Chapter 84: The Cold of Outer Space, the Warm Embrace of Death, Part 6

Sylvester felt impossibly strange. His lungs were empty of air. He should be dead, his heart stopping or on the verge of it, yet he kept flying forward against a pressure like steel wind that crushed even his eyeballs. How much longer until they reached their destination? He wasn't sure he could hold on like this much longer.

Heather had been certain this was the right place, but if that was true, where was everything? It was nothing but an uninhabitable void. If he had to die trying, he could accept that as long as Heather survived, as long as it meant something. But what if they weren't even in the right place? What if they'd missed their chance to turn back and run to where they'd taken off from?

He didn't want to die. He didn't want to disappear without a trace after losing to this wind. He still had things to live for. More accurately, he had barely started living. He deserved to overcome this and reach the other side. He deserved to be happy.

But what one deserved didn't matter, only what one sought. That was the problem with all human beings. They had no fucking clue they were seeking something very different from what they deserved, from what they desperately wanted. Not until it was too late.

At least he didn't have to wonder if he'd made the wrong choice. His path up to here might have been littered with mistakes and stumbles, but what had led him to cross the portal was simply running out of options. The only decision left on the table was obviously the right one.

It had to end soon. It had to be the right place. They couldn't die from a simple mistake. If they had to fail, let it at least be in battle, doing what they did best.

Was it too much to ask for just one chance?

The agony was indescribable, but he would try to describe it anyway. It was what dragged him to the edge of the abyss and what brought him back to safety. Because when he thought he would lose consciousness, the pain was what kept him awake, alive.

Sylvester closed his eyes, still flying forward like a bullet. How long had it been since the bullet left the barrel? Hours. Days. Months. Even his sense of time was being eroded by that wind. No help for it.

But finally he felt he had overcome it, that the end was near. He felt it in his bones, a premonition he would bet anything on. And thank goodness, because it came true.

Sylvester hit the ground. Yes, there was ground. His knees scraped against the cold metal hard.

"Huh? Where am I?"

Sylvester looked around. For some reason, he found himself in some kind of train. It was empty, of course. Empty except for Heather and him. Sylvester looked back. Well, at least that was over. But the joy died quickly on his lips. Heather wasn't there; he couldn't see her anywhere.

"Shit! What happened?"

He approached the door at the other end of the train, pulling the handle, shaking it. It wouldn't open. It wouldn't open at all, but even if he broke it down, what exactly awaited him? Just that steel wind, the torture he had tried to patiently endure. As if for the greater good.

He didn't want to go back out there. What if the flight had brought him here? Well, it was something new, it was progress. He had to cling to that with all his might. It was all he had.

Sylvester tried to check his status page and there was absolutely nothing. He was here, so the mysterious power they had granted him still worked. There was no room for doubt, since it was the only reason he could fly. But he had no access to the numbers. No way to monitor his progress, nor, surely, to be notified of new abilities and that sort of thing.

Well, at this point, nothing he could gain by leveling up would change anything. If he hadn't become strong enough in these last ten years, a few minutes or hours more wouldn't change anything. That's not how it worked.

It wasn't much, but Sylvester almost felt normal again. Almost felt as vulnerable as in that alternative dimension where he had nearly served as dinner for some very strange monsters, until Jonathan pulled his chestnuts out of the fire.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Exaggeration? Yes. Avoidable? Well, no. Not at all.

Sylvester gripped the sword with both hands, raising it high. Of course, he had to unsheathe it first. He hadn't flown with the sword ready. If he had, he would have lost it, torn away by that wind anyway.

Sylvester decided to move forward. That was the only thing he could do at this point. Besides, the wind had brought him here. This was probably the right place.

The door opened automatically when he approached. There was nothing strange or surprising about that. That's what any door did in a place like this. He tensed at the sound, but nothing more. What really had him on edge was that he had no fucking idea what he might find in there. Not to mention beyond—he highly doubted this was, so to speak, the final battle scene. There was surely something more out there, and he wouldn't discover it if he didn't move his ass.

