy-five with our contingent added. It seemed like more. All armed to the teeth.

In the center of the courtyard a dozen people stood staggering under the weight of massive chains. David, Jalil, King Camulos, Fios, Goewynne, a handful of druids I didn't know, and Etain.

The chains were looped around legs and waists, over shoulders, around necks. Here and there massive, primitive locks had been placed. The chain links were each big enough to stick your hand through. The chains weighed a ton. Etain was on her knees, unable to carry the weight, her head bowed low. Her clothes were ripped, shredded. Goewynne had been hit. Her face was bruised. The king was badly wounded, clutching his side, blood seeping from a gut wound. A blue druid, a young guy with an incongruously full beard and strange green eyes, was trying to help stem the flow of royal blood.

David was a mess. His own mother wouldn't have recognized him. He'd been professionally beaten. One eye was
closed by a knot the size of a lemon. Jalil wasn't much better off. April was nowhere to be seen. That was the worst of it, because although seeing them like this made me burn, not seeing April, not knowing what had happened to her, or was happening to her, that was worse still.

I felt Merlin's hand on my arm. Restraining me. He looked at me with eyes that were not his own, and shook his head slowly. I unclenched my fists. Forced myself to breathe. Loosened the finger that had wrapped around the Uzi's trigger.

"Silence!" Senna roared.

The yelping and hollering and yeehahing and sieg-heiling calmed down. An expectant pause.

"Hello, David. Hello, Jalil," she said in a sneering voice intended to reach most of her troops.

No answer. The crowd leaned forward expectantly. They wanted to see what the Great One was going to do. I guessed that most of these guys didn't really know what they'd gotten themselves into, or who, exactly, they were following.

"Nothing to say, David?" Senna demanded.

David just looked at her.

Keith stepped up behind him and nailed him in the kidneys with his rifle butt. He went down, gasping for breath, an
involuntary whimper of pain escaping. But then he levered himself back up, fighting the pain and the weight of his chains.

"Where are the other two?" Senna demanded in a hiss of a voice.

The question was directed at a guy I hadn't noticed before: a skinhead wearing a muscle T-shirt over plenty of muscle.

Muscle Shirt looked uncertain. "What other two, Great One?"

"April and Christopher," she said. "Where are they?"

"The uh... the blond guy, that's Christopher, right?" Muscle Shirt stammered. "He got killed. He's... the body is right over, you know, Great One, with the other bodies."

"Bring it here. I want to see it," Senna ordered.

This ought to be good, I thought. A bunch of toadies raced off to rummage through the grisly heap of bodies by the gate. I was pretty sure they weren't going to find my body. Senna waited impatiently, staring holes through Muscle
Shirt. The flunkies returned empty-handed.

Senna drew her lips back in a feral snarl I'd never seen before. "You let Christopher escape. Well, that's okay, I'll let that go. He's irrelevant. But April... that's a different matter entirely. Where is my favorite half sister?"

Muscle Shirt looked around like someone else might come forward to take the blame. Oddly enough, no one volunteered.

I spotted Keith in the crowd. He was carefully looking down at the ground.

"No April," Senna said regretfully. "And yet, my orders were clear: At all costs get the four real-worlders. Despite this, I see only half of them here. Well, half a failure earns half a punishment."

She waved her Demi Moore arms very theatrically, and instantly Muscle Shirt's body burst into flames. No, only half. He burned only on his left side. Burned as if someone had poured lighter fluid all over him and struck a match. He screamed and flapped at himself as every glittering eye gazed on in horror and fascination. Muscle Shirt's flesh crisped and peeled like pork cracklings in the barbecue.

Senna was burning a man alive.

116 of 128, we finish tomorrow.

# ? Dec 28, 2023 02:22

effervescible: Jun 29, 2012; i will eat your soul

Starting to think I don't care for Senna.

effervescible fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Dec 29, 2023

# ? Dec 29, 2023 02:42

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

quote:

Chapter
XXV

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. Muscle Shirt quivered, shook, whimpered as he touched the burned flesh that now, magically, was whole and sound and unharmed again. The burning had been an illusion, but no less hideous for that feet. A display by the Great One. A little lesson on who held the power. And her boys loved it. They were horrified and sickened and scared peeless, but they loved it just the same.

David had watched the whole thing stonily. Jalil's face was a mask of indifference. Etain had raised her head as much as she could, but let it sink back down under the weight of her chains. King Camulos was too gone even to glare, he was bleeding out. The blue druid eased him to the ground and knelt beside him. Goewynne tried to go to her husband, but Keith yanked her back by her hair.

Senna owned the crowd, that was for sure. Nothing like a display of casual brutality to really wow this particular crowd.

She strode her newly muscular way up to David. "General Davideus," she said. "You've been outgeneraled."

She laughed at that. Laughed. Senna, a person who pretty much never laughed. She was way off the deep end of the pier. She was channeling Mussolini at this point: strutting, posturing, flexing her illusory muscles, sticking out her rock-hard chest. She was playing to the crowd, camping it up, making them love her.

"David Levin!" she yelled, pointing an accusing finger at David. She'd placed extra emphasis on the "Levin," and through the crowd went the murmured response, "Jew."

"David was once my tool," she announced, clenching her fist. "But he defied me. And now he will suffer as all who defy me suffer."

Anticipation. Excitement. Oooh, the good stuff was still to come. She turned to Jalil, and now the faked hatred she'd
exposed toward David was replaced by real hatred.

"Still the unbeliever, Jalil?" she mocked. "Still think you're going to dissect me, take me apart, outsmart me?"

Jalil remained silent. I knew him well enough to know he was scared, but damned if he showed it.

"Pray to me, Jalil," Senna whispered. "Down on your knees and pray to me. Beg me for your life, and I'll let you keep it."

"I don't think so, Senna," he said.

"I think you will," she said. "You know, Jalil, I think your hands are very, very dirty."

Jalil looked blank, then slowly at first, then faster, he began rubbing his hands, rubbing at them with imaginary soap. He rubbed and rubbed, twisted them, worried them, scratched and clawed at the backs of his hands. Blood began to flow.

"Jalil has a little problem. Did you know that, David? Jalil just can't seem to get clean. What's it called, Jalil? Obsessive- compulsive?"

"Stop it," David snapped.

"Jalil's a sick, sick boy. He tries so hard to be all brain, but his brain is sick. Sick and dirty, right, Jalil?"

"I said stop it," David said.

"No, I don't think so," Senna said and giggled as Jalil became more frantic. His hands were bloody, his nails clawing, and now tears rolled down his face as the crowd laughed and hooted, unsure what they were seeing, but glad to see the black man cry and bleed.

"I'll make him claw himself down to the bone," Senna said to David. "He'll clean himself to death."

"Do something," I muttered to Merlin.

"This is not the time," he whispered. "Something will happen soon, and then the time will be ripe. Soon! He approaches. I sense his approach."

"He? Who he?"

No answer.

"Jalil, oh, Jalil," Senna mocked in a singsong voice. "Your face is dirty now. Filthy!"

Jalil shuddered, tried to resist, then began slowly to scrub and finally to claw at his face.

"You sick bitch!" someone yelled.

That someone, to my great horror, was me. Senna spun on her heels, and for a sweet moment I saw fear in her eyes. The tyrant's natural, instinctive fear of defiance.

"Who said that?" she shrieked.

"You really must learn patience," Merlin snapped in an undertone. Then, without missing a beat, he yelled, "He said it!" and pointed his illusory finger at an unoffending creep standing beside me.

"No!" the creep yelled, but way too late.

Senna aimed a finger at him and he burst into flame. I backpedaled, everyone did, backed away as the guy screamed and writhed, and I knew deep down that this time it was no illusion. I could smell it this time.

He fell to his knees, a living torch. His gun fell from his grip and I snatched it up like I was trying to save valuable hardware from being wasted. It was hot to the touch. Senna's mad, distorted face glowed in the flames. Bang! Bang!

Not me, not anyone firing a gun, the reports were from cartridges in the dead man's ammo belt fired off by the heat of the flames. Everyone scattered. The guy had loaded magazines all over, maybe a hundred rounds, and Senna, who was not only a complete whack job, but not real bright when it came to weapons, had lit up what amounted to a walking ammunition dump.

The Sennites up on the walls crouched behind stone. Everyone down below bolted for cover. It was a kitchen full of
cockroaches when someone turns on a light. Bang! Bang! Bang!

The bullets went off randomly, in groups of two or three, in singles, unpredictable. Merlin and I had run with everyone else and we were behind a stone well. Only the chained prisoners and Senna remained exposed, and David was yelling, "Get down!"

Etain and Goewynne were already down, but now the druids and the king dropped, too. One of the druids was too
slow. A bullet caught him in the leg. But, of course, bullets fired without benefit of a barrel were less dangerous. The explosion was not confined so they were dangerous only at close range.

I saw David slipping out of his chains. He must have beat the lock already because he sloughed off the weight without too much trouble and was now grabbing Jalil, pulling Jalil's clawing hands away from his face. Senna looked like the visiting head of the school board addressing the assembly where someone has lit a stink bomb. She was outraged and confused at losing control. She was furious and unsure of where to direct her rage, what with the
fact that she herself was responsible for this particular fiasco.

One thing was sure: Senna had to go. Senna was loony. The human race was going to have to get along without her.

I did what I never wanted to do: I leveled my rifle, took shaky aim, and squeezed the trigger.

Nothing.

The safety!

I fumbled madly, looking for the safety. Was that it, or wasn't the thing even cocked? What was... there, that had to be the safety.

I clicked it, but a hand was already wrapped around the barrel, forcing it down. No man would take Senna's life. That's what Brigid had said.

I looked up into Senna's manic face. "Who are you?" she demanded. Of course, she couldn't yet see through Merlin's disguise of me.

She put her free hand on my face, almost caressing, and I felt all the anger, all the determination slip away, disappear behind a bank of fog that rolled into my brain.

"It's just me, Christopher," I said.

quote:

Chapter
XXVI

�Christopher, of course," she said. Then, raising her voice to a shout, she yelled, "Come and take this garbage away!"

I was confused for a moment because I thought she was talking about me, and she couldn't be talking about me
because I loved her, I loved her and served her, and always would.

But no, to my deep relief she was talking about the dead man, the burned corpse who had, at last, slowed his rate of fire. A couple of her soldiers came running, eager to please, scared to disappoint, but leery about grabbing onto a charcoal briquette studded with un-fired rounds.

There was a bang and a yelp of pain, but they managed after some confusion to throw a rope around the remains and drag him off at a run toward the gate. The cowering minions resurfaced, laughing with relief.

"All we need is April now," Senna said, caressing my face.

"And, of course, master Merlin. He must be very nearby. Only he could have disguised you so effectively."

I was all set to point Merlin out, but the wizard was no longer where I'd last seen him. Senna noticed my puppy-dog
eagerness and frustration and patted my head almost affectionately.

"No, no, never fret, Christopher: He's shifted himself again, no doubt. But we'll find him, won't we? We'll find the wizard yet."

"We'll get him," I said. "We'll get April, too."

Senna looked sharply at me. "Do you know where she is?"

"No," I said. And yet, at that same moment, a flash of memory, an image. Blue. Green eyes. A strange beard. I tried to put it together in my head, tried to make sense of it. The answer would please Senna, and pleasing Senna was
the point. I tried to focus, tried to think, but it was as if someone else was in my head, blocking my every attempt.

Senna turned away. Time to rally the troops. "Brave soldiers of the New Order," she cried. "A wizard is among us. None other than Merlin the Magnificent. He is passing as one of you. But you know who you are. Each of you is known to at least a few others. Look around at your companions, and point out the soldier who is unknown. Find the
outsider."

Muttering, suspicious looks, yelling back and forth. Just the kind of assignment to appeal to this crowd: Find the outsider.

"There!" a voice cried finally. "That one. No one knows him." It was Keith, pointing triumphantly.

"What the hell are you talking about? It's me, John Loboda. Terry, you know me! Al, you know me."

But Terry and Al shook their heads. "That ain't Big John. I've never seen that guy."

"Kill him!" Senna snapped.

The sound of guns blazing and the victim fell. He fell and as he died his appearance changed. Senna ran forward
eagerly, expecting to see Merlin's bullet-riddled corpse. Instead she saw what had to be the actual John Loboda.
A laugh. Loud and sustained and mocking. An old man's laugh. Merlin's voice.

Senna flushed red. She realized too late: Merlin had altered John Loboda's face, just as he had disguised me.

"You wanted to play Merlin's game, witch," the wizard said from nowhere in particular. "Your move."

Senna was definitely freaked. So were her troops. This wasn't in the script. Mighty Senna the Great One was getting
yanked. She'd just been tricked into ordering a faithful follower shot. That didn't sit well with the other faithful followers, and Senna knew it. It's okay to punish failure. This was a whole other thing.

And at that moment a voice cried, "Hey! Hey! Something's happening down in the town." It was a lookout, high on the walls.

"What is it?" Keith yelled back, assuming the mantle of lieutenant, I guess.

"It's like... there's a bunch of guys coming," the lookout cried.

"And some kind of big, I mean, freaking huge-rear end wolf."

In my dopey, bewitched state of mind, I didn't click. Didn't figure out who the wolf was, who it had to be. But Senna did.

"Fenrir," she whispered. "Yes. Come, Fenrir, come, Loki, I await you."

"He comes, witch," Merlin's voice-from-nowhere shouted. "Great Loki is come for you at last."

Jalil started talking, loud, persuasive. "You poor dumb fools, you don't know what she's gotten you into. Loki is coming. He's a god. And his son, Fenrir. You know what Fenrir is? He's a wolf the size of an elephant. She's gotten you all killed. You followed this psycho and she's gotten you all killed. Look! She's lost control. She can't handle Merlin and Loki at once. Fenrir is going to chew you up and crap you out."

"Silence!" Senna screamed. But her brain was going, wheels spinning, too busy to waste time torturing Jalil.

"Loki comes," Merlin intoned helpfully. "You may still escape, witch. Surrender yourself to me."

"What do we do. Great One?" Keith demanded.

"You're all dead," Jalil crowed. "You think she's going to lead you? She's some head case of a girl from the North Shore, how stupid are you?"

"Great One," Keith pressed.

My own slow, bewitched brain clicked. A druid with green eyes? April! April the actress. April. Senna would be so happy to find April.

"Senna," I said. "I know �"

Senna pressed her hands against her temples, squeezing. "Shut up. Obey me!"

"Everyone shut up!" Keith reiterated savagely.

"Forget the wizard, I'll deal with him later," Senna said.

"Man the walls. Raise the drawbridge. Close the gate. We have a battle to fight!" That last was in a roar, her face up to the crowds atop the walls.

The troops bellowed their relieved approval. This they understood. They were going to get a chance to shoot some
people. Cool. Could they really stop Loki and Fenrir? Could bullets kill a god?

"Here they come!" the lookout yelled. "There's, like a � man, that wolf is huge. And the guys aren't human."

"Trolls!" Merlin's mocking voice cried helpfully. "Living stone."

"You're all dead," Jalil said, keeping his trash-talking monologue. I expected him to start with "no batter, no batter"
next.

