Fates worse than death
A couple dancing in a resort bedroom stopped mid step, smiles melting from their faces, as the music died to silence. The neon sunset in the window vanished, replaced by solid darkness, and the door blinked out of existence leaving only bare wall behind. They held each other, terrified, as laughter echoed all around.
“The Demons,” Michael said. “They came crashing through like Armageddon. Unexpected and irresistible.”
Above the Allcity, the sun dimmed and flickered, swallowed by a great cloud of liquid darkness. In the sky beyond, the stars went out one by one.
“Powerful makers, keepers, and speakers, they twisted creations into weapons, turned fantasies into nightmares, and trapped spirits in places that couldn’t be found. They proved that if paradise could be bought, it could also be stolen.”
Crafts flashed away from the Allworld like shrapnel and disappeared into the black. On the surface, people huddled together watching the skies, and each other, in fear.
“There was no escaping them. Those who tried to fight them, outrun them, or buy them off, all met the same fate. The Demons trapped their captives in their own minds, dissected their memories, and vanished, leaving them to claw their way out.”
A woman fell through a circle of shadow that appeared in the ground. When she landed, she was a child, sobbing, wandering among endless rows of towering clothes racks, calling for her mother.
“Even the supreme makers couldn’t oppose them, so they fled into the black and crafted places outside their reach. The first fortress worlds.”
“Jericho”
An endless mass of gates and doorways floated in the dark, rotating like a slow whirlpool.
“Chittor”
A kaleidoscope of polygonal slices of glittering ocean and white stone walls, lit by brilliant, blinding micro suns that orbited like eyes of god.
“Gormenghast”
A woven mesh of hallways, courtyards, staircases, and collapsing rooms, all shifting like a jigsaw as entire sections were created and destroyed.
“And Paradise, which offered eternal protection and bliss in exchange for a life’s worth of memories. Those who went in during that time never returned.”
It was just a warm glow in the darkness. Figures flew into it and faded hazily into nothing.
“It felt like the end of the world. But not everyone had given up hope. When those who had seemed like gods abandoned us, new ones arose from the masses. We called them Saviors.”
Crafts like stars hammered into shapes flew into orbit around the Allworld as shadows seethed on the surface.
“It was the first and only war. The only kind possible here. A war of wills.”
A man stood in a featureless room of stone while a voice taunted him from all around. He closed his eyes and disappeared, then burst back into existence in a flash of light inside an orb of doorways, each reflecting a different surreal landscape. A blurry figure flew through one of the frames in terror and the first, still radiant, followed.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“Those who had abandoned us, now seeing a chance of victory, returned, and a desperate last stand became a fight for freedom.”
A brilliant figure with six wings and swirling rings of eyes descended upon a geometric structure of black glass. A prismatic light reflected across the surfaces, shattering them, and something screamed.
“The first battle drove the Demons from the Allworld. The celebration of that victory, held in the massive area cleared by the destruction, is still going strong all over the Allclub.”
The Allworld glowed and pulsed as the starlike crafts flew off into the black, followed by spheres of fire and waves of prismatic dreamers.
“Unfortunately, the war wasn’t easily won. The Demons proved themselves masters of evasion and surprise.”
A lone light separated from a swirling constellation and blinked out. The other stars doubled back, seeking their lost member. Gradie felt the fear in them, the anguish.
“Conflict has a way of bringing about change, catastrophic change, that would be impossible otherwise. This war, even in this world, was no different.”
Two starcrafts followed a thing as black as the space around them and only Michael’s vision let Gradie sense it.
“The last of the demons were on the run. Nightmare had just been created, and they were its first prisoners. Fearing capture, the story goes, one Demon pushed at the edges of the Otherworld itself, and found something more.”
Suddenly, Gradie knew it was gone. The stars zipped around frantically, then flew out of sight. A subtle motion formed out of the darkness. There was a click, and a man sat up in bed, his confused face lit by a table lamp.
“They thought they’d gotten out. Gone back to the Real, finally able to remember the Otherworld. Many got lost in it and forgot everything else, and some just decided to stay for good, but a few came back to tell the tale. They had found the Hardworlds.”
The man, now dressed in a Brioni suit, walked through brass doors into a marble-floored bank lobby. He took off his sunglasses and smiled like a kid opening a Christmas present.
“What are they?” Gradie asked. His voice broke out through the vision, but Michael didn’t let it waver. The man in the bank drew a pistol and laughed as everyone around him scrambled and screamed.
“What they are is debated, but they act like alternate versions of the real world. Being in them feels like dreaming you’re someone else.”
Gradie felt a chill as the realization took hold. Michael predicted his question.
“That’s where I found you.”
Gradie saw himself back in the gas station from Michael’s point of view. He remembered what it had felt like, being that person, and the Hardworlds suddenly made sense. But if that had been him dreaming he was someone else, then who was he really?
“How did I get there?”
Michael froze the vision.
“The same way we all get here. Most people appear in the Otherworld when they break through, as we call it, but there’s no reason a spirit can’t be born in the Hardworlds.”
Michael waited for Gradie to probe further, but something about the answer kept him from forming another question. He didn’t want to think about anything other than the story, least of all himself. Michael, as if sensing his apprehension, continued.
“Finding the Hardworlds was the most important thing to happen since the discovery of the Otherworld, but at first, no one understood them. Only a few could get in, and even less wanted to. A place where all the rules of the Real applied was a place to be feared. Which made them the perfect place to hide.”
“The last demons fled into the Hardworlds and the Saviors found themselves out of their element, unable to finish the war.”
The man in the Brioni suit leaned out the back window of a speeding car and opened fire with an AK-12. He shot the cop in the driver seat of the pursuing cruiser through the face and brains sprayed on the punctured windshield.
“With a new base of operations, and the ability to come and go as they pleased, the Demons struck back with renewed force. Thousands flocked to the fortress worlds, giving everything to get inside, some becoming little more than slaves. The Allworld became the last bastion and the Saviors ruled it with an oppressive tyranny.”
Defensive crafts and constructs orbited the Allworld, where the sun had returned with a harsh glare and searchlights swept the night side. Towers reached impossible heights from the surface and massive walls dissected the land into a grid.
“The age of freedom, it seemed, was over.”
Gradie was back in the craft. Michael waved his hand and a bottle of Glenmorangie Signet poured itself into two glasses in front of Gradie. The spirals in the decal rotated slowly and the gold reflected the light of an unseen sunset. They each took one and Michael clinked the glasses. It was dreamworld scotch, afterlife ambrosia. Gradie felt the story didn’t call for it. Michael winked and it all went black again.
“That’s where we come in.”