Chapter 61: High on Life, Part 3
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They were under attack, and the enemy was perhaps worse than any of the others because there seemed to be nothing they could do to defend themselves, let alone counterattack. The only comfort Sylvester had was that the time in these hallucinations or whatever they were wasn't very long. He had held a long conversation with the voice, but in the real world, only seconds had passed. He knew it for sure; otherwise, he would have fallen overboard and had to fly back to the aircraft.
It was a consolation, yes. But not very effective. It changed nothing. When he returned to reality, the aircraft would still be falling, and he would have little time to do anything about it. This gave him time to think, at least, but he couldn't come up with anything. And it was very possible that he would have less time each time. That it would become increasingly difficult to resist. It was a chilling thought. That's precisely why he couldn't easily dismiss it. He was a pessimist by nature. To be fair, the world didn't give him reasons to think otherwise.
A carnival of death, of madness. Sylvester moved forward with the vague hope of finding an exit or the enemy, hidden somewhere. Even if he was doing this from a distance, out of reach, this was a point of contact. So, maybe he was vulnerable here? It felt too convenient, but it made some sense.
The carnival twisted as they advanced through it, like the dark hallway he had traversed with a knife in hand. All of this was as unstable as a dream. Was it entirely a product of the enemy's imagination?
He would see in due time, he supposed. Step by step. At one point, all the attractions changed without apparent reason. They turned into flesh, wet and pulsating. A twisted carnival of flesh and death. What a place to die.
Sylvester was drawn to the light of one of the attractions. Inside, he found mirrors. Mirrors from the house of laughter, distorting his image. No. His image was completely different. He when he was younger, weaker, and weighed down by the pressure of living with his mother. With something dark in his eyes. And a knife in his hands, bathed in blood.
Sylvester destroyed several mirrors with a single blow. They shattered into a thousand pieces, but there were still... many more. Too many.
"Why this, over and over again? I didn't do anything to her. She died in front of me from natural causes, she just died!"
He knew that this is what the enemy or enemies wanted, but he couldn't help it. He hoped it was a united effort because if one of those bastards could do this to dozens of people, they didn't stand a chance. Was he losing control of himself, or was he being manipulated, defenseless against a sinister power that could manipulate the minds of others? If they could make him perceive whatever they wanted, then feeling what they desired wasn't a great leap. Or difference. What were feelings if not a reaction to what you see, hear, touch?
He found himself back on the aircraft. That is, in free fall. He was also falling, and members of the crew with him. Some would just hit the control panel or the windows, bouncing off, but there was also the hole he had opened to get in.
Sylvester acted quickly, closing it. Using the [Mountain of Needles], concentrating power, he managed to seal the hole. But not just that, of course. If it were just that, he would have created a deadly trap. He crushed the spikes, ensuring no edge protruded. All in a matter of seconds.
And he succeeded. For all intents and purposes, it was a slightly less safe cushion than usual.
Sylvester crashed against the control panel, too, and...
Back to the house of laughter, lying on the floor.
"Again. Great. Is it so much fun, you bastard? Sure, it is, but not as much as talking, right? Don't you feel like mocking me, representing some atrocity?"
Sylvester stood up slowly, leaning on the floor first and then on the mirrors. The ones nearest to him were the broken ones, of course. They shouldn't be able to cut him, but they did anyway, and he should have seen that coming. He watched as his blood slid down the glass and flowed between the cracks as if mesmerized.
"I'm not your toy. I'll catch you, and I'll kill you."
He used [Infernal Wings] and took flight, intending to pierce the roof. It just got bigger, moving away. No, it was a response, a conscious action of the bastard who had set this up. He wanted him here. He probably couldn't even get out the way he came in.
Sylvester shook his head and landed. Okay, he was willing to play along, at least for now. Anyway, he had no other choice.
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A curtain, another corridor. More mirrors. He looked at his reflections out of the corner of his eye. They were different in this corridor. Not that distorted version of his younger self, representing something that had never happened. Just a distorted version of him here and now, limbs elongated like those rubber men on the roller coaster.
Was this a wordless conversation? What did he want to tell him?
He moved quickly, going through one corridor after another. This house of laughter had no end. It was more like a house of horrors. How much time had passed outside? A few seconds, like the other times, or maybe more? Maybe they were about to make a crash landing.