"You'll be lucky to be dead. Loki may give you to his daughter, Hel," Jalil said. "You'll be buried alive up to your necks. You'll be cobblestones for her to walk over."

"I think I'll kill you right now," Keith screamed at Jalil, spit flying,

"Your Great One hasn't given you that order," David intervened quickly. "A soldier follows orders."

"There's hundreds of them," the lookout cried.

Keith put his face up to Jalil's. "Great One," he said, "let me kill this one. Right now."

David sloughed off the last of his chains, free, and slammed into Keith. Keith hit the ground, swung his gun up, and caught David a brutal blow under the chin. David dropped. The ground shook like the opening rumble of an earthquake. Something big was knocking on the castle door. Gunfire blazed from the wall above. Everyone on the wall was firing, a deafening din.

Another massive blow and the castle gate blew inward, matchsticks and kindling. Fenrir leaped through, enormous, shaggy, and gray. He shouldered into the castle and let loose a roar that would have knocked the glass out of every window, if there'd been any glass.

Trolls shoved around him, under his legs, rushing to get inside the castle. A dozen or more, thick, squat, living-stone creatures with hornless rhino heads. They swung curved swords but had no targets. The men on the battlements shifted, turned and directed their fire down at Loki's son. The wolf-god was impossible to miss. Hundreds of rounds hit his neck, his head. Fenrir bellowed in rage and agony. When he opened his mouth, blue blood gushed through his teeth. Still the men fired and now the wolf was lost, snapping at the air, bellowing, dangerous but helpless to reach or stop his tormentors. A bestial cry of triumph went up from the men and Fenrir
fell.

The trolls quavered, unsure. Then, in shock, they broke and ran. Keith stood over a beaten David. Leveled his weapon at him, and my own mind, my treasonous, bewitched mind thought. Yes, do it! I glanced at the blue druid with the incongruous beard and green eyes. April. King Camulos was dead at her feet. She started toward Keith.

I yelled, "It's her! It's April!"

Senna spun, her attention suddenly riveted on me. "Where? Where?"

I started to point. Jalil staggered forward, using the weight of his chains to bear Keith down. The two of them fell in a heap. But Jalil wasn't focusing on Keith. He twisted around and stuck out one hand, one clawed, bloody hand to April.

April leaped, grabbed what Jalil had given her, and in a flash I knew what it was: Jalil's Swiss Army knife. The tiny little knife with the two-inch blade that had been replaced by the Coo-Hatch.

I raised my gun, aimed it at April. April leaped at Senna. Some unseen force pushed my gun barrel up as I fired. Merlin! The gun kicked in my hands and a line of bullets passed over April's head.

But the noise drew Senna's gaze to me, to me, away from April, away from the Coo-Hatch blade.

April stabbed.

The blade went in like a red-hot ice pick in a pound of butter. Senna grabbed her chest, laughed in disbelief, stared at the blue druid, and now, now too late, saw the familiar green eyes.

"You," she sobbed.

Senna fell backward. No longer the illusory Senna of rippling muscles, the Valkyrie Senna. Just Senna, the girl I used to date.

I knew she was dead. Knew it beyond any doubt: Her hold over me snapped, ceased, a light switch turned off. Keith was freeing himself. I ran over, kicked his gun away, and drew down on him.

"You better shoot me," Keith said to me. "Because if you don't, I'll sure as hell kill you."

I shook my head. "I think we've had about enough killing."

Then I slammed my rifle butt into his chin and he went down like a sandbag. "Of course, rear end-kicking, that's different: Still have some room for that."

I looked at Senna. Senna the witch. Senna the gateway. Senna the whole reason for us even being in this nuthouse. She didn't look like too much now. April was frozen, unable to move. She was just staring. Her half sister's blood was all over her hand.

I don't think any of us would have known what to do next but for Merlin, who appeared beside me. "We must leave," he said. "The battle still rages, but Loki has lost. Soon these men will turn their attention back to us. There is a tunnel that leads from the keep, under the moat. It is the only way."

"I will not leave my husband," Goewynne said.

"You will, Goewynne," Merlin said. "You are still a queen. Your people have need of you."

I knelt beside Etain. "Come on, we have to get out of here. Hold still"

I laid the lock of her chains on the ground, made sure she was turned away, and shot the lock. I extricated her from her chains and helped her to her feet. But Etain couldn't walk. I picked her up, like some kind of romance novel hero, I picked her up, and followed Merlin.

Goewynne stayed behind to kneel by her husband and kiss his forehead.

We left the castle in the hands of the now leaderless Sennites. We left Senna lying in the dust. No one retrieved Jalil's knife.

Goewynne came and took April's hand. She led April away. April was gone to us. Jalil helped support David. Merlin
led the way, and I hugged Etain close and wondered, as each of us was wondering, how, with the gateway dead, how we would ever get home.

Okay I did not expect that ending. Did not expect for Senna to be killed with one whole book left. Is the last book going up against Ka Anor? I was going to wait until after the new year to post, but I actually think I'll start our final book tomorrow.

# ? Dec 29, 2023 02:55

Coca Koala: Nov 28, 2005; ongoing nowhere; College Slice

yeah wow that's not a loose end i expected to have tied up right at this moment.

# ? Dec 29, 2023 03:16

Edna Mode: Sep 24, 2005; Bullshit, that's last year's Fall collection!

I'm appreciating the shorter series, this book felt like the last five Animorph books in one. The escalations just get crazier and crazier.

# ? Dec 29, 2023 07:59

Mazerunner: Apr 22, 2010; Good Hunter, what... what is this post?

effervescible posted:

Starting to think I don't care for Sennna.

look like you and April just couldn't handle her gaslight, gateway, girlboss attitude

# ? Dec 29, 2023 11:19

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

lol i hope i didn't post this in another thread. My favorite bar is closing today so I've been up there for like seven hours and I know I edited and cut this post out of open office, and i THOUGHT i pasted it, but it's not here or in any of my other bookmarks,but ugh.

Okay, here we go!

quote:

Everworld #12
Entertain The End

Chapter
I

Seven of us. Seven survivors. All that were left of the horror. Standing on a hilltop overlooking what was left of Merlinshire. Merlin the Magnificent had led us there, out of the castle through a tunnel that led from the keep and under the moat. Merlin. A powerful wizard but chastened now, and worried. Like all of us, unable to ignore the grim reality of what we had just witnessed.

The almost total annihilation of Loki's forces � Loki, the Norse god of destruction. The swift and sure murder of his son, the giant wolf, Fenrir. And the almost total destruction of King Camulos's forces. His murder. The triumph of weapons' technology over bows and arrows, over the brute force of the trolls and the impossible size of a mythological creature, which, in Everworld, was real.

Standing slightly behind Merlin were Etain, the half-elfin Irish princess, and her elfin mother, the queen, Goewynne.
Homeless, driven from their kingdom, from Merlinshire. Father and husband. King Camulos, dead. Etain. Red hair, blue eyes, lovely skin, dressed like a fairy-tale Irish princess in a long and low-cut dress, now badly torn and bloodstained. Etain was genuine Irish-maiden charming but so much more. She was smart and curious and savvy and politically aware, definitely the daughter of the king. Now the daughter of a dead king. An exile.

goddamn, April, just start singing Jolene!

And Goewynne, who was until that morning the benign and powerful co-ruler of Merlinshire. Goewynne might remind you of a society lady but without the pretentiousness, just the sophistication and graciousness, the deep awareness of her place. She was physically beautiful, with long, shiny black hair and pale blue eyes that now looked gray with sadness. Goewynne had been devoted to her husband. Now Goewynne was a widow, face swollen and bruised from a Sennite's blow. Still, somehow, she managed to retain an air of royalty. I couldn't imagine the effort it must have taken for her to stand so tall when the ordered, peaceful society of Merlinshire had been destroyed, crushed by the technology of a more advanced and civilized society.

That was a sad and sick irony. Merlinshire had been a lovely port town of Ireland, at least the Everworld version of Ireland. Picturesque wharf, a park, houses built of limestone with thatch or slate roofs. Cobblestone
streets, busy little shops, even a cable car system. Now it was all gone. All gutted and burned, its citizens tortured, murdered, driven from their homes.

Ireland. It was the nicest place we'd visited in Everworld so far. Home of the Tuatha De Danaan, sacred isle of the
Daghdha. Except now the Daghdha was dead, killed by Ka Anor. Still, even without the Father God, Everworld Ireland had thrived for two hundred and nine years in peace. Ever since the Peace Council had met at the Magh Tuireadh. Ever since the residents had chosen to follow Merlin's Way. Ireland had thrived for more than two hundred years until we showed up. Four kids from the old world. Followed by Senna and her insane tribe, bringing weapons unlike any Everworld had ever seen and turning them against Ireland's people.

Four kids from a suburb north of Chicago, Illinois. Dressed in a bizarre and filthy assortment of clothing that had long since ceased to resemble anything from the Gap or Tommy Hilfiger. There was David, our leader because he needed to be, because we needed him to be. The responsible one. The hero. The one still in possession of Sir Galahad's sword. Beaten and bloody and bruised but standing.

Jalil, our scientist, the voice of reason. The smartest. Brave, too. Ruthless, unsentimental, and self-serving when he had to be � but utterly trustworthy. He'd saved my life on more than one occasion, at no small risk to himself. Now, his spirit was broken by the public humiliation Senna had cruelly sentenced him to suffer. He stood stoically, staring directly in front of him. And there was Christopher. He'd carried Etain from the castle, through the dark, dank stone tunnel and released her only when we'd reached the hilltop. Only moments before Christopher had been under Senna's spell, ready to betray us all, his gun aimed at my head. But he was free of Senna now. He was wounded and discouraged, but one of us again.

Finally, there was me. April O'Brien. Led from the castle by Goewynne, taken by the hand like a person in a trance, a person stunned and in shock. Led to the hillside, away from the scene of the crime. April O'Brien. Pretty decent citizen, good in one world. Murderer in another. There were only four of us now because Senna was dead.

I had killed her.

quote:

Chapter
II

We stood, the seven of us, transfixed, up on a hilltop, up by the windmills, looking down on the charred ruin of Merlinshire. We were responsible for introducing electricity to Everworld. We were also responsible for introducing the notion of gunpowder to this place of bows and arrows and magic. But Senna alone was responsible for this ultimate devastation.

We looked down at the damaged walls of the once magnificent castle, a structure right out of a medieval tale. At the remains of Fenrir's carcass. The impossibly large wolf with the power to draw the four of us and Senna into Everworld.

With no great effort he had been shot dead by a gang of real- world sociopaths.

We watched the fleeing trolls, Loki's soldiers, most of whom had panicked and run as soon as they saw Fenrir fall.
We noted the bodies we could see and those we could only imagine. Among them. Senna's. And the burned body of the Sennite follower she'd killed as an example of her might. And where was Loki? Had he run, abandoned his troops, saved his own butt? Loki was a coward. All along he'd wanted to run away from Ka Anor, back into the real world. Close the gateway after him.

Actually, maybe Loki wasn't a coward after all. Maybe he was just really smart.

He wanted out of Everworld. And so did I...

Everworld.

After all the time I've been here and I still don't know how to describe or explain it. It was a universe unto itself but parallel with the real world. A place of myth and story, where thousand- year-old legends walked and talked and sometimes died.

Where gods of every culture known in the real world � ancient Greek and Roman, African, Aztec, European � cavorted and fought and fiddled with human lives. Where humans lived alongside elves who traded with dwarfs who avoided trolls who were strange but not half as strange as satyrs.

Everworld was a physical landscape that made no sense in relation to our real-world understanding of geography and ecosystems. A landscape stitched together like a patchwork quilt, deserts jutting against brown northern European fields on one side and lush Mediterranean seascapes on the other.

Everworld was a universe that supported all sorts of life- forms, humans and gods and all varieties of real-world
creatures, as well as those from other planets. Ka Anor and his Hetwan followers. The Coo-Hatch. Probably many others.

It was a world where time passed on a whim. Sometimes too fast. Sometimes too slow. This was a place where up was usually down and down was up � or sideways. Where dragons far too large to fly flapped their tiny wings and floated away.

And now the reason for our being here in Everworld, in this open-air lunatic asylum, was no more. The person responsible for our being dragged across the barrier between universes was dead.

And we were still here.

quote:

Chapter
III

We were a sad and silent troupe. None of us had spoken since we'd left the castle. What was left to say? We walked and I was alone with my thoughts I had committed a murder. It had taken place in the context of battle,
but that didn't make the fact any easier to bear. It didn't make me any less guilty. Or afraid.

Senna was dead and nothing was the same. But now it's the way you wanted it to be, April, right? my brain taunted. This is what you've always wanted Senna gone, Senna out of the house, out of your life.

It was true. I had wanted Senna dead. I had hated her beyond reason. Oh, I had a long list of actual reasons for hating Senna, but none of those could really justify wanting her dead.

Or could they?

An eye for an eye. A life for a life. I should be dead, too. Someone should take my life in exchange for Senna's. But there was no one to avenge Senna's death. No one had cared for her enough to seek justice for her murder. Keith
and the other Sennites? They were too damaged for true devotion. Senna, their leader, was gone. Fine. She was weird, man, anyway, a seriously scary chick. They'd go on raping and pillaging and playing target practice with anything that moved.

No loss.

Even David, poor David, he had loved Senna, but even David knew that in some way it was better she was gone. He would never admit that to himself, but he knew. He wouldn't retaliate against me for what I had done. If he did anything it would probably be to himself. He'd berate himself for not having saved her, protected her, rescued her from her own dark fate. Everything was always David's fault. In his own mind, anyway.

Christopher and Jalil? Merlin? Etain and Goewynne? They weren't sorry Senna was dead. Maybe they even admired me for killing her. They weren't cold-blooded, any of them; they also must have felt some pity for me, some sympathy. Senna's half sister had been forced to kill her.

It's weird. When Senna and I were growing up, there had been no frame of reference to help me understand her. To feel any sympathy or love. She was so different from me. So different from most people. In ways I can name and in too many I can't.

Yes, we lived in the same house for years. Yes, we shared a biological father. Yes, we were almost the same age.
But all that didn't really mean anything. Senna and I weren't really sisters. And we weren't friends. Senna was a stranger who wound up living in my home, sitting across from me at the dinner table, next to me in church, a stranger who shared the backseat of the car when we went on vacations. Why? I don't know. I wanted to ask my mother. But I couldn't I knew she hated Senna as much as I did. And she was as helpless as I was to resist the power of Senna's discomfiting presence.

I could ask my father, I decided once. I Could ask him because his guilt had made him vulnerable. No longer the incorruptible, hero father, now he was just a man.
.
''Why is Senna here, Daddy?"

''Because it's the right thing to do, April. I thought your mother and I explained that to you. It's our � my � responsibility."

Well, how could I argue with that? And then � just like now � I went around in circles. Trying to figure it all out. Trying to figure how my feelings got me to this point. No one had made me kill Senna. I did it because I'd wanted to. Because I believed it had to be done. I still believed that. And yet with every passing moment, with every step I took, the guilt became nearly overwhelming.

