“Wait-wait-wait, hang on.” Waia looked down at Horan, pulling her shirt away from her chest so that it wouldn’t get soaked through with gold. “Your plan is Deus?”
Horan sighed and floated back to his feet. “Okay, yeah, there’s a lot of holes in that, but we haven’t really had the time to figure out the details so far. Now that–”
“Yeah, I can tell!” Waia scoffed and looked at Quet in disbelief. “Deus wouldn’t even get involved in my first draft of a plan! You’re banking on that idiot fixing all of our problems?!”
Quet walked over to stand between Waia and Horan. “I know, I know, Deus isn’t great. But Horan’s right, we just need to work on what to use the Seraphium for, and–”
“Oh, just work on it?!” Waia glared at the two Primoi. “You’ve had five months to work on it! Your vacation in SoCal didn’t exactly keep you too busy to think! Doesn’t matter if he did it on purpose or not, Deus caused all this! You think he wants anything to do with this?! Absolute best case scenario, he takes the Seraphium to make sure we never bring him back and just leaves again.”
“I know Deus better than anyone else left on earth,” protested Horan. “He sucks, but he’s not that–”
Waia wheeled on Horan, who remained towering over her while she stayed in her human form. “And worst-case scenario, Deus is the one who’s been giving Mark all these visions telling us to come here! You haven’t questioned that yet?! The resident human gets a bunch of impossible premonitions about the secret weapon we need to magically turn back time, and is incapable of telling us where he gets them from, and you just roll with it?! Deus might just up and kill us the second we bring him back, for all we know!”
“Fine,” snapped Horan, “Okay, I get it! Deus is a bad option! But if you care to look around us, there aren’t any other options available for four people to fix the world!”
“Wha–?! The world can’t be fixed!” Waia waved aimlessly around at the foggy expanse around the three Primoi. “Even without the Nabbing, billions of people were bombed to hell! You don’t just reverse out of that, all-powerful god-king or no!”
Quet held a hand out to Waia, as if the Hawaiian was some kind of wild horse. “Okay, I get it, but there has to be some halfway-meeting here. A lot of people are already dead, yeah, but we can still do something for the people left over. And most of the population was taken by Deus; so if we can manage to bring them back, it would still be–”
“Do you not hear me right now?!” Waia swatted Quet’s hand away. “Deus isn’t fixing anything! He’s not coming back! Those people are gone! It’s just us! Maybe we can bring everyone back from the edge before we all starve to death, maybe we can’t, but Deus is a non-factor in this, and we sure as hell aren’t ever going back to your oh-so-precious pre-Nabbing status quo!”
Quet cradled her hand close to her chest. “So, what, you just want to give up on–?!”
“They’re dead!” snapped Waia. “Your Domain isn’t coming back just because you wished upon a star, Quet! I’m trying to compromise here! Torch was the number-one problem with the world, and now they’re stuck all the way out here, and that means that as long as we don’t act like saying ‘pretty please’ to Deus of all people will undo a three-year mass murder campaign, we might– might– be able to start improving things!”
Quet huffed. “Well, what do you know about fixing anything?!”
Waia recoiled almost physically, the indignation draining from her face before being replaced with mild shock.
The three were quiet for several seconds.
Quet shrank into her cardigan and stared, concerned, at Waia. “…I… I said something wrong.”
“I’ll say,” muttered Horan.
Waia pursed her lips and looked away from Quet and Horan. “…No, I get it.”
“I– Look.” Horan stepped forward and nervously cleared his throat. “Quet didn’t mean anything by it. Tensions are high right now, and I think arguing like this while adrenaline is so high is going to–”
“Oh, adrenaline, huh?” Waia wheeled around and glared at Horan. “I’m sure you’d just love to attribute all this to a little round of hysteria and move on like nothing happened.”
Horan groaned. “Waia, you know that isn’t what I meant.”
