The Adept - Day 4
On day four, Reader was feeling very weak. It was difficult to concentrate on the weaving. As much as his skill and understanding had improved, his mind was a challenge to contain on the task. He couldn’t stand indefinitely without feeling weak and he couldn’t see the threads of reality well enough to manipulate them without sitting down, so it necessitated a lot of breaks. Grim was not slow to remind him that those breaks were a lot of wasted time he didn’t necessarily have.
Grim spent the time almost completely consumed with watching the efforts of the Finality. He had found not one, but two telescopes. An astronomy scope on a tripod that Reader had deigned to move for him and bring out to the courtyard, and a folding telescope. Grim seemed to prefer the smaller one that fit him better and this suited Reader. It freed up the more powerful scope for him to use himself.
Under the power of the scope he could see that the plume of blackness was emerging from a small camp in the middle of the white. There were some pavilion tents set up, and a collection of figures moving around the path. It was hard or impossible to distinguish the types of creatures even with the scope. Some were clearly too huge and bulky to be human, others too slight and short. They were clad in almost tropishly dark armor.
It was clear that one among them held rank. A human height but far too broad, clad in armor that exceeded realism in its adornment. Massive spikes, gigantic shoulder plates, a flowing cape. Grim promised that this would be the one to provide the entertainment when intervention came.
In the midst of all of it lay the source of the smoke. It was hard to distinguish exactly from the distance. It might have been a cart of some kind. It was clearly huge and mechanical and very dark in color. The association it conjured to mind in Reader’s head was of a combine harvester.
Reader said, “And they’re trying to just… what, destroy everything?”
Grim did not like to be distracted from his scope. Irritated, he said, “Huh? What? Oh, fuck yes.”
Reader said, “And nobody tries to stop them unless they come out from the edge? Are they succeeding at the Edge?”
Grim snorted. “Nobody can fucking stop them. They’re bigger now than one fucking realm and there’s no fucking way two realms will get together to fight the gothic pricks.”
Reader said, “And the Edge? What’s that? How far away?”
Grim withdrew his eye from the scope and shot Reader a most disparaging look. Tapping the edge of his book body at eye height, he said, “For fuck’s sake, can’t you just fucking look it up! That was the first fucking book you ate!”
Reader said, “Oh… yeah… uh, sorry… okay, let me try…”
He sought the knowledge and it came. Not perfectly ordered but near enough that he started to pull answers from his connection with Grim. The pages flashed before his eyes, but he didn’t read them so much as weirdly comprehend him.
Hesitantly, “Oh… So… Scape is a planet… I don’t have a frame of reference but I get the feeling it’s smaller than Earth… It’s a sphere, but part of it’s like the dark side of the moon… except instead of darkness it’s… nothingness…?”
“Hey, look at that! The dipshit can repeat information that’s literally piped into his thick fucking skull!”
“I’m just trying to make sure I’ve got it. Wait, let me look for more… These dates don’t make sense. There’s a huge gap where there’s nothing. I have dates of events going back a long time and then there’s nothing until a few decades ago… but the names are the same. It’s like time paused, the years kept rolling, and then it started up again. This doesn’t make sense and… WAIT! Eater made the Edge? He started it?”
Grim said, “That’s what it fucking says, isn’t it!”
“But, Grim! The Finality have deleted almost half of the planet! How can people just stand by like this and wait? The Edge is expanding, it’s coming for them, it’s like it’s inevitable!”
Grim kept staring down the scope. Quietly, he said, “You’re old enough you should have fucking figured this shit out already. People are fucking stupid, and they’ll fucking ignore a problem if tackling it costs them money. War isn’t fucking cheap. And war with the Finality, now? Now that they’ve fucking eaten so much? That’d fucking cost a lot to fight, if, and I fucking say if, it could be won!”
Reader’s voice pierced the silence, excited, thrilled, urgent. “Grim! Grim! Grim, look!”
Grim turned from his scope, grumbling that the fight should have started by now. Then he stopped and an eyebrow, or the malleable part of his leather face that seemed to count as an eyebrow, rose. There was an actual moment where he seemed to bear no contempt.
The table floated. It drifted about a foot off the ground.
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Grim hopped down and walked around the table, looking at it. He nudged it and it drifted in the direction of the nudge without falling.
“Hey! Not too fucking shabby! Those knots might even be tight enough… Even if they are a little loose I guess you could afford to... Fuck it. Let’s see. Hop up, champ.”
Champ? Reader liked the sound of that. He stepped onto the table. It didn’t fall exactly. But it sank very quickly.
Reader said, “Do you think…”
Grim said, “That that would accelerate so fucking fast that all you’d leave is shit and guts smeared on the white? Yeah, that’s exactly what would fucking happen. You’re asking a fucking lot of a Stone sigil, to be fucking honest with you. It’s too fucking heavy, a big fucking table, and the legs and all. Look at it this way, you got it to fucking work and it only took four days. If you can get it to work a little fucking better, get the platform to be a little fucking lighter, then I’d give us, I dunno, a ten percent chance of not pasting ourselves on the ground. And don’t forget, I like those fucking odds.” Grim flashed a horrifically toothy grin at him.