Oh, please god, I just wanted out of Everworld. There was no place for me here. Go back home and forget it all happened. That was my impossible dream. Because in the real world it would never be okay that I killed Senna. In Everworld, it had been necessary.

not much in these three short introductory chapters, just April recounting what happened and her impressions of the others, as normal. I expected a set up for our final book. Bit of a let down after that climax.

# ? Dec 30, 2023 03:07

Coca Koala: Nov 28, 2005; ongoing nowhere; College Slice

Soonmot posted:

lol i hope i didn't post this in another thread. My favorite bar is closing today so I've been up there for like seven hours and I know I edited and cut this post out of open office, and i THOUGHT i pasted it, but it's not here or in any of my other bookmarks,but ugh.

not much in these three short introductory chapters, just April recounting what happened and her impressions of the others, as normal. I expected a set up for our final book. Bit of a let down after that climax.

I don't see it anywhere else in your post history, I think you're clean.

Agreed that this setup was a little slow after what it followed, hopefully the next chapter has a bit more meat to it.

# ? Dec 30, 2023 15:56

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

/\/\/\ Thanks, yeah, I couldn't really see or focus last night.

Oh wow, this is also a short book, only 104 pages. Did three chapters again since the first two were really short.

quote:

Chapter
IV

We came to a stream. But before I could use my hands as a cup they had to be cleaned. Silently I stuck my bloodstained fingers into the icy water. Watched, fascinated, as the blood softened and slicked away.

Beside me, Jalil knelt. Held his own stained fingers under the water's surface until they were free of blood. Then he bent over and splashed his face with the cold water. He held his hands there, over his eyes and nose and mouth, for what seemed like a long time.

"We should rest for a few minutes," Merlin said. His voice startled me. No one had spoken for so long. No one
questioned him now.

After I'd drunk my fill, I walked back from the stream and sat down, head on my knees, arms wrapped around myself. I tried to rest, but my brain was wired too tight, every nerve stretched too thin for peace. I lifted my head and saw David standing, facing back toward Merlinshire. His face betrayed his disbelief. It also betrayed the fact that he knew some of the answers.

I wanted to reach out to him, offer comfort, and yes, take what comfort he could give me. But David was too far gone, too far away to be touched right now. Least of all by me.

"We should have brought the body with us," David said. "We should have buried her someplace. We shouldn't have left her there with those idiots...."

I felt someone put an arm around my shoulders. I turned my head. It was Christopher, crouched at my side. Ordinarily, I'd be wary of such a gesture on his part. Christopher was not above trying to cop a feel, even in a moment of sadness. Well, the old Christopher, anyway. He'd changed. We all had. But somehow the changes in Christopher seemed more obvious than those the rest of us had undergone.

He proved this now by giving my shoulders a gentle squeeze and singing, softly, ironically, "So no one told you life
was going to be this way..."

He made me laugh. But, it came out to be more of a sob. I looked over at Jalil, sitting close to the stream. The blood
was gone but his face was still darkened by long, deep scratches. His own doing. Because Senna had made him attack himself.

Jalil. He'd known what I was going to do, almost at the same moment I discovered my own intention. He'd thrust Excalibur into my hand, his Swiss Army knife outfitted with Coo- Hatch steel. Superb metal, able to easily cut any substance. Jalil had ripped through a wall with that knife, that tiny blade. Ripping into flesh was far easier. For the knife, anyway.

I put my head back down on my knees and sighed. What had I felt in that moment, that moment when the blade
penetrated Senna's flesh? I didn't remember, maybe couldn't. Maybe it was better not to remember but a part of me wanted to know. Was I exalted with a sense of divine duty? Was I crazy with rage, was it a crime of passion? Was I clearheaded and sure or panicked and doubtful?

And, I remembered wondering, for a split second, calmly, curiously, if Senna's blood would kill me the way it had killed the patches of grass in Africa. Remembered Thorolf affirming that, yes, a witch's blood was poisonous. We had threatened to use Senna's blood to destroy the sacred tree that united the two halves of the African Everworld.
But nothing had happened to me. The blood had covered my hand, a witch's blood, my half sister's blood. I had watched it slick and dark against my pale skin. And I'd lived.

Suddenly, sitting there on the banks of that little stream, I remembered a million little facts about Senna. A million little details I'd never bothered to list and review. Why should I when she was always there? Now that she wasn't I couldn't seem to stop the torrent of facts that comprised the person named Senna Wales. How she drank coffee black. How when she sneezed she always sneezed at least three times in a row. How when she was twelve she wore her hair in a loose pony-tail straight down her back and made it look sophisticated. How for a while she wore a small silver star on a black cord around her neck. How one day, it was gone.

Hundreds of insignificant details, details that belonged to Senna alone. It was like learning all you could about a
character you were going to play on stage. Almost as if gathering every seemingly arbitrary detail could finally put a
person together.

But it didn't work. I couldn't construct a person out of my memories of Senna. At least not a person I could understand. Her personality, her character, her motives and dreams and emotions � nothing.

In life, Senna was an enigma. In death, she remained an enigma. At least to me. And I guessed to everyone.

Especially David.

quote:

Chapter
V

We rested by the stream for a while, then set off again. Sheep and stone fences and rocky fields. A harsh Celtic
landscape, not far from the cold gray sea. When we came across a dolmen, an ancient place of burial that was marked by three large rocks � one resting horizontally across two standing vertically � Merlin and Goewynne created an illusion they promised would camouflage our temporary campsite from the roving bands of Sennites.

We were hungry, cold, and tired. Three conditions far too common in Everworld. I couldn't remember when I'd last eaten or slept. I'd have probably given my right arm for a bowl of hot soup.

It was pretty obvious that we were all ready to talk. About some things, anyway. David called a meeting. I couldn't
imagine a meeting undertaken with less enthusiasm and such a strong sense of despair and defeat. No one mentioned what I had done to Senna. No one.

"This is what we do now," David said, his voice harsh, words slightly garbled by a swollen lip. "We made a promise to Athena. Nothing's changed. We go back to figuring out a way to defend Olympus against Ka Anor's Hetwan."

"Maybe we should take a nap first," Christopher muttered.

"A very long one."

"Maybe not just a nap, but some time out."

They were the first words Jalil had spoken since we'd fled Merlinshire. The first time he'd lifted his head, met any one of us in the eye. Now he spoke to David. We'd always wondered what lay at the core of Jalil's relationship to Senna. What hold she had had on him, before he'd somehow broken away, infuriated her with his independence.

Now we knew. Senna had shown us in the most cruel and crude way. She'd publically humiliated Jalil, shown his enemies and his friends that he was a victim of his own mind, a prisoner of his own head. She'd laughed and pointed while Jalil had obsessively, compulsively pantomimed washing his hands. While he rubbed them raw, clawed them and then at his face. Jalil was proud and unsentimental. I'd always known that about him and respected it. I would never mention what we'd seen. Would never say I was sorry. My sympathy wasn't what he
needed. What would bring Jalil back to us was something concrete for him to do.

"Come on, guys. We don't have the time to waste," David said.

"I'm not talking about wasting time," Jalil answered. "I'm talking about us finding a place to hide out, somehow begin manufacturing our own weapons. It's not impossible. We look for even one Coo-Hatch, one of them who hasn't gone back to his or her own world yet. They owe us, man. We make a deal with them, we start our own weapons tech center. From there we build the greatest army Everworld's ever seen. Wont be easy but get what gods we can on our side and take down Ka Anor."

I watched Jalil as he spoke. I admired his renewed determination. But it made me feel suddenly so very, very tired.
Was I the only one who just wanted to leave this, this place for good?

David nodded. "One of us scouts for Coo-Hatch. The rest..."

"No," Merlin interrupted. "Don't you see? If you build an army, one big enough to be noticed and feared, you will just
become the new threat to the gods. They will never join you to fight Ka Anor. Instead they will turn what lazy, unorganized energies they have toward fighting you. They know � or believe � that fighting Ka Anor is a losing battle. They will trade the terror they know for the terror they don't know. They will strut and bluster and believe they have found the opportunity to assert their might."

"That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, now does it?" I said, surprised I cared enough to comment. "But I think Merlin's probably right. The gods are inherently fixed, narrow personalities. They're not going to suddenly change, see the light, join us, whatever."

"Here's what I'm thinking," Christopher offered. "I'm thinking the Sennites are a way bigger threat right now than the Looney Tunes we've been calling gods. These guys are without a real leader anymore, which probably means lots of infighting, major civil war. Remember, these guys are not all that bright and most, if not all, are certifiable. I'm guessing they're stuck here in Everworld, now that Senna's gone. Got to be some panic in the ranks. I'm thinking, a group of Hetwan approach these guys, they're gonna leap at the chance to sign up under a big macho guy like Ka Anor. This dude eats gods? Cool. Let's join up!"

"Christopher's right about that," Jalil said. "The Sennites are stupid enough to sign up with Ka Anor. But before they get themselves toasted by alien forces, they're going to help the Hetwan cause some major damage."

"We're looking at the worst possible scenario," said David. �Only way to prevent it from coming down is to divide and conquer. Take out one group, then deal with the other."

Christopher rolled his eyes. "You think? And it sounds so simple when you lay it out that way."

"It's not a plan," David said defensively. "Just what we have to do."

"Have to try to do," I murmured, surprising myself again.

Because I didn't want any part of this place anymore. I really didn't.

I didn't consider that about the gods, but Merlin and April are right, the gods are fixed enough in their ways to rotate to attacking the upstart mortals.

quote:

Chapter
VI

"Look, we're refugees," David said. "It's a lousy fact. We're a pitifully weak band of seven survivors. We need help. And if the gods are too un-reliable to be our true allies � and they are � then we have to turn to mortals."

Christopher snorted. "We can forget about Everworld humans. Just about every one of them we've met is a poor,
downtrodden peasant. Those folk are used to being raped and pillaged, not to fighting back."

"'As flies to wanton boys are we/men to the gods.' Shakespeare," I said.

"Right." Jalil nodded. "And to rally people who've been abused since the day they were born would take way too much time, something we have way too little of. Besides, there's still the question of haw to arm them against Keith and the Sennites. Against rifles and pistols and Uzis."

"Hey! We're right back to where we started, how about that?" Christopher asked.

"I feel certain I can rally my fellow elves," Goewynne said halfheartedly, "but there are far too few in Everworld to turn the tide of this war. We will need others."

"Okay, how about the fairies?" David suggested.

"I can't believe you've forgotten, my friend. Or are you just that desperate? Fairies work only for cash. They don't do favors, they're not into volunteer work, they don't give to charity." Christopher paused for just a second. "You know, that's what I like about fairies. The Everworld kind, anyway. They are opportunists. They are all about looking out for number one."

"However obnoxious his presentation might have been, he's definitely got a point," Jalil noted. "Fairies work for money. We have no money. No collateral. Absolutely nothing of value to trade. Not a damned dime."

"Dwarfs." David again. He wasn't going to give it up. "What about the dwarf?"

"They're all that's left. They're our only hope."

"How do you figure?" Jalil asked.

"Dwarfs have money. Particularly, they have gold. We need gold. With enough gold we could hire all the fairy archers we want."

"Yeah." Jalil's eyes narrowed. "And finance a weapons factory. Dwarfs could probably even make the guns for us. I
mean, if we come up with something we have that they want."

"Ah, there's a problem," Christopher said.

"And here's another one," I said. "The dwarfs really don't like us. The Nile, remember? We sort of set fire to their dam? Lots of crispy bodies floating around?"

Merlin frowned. "A few truths about dwarfs it would be well to remember. They tend to stay out of the affairs of other
peoples. And they never forgive an injury or insult to one of their number. They never forget it, either. I doubt they will work with you. They would probably prefer to dispose of you."

"Okay, let's say they surprise us," David said.

Christopher sighed. "Didn't you just hear what the man said?"

"Could happen they work with us. So we're back to what do we have that the dwarfs want," David said.

"Dwarfs want gold," I said wearily. "Strike one."

"The dwarfs want me." Etain.

�What?" Christopher said.

I saw Merlin nod to Etain, then close his eyes. A gesture of acceptance. Maybe resignation. "The dwarfs want me," Etain repeated. "At least their king, Baldwin, wants me. For his bride."

Christopher barked a laugh. "Which one, Billy? Alec? How many brothers are there, anyway? I'll tell you this. At least one too. many. And he is not marrying Etain."

Goewynne looked at Christopher, pity on her face.

Etain spoke softly. "Dwarfs prize elfin women, Christopher. Almost as much as they prize gold."

"Okay, all right. I can understand Mr. Baldwin's point," Christopher ranted. "I mean, if the dwarf women look anything like the dwarf guys, I mean, okay. Got it. However, and I do mean this in a pleasant way, no freakin' DWARF is marrying Etain. Okay? Over my dead body."

"This is Everworld, Christopher," Jalil said. "That could very well happen."

Christopher made an exaggerated frown. "Oh, yeah, I forgot. Everything's been so peaceful and all for so long, I just
got lulled into la-la land over here. Look, man, I am sick to freakin' death of these gods. These freakin' idiot gods. Why can't they get their act together, huh? Can anyone answer me that? No, I didn't think so. We're surrounded by all these gods of war, Huitzilopoctli and Neptune and even David's favorite, Mistress Athena, and none of them, NONE of them do any real fighting! Oh, excuse me, some do. Sometimes. Only they do it badly. On the wrong side!"

"Are you finished?"

"No, I'm not finished. General Davideus. In fact, I'm not sure I even got started."

"Save it!" David snapped. "It's not helping."

Before Christopher could respond. Merlin spoke, his voice stronger than it had been. "Thor would fight," he said. "As would Baldur, Odin's favorite, most beloved of the gods of Asgard. And the mighty Odin One-Eye, too." His voice fell. So much for hope. "But the All-Father is imprisoned by Loki. And great Thor and courageous Baldur, both are lost, their whereabouts unknown."

"Merlin, my man," Christopher said. "Prepare for your world to be rocked."

"We've seen Baldur and Thor," David explained. "Hel's got them. Baldur and Thor, they're each frozen in a huge block of ice."

"And not one of us is too excited about the idea of descending to Hel's psycho harem," Jalil said. "Even for almighty
Thor."

Merlin looked amazed. �But don't you see?" he said. "If Thor were freed and reunited with Mjolnir, he would help us free Odin. Together the two most powerful Norse gods would assemble all Vikings to the battlefield. The Vikings, along with the elves good Queen Goewynne can rally, would be the start of a magnificent army!"

"We don't doubt that," Jalil said. "But Merlin, the fact still remains that the Sennites have guns. We'd have to arm Odin's forces with something that would enable them to fight back. I mean, successfully. Without being just plain slaughtered."

"Yeah," Christopher added. "How about a fair fight for once?"

"It could be a fair fight." David gripped the hilt of his sword. He looked more animated than he had since we'd ran, tails between our legs, from Merlinshire. "Dwarfs."

"Again with the dwarfs? Are you fixated on short, stocky men in chain-mail shirts, David? 'Cause I would have pictured you with the tall and lanky type...."