So that's what he would do. Move his damn ass without fear.

But sometimes one felt fear for very good reasons.

Someone threw themselves at him, pushing him against the steel bars, squeezing hard enough to cut off his breath, and he saw that thing had Cynthia's face.

It couldn't fool him for even a second. It was simply a monster that had taken on Cynthia's appearance. They might not be best friends, but he knew her well enough to spot a cheap clone at first glance. And besides, it hadn't even bothered to hide much, attacking him right off the bat as if that were normal.

It pained his soul even after everything he knew, but Sylvester stabbed it in the elbow without thinking twice. If he had thought about it, he would have chickened out, almost certainly, simply because it wore the face of a dear friend.

When that dear friend's life and all those in their universe, including the life of his love, were at stake. Strange priorities. He thought so himself.

The clone opened its mouth, gasping, spewing blood. It put on quite a realistic performance and, to be honest, it made him nervous.

But then the puppet collapsed backward into a pool of blood, completely spent. At least it had only taken one precise blow to finish it off.

With great effort, Sylvester turned his gaze from the corpse and continued forward, his sword dripping with his best friend's blood.

"No, she's not Cynthia, damn it."

Leaving a thick trail behind him, Sylvester couldn't help wondering what the hell might be behind door number two if this had been nothing more than his warm welcome.

He shouldn't have thought about it so much. Sometimes he spent too much time turning over what he already knew, as if begging someone else to convince him.

Behind door number two was Ryan. Of course. That is, a clone of Ryan as obviously fake as Cynthia's.

Well, to be fair, this thing didn't try to kill him right away, so it had better chances of fooling him in theory. Too bad common sense and his eyes told him it was nothing more than a damn copy.

He consoled himself by saying that if the train wouldn't end until it forced him to face all his loved ones, it would be a very short trip. Lonely, but short.

"Sylvester," that creature said, "you killed her. For God's sake, you killed her with your own hands. How could you? Before being my friend, she was your companion, your pupil. You felt nothing and your hand didn't even tremble. You're nothing but a monster."

Sylvester clicked his tongue, hating to see how that thing twisted Ryan's face, speaking with his voice. He put an end to that farce with a precise slash.

The head rolled, crashing first against a window, then bouncing. It landed on one of the seats and kept rolling forward, spreading blood like a snail's trail.

He had only killed one being, but suddenly the entire car reeked of blood and guts, of violence, as if he had perpetrated a massacre.

Ryan's clone's head was still alive. It stared at him fixedly with those artificial eyes, not even blinking.

"You'll never be happy, Sylvester, even if you marry her. Do us all a favor, yourself included: put a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger."

Until not too long ago, that would have actually been a tempting idea, but now Sylvester firmly rejected it, raising his leg to crush the enemy's head and ensure it would shut its mouth forever.

The crunch was immensely satisfying. He licked his lips. He could only experience it because he looked away.

He could know intellectually that this wasn't Ryan, just as the other thing hadn't been Cynthia, but that was different from what he might believe, being a romantic who was easily fooled.

Door number three. What was there? Well, the worst joke of all. If this was a list of his loved ones, this was the last thing one could expect. The person he had called... the person who haunted his dreams.

"Mom," Sylvester said, his throat suddenly dry.

It wasn't even the first time some mind-fucking son of a bitch had tried to use her against him. He knew that, it wasn't even the first time, but his legs were suddenly trembling.

I won't do it, Sylvester thought, I've had more than enough of doing it once.

Sylvester decided to pass by, to not fulfill what this world seemed to expect of him. He simply couldn't do it. He would try to pass by and whatever happened afterward, let it happen. He was tired of holding back.

Sylvester tried to pass by, to put as much distance between himself and the clone as possible in the narrow car. He believed he would make it, that he could pass through the door, that this would end here, but then the hand reached out and grabbed his wrist.

The Cold of Outer Space, the Warm Embrace of Death, Part 6: END