Seconds later, he checked it with his own eyes. The ground was still far away, but what did it matter? The crew was still unconscious. He assumed that Cynthia and Heather weren't, that what made them less vulnerable to the effect of this power was that they were the Champions of their planet. But none of them could do anything to change the outcome.
They were going to crash and burn, it was already too late to do anything. The things the enemy or enemies were forcing them to see only served to prolong the inevitable. An eternal fall into damnation. How many would survive the landing? And the machine, would the machine remain intact? This was exactly the situation they had waited for until they had at least two of these machines to test, doing nothing.
Maybe they couldn't win this fight, but they could flee. If it failed during the fall...
What does it matter? It's too late already; I made a mistake trying to regain control of the vehicle instead of going for the machine. Pressing a button would have crashed us back to Kaleidoscope, we would have been safe. Damn.
He was dragged into the illusion again, but he was no longer in the house of laughter. But that was the least of his concerns; he barely noticed. What was truly important was that he had an enemy in front of him. The enemy? Probably not, but he was eager to hit someone.
He launched an attack. He barely registered the appearance of his opponent. He was the opposite of the rubber men he had seen so far. By the standards of humanity on his planet, at least, he looked like a child. Aviator glasses and eyes too large for his face, as if he had stepped out of a cartoon. But he wasn't going to let that stop him. Even if he was really a child and not an adult of his species, he was an enemy who had come to kill him. He couldn't afford to think otherwise about him. Moreover, at this point, compassion would be ridiculous. He had killed countless millions of people. Cynthia delivered the final blow, but it didn't matter. They all shared that burden. They were all responsible.
What good would it do now to have compassion? Act as if he were a good person? He just wanted to survive. He just wanted to save everyone.
And that's what he would do. By God. He swore by God!
He reached the enemy in less than a second, but his attack didn't get anywhere. Sylvester collapsed without apparent explanation. Only after coughing and feeling blood flowing out did he realize that his body had been pierced by many knives. What? Hadn't he heard anything, hadn't he seen them coming? Impossible...
Sure, maybe it was impossible. But none of this was real. They weren't playing by the rules of reality. It was that 'child' who dictated the rules.
He was the strongest of all... or almost, but could he be victorious in a mental struggle? Could he defeat a god? As melodramatic as it sounded, the child was the creator of this world, what else to call him if not a god?
"That's exaggerating a bit," said the child. "But yes, more or less. Here, I am the power. I have control."
A shiver ran down his spine. Digging into his memories, reading his mind, even now. What a son of a bitch.
"You're very touchy for an invader. You feel like your privacy has been violated. I understand, although it's hard for me. In my culture, everyone can do this. There's no such thing. We're very different. Even organizing these thoughts into words, sentences, is a greater effort than I'm used to."
...Of course. Language was very limited, especially compared to direct mind-to-mind communication.
"I wish I could understand you, understand you all, and convince you to leave, but I understand that you have no choice. Accepting annihilation, forgetting, is not a decision for any living being. It's not any consolation..." A dagger appeared in his hands, long and twisted. "But I don't enjoy it."
What do I care?
"You're to blame. We decided to defend ourselves, and you had to come after us, precisely. Tough luck. You'll fall like the others... Although I don't want to see that destruction again."
The mind-reading monster raised the knife above his head and brought it down with force, holding it with both hands. He believed himself to be Sylvester's executioner. Sylvester returned to reality before the knife made contact. That was mainly what saved him. He had tried, but he couldn't move a muscle. The knives embedded throughout his body had immobilized him too effectively. To the point that even after returning to reality, he felt them stuck, felt the pain.
He had to push him aside. He wouldn't have much time to act, like all the other times. Probably less time each time. The machine. The portal machine, if only he could activate it... He couldn't maintain that 'connection' across worlds. It simply couldn't be possible. That was his salvation. If he couldn't defeat a god in his realm, that was his only salvation.
Sylvester spread his wings.
He didn't head towards the window, but forward.
Violently piercing through wall after wall on his way to the machine. The fastest way was always a straight line. With the limited time he was working under, going out the window and taking a long detour wouldn't do him any favors. So he took the most direct route, as was natural.
But it still wasn't enough. It could never have been enough.
The aircraft finally completed its eternal fall, and everything went dark.
High on Life, Part 3: FIN