Reader said, “Are you… encouraging me?”
Grim’s face darkened. “Don’t read too much into it, dipshit. Remember I want to make this fucking attempt so I can enjoy watching your face when we fucking fall. And then? Maybe sweet fucking release. If nothing else I’ll be free of this fucking place once I rinse your guts off me.”
Reader said, “That reminds me, why don’t you show me the rules page?”
“Aw… don’t be like that! I’m only-”
The muffled boom of a distant detonation shook the air.
Grim’s eyes went wide. “The fight! The fucking fight! You and your “I’m gonna starve up here if my little fleshy body doesn’t get sustenance” shit cost me the start of the fight. You’re so fucking selfish.”
He scrambled off for the telescopes. “I swear to fuck, if that fight is over, if I fucking missed it, I’ll.”
“The rules. After this, the rules.”
Reader moved to join him and looked through the scope.
He had to pan the scope for a moment to find the scene where the Finality were at work. Or… had been at work.
The strange harvester-like machine was now on its side in a very much poorer condition than it had been. The shape was buckled and bent; pieces lay scattered on the barren white floor, a different kind of smoke, a more natural smoke, was now erupting from its form.
Among the pieces of wreckage lay inert forms in dark gothy armor.
Reader panned the scope, his own heart rate kicking up as he passed over figures locked in combat. Pale figures with four arms each were crossing weapons with the soldiers of the Finality. These new creatures were tall and slender, amazingly graceful in appearance given their large bodies and extra arms. Most of them wielded at least two swords.
Grim was unable to contain his excitement. “Clarrocks! Fucking Clarrocks! I knew it would be the fucking Xantion realm! Oh, where’s the big...”
Another boom shook the air, the hollow concussive blast reaching up through the height and distance to shake their ears.
Grim was utterly delighted, in his twisted way. “Oh, here we go. Big fucker too. They’re all big fuckers. But this one is capital B fucking big. Oh, this’ll be good.”
Reader couldn’t help himself. “Who? Where?”
But then his own sweeping of the scope settled on the scene. The Finality Captain, the figure in the especially bulky and overly adorned armor, was facing… something else.
Reader drew his eye from the scope and tried to peer across the distance with his own eye, as if that would somehow be clearer.
He cocked his head upwards, whispering, “I just don’t know what I’m seeing…”
Grim twitched. “You fucking talking to your imaginary fucking friend again, dipshit?”
Reader just shook his head slightly and returned to the scope. The being that confronted the Captain was a huge figure. Thicker and broader and taller than a man. It was hard to discern, even with the scope, but the skin seemed thick, like armor. Like shell, or bone or stone. And it had wings! Two massive curving domed wings that extended from its back like a beetle’s opened carapace. The wings looked dense and hard, like the armored skin, with horns or spikes protruding from every angle on their surface.
Unconsciously, he muttered, “That can’t fly…”
Grim chuckled, dark glee filling his voice. “Xantions can fly… oh, fuck yes they can fucking fly. Now shut up and watch this.”
The Xantion flew at the Captain. It bore a two-handed warhammer, the Captain a monstrous two-handed sword. When the weapons clashed the air vibrated even across the distance. Each time their weapons struck, the fighters around them seemed to slip and struggle against the shockwaves. The Captain was on the backfoot. They were creating separation whenever they could by casting balls of fire towards the Xantion. The Xantion took to the wing, soaring with speed that seemed impossible for something so seemingly heavy, evading the bolts, or turning them away with its armored wings. The bolts exploded on the ground, the light of their explosions blinding even this far away. Reader fancied he could nearly feel faint waves of heat rolling to his skin.
Reader said, “They’re like… WMDs. They’re so…”
Grim’s eye was pressed so hard against the scope that it looked painful. “Fucking silvers. I told you. Steps on the path are fucking big. A Stone band is like ten Clays. An iron is like ten stones. And on and on. Each of them, some kind of fighter class both of the fuckers, is like fucking what? A thousand? Ten thousand unlevelled fighters?”
Reader’s breath caught as he contemplated it.
The Xantion waited until the Captain was off balance after hurling a particularly savage bolt of fire. Then it seemed to do something, unleash something, its body winked forward, shooting at the Captain in a sudden straight line with velocity that was quite frankly impossible.
The impact was the largest blast. Dust or smoke exploded at the point of impact. The vibrations in the air, the WHOOM of the soundwave, rattled the stones on their floating islands.
When the dust cleared, the Captain was dead. The Xantion turned to the rest of the fight and moved through easily, dispatching the remaining Finality soldiers with a kind of ease that seemed terrifying. It swung the huge hammer casually, one-handed. When it struck a soldier they exploded. Reader was glad to be so far away and unable to see the details and chunks of something unpleasant rained down. He could make out the shapes of limbs and torsos and little dots that must have been heads.
Grim sat back. “Well, that’s fucking that. Not bad.”
Reader just remained transfixed, trying to comprehend the display of power. He wanted to go home. It had been all he’d thought about until the hunger grew so loud that all he wanted was escape and reprieve from the gnawing in his guts.