David ignored Christopher. "Like Jalil said, the dwarfs could forge weapons. Assuming we can get them to work with us, make a deal."

I glanced quickly at Etain. She seemed lost in thought. "And they could cut a tunnel into Hel's domain," David said.
"Ka Anor's Hetwan failed but..."

"Large and Crusty," Christopher said, "Nidhoggr, man, he's a bud. He's on our side. He might not actually help but he probably wouldn't stand in our way. I mean, if we run into him down there. And what am I doing talking about going back to Hel? It's lack of food. Sleep. I'm delirious."

Jalil folded his arms. "What exactly is your plan once we're in that psychopath's harem, David? I seem to recall our not doing so good last time. Horror, panic, nauseating scenery. In fact, I seem to recall that unfortunate experience about every other hour of my life."

"The attack distracts her," David said, like it was a done deal. "Hel would never expect an invasion, especially by us. So, while she's freaking, some of us slip past and rescue Baldur and Thor. Then get the hell out of there. No pun intended."

A beat of time passed, as everyone absorbed what it was we were crazy enough to be planning. Then I shook my head. "No, David. Merlin, listen. It's insane. We can't go back there. You saw. You remember. Hel must be furious we escaped once. Do you really think she'll let us get away a second time?"

"I don't think it would be a good idea to give her a choice," David answered, eyes narrowed.

"Oh, don't be such an idiot!" I shouted. "You're a guy. A, that means you're probably dumb enough to go back up against the worst thing we've faced here, thinking. Hey, this time I'll show her. And B, it means you're powerless in Hel's presence. No one's doubting you're brave, David. But you're not indestructible."

"Sometimes I think he is," Jalil muttered. He and David exchanged a look. Smiled.

"Well, golly gee whiskers," Christopher said brightly. "What do we have to lose but what's left of our sanity?"

Merlin didn't back me up. It was decided.

"There's still the little matter of what to exchange for the dwarfs' help in getting into Hel and then manufacturing
weapons for the cause."

I could tell David felt awkward saying it. But he had to. I wasn't going to bring it up again. Neither was Christopher. Jalil might have.

Etain spoke. "I will marry Baldwin."

"My daughter." Goewynne laid her hand on Etain's arm. She'd lost her kingdom, her home. Worse, she'd lost her beloved husband. And now she was losing her daughter. And still she retained an air of grace and dignity and calm. "Are you certain?"

"Yes. It is what I must do."

It didn't look like marrying Baldwin, the dwarf king, was what she wanted to do. Etain's beautiful face was paler than
usual, her blue eyes dark,

"No way!" Christopher cried. "I thought this was settled. Etain, you can't do this!"

She smiled fondly at him. "Just because you don't want it to happen does not mean it won't," she said. Then she took his hands in hers. "Christopher, you must come to see that this self-sacrifice is necessary."

"But you don't love the guy! Have you ever even met him? I mean, he's a dwarf! Do you even have anything in common? What are you going to talk about at dinner every night! I mean, maybe this guy is a slob. Maybe he's a real pain in the rear end. Maybe..."

"Yes, maybe. But he is an old dwarf, by dwarf standards. He will live only another ten years, perhaps twenty, if he is
lucky."

"Twenty years! But..."

"Do not worry, Christopher. I am part elf. That heritage will protect me from physical change. I will not have grown older."

"Yeah, that's great, Etain. Really. But that�s kind of not the point. I mean, you'll be all peaches and cream but I�ll have gotten older. I'll be, what, thirty-seven? Oh, my god, I'll have a potbelly. I'll have gray hair. I'll have ear hair! Jeez, twenty freakin' years! What am I supposed to do with myself for twenty years? Sit around and wait for your husband to croak? Wait for him to achieve the eternal horizontal? Twiddle my thumbs until he decides to take a dirt nap? This is so not going to happen."

I didn't have the heart to tell him that yes, most likely it was absolutely going to happen.

Chris, you've improved, buddy, but stop this bullshit, let her have her agency.

# ? Dec 31, 2023 02:19

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

drat, these are some short rear end chapters. Happy new years, goons, we got three again

quote:

Chapter
VII

We formed a plan. Goewynne would set off to rally her fellow elves. She would go alone, relying on her native swiftness and magical abilities to keep her safe until she reached Fairy Land. It seemed the best place for her to start. From there she would go where necessary and in one week's time, meet us at DaggerMouth, King Baldwin's castle. According to Merlin, the castle was the only external, visible part of the dwarfs' ancestral Everworld home. The Great Diggings was otherwise entirely subterranean.

Merlin would leave us, too. His self-appointed task was to search for Thor's mighty hammer, Mjolnir. The last time any of us had seen Mjolnir was back in the land of the Aztecs. It might still be there � somewhere. It might be in the temporary possession of another Viking warrior. Either way, Merlin would retrieve it so that Thor's power would be restored. When we broke him out of Hel's domain, that is.

Merlin would also prepare a dramatic diversion to take place in Hel's underground lair. Something that would force her to heel. He didn't tell us more than that, no details of what he had in mind. Only said he'd meet us and Goewynne in a week, at Baldwin's castle. Merlin was tired, but he was still magnificent. And I trusted that whatever he sprung on Hel would be serious.

But would it be serious enough?

The rest of us, including Etain, would Journey north to DaggerMouth and, once there, present our offer. Goewynne and Merlin would leave in the morning. I got the feeling they stayed for us, particularly for Etain and for me. Honestly I was glad for the company of two wise and powerful adults.

We settled on the stony ground, wrapped in our stained and ripped clothing. We smelled of smoke and blood and fear and sweat. Etain was on my right, Goewynne on my left. Merlin, Jalil, and Christopher formed a tight ring around us, basically outside the protection of the stone "roof." David took first watch, as was his habit.

I lay there in the thick dark, eyes wide. Afraid to sleep. Afraid to find I could no longer wake in the real world, afraid
that now Senna was dead I'd lost all contact with the real-world April. Except for memories that would slowly drive me crazy with loss.

Around me, the others slept or pretended to sleep. Nobody tossed or grumbled or snored. Either we were all too tired to move or just too scared of being discovered. Or both.

quote:

Chapter
VIII

I slept. Woke in the real world to lunch at the Rave Cafe. Magda and I. I saw we'd been shopping. Again. Bebe. Guess. How much stuff do I need? I asked myself. I wasn't even curious to see what I'd bought. Only then did I remember I was glad to be here, Everworld April united with real-world April, in a suburb north of Chicago.

Only then did I remember that I'd fallen asleep worried I'd been listed persona non grata in my real life. Magda was talking about something she'd read in the latest issue of In-Style. At least, I think she was. My body sat across from her at the little marble table, but my mind was in Everworld. I got the breaking-news update and had to wrap my
feet around the legs of the table to prevent myself from jumping up and screaming.

The final battle at King Camulos's castle. The spectacular defeat of Fenrir. Deaths, blood, fire. And Senna. I'd killed Senna. I had killed my half sister. I had stuck a knife into her heart.

"That guy, David Levin?"

"What?!" My voice came out too loud. David's name was the first thing I'd really heard Magda say.

Magda gave me a look. "Don't shout, I'm right here. David Levin. Kind of cute but way too serious. Drives that old wreck."

"Yeah? What about him?" I said. Keeping my voice low and normal. I took a sip of the cold mint tea in front of me.

"It's like he's fallen off the face of the earth or whatever. I can't get in touch with him. He hasn't been in class."
This was not good news.

"How long has he been gone? I mean, you know, how long's he been out? Sick or whatever."

Magda shrugged. "A few days. I don't know. Most of the week, I guess. I mean, I wouldn't care, he's not exactly my type or anything, except that he's supposed to be my project partner and he's screwing me over royally by not showing up in class."

"Did you call his house?"

Magda rolled her eyes. "Yes, April, that had occurred to me. But once I got the machine and the second time, two nights ago, I got his mother."

�And?"

"And she wasn't too happy I'd called. She didn't really tell me what was wrong with him. Come to think of it, she didn't really tell me anything. Just said that when she saw him she'd tell him I called. And then she hung up. Probably thought I was some hoochie mama after her precious little darling. Mothers."

Huh, guess things are really taking a toll on their real world selves.

quote:

Chapter
IX

I got away from Magda as quickly as I could. Made up some bogus excuse about having to run an errand.

"How come you didn't tell me earlier?"

I shrugged. "I forgot. Sorry, I'll call you later, okay? Here's some money to cover the drinks. I've got to go."

"Your bags!" Magda called out after me as I hurried to the door.

"Keep them for me, will you?"

I shot around the corner. Hoped that when Magda came out of the cafe she wouldn't see that my car was still parked across the street. Hoped she wouldn't find out I was a murderer. I was pretty sure that would be a good excuse for her to end our friendship.

I'd forgotten my cell phone. Try finding a working public pay phone anymore. Not easy. I found one, finally, and made the call. Mrs. Levin was home. When I hung up, my hands were shaking. Had to find Jalil. Mailboxes, Inc. Where Jalil worked now that the Boston Market place had closed. Weighing packages had to be better work than slicing chicken. Cleaner, at least.

It took me ten minutes to get there. I pushed open the door. A middle-aged man with a serious paunch was at the counter. A pretty brown-haired girl was explaining mailing options to him. I spotted Jalil by a shelf of assorted-size Jiffy bags. Walked over to him, didn't say hello.

"David is missing."

He flinched a little.

"I didn't see you come in. And what do you mean, David is missing?"

"Missing, like he's not been in school."

Jalil shrugged. "I know that. I just thought maybe he's sick. Or playing hooky, though that's not the Mr. Levin I know."

"Jalil, he hasn't been home, either."

Jalil looked over at the counter. The brown-haired girl was still talking to the middle-aged customer. No one else had
come into the store. Jalil turned and motioned for me to follow him into the back room.

"Are you sure?" he hissed.

"Pretty sure. My friend Magda called him the other night about some project. His mother rushed her off the phone. Then I called on the way over here. She was polite to me but worried. And angry, too, I think. Said she hadn't seen David in days."

"Different schedules? Maybe he's avoiding her."

"No. She said no food was gone. No clothes. I think she wondered the same thing. She's been checking for any sign of him. Jalil, he's gone."

Jalil nodded. Like he accepted David's disappearance was something big.

"Are you here?" he said. He looked straight at me. "Did you get the update?"

I felt hot tears burning against my eyelids. "Yeah," I whispered.

"Are you all right? I mean..."

I shook my head and wiped at the tears that had started to flow. "No. But I will be. I hope. I don't know."

"April. Look, don't panic. I have to show you something. It's been freaking me out but I figure, hey, there's an explanation, I just gotta find it. I mean, this is the real world. Things work a certain way, always have, always will. Right? But..."

"But what, Jalil?"

He shook his head. "I don't know, man. I'm thinking... with Senna dead and David missing... I really don't want to be
dealing with this but I'm thinking Everworld is seeping through. Or maybe Everworld Jalil is... just look."

He pulled me behind a large stack of folded cardboard boxes.

Began to unbutton his blue Oxford shirt, fingers trembling. Eyes on the door behind me.

"No, I'm not pulling a Christopher," he said when he saw the look of doubt that flitted across my face.

"Sorry." I wiped away the last of my tears.

He pulled the shirt open. Lifted his white T-shirt. And there it was. A hole, right through the middle of Jalil's chest. Not a gunshot wound. Not some bloody, ragged, blackened hole burned there by Hetwan venom. Not the awful
mark of a sword. Just � a hole. Clean, round, an emptiness all the way through his skinny chest. Like Jalil, real-world Jalil, the guy standing right in front of me, was a drawing and someone had erased a six-inch hole in his chest. Like he was a tall puzzle with one perfect piece punched right out.

Through the hole I saw a six-inch-round segment of a Priority Mail box.

Impossible. In Everworld, maybe. But impossible here, in the real world. Right?

Obviously not.

I stepped back from Jalil. Couldn't help it. After all the grotesque creatures I'd seen, after all the disgusting wounds I'd treated, this � nothingness � was somehow the most disturbing.

I .Was. Afraid.

"Have you told the others?"

"No. Haven't seen David, obviously. Didn't think of talking to Christopher about it. You're the first. Feel special?"

I laughed nervously. "What's going on, Jalil?"

"I don't know. Are you okay? I mean, whole?"

"I think. I guess. I... I didn't notice anything when I got dressed this morning."

"Any ideas? This might be more your terrain than mine," he said wryly. "I am pretty sure modem medical science is not going to account for a peephole in my rib cage."

"When did you first notice the... I mean; did it just appear that way or did it start really small..."

"Yesterday. At least, when I went to take a shower yesterday morning, it was there. Wasn't there when I went to bed the night before. Thought I was exhausted, got undressed in the dark.... Point is, it's new. And it's here whether Everworld Jalil is or not. That's something new. It's a kind of crossover we haven't experienced before."

"Senna," I said flatly. "It has to be. Everything always comes back to Senna. David's gone. Now this. When Senna died something must have happened to us."

"But you're fine, right?"

"So far," I admitted. "If you can say being simultaneously consumed with guilt for killing your half sister and also glad you killed her, wishing maybe you'd done it sooner, if you can call that 'fine.'" I sighed. "Look, I'll find Christopher, see what's going on with him."

"Yeah. While I go back to work comparing UPS to Federal Express to Priority Mail prices. I'm not out of here until six. Then I'll go by David's, see if he's shown up. drat, I thought we were done with that witch. But I think you're right, April. I think maybe Senna's death is gonna cause consequences, the action and now the reaction. It makes no sense but neither does a hole in my chest. Senna dies in Everworld, we're the same in Everworld, we're experiencing weird stuff here, in the real world. At least I am. David could still be just A.W.O.L."

"No, I'm sure he's not hiding out on purpose." I felt a surge of raw hate flood my body. Senna was dead and still she dominated our lives.

"You know, April," Jalil said. "What happened back there, in Merlinshire. At the end, when she was torturing us."
Jalil paused. I wanted to step forward again, maybe touch his arm. But I didn't. I wasn't sure he'd want me so close when he told me. Plus, I was still trembling with anger.

"My mind. It's not right. In the real world, I mean."

"Jalil, you're brilliant. You're intellectual and smart in so many ways and you're brave...."

He laughed. Not a happy laugh, but not completely cynical, either. "Thanks, I think. Obsessive-compulsive disorder. No one at home knows. Senna caught me once, before this all started. She caught me at school, in the lab. April, for one split second, she made it all stop. She made my mind quiet. I was in control."

"How?" A stupid question.

Jalil shrugged. "How did she do any of the strange things she did? Point is, for that one split second I was free of the disease. It was... it was beautiful. And I could have stayed free. All I needed to do was become her slave. Pledge myself to Senna as her unquestioning champion."

"You said no."

"Yeah. And she hated me from that moment on. It only got worse, of course, every time I fought her will. But I hated her, too. At the end, April, if you hadn't killed her, it would have been me."

I smiled and this time, I did touch his arm. "Except for the fact that no man could kill Senna."

Jalil grinned. "There was that. Anyway, in Everworld, no OC. From the very beginning, it was just gone. My world was turned upside down � sometimes literally � every fact I'd ever known and every theory I'd ever proved since the day I was born was being shown as false in this new place. I was frustrated and angry and determined not to bend to this new reality of chaos and uncertainty. This shifting version of reality, whatever, I still don't know what to call it. But still, I was free. In the one way I could never be free here."

I knew, at that moment what he was about to say. "Are you saying you want to stay in Everworld?" I asked. "I mean, if it comes down to a choice. If..."

"If I fade right away here, would I miss it?" He gestured mockingly at the shelves of packing materials, rolls of tape,
stacks of colored construction paper. "All this?"

"Yeah."

"I don't know, April. I really don't. There are my parents. And sisters. And Miyuki, she and I, you know, we're getting close. But there's the OC. And everything here, it's not the same anymore. Now there's Everworld, always in my mind. Memories that won't go away. I see everything here now so differently. Things I had tolerance for once, no more. This ordered universe, the rules I know by heart? It all seems somehow dull. Not enough. I just don't know. It might be too late for me, this world. You know?"

Wow, that's some weird poo poo. Of the three, April is really the only one I can see still wanting to leave Everworld.

# ? Dec 31, 2023 22:53

bird food bathtub: Aug 9, 2003; College Slice

Didn't think about them all making decisions about where to stay, that'll be interesting to see play out. The frozen gods thing doesn't surprise me. Thought about them a while back.

# ? Jan 1, 2024 01:21

Fritzler: Sep 5, 2007

It is interesting. Christopher would have never wanted to stay. But after Etain? Maybe.

# ? Jan 1, 2024 04:39

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

quote:

Chapter
X

I ran. Literally ran across the street, cars honking at me, kids on a school bus sneering. Borders. Borders had bathrooms. I had to know. Now.

Grabbed the handle of the revolving door, pushed, too fast, the person in the compartment ahead of me looked back like, "What's your damage?"

I mouthed "sorry," tried not to make a mad dash for the bathrooms. Wouldn't look too cool, would probably elicit a few witty comments from the so-important college guy at the information counter. "Too much coffee in the cafe?"

I got on the escalator. Gripped the rail just like my mother had always told me to do. Didn't walk up the moving stairs, stood still, both feet on one serrated step. The real world being so full of dangers, unlike Everworld. Real-world April being so much more timid than Everworld April. Everworld April would probably have climbed the rail on hands and knees.

Finally, second floor, stepped off, carefully. Walked deliberate-casual to the far right corner. Pushed open the door.
Every stall door open. Look at that, I had my choice. Chose the stall farthest from the door. In case I screamed or something, slightly less chance of my being heard. Went inside, closed and locked the three-quarter door behind me.

Okay. Examining my body is not something I do a lot of. But this was necessary. I hung my bag on the hook on the side wall. Took off my coat. Lifted my arms and pulled my ribbed cotton Gap T-shirt over my head. Closed my eyes. Took a deep breath, and told myself, It's okay, April, it's okay. Just look.

I did. Nothing. I mean, everything, everything was there, where it should be. No magic peepholes. Strained my neck trying to see over my shoulder. Looked like skin all around. Felt my butt. All there. Maybe a bit more than last month but oh, I'd never worry about an extra pound again, flesh was good, it was very good. I got dressed, trembling slightly, relief washing over me.

Then I sat on the toilet and put my head in my hands and cried.

quote:

Chapter
XI

"April, hey. What are you doing here?"

"Hello to you, too."

"Sorry. Just that you've never dropped in before, you know, unannounced. Without being part of some bizarre scheme to catch a Nazi-wanna-be arms dealer."

"Could you maybe shut up?"

"No one's home but us chickens. Come on in."

I followed Christopher into the den. The TV was on, of course. I noticed now that the remote was still in Christopher's hand. Of course. On a small side table, a can of soda and an open bag of Cheetos. Of course.

Christopher flopped into the recliner and gestured toward the couch. "So, to what do I owe this pleasure?"

I sat on the couch. Instinctively pulled a pillow onto my lap. "Are you here?" I said.

"Real-world me is here all alone. I'm awake over there now. But if you're asking if I got the update, oh, yes. The whole stinking mess. Right up to this crazy-assed scheme to invade Hel. About Senna...

"I'm sorry she got to me again, at the end," he said in a rush. "I was going to give you up, April. I know it wasn't really me but still, I'm sorry. I felt the moment she died. I was released, just like that. I'm glad she's dead, April. We all are. She had to die, you know that."

I nodded, unable to speak. Let a few tears well over and trickle down my cheeks. Then I took a deep breath. "David's missing," I said.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, he's gone, missing. I don't think his mother knows where he is. He hasn't been at school, either. Jalil's going by his house later to check again."

Christopher shrugged. Back to the old who-gives-a-Flying-Walenda jerk. "Hey, maybe he and Senna have hooked up on another astral plane. Corulers of their very own bizarro kingdom. I bet right now David's showing her what he can do with his sword." He punched the remote. All old Clint Eastwood movie. Clint was a cowboy.

"You don't seem very worried," I said.

Christopher shrugged. "I'm not. I have my own problems."

New station. Cartoon Channel. Johnny Bravo. "Love this show," Christopher murmured. He was staring at the screen, eyes squinted, face intent. Like he was trying to burn the images into his head.

"What problems?"

Christopher sighed. Like I was bothering him. He lowered the volume on the TV. Put down the remote. Glanced toward the door of the den. Then he sat forward in the recliner, perched on the edge, and lifted his T-shirt. "Like this. If you must know."

I should have known.

"Well?" he said. "Interesting, isn't it?"

I nodded, silent. Felt sick.

"When were you planning on telling us about this?" I said finally.

Christopher was fading. His chest was translucent, not completely, but not completely opaque, either. "Only started a day or two ago. It�s kind of an Invisible Man thing," he said, dropping his shirt. "Pretty soon I'll be wearing a trench coat, slouch hat, and dark glasses to school. I might even consider a life of crime. Bank robbery, unarmed of course. A cat burglar, maybe. Very dashing."

He sat back in the recliner but didn't pick up the remote.

"Jalil," I said. "It's happening to him, too. I mean, there's a hole, a perfectly round hole right through his chest. I mean, you can see right through it."

Christopher grinned. "Playing doctor with Mr. Spock, are you? So, how about you, April? All there? Maybe you should, you know, let me examine you, just to be sure."

"You're an idiot," I said. But I wasn't really mad. Christopher was just on autopilot, telling the old jokes, playing the old roles. I knew him well enough by now to know he was freaking, trying to hang on to sanity, like the rest of us. "I'm all here," I said. "I'm not fading, there are no holes. And before you say it: Only the ones that have always been there."

"Am I getting that predictable?" He laughed. "Time for some new material."

"What are we going to do?"

Christopher shrugged. "Nothing. For now. What can we do? You know what's interesting, though?"

"What?"

"I'm kind of able to control it. Now, don't laugh, but TV? The more I watch, the more into a show I get, like a block of reruns of The Andy Griffith Show, whatever, Barney Fife and Opie and Aunt Bea, the more solid I get. Doesn't last. An hour later, I'll be doing something else, I check, I'm see-through again."

I thought about that for a second.

"When is it going to stop?" I said. Rhetorical question. How could any of us know? "Someone's going to notice."

"Just one of several questions, April. Like, why is it happening? What's causing it? Why isn't it happening to you?
And how am I going to explain a see-through chest to a date? I'm in even bigger trouble if another, er, vital part of me disappears. If you know what I mean."

I'm a little convinced their fading is tied to their desire to remain in Everworld.

quote:

Chapter
XII

I woke groggily, a stone jutting into my kidneys, cold dew thick on my face. The sky was gray. Around me the others stirred to life. I sat up.

"Merlin's gone." David. "So's Goewynne. We talked before they left."

"They didn't happen to conjure up a big pot of hot coffee, did they?" Christopher said, climbing stiffly to his feet. "And a bottle of aspirin. I ache."

"You also reek. We all do. Again." Jalil.

Beside me Etain raised herself to a kneeling position. She looked beautiful even now, tired, dirty, and hurt.

"Look, there isn't much point in hanging around," David said. "No food, the Sennites too close. We'd better get moving. Merlin told me the way to DaggerMouth. It's about a day's walk. Maybe a day and a half."

"Provided we don't get ambushed or lost or otherwise killed," Christopher grumbled. But he reached for Etain's hand and helped her to her feet.

We started to head north, I hurried to walk ahead with David, I was almost afraid of him, knew he might not want to
deal with me alone, but I had to know.

"David. Did you sleep?" I said.

He didn't look as if he'd slept. His face was puffy, eye still swollen almost shut, split lip beginning to scab over.

"Yeah."

"Did you cross over?"

He shot me a strange look. "Why?"

"Because you're gone, David," I said urgently. "You've been missing, back in the real world. No one's seen you for the past few days. What's going on?"

He considered. "Yeah, that would explain it."

"Explain what, what?"

"I slept, but it wasn't like it usually is. I dreamed. You know, like we do � did � over there. But then, I also had these weird sensations, kind of like I was a ghost or something. Like I could go places and see things but nobody could see me, I was home, April. I saw my mom, I talked to her. But she couldn't see or hear me." He shrugged.

"You don't seem very concerned," I said. "David, you could be really gone, forever."

He looked at me like I was insane.

"I'm not gone, April. I'm right here."

His answer infuriated me. "Do you know about Jalil and Christopher?" I demanded. "They're fading over there. Parts of them are gone, David, just gone or fading away."

"What about you?" he said.

"I'm fine. So far. I mean, it could happen to me, too. David, I don't want to disappear! That's my life over there, that's the real world."

"Maybe for you that's the real world," he said. "I don't know, Everworld is real enough for me, April. Look, I don't know what's going on, but there's nothing I can do about it. I've got a job, to get us to DaggerMouth, negotiate with Baldwin, build an army. Get back to Olympus. Destroy Ka Anor and the Sennites. I really don't care that I'm not sitting in history class anymore."

"What about your mother? She must be freaking out!"

David smiled darkly. "Yeah, she's probably worried, a bit. She'll get over it. I was kind of a rock in her shoe. With me gone, she can get married to her boyfriend, live her own life. No more having to take care of her moody son."

"That's mean."

"That's the truth. At least the way I see it."

I stopped walking and let David go on ahead of me. Suddenly I felt as desolate as the landscape. What had I done to us?

"Jalil!" I joined him as he passed. "I told David about you and Christopher, about what's happening to you in the real
world. He knows he's missing, I told him that, too. He said last night he dreamed. And was also in the real world but invisible, like a ghost. He doesn't care, Jalil, I do."

Jalil looked down at me with something like pity. "I still don't know what we can do about any of it, April."

"I'll go to see Brigid." I said. "Maybe she'll know what's going on. Maybe she's got an idea."

"Good luck. But I don't think it will help. Remember the last time you talked to her, she pretty much said she couldn't stop Senna and her band of loonies. Her powers are limited."

"But maybe now that Senna's gone..."

I fell silent. Jalil was right. At least right now there was nothing I could do to bring David back to the real world, to stop Jalil and Christopher from fading away. But I made a vow that the next time I woke in the real world I'd try to see Brigid.

We walked. It was an uneventful journey as Everworld journeys go. Which was a welcome relief but also disconcerting. Everything seemed too quiet, too calm. Like everyone had gone into hiding, too afraid to be caught unguarded by this new menace � the Sennites. How sick was it that I almost hoped for a minor skirmish with a randy satyr or lumpish ogre?

The weather was the only real difficulty. That and hunger, but we were so used to inadequate supplies of food by now it seemed like the normal state of things. The air was gray and damp and chill. A fine drizzle, more a mist, really, kept the rocky ground somewhat slick and made our clothes feel heavy and uncomfortable. And at the same time, inadequate protection against the elements.

After approximately fourteen hours of walking we reached DaggerMouth. No mistaking our destination.

"Check this out!" Christopher said, then whistled.

Rising from the relatively flat and stone-paved terrain like an ugly but impressively sized growth � DaggerMouth. Behind it but also somehow part of it, a series of five large hills or small maintains, each distinct in overall shape and size, but each rugged and rock-strewn.

DaggerMouth. An appropriate name for the thing looming ahead of us.

It was an intimidating structure, both a castle and a gateway through to the Great Diggings. A place, Merlin had
told us, where King Baldwin and his court lived and where caravans of dwarf traders set out and returned home, day after day.

"Let's keep moving," David instructed. We did. And the closer we got the more certain I was that DaggerMouth was
made entirely of steel. The walls, the towers, the guard stations, even, I later learned, the floors, everything was steel. The place looked like its name, a frightening and dangerous maw. Images from movies raced through my mind. Jaws from the James Bond movies, that big hulk with a mouthful of wire. Hannibal Lecter wearing that terrifying face mask in Silence of the Lambs. God, even the Abominable Snowman from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. A funny image now, but to a five-year-old those teeth were very scary,

"Cool," Christopher said. " Very cool place."

"Yeah," Jalil said. "Like something a brilliant kid would make with a seriously sophisticated erector set. And a macabre sensibility, definitely."

"I think it's truly ugly," I blurted.

Christopher grinned. "That's because you're a girl. Girls like white castles and pretty horses with flowing manes and pink puffy dresses. Right, April? Chain mail, steel, gray all over, not your thing."

"I agree with April," Etain said. Then, softly she added, "Though I suppose in time I will come to appreciate the charms of my new home."

That wiped the grin off Christopher's face.

# ? Jan 2, 2024 05:32

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

quote:

Chapter
XIII

We had reached the guarded main entrance of the castle, a jagged arch of, what else, steel. The keystone was decorated with a design in relief. Later I found out it was a fancy representation of a pick and ax. King Baldwin's family coat of arms.

I could see into the main courtyard. It was teeming with dwarfs, all male it seemed, everyone focused on a task, loading and unloading carts, checking papers, taking inventory of stacks of produce and bolts of plain dark fabrics. There was also a steady stream of dwarfs disappearing through several low-ceilinged tunnels at the far end of the courtyard. Slipping into the Great Diggings like two-legged moles.

I didn't get to see much of the Great Diggings itself until later, but when I did, I was amazed. It was a complete
underground city, with crowded urban areas and less congested suburban parts, industrial sections and recreational parks. There were forts and barracks and storehouses for weapons. There were huge private homes and densely packed apartment buildings. Reservoirs, mine shafts � complete mining and refining operations � construction sites, and factories. Breweries and food processing plants, mushroom farms, and bakeries. Except for the herds of bats being raised for food, everything you would find in an average aboveground city but underground, lit by coal and oil lamps that vented through incredibly high ventilation shafts that allowed in only the tiniest pinpoints of sunlight. The whole thing was really a vast underground maze.

The Great Diggings was a bustling, cosmopolitan place. What it lacked in charm it made up for in industry. Jalil later explained to me that the complex extended throughout the Five Hills. Each hill supplied a particular metal and only that metal. One hill was rich with gold. Another, with silver. The third with iron, the fourth with nickel. The fifth hill supplied copper.

Impossible, of course, in the real world, it made no geological sense, but W. T. E. Welcome to Everworld.

Two dwarf guards approached us. Each had his hand on the hilt of a broad, daggerlike weapon. Each looked very
businesslike. "Identify yourselves and state your business," the first one demanded.

"Pleasant fellows, the dwarfs," Christopher whispered, gently pushing Etain behind him but keeping hold of her hand.

Dwarfs. We'd run into them all over Everworld, it seemed. Even in Egypt, where they probably shouldn't have been � one, because they were a European myth, and two, because they were damming the Nile and subsequently causing the population to starve.

They weren't human but they weren't Hetwan, either. Their heads were oversized. Their legs were short and thick, their feet large. Arms short and hands huge and rough as if from hard work. They had massive shoulders and barrel chests. Their faces were elongated. Some wore heavy beards.

Generally speaking, the dwarfs � at least the men, we still hadn't seen any women � wore a sort of supple body armor, chain-mail shirts that hung to their knees, brown leather pants, and wide leather belts worn over a shoulder like a sash.

"I am General Davideus," David said, stepping forward from our little mob. "I am in the employ of the goddess Athena. I have been sent by Merlin to speak with King Baldwin about a matter of great urgency." He paused. The guards seemed unimpressed. Clearly, the habit of name-dropping meant nothing to them. So then David said, "And I am responsible for the burning of the dwarfs' dam on the Nile."

That did it.

Before I knew what was happening, we were surrounded by guards. They formed a tight ring around us. One guard put his sword against David's neck while another removed Galahad's sword from David's side. David, very wisely, didn't resist.

"Walk," the first guard commanded.

We did. Not much choice. We were led through the open courtyard and into DaggerMouth itself. If looks could kill... Word must have spread like wildfire throughout the place because every dwarf we passed glared and glowered at us.

"We are, officially, history," Christopher muttered. "Etain, I want you to take a good hard look at this bunch. Okay? That's all I'm saying."

She didn't answer.

Through a doorway, down a long, low-ceilinged, dimly lit corridor. Some of the guards had spurlike things on the heels of their boots, which clanged noisily on the metal flooring. Our own worn-down sneakers didn't make a sound.
We seemed to be descending slightly as we made our way deeper into the castle. The grade wasn't dramatic but the muscles in my legs definitely told me we were penetrating slowly into the bowels of the earth.

Finally, the guards called a halt at a massive pair of double doors. Steel, of course, studded with more steel. One slipped inside the room beyond and we waited.

We didn't have to wait long. The doors were flung open from inside and we were summoned to enter by the guard
who'd gone ahead. With a little unnecessary shoving, the guards brought us into what I saw was a throne room. Where King Baldwin received visitors and, it seemed, prisoners.

I took a quick look around the room. No Windows, which made me think we were indeed below the surface of the earth now. Small oil and coal lamps lined the walls at regular intervals. Each was lit but the room was too large to be fully brightened by anything less than electricity. Male and female dwarfs, though far fewer of the latter, stood in small groups around the room. Ladies and gentlemen of the court? As far as general proportion, the female dwarfs didn't look so different from the males.

There were also some male dwarfs who were dressed more finely than most and who clutched rolls of what might
have been documents. Officers or advisers, I guessed. One thing was the same about every dwarf in the room. A scowling face.

Besides the lamps, which were really a necessity, there were no other decorations or embellishments. Except for the
king, who sat on a large, austere steel throne. No cushions or velvet or footstool even. King Baldwin wasn't really ugly. He was a bit taller than the average dwarf and a bit more nicely proportioned. Maybe this made him ugly to a dwarf's eyes but it made him almost attractive to a human's. His hair was chestnut brown and clean, by Everworld's standards. His face, too, was less stony, more animated than any I'd seen so far in DaggerMouth, with very large brown eyes and a great smile. Lots of teeth, very rakish, a perfectly styled goatee that added to his appeal. Baldwin
emanated a definite mix of danger and devilry, seriousness and wit. I didn't want to like him, necessarily, not with his basically buying Etain in marriage, but somehow, I did.

Now I just had to hope he wouldn't kill us.

"Speak, human," Baldwin said now, nodding at David.

"I am David Levin, also known as General Davideus, in service to the goddess Athena. I am responsible for destroying your dam on the river Nile."

"You know," Christopher whispered, "that boy just has a way with words. He's just so � I don't know � so subtle."

Jalil gave Christopher a withering look.

King Baldwin looked amused in spite of himself. "Yes, my guards have informed me," he said. "Allow me a moment to register your audacity in coming here and so boldly announcing your crime." Baldwin paused. "I will tell you that I
have long awaited the day when I would meet those responsible for the destruction of our dam. And for the death of
my cousin, Drogar. He died in the flames that engulfed the workers' sleeping quarters. From what I have been told, he did not have a chance to save himself. You understand, then, if I proceed to mete out the punishment you deserve for causing such horror."

I was scared. Not David. He didn't even try to apologize. "Not before you hear me out. Hear us out. We are emissaries of Merlin the Magnificent."

"I know who he is," Baldwin grumbled, slightly chastened.

"And we bring you the Princess Etain of Merlinshire." David could barely restrain a sneer of distaste. None of us were fond of the idea of handing over women like chattel.

Christopher bristled. Etain stepped out from behind him.

"I bring myself, good King Baldwin. I ask you to pardon my rather disheveled appearance. I am here to offer myself in marriage to you, if you will still have me as your bride."

Baldwin frowned at each of us in turn but directed his next question to David. "Is this some sort of trick, human?"

"It's no trick," David replied. "What Etain says is true. She will marry you. But we want to make a deal first."

"Great King Baldwin, there are two conditions to my offer," Etain said, her voice firm.

"Speak, Princess Etain."

"First, my friends are not to be held prisoner or receive punishment for their previous actions against the dwarf
kingdom."

Baldwin grumbled but the way he was looking at Etain, it was pretty clear he was seriously hot for her. "Very well. Even a king is but a vassal to his wife. I will grant your first condition."

"I thank you humbly, good sir. My second condition is this. That you and your people form a true bond with Merlinshire � beyond even our marriage � by joining the military alliance of General Davideus, Merlin, and my good mother, Goewynne."

Baldwin said, "Why should I join this alliance? What is in it for me and my kingdom? What does King Camulos have to say to this proposal?"

Etain looked at David and he nodded. With his usual lack of ceremony and sugarcoating, David recounted the battle between Merlinshire and the Sennites, including the ignominious death of King Camulos.

"I am truly sorry to hear of the death of such a fine man," Baldwin said. "And of the suffering the princess and her good mother the queen have endured. But who are these Sennites with weapons so powerful? And why should I risk the welfare of my own kingdom to fight with you against them?"

David explained Senna. At least, that she was a witch who had been a gateway between worlds. That now she was dead, though her band of soldiers lived on. Christopher added an occasional caustic remark. Jalil added some of the details David chose to leave out. Like the fact that Senna had dragged us to Everworld with her. No one mentioned the fact that I had killed her.

"We're afraid the Sennites might try to unite with Ka Anor and his Hetwan followers," David went on. "That's a deadly combination. No one in Everworld will be safe, gods or mortals. Weapons technology alone is a major problem. With a couple of mortars the Sennites could blow this castle apart before you'd have time to blink."

Baldwin thought about this. "What is it you ask, exactly?" he finally demanded.

"Gold. Enough to hire all the fairy archers who will fight. And your own formidable troops. We want to stop the Sennites or Ka Anor, take out one force before they join up together. Then take out the other."

Baldwin considered. "I agree. But I have a condition of my own. I will commit no more than one thousand bars of gold or their equivalent in silver to your cause." Baldwin smiled silkily at Etain. "A small enough consideration for the happiness the fair Etain will bring me and my kingdom."

I shot a glance at Christopher. He looked simultaneously sick and like he was going to fling himself at Baldwin's throat. I grabbed his elbow.

"One other thing," David said.

"He could have thanked the guy, first," Jalil muttered.

Baldwin frowned. "What is it?"

"We intend to rescue Thor. He's being held prisoner."

"Who dares to hold mighty Thor against his will?"

"Hel."

"Here it comes," Christopher whispered, calmer now. "The product has hit the fan."

"Are you mad?!" Baldwin thundered.

"Yup." Jalil said under his breath.

David went on as if he hadn't heard Baldwin's explosion. "We intend to cut a tunnel into Hel's domain. We need your help and expertise with this project. In one week Merlin will arrive with whatever help he's been able to muster, including Mjolnir, Thor's hammer. And Queen Goewynne will bring her people, the elves. That's the start of a serious army."

"And the end of my participation," Baldwin answered. "I am truly sorry. Princess Etain. But not even for your lovely hand in marriage will I risk infuriating Hel and so endangering my kingdom. I wish you success in your mad scheme. General Davideus. But I will not lend my support."

"Oh, yeah. That's true love," Christopher hissed.

"He's giving her up and you're complaining?" I said.

"Oh. Right. Just that he insulted her and all."

David wasn't finished. "Merlin helped form this plan. He believes it can work. You know he's not stupid."

"No, not stupid," Baldwin agreed. "But maybe desperate, and that is almost as bad." Baldwin continued to protest but I saw something in his eye, some spark of interest. It was David's mention of Merlin's particular support.

"Enough discussion for now," Baldwin suddenly announced. "I keep my pledge to the fair Etain to treat you all as my guests. General Davideus, you may have your sword. Those of you who wish to retire for the night will be shown to your quarters. Those who wish to wander the Great Diggings first are welcome to do so."

Baldwin shook his head and stood. "I will retire to my private chambers to give this matter further consideration."

So they raise bats as livestock?

quote:

Chapter
XIV

Etain was led off by two dwarf women to what was no doubt the luxury suite. I didn't join David, Jalil, and Christopher on their before-bedtime tour of the Great Diggings. Wasn't in the mood for sight-seeing. All I wanted was to go to sleep, go back home, to my world, make sure I was still whole there, that Everworld April wasn't sucking the life � literally � out of real- world April.

I was shown to my room. It was no Hotel Olympus but neither was it a peasant's cottage complete with pigs, chickens, and competing colonies of lice. The dwarfs were solidly working-class, not outrageously rich but not desperately poor, either. The air might not have been the freshest and the light was dim at best, but in general things were clean and well-built.

A bed, a chair, and a table, made of wood the dwarfs had probably traded for. On the table sat a basin and pitcher
made of some sort of stone. The female dwarf who'd brought me here left. After not acknowledging my thank you.
Wearily I picked up the sacklike gown she'd left for me to sleep in. It seemed luxurious compared to the filthy, bloodstained robes I had been wearing since the final battle at Merlinshire. Of course, the gown came to only just under my butt so it was really more of a skimpy nightshirt but I was happy to have it

Gratefully, I stripped. Began to give myself a sponge bath at the large basin. God bless the clean, industrious, mind-their-own-business dwarfs. Even if they killed us later, they ware offering me a bath and a bed now. Now was all that mattered. Except, of course, for the hole in my chest.

I grabbed hold of the low bedpost to support myself. No mirror so I bent my head as far as my neck would stretch.
Tentatively touched the place with my fingertip and sucked in a breath when my finger disappeared inside my body.
I couldn't see it perfectly, but oh, yes, there was a sort of hole, a hazy hole, like Jalil and like Christopher. Except my hole was forming in Everworld April.

Everworld April was fading away.

Yup, their fading is related to how much they want to stay, and April is the only one with very strong ties to her previous life.

quote:

Chapter
XV

Asleep in Everworld.

Magda, Becka, Tyra, and me. Blind Faith cafe. After school. Stopping by for a quick snack before taking in the new Russell Crowe movie at the Cineplex. Everyone ordered the usual. Everyone sat in her usual place. It could have been any one of the hundreds of times we'd been here, catching some food before catching a movie.

The waiter went off to get our orders.

I listened to my friends but heard only part of what they were saying. Or maybe it was the other way around. I heard
their familiar voices, laughing and chattering in the familiar tones, but did I actually listen to what it was they were laughing and chattering about? Suddenly, it seemed to require a big effort to focus on the words and their meanings.

I felt like maybe this was what it was like to be drunk or high. Or maybe this was just boredom. That disturbed me.

"He is fine, that boy." Magda's voice.

"Girl, you are deficient! He's got a nose the size of Detroit!"

"Yeah, but you know what they say about a big nose. Big nose, big..."

"Box of tissues."

Howls of laughter. I smiled. It was funny. But the silly joke didn't make me forget my other life, the life that since Senna's death seemed more important and vital and essential than it ever had. It was getting progressively harder for real-world April to keep Everworld at bay. I suspected also that real-world April was not trying as hard as she once did to keep both worlds apart.

Even sitting with good friends, people with whom I'd lived so much of my life, people who loved me and kept me safe, I couldn't ignore the fact that David was still missing here in the real world. Rumors had begun to sprout and spread. The usual outlandish stuff, like he'd joined a cult, and the less crazy, like he'd heard from Senna and gone off to join her. Of course, there was fear, too. Maybe he'd been murdered by some psycho killer of high school kids. Ten years from now the cops would find his body and Senna's and probably others in a ditch on the outskirts of town.

I knew no one would ever find David or his body. I knew that he was alive and well but in some other world. Keeping
that enormous secret was � strange. It was strange, too, to keep silent in the real world about all the other people who had become so important to me. People whose lives affected mine so closely. Like, I couldn't forget Etain's
dilemma. Forced to marry a man she didn't love, compelled by duty to reject the man she did, all for the good of her people.

Etain was making an enormous personal sacrifice and I so wished I could help her somehow. So wished I could help Christopher accept what Etain was doing, respect her wishes, so wished I could ease his pain. Because it was genuine, I could see that.

I wished I could help myself, too. Everworld April was slipping away and why why why was that worrying me? It was
what I'd always wanted, to leave Everworld for good. But now that it looked like that might be happening, I... I didn't know what I wanted.

And I so couldn't forget that final moment with Senna. What had happened inside me at that moment to give me the strength to kill her? I felt sure I could never do it again, if somehow Senna had survived, which I also knew was impossible. I felt sure I never could have premeditated her death. If only... If only what?

"April, you with us?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, sorry. I was just thinking." I smiled. I really didn't want my friends to think anything was wrong with me. With us.

Becka shook her head. "Too much thinking is a bad things April, you know that. You sure you're okay?"

"Yeah," Tyra said, "lately you seem, I don't know, like you're someplace else. Not all the time but a lot of the time."

Magda leaned forward. "You know you can count on us, girl. Something going on at home? That creepy half sister of yours didn't show up again, did she?"

Becka pretended to shiver. "Evil."

"No, no," I said. "Everything's cool, really. Nothing's going on."

"Okay, if you say so."

"Just let us know if something is going on, all right?"

The conversation swerved away from me. I put my hands in my lap and squeezed them together. No, Senna wouldn't be showing up again. I looked around, over my shoulder. I spotted Jalil and was suddenly happy. He was sitting tall, back very straight. Looked odd. He gestured to me with his head.

"Be back in a minute," I said to my friends. Tyra gave me a strange look. I got up and made my way through the crowded cafe, to the small table at the back where Jalil sat. A cup of coffee, untouched, and a scone, one bite gone, sat before him. His hands were in his lap. His face was impassive.

"Hi," I said.

"Sit in front of me. Your back to the cafe," Jalil instructed, a false smile on his face, like he was saying, "Hey, April, good to see you!"

I did as he instructed. Shook my head like, "What?" Said, "I feel like I'm in some gangster movie. Or The Sopranos. Who are you hiding from?"

"Don't react or anything, okay?" I nodded.

"Good. I'm sitting here, waiting for Miyuki. I take a bite of that scone, chew, think I'll take a sip of coffee, wash it down. That's when I realize, my hand, the one reaching for the cup, it's gone. I mean, suddenly, it's just not there. So I put it in my lap and presto, there it is again. Only before it gets solid, it kind of flickers into view. Nothing, flicker, hand. Keeps happening."

This was not good.

"Jalil, you've got to get out of here before Miyuki shows up. What if she sees? I'll tell her you didn't feel well and went home, something. Stick your hands in your pockets, get up, walk out. Did you pay? I'll pay for you, just go."

Jalil smiled wanly. "And what's that going to do? Sooner or later I'm going to have to take my hands out of my pockets, like to, I don't know, open a door, and someone's going to notice. Someone's going to say, 'Gee, that young man has translucent hands. Interesting effect.' April, something's got to happen. Soon. I can't live this way here. It won't work. I think I'm being kicked out of my life."

I leaned forward. "Or you're choosing to go. Jalil, I think I know what's going on. I think we have to choose, one world or another. You, you're not so attached to this life, the real world, anymore. Neither is Christopher. That's why you're both fading away. Not completely, and if you don't choose you'll continue to flicker in and out. But David, from the beginning he's wanted out of this world, wanted to stay in Everworld. He's got a purpose there, or at least he feels he does. That's why he's gone here, totally. He made the commitment to Everworld."

"And you, April?"'

"Me, I... I'm still whole here. But Everworld April, Jalil, she's fading. Look, I've never wanted to stay there. I've always wanted things to go back to the way they were before. Before Senna dragged us down to the lake."

"And now? You know it'll never be like it was. You can't go back, pretend Everworld never happened,"

"I know. And it freaks me out to admit this, but I'm not thrilled Everworld April is fading out. I... I just don't know what I want. I'm not ready to choose."

"I don't feel like I'm choosing," Jalil said. "But you are. You must be."

"drat. There's Miyuki. "Do you want me to stay?" I said.

Jalil smiled. "No, but thanks. If I'm on my way out of here, I want to spend as much time with my new girlfriend as I can. Alone. Even with see-through hands."

I stood up from the table, knees weak. And then I woke up to pounding.

We have hit the halfway point!

# ? Jan 3, 2024 02:41

Mazerunner: Apr 22, 2010; Good Hunter, what... what is this post?

Ok I think I see it, the previous book and sennas death was the climax, this is a book long epilogue

# ? Jan 3, 2024 05:02

Tree Bucket: Apr 1, 2016; R.I.P.idura leucophrys

These chapters are short.
Were they still writing Animorphs at this point? Were they getting kind of burnt out on writing or something?

# ? Jan 3, 2024 05:05

bird food bathtub: Aug 9, 2003; College Slice

Mazerunner posted:

Ok I think I see it, the previous book and sennas death was the climax, this is a book long epilogue

I would think tying up the ka'anor stuff and choosing a reality will be another high point, though so far it does have that "and here's how it all turned out" feel.

# ? Jan 3, 2024 05:06

Edna Mode: Sep 24, 2005; Bullshit, that's last year's Fall collection!

To be honest I had kind of forgotten about Ka Anor, Senna had completely supplanted him as the big bad in my mind.

# ? Jan 3, 2024 05:38

nine-gear crow: Aug 10, 2013

Tree Bucket posted:

These chapters are short.
Were they still writing Animorphs at this point? Were they getting kind of burnt out on writing or something?

I think this is when everything was piling up for them: Everworld being cancelled by Scholastic, Animorphs about to enter its own endgame, Remnants in the last stages of pre-production such as it is for a book, and their first child was on the way.

# ? Jan 3, 2024 05:52

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

One of those chapters was a single page.

# ? Jan 3, 2024 13:38

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

quote:

Chapter
XVI

Everworld. Pound, pound, pound.

BAM. BAM. BAM.

"What?" I opened my eyes. It took a second to realize where I was but it always did, waking up in Everworld. Low-
ceilinged room, rock walls, rough-but-sturdy wood furniture, a large stone basin, and a pitcher of water. My room in
DaggerMouth. I stumbled out of the too-short bed in my too- short nightshirt. Saw that during the night someone had brought me fresh clothing and taken my filthy robes to be washed. Or burned.

"Who is it?"

"It's me, Christopher. Open up."

I unlatched the thick steel door and yanked it open. "Oof. This door weighs a ton," I complained.

"It feels heavier because you're still half asleep," Christopher said, brushing past me.

"Oh? And whose fault is that?"

He didn't answer, just flung himself full length on my rumpled bed. I sat down at the foot, where his knees were. My eyes traveled up to Christopher's face. His eyes were troubled. He rubbed his face with his hands and sighed.

"What am I gonna do? I mean, she won't even talk to me."

"I assume you're talking about Etain?"

He didn't respond. No funny comment. No insult. I don't even think he heard me. He hadn't even leered at my naked legs.

The boy had it bad.

"I've hardly seen her since we got to DaggerMouth," he went on, "what with her being a princess and all, a special
guest. And then when I do run into her she's surrounded by all these dwarf women. Maybe it's their fault. Maybe they won't let her talk to me. Etain turns away, but maybe she's just obeying orders because she has no choice...."

"Just forget her, Christopher." Maybe I sounded cranky or harsh. I mean, he'd woken me up. I yawned. "There's still a good chance she's going to have to marry Baldwin. You'll just have to move on."

Christopher looked at me like he was disappointed. Like he'd thought he was talking to someone named April but had just discovered he'd been talking to someone named Fred.

"You know, April," he said. "It doesn't work that way. It's just not that easy. Man, I thought I'd never hear myself say this, but I'm in love with Etain. I love her. Have you ever been in love? Do you even have a clue what it feels like? And I don't even have a fair shot with her. I don't even get to date her and drive her crazy with my stupid TV obsession and have her give me the big Ultimate � that she wants to get married now or she's moving on. I don't get to buy her a ring and get down on my knees and make a fool of myself asking her to be my wife. I don't get to hold her hand while she's delivering our baby. I don't get to show her off at office Christmas parties...."

"There are no office Christmas parties in Everworld," I pointed out. "At least not the kind you mean. Shrimp on ice and lots of free booze and people making Xerox copies of their butts."

"Don't you care about her at all?" he said angrily

"Look, it's not about Etain. I mean, of course I care, I like her, admire her. But I'm thinking about you. Senna's... death left us sort of flickering between the real world and Everworld. The more attached you become to Everworld, the less you're around in the real world. Look at David. He's gone over there, just gone. You and Jalil, you're fading away back home. You know why you stop fading when you get into a TV show? Because TV anchors you, it's so uniquely real world, it holds you down, keeps you from floating away. Christopher, if you get too involved here, you'll lose the real world."

Christopher sat up and leaned toward me. His tone was urgent. "Would that be so awful, April? What would I be giving up, huh? Two drunk parents. An obnoxious little brother. A future all mapped out for a guy like me: middle management, an affair that breaks up my marriage, kids who become druggies, bald by the time I'm fifty, a heart attack by the time I'm fifty-five. Prostate cancer by my late sixties. You know, the usual suburban scenario for the average American male. Here's the worst of it. I used to think that all would be okay. I'm a simple guy, April, never wanted much. Always thought I'd be content to slide by, have some laughs along the way. Man, I used to rag David, we all did, about his bitter vision of adulthood. Now, well, I'm no wanna-be hero type like David, but now that life just doesn't seem right."

I had no argument to make. Just a warning for a friend. "If you stay here, Christopher, you could still lose Etain.
Nothing's going to change Baldwin's mind if he decides to go through with the deal."

"Maybe." He nodded, thoughtful. "But maybe that's a chance I have to take. Maybe if I have to live out the rest of my life without Etain, it's better I do it here. At least there'll be plenty of mind-blowing action to take my mind off my pain."

Suddenly, the comedian Christopher, trying to make the grief bearable. "Maybe I'll even die a glorious death before my time. Die young and leave a good-looking corpse. That would be something. Wouldn't it?"

Ahhh, to die young and good looking, I feel ya, Chris. Still amazed I made it past my 30s.

quote:

Chapter
XVII

We were summoned to a meal. Breakfast, I figured, though there wasn't a bowl of Shredded Wheat or a glass of orange juice in sight. David, Jalil, Christopher, and me. Etain, a royal visitor, was probably eating with the king and his court.

Dark bread, meat stew, mushrooms. The entire meal was brown, including the ale and some other liquid that was
supposed to be water. The meat was not bat � I asked � but I stuck to the bread and mushrooms. David ate silently and swiftly, his sword buckled at his side. Jalil spooned food into his mouth with one hand and made notes and sketches on a large sheet of thick, cream-colored paper with the other.

Christopher had arranged one of every variety of mushroom in a circle on his plate. Fifteen mushrooms. It was a
very large plate. "There's a fungus among us," he muttered. I didn't laugh.

He sighed. "Look, I am trying to be lighthearted over here. The least you can do is pretend to laugh. Okay? The woman I love is still in danger of being married off. I'm not in top form."

"Baldwin is a king," I pointed out.

"He's a freakin' dwarf."

"He does seem nice. Not mean and all. You should be glad about that, anyway. For Etain's sake."

"Look, April, I'm not all moral and noble like you, okay? I'm a dog. I'm self-centered and of course I want Etain to be happy no matter what she decides to do with her life. But more than that I want me to be happy, with her, okay? End of story."

"I'm sorry. I want you to be happy, too. With Etain."

His smile was wobbly. "Thanks."

When we'd eaten all the earthy fare we could stomach, we were summoned to the throne room where we'd first met King Baldwin. He was going to give us his final decision. One look at his face, all grim and sober, and we knew what he was going to say.

"I am sorry. But I, will not endanger the Great Diggings, my people, and my kingdom, by invading Hel's domain. I deeply regret the loss of Princess Etain as my wife. And I appreciate the sacrifice she was prepared to make for her own people. I wish I could accept her noble gift but I cannot."

"Wait." Jalil. "King Baldwin, please, I have something to show you."

Baldwin smiled wearily. "Is it great enough to change the royal ruling on this matter?"

Jalil nodded. "Yes. I think it is."

Baldwin was taken by surprise. "Very well, then, approach " Add "tolerant" to a list of Baldwin's good features.

Jalil pulled a roll of what turned out to be drawings from his shirt and brought them up to the king. "I spent some time looking around your operation. You're doing okay, but you could be doing a lot better."

Baldwin looked momentarily annoyed but nodded for Jalil to go on.

"One: You've got plenty of coal, no problem there. But you're not using it efficiently. I mean, you could be doing a lot
more with it. You know King Camulos had electricity in his castle, right? Well, you can have it here, too, in DaggerMouth. I can build you a coal-fired electrical plant, light up everything. The tunnels, the workshops. You can have instant communication throughout the Great Diggings. Okay? Telegraph, first. No more hand-delivered notes. Better than that, I can build you a train, like one in Merlinshire, to carry the ore up from the mines in a fraction of the time it takes you now. Your entire mining enterprise will be two, three times more productive. That means more gold. Lots of gold. And I haven't even gotten to the possibility of automating some of your manufacturing work. That's down the line but it can happen."

Baldwin was sitting forward in his throne, hands on his knees. The guy was hooked.

Christopher's face was dark. "What the hell is Jalil doing?" he hissed. "He's basically throwing my girlfriend at this guy...."

"Continue," Baldwin commanded.

"Here's the deal. I gave the fairies the telegraph. They transferred the technology to Merlinshire. Now they've got
electricity. But neither the fairies nor the Irish humans have the dwarfs' skill. There are hundreds, thousands of ways your kingdom can benefit from electricity. You can use it to push more fresh air into the deep wells or to pump water out. Look, from what I can tell you've almost reached the limit of your mining capabilities. I give you electricity, there are no limits."

"No limits," Baldwin repeated in a low voice.

"No limits," Jalil confirmed.

Baldwin paused for a moment before speaking. "I believe, perhaps, I made a hasty decision when I refused to support your raid on Hel. I have changed my mind. I will risk Hel's enmity and commit my kingdom to the fight against the Sennites and that foul beast Ka Anor. My conditions are these: You..."

"Jalil."

"Strange name, but you, Jalil, you will commence work directly on the first stage of your plan to introduce electricity to the Great Diggings. In the meantime, my men will begin construction of the tunnel to Hel. It will be ready by the time Merlin arrives with his magic and Queen Goewynne with her reinforcements. General Davideus will supervise."
Baldwin now rose from his throne and turned to face Etain, standing with a small group of female dwarf.

"Fair Etain," he began, "does your offer of marriage still stand? For it is the second of my conditions for this treaty."

"It does, good sir," Etain answered.

Baldwin held out his hand and Etain came forward to take it. Together they faced the room, Etain standing on the floor, Baldwin on the step to his throne, almost the same height this way.

"May I present to you your future queen!" Baldwin cried out.

I turned to look for Christopher but he was gone.

uh oh

quote:

Chapter
XVIII

Real-world April went to church but I left without going to confession. Without receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation, as it's now called. When I got home there was an undercover police car in the driveway. I wondered if anyone is ever fooled by an undercover police car. They all look alike: bland-colored sedans, no trim, nothing to make them stand out, which, of course, makes them stand out.

I walked up the drive, breathing the cold evening air. This is it, April, I told myself. It's time for the greatest role of your life. Time for you to play innocent high school junior, still utterly puzzled about the several-month disappearance of her half sister. Sad but recovering, moving on.

It shouldn't be too hard, I thought. My parents and I had been feigning concern since Senna left home. We'd been
deceiving the world and one another. What was one more harmless deception on my part? No, officer, I have no idea where Senna is right now. I haven't seen her since she left home. Why, do you have a lead?

But the police weren't there to talk about Senna, at least not at first.

My parents were sitting on the living room couch, very close, shoulders touching. When I got to the door of the room, my father stood and said in his gentle voice, "April, honey, these police officers need to talk to you about one of your classmates." Then he sat back down.

I stepped into the room and glanced wide-eyed at the two plainclothes detectives who stood in front of the fireplace. One held a small notebook and pen. They each wore a slightly rumpled but clean sports jacket, button-down shirt and slacks. Sears catalog. Nondescript.

"Okay," I said. I joined my parents on the couch, perched on the edge of the cushion. Give them nothing, let them ask the questions, April. Already I was thinking like a criminal.

"I'm Detective Costello and this is Detective Hayes, Miss O'Brien. Do you know a boy named David Levin?" Detective Costello asked. The talker. The other one would take the notes.

"Yes," I said simply.

"How well do you know him?"

I shrugged. "Not well. He goes to my school."

"Is that all?"

I pretended to think. "He's in my grade."

"Didn't he date your sister for a while, before she disappeared?"

Well, duh, certainly not after she disappeared, I thought. Careful, April. "I think so. I mean, I heard they were seeing each other. Senna was very private."

"Was private?" There was a gleam in Detective Costello's eye.

"Yes," I said. "When she was living here, at home. She was private."

"So you weren't close to your sister. Miss O'Brien?"

"My half sister," I said. "No, we weren't very close."

My mother put her hand on my arm, reassuringly "Are you aware, Miss O'Brien, that David Levin has not been at school all week?"

Careful again, April. They might know you spoke to his mother. And why would you do that if you didn't know him very well?

"I heard he was out," I said carefully. "From my best friend. She's doing a social studies project with him; he's her assigned partner. She was upset he wasn't at school to help."

"Is that why you called his house and spoke to Mrs. Levin?"

Oh, crap, it was going to sound lame but it was the best I could do at the moment. Especially with cold sweat suddenly cascading down my back.

"Yes. I mean, first my friend called but Mrs. Levin didn't really say if David was home. So I called, too. To help out my friend."

Detective Costello didn't buy my story for a second. I could see the disbelief all over his face. Even I'd heard the falseness in my voice.

"Miss O'Brien, is it usual for you to interfere �"

"Detective Costello." My mother. "My daughter and her girlfriends are very close. It is not at all unusual for them to help one another with their school work or drama club projects."

Detective Costello held up his hand as if to acquiesce, then shot me a look. My mother's defense had shut him up, but he still knew I was lying. And he wanted me to know he knew.

"Miss O'Brien," he continued, "what did Mrs. Levin tell you when you spoke with her?"

I pretended to think hard. "I think she said something about David not being home. Something about not having seen him around the house."

"Miss O'Brien, when was the last time you saw David Levin?"

Here, in the real world, you mean? "Uh, I don't remember, exactly. Sometime last week, I guess. Maybe in the cafeteria?"

My father cleared his throat. "Look, officers, I really don't see the point in your asking my daughter all these questions. She says she hardly knows the boy. And my wife and I can tell you that if this David Levin was involved with our daughter Senna, we didn't know about it. Senna never brought any boy home. She was very independent."

Suddenly, I thought I was going to cry. I was doing a lot of crying these days. But I was immensely grateful for my parents' support. And immensely guilty about it, too.

Detective Hayes closed his notebook and nodded at his partner. "Mr. O'Brien, let me be blunt." Detective Costello stuck his hands in his pants pockets. I noticed the material was a little, saggy. "I think your daughter knows more than she's telling us. About David Levin and Senna Wales."

I continued to stare at his pockets. This man was smarter than he looked. But my father believed me. He believed his daughter was telling the truth. Why shouldn't he, when to his knowledge she'd never given him reason to distrust her.

"Detective Costello, my daughter is an honor student and an active member of our church. She's the last person to lie, especially about something as important as a missing classmate, and especially not to the police. Now, gentlemen, I'm asking you to leave our home."

They did. But not without pressing the point that if I suddenly remembered anything, anything at all about either
Senna or David, any little incident that might help the police in their investigation, I was to contact Detective Costello
immediately.

I said, "Of course, officers, I will."

"Mrs. Levin is a single parent," Detective Costello explained as he stood in the doorway. Night had fallen. "David is her only child. She's very concerned. You'll keep that in mind, won't you?"

"I will," I promised.

acab, april.

# ? Jan 4, 2024 07:15

Remalle: Feb 12, 2020

Just caught up, and the descriptions of Daggermouth are making me wonder what year this book was published. Feels like the authors had been playing some Dwarf Fortress at the time.

# ? Jan 4, 2024 15:03

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 3, 2024 12:57

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

We are three quarters through this final book wtf

quote:

Chapter
XIX

When the police left, my mother asked me what I wanted for dinner. As if I deserved a treat after my ordeal.

"How about I go pick up some Thai food?" my father suggested. "We'll have a nice dinner together, try to forget that
unpleasantness. What do you say?"

My mother just nodded. She looked very tired.

I said, "I'm sorry, Dad. I'm going out tonight. I already made plans."

He was disappointed. And I got the feeling that maybe he didn't want to be alone with my mother right now. After all,
Senna was his daughter, not hers, and all Senna had ever done was cause trouble. Even now, months after Senna had left, my mother was still dealing with police coming into her home -and questioning her own daughter, the legitimate product of a lawful marriage, about Senna Wales, illegitimate result of my father's affair.

But tonight I wouldn't be the buffer zone. Tonight they would have to do without me.

I had a date. His name was Trey and I'd met him at the Rave Cafe the week before while waiting for Magda to show
up. He asked if he could share a table and I said, sure, but only until my friend came. We talked. He was twenty-one years old and a senior at the university. He was planning to go to business school for an MBA. At one point my cell phone rang. Magda was still at the doctor's office. The doctor was running late. I said, no problem, I'll see you tomorrow in school. Then Trey asked me out, for dinner at one of the hottest restaurants in town. I hadn't been there before. It wasn't the sort of place you went with your parents, and my friends and I had decided we probably wouldn't fit in with the crowd, mostly twenty- somethings, being only high school juniors. I'd said sure, and that I'd meet him these. He didn't offer to pick me up, which I appreciated. I hadn't lied about my age. He had to be relieved not to have to meet my parents.

what the gently caress april?!?!

Okay, this was a bold move. A date with an older guy, a guy about to graduate college in a few months, a guy who was into business and not the theater, that was huge. A date I hadn't gone into specifics with parents about because they'd never have let me go, and I'd really wanted to. Not that I was in love with Trey or anything, I'd only talked with him for an hour, but... Well, I'm not sure why, exactly, but somehow it seemed important to meet him for dinner. I wanted the experience to be all mine. I just didn't want to have to report every detail of the date to Magda and Becka and the others. I wanted to live it and then remember it, figure it out on my own, make my own decision about Trey.

It's just a date, April, I told myself as I finished getting dressed. But I knew it was more than that. I asked to borrow my dad's car and he said okay. What trouble could his honor student, churchgoing daughter get into?

I parked a block away from the restaurant. U Panino. I was a bit early, not too much. I pulled open the door to U Panino and walked purposefully to the hostess. She was slim and tall and dressed all in black.

"Hi, I'm meeting someone here at seven," I said.

"Great. Do you see him?"

The place was small. I glanced around. "No."

"Okay then, would you like to wait at the bar?"

"Sure." I smiled a sophisticated smile.

I was in.

This is bad news, and April can't be so naive as to think this is �just a date� ugh, this is gross, i'm worried.

quote:

Chapter
XX

Trey was three minutes late. Not that I was counting. We were shown to a small round table against an exposed brick wall. On the wall was a painting of a fig. A label listed the price as three hundred and fifty dollars. The fig was pink.

We ordered appetizers and a bottle of sparkling water. Lime for me, lemon for Trey. He looked great, even older than
twenty-one. I'm pretty sure his jacket was Armani or a very good knockoff. We ate bruschetta and talked easily. It was turning out to be a pretty good date. Until about halfway through the main course.

"Oh... oh, my god, April?"

Trey scooted his chair away from the table. The legs made a loud and unpleasant noise on the tiled floor.

"What? What's wrong?" I said. One minute we're having a decent conversation. The next minute he's looking at me like I'm some freak show reject. His eyes were wide, mouth opened, throat working.

"Do I have something in my teeth, what?"

Trey put his hand to his forehead. "I think maybe I'm sick. Or something. You, your face..."

I knew. I touched my cheek anyway. My fingers met air.

"Oh, God, you just, it's not me! You're, like, fading or something!"

Trey looked like he really might be sick. By now people at the other tables were watching us. I grabbed my bag and
mumbled, "I'm sorry, I have to go."

And I ran, head down, out to the street. Tore down the block to my car, fumbled wildly for the keys, then locked myself in and flipped down the visor on the passenger side. Looked into the mirror there. Half a face looked back at me. A flickering and my left eye returned, went away, came back again. I watched, fascinated, until my entire face came back into view. Then I leaned my head against the steering wheel. It was finally happening. Real-world April was leaving home.

After a minute I started the car and began to drive toward Christopher's house. I needed to tell him it was finally
happening to me. Then I would look for Jalil. It didn't, of course, occur to me to go home. Or to call Magda. I needed to talk without having to lie.

I drove to Christopher's house. A block away I saw flashing lights and knew they were for him. I parked a few houses down, ran past the faces peeping curiously from windows and the nosy woman standing in an open doorway, mouth gaping. One ambulance, one police car. Great. The way my day was going. Detectives Costello and Hayes would come cruising around the corner next.

Just as I reached the Hitchcocks' lawn, the front door opened. Two paramedics wheeled a gurney over the doorsill
and lifted it down the few stairs to the front walk. Christopher's father stood in the open door and watched his son being wheeled away.

"Christopher!" I raced to his side and gripped the metal edge of the gurney. Walked along with the paramedics, who
seemed strangely disturbed and nervous. "What happened?"

"Boys, how about you let me talk to my friend here for a minute, okay?"

The paramedics stopped wheeling. Since when is a patient in charge, I thought. Christopher didn't look sick. In fact, he looked kind of � happy. "Well, April, Mom caught a glimpse of me without my shirt on. Didn't know she'd come into my room to put away some laundry."

"You mean..."

"Take a look." Christopher yanked the sheet covering him from the leather restraints. The paramedics stepped back.
I sucked in a breath. "I see. Or, I don't see. Whatever."

Christopher was mostly not there. No chest, but some stomach. One shoulder. He leered. "Want to see what else is missing?"

"No. Oh, my god, Christopher." I leaned close to his ear.

"How are you going to explain this? What are you going to do?!"

"Keep my mouth shut," he said. "What else can I do? And you're looking a little, uh, pale, too, right now. If you know what I mean."

"I started to fade out at dinner. I was on a date and the guy freaked. I came right over to see you."

"Yeah, well, thanks. I guess. Look, I suggest you get home, now. Go in the back way, don't let your mother see you. Or we're gonna be roomies in Intensive care."

"Okay. Christopher, the police came to my house today," I said in a rush. "They wanted to know about Senna and David. They know I'm not telling the truth. I..."

"Don't wait up for me, April," Christopher said, as if he hadn't heard me at all, a strange, spacey smile on his face. "I
think you might be wasting your time."

The paramedics had snapped back into professional mode. Maybe because Mr. Hitchcock was shouting at them to
get the hell to the hospital. "Please step back, miss," one said.

I did. He replaced the sheet over Christopher, but not before letting his hand slide into the nothingness. Then the
paramedics hoisted the gurney up and into the back of the ambulance.

"Christopher, I want to go with you," I said.

"Only family, please," the stocky paramedic told me and helped Christopher's mother into the back with her son. When she passed close to me I thought I smelled alcohol.

"April, I..."

I didn't hear what Christopher was about to say. The stocky paramedic slammed the doors shut and locked them into place.

I stood and watched as Christopher was sped off to the emergency room. I stood and watched until the ambulance was out of sight.

Then I decided I'd go see Jalil.

And then I was in Everworld.

why is April fading?

quote:

Chapter
XXI

DaggerMouth, the Great Diggings, the Five Hills, King Baldwin's realm. A fairly awful subterranean kingdom, with little fresh air and less natural light, where for some reason I didn't mind so much being at the moment. Until David asked me to go with him and Christopher to check the progress on the tunnel. Up to that point, I'd avoided the construction site, for the obvious reason. My intelligent brain knew it was unlikely, but my primitive brain couldn't help but picture Hel roaring up through the tunnel from her pit of misery and snatching me away. Like when you're a kid and someone tells you snakes can come up through the toilet and bite you. But far, far worse.

"Why do I have to go?" I asked.

"Jalil's too busy playing master engineer. I need someone to keep Christopher in line. He doesn't listen to me."

"What are you afraid he's going to do?" I said.

David frowned. "Ruin everything, destroy the whole plan. He's determined that Etain won't marry Baldwin. If he freaks and tries to do something like kidnap her, everything is screwed."

"And you really think he'll listen to me?" I asked.

"Yeah. I do."

I couldn't decide whether I was pleased about David's confidence in me or just mad he was guiding me into exploring a tunnel that was a direct road to Hel.

Literally.

We started out at the main area of the work site, where the foreman was stationed and where small, portable tables were set up for the workers' on-the-job meals. Piles of pickaxes and shovels and coal-powered drills. From there we progressed to the opening of the tunnel. The tunnel was low-ceilinged, high enough for me to walk without stooping but a bit tight for Christopher. And probably for Jalil, I guessed. The stone walls were slick with condensation. The air was thick and humid. The light was dim, provided by coal lamps hung along the walls every few feet. But the dwarfs had done a good job of clearing away loose rubble and any obstructing stones so walking wasn't really a problem. And the incline was gentle enough to prevent undo strain on the knees.

The dwarfs definitely knew what they were doing.

Christopher was beyond grim. He was wound so tight it was like he could whirl his way through the floor of the tunnel like a drill. David kept his sword in its scabbard but his hand on the hilt.

I walked a bit behind both guys and wondered if I should tell them that I was fading now in the real world. I'd told real- world Christopher but as far as I could tell, Everworld Christopher knew nothing. The two people hadn't yet met
again. Maybe they never would.

"Christopher, I think you're gone now in the real world," I said. "Or just about gone. You were taken by paramedics to the emergency room. I wanted to go with you but then I was back here. I don't know what real-world April is doing now."

Christopher looked at me over his shoulder and barked a laugh. "Those guys must be sick of hauling me off only to have the doctors throw up their hands in confusion and send me home. Maybe they think I'm faking it."

I shook my head. "Trust me, Christopher, there's no way you could be faking this. You were only half there, maybe only a quarter there, on the stretcher."

"Invisible paint?"

"Nope. One paramedic stuck his hand right through you."

"Hmmm. Maybe I'll be famous." He shrugged.

"You won't be around long enough to be famous," I said. �At this rate you'll be all gone in a day or two."

"Not a problem," he muttered, pushing his damp hair off his face. The humidity was beginning to be unbearable. "By the way," he asked me, "what happened to your idea about talking to Brigid? You know, to see if she could stop us from disappearing back there."

I nearly stopped walking. I'd forgotten all about my plan. And that was strange because I'd so hoped Brigid could help us.

"I just haven't had the time," I lied. "You know, I do lead a very busy life back home. Not quite as glamorous as my life here but..."

David looked at me with a look that said, "Oh, so it's finally happening to you, too. About time."

But I wasn't one hundred percent ready to join David's accept-the-inevitability-of-Everworld club. I was glad now I
hadn't mentioned that real-world April was fading.

"Next time I go back," I said, "I'll go see her."

We walked.

Once Jalil had said he thought the real-world versions of us were becoming the subset. That the more that happened to us, the more we experienced in Everworld, the smaller our "real" lives were becoming. I was so angry with him then. I was angry because I knew he was telling the truth. Now, here we were, the four of us, planning an invasion of Hel's domain, fading or already gone in the real world, more than likely we'd spend the rest of our lives in Everworld, a place of massive uncertainty, fear, and violence. And on some distant level, I really didn't mind.

# ? Jan 5, 2024 03:26

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Lets read Everworld-Show me the way to go home.

«‹›18 »