“Still said it, though,” replied Waia. “Maybe you didn’t mean it that way, but those were the words you considered, and they were the words you figured were good enough to say. Tells me plenty.”
“Well, what do you want me to say, then?!” demanded Horan. “I’m trying not to ruin our win here!”
“I want you to tell me the truth.” Waia stared impassively at Horan for a moment. “Not like I don’t know what it is. I’ve heard it a million times before. I just want you to say it.”
Horan balled his fists and looked Waia in the eye. “I know exact…” He stopped himself and averted his eye, muttering something under his breath.
“Thought so.” Waia folded her arms over her chest, which was quickly soaking through with gold. “You plug your ears and bury your heads in the sand just because it’s the bloodthirsty idiot savage pointing out how stupid you’re being. Well unfortunately for you, I see exactly what you’re doing.”
Quet put her hand on Horan’s back. “You’re not stupid, Waia.”
“Oh, no.” Waia pointed a single finger straight at Quet’s chest. “Don’t try to back out now. I haven’t forgotten what you didn’t manage to hold back just now. Don’t act like some kind words are gonna erase what I’ve seen behind them.”
Horan glared at the Hawaiian. “Waia, you’re being unreasonable now. Just calm down and–”
“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?!” Waia lunged forward and grabbed a fistful of Horan’s jacket. “Waia’s the unreasonable one! She’s crazy! She only cares about revenge, is that it?! I’ve been seeing people ignore me and everything I have to say for eight hundred years! Sorry for not being civil and sitting down for tea! Guess it just isn’t my style!” She released Horan and shoved him away, making him stumble as he regained his footing.
After a moment of silently examining a stunned Horan, Waia turned around and walked towards the edge of the structure. “Why’d I ever think things would’ve changed…?”
Quet looked ahead at Waia, whose back was turned to her and Horan. “…Guess it’s still hard to get over everything Torch took back in Hawaii, huh?”
Waia didn’t turn to address Quet. “I am getting over it. This is how. Eye for an eye. I can cry into a tub of ice cream once I’m done.”
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
Horan’s hand went to the crumpled-up patch of his jacket. He thought for a moment about approaching the Primus standing still and looking over the edge, then thought better of it. “So… I’m sorry about things turning out like this. I know you’ve had a rough… year… so I get it. And, uh, does this mean we’ll take some time to figure out what we’ll do about Deus?”
The motionless form of Waia stiffened. A hand went to cover her face. “…Doesn’t matter what I do… nobody ever listens…”
Horan winced. “No, I–”
Waia turned around to glare at Quet and Horan. “You keep thinking that’ll work. You keep figuring that a quick ‘oops-a-daisy’ makes it all fine. Well, sorry to say, but I clearly care about what you say a lot more than you care about me. Sure is convenient, Quet, that you throw our promise back at me when it comes to standing between me and Torch, but the moment you’re the one who has to put your money where your mouth is, you forget everything about ‘oh, we stick with who we trust’! Am I the only one here who really cares about what I’m doing? Or am I just a special exemption for you all?!”
Quet grimaced and looked away from Waia, eyes watering. Horan himself remained silent.
“Thought so.” Waia glanced at the entrance that Mark had disappeared down. “…I’m going to wait over there for Mark, and when he comes back out, I’m taking the Sera-who-cares from him before he does anything we all regret. You know what’ll happen if you try to stop me.”
Horan gasped quietly and stepped forward an inch. “No, ha–hang on, you can’t just take–!”
“Oh, what, should I engage him in civil debate while he’s holding something that can screw all of over in an instant?! Yeah, sure, because I’m sure Mark will succeed in hearing reason where Princess Marshmallow and King Compromise failed!” Waia stormed towards Horan, who stood directly in the way of her and the entryway. “Fine! I get it! Diplomacy isn’t my style! I’ve always been an advocate for the simpler solutions!”
“You don’t have to–”
Waia shoved Horan to the ground and walked past him, looking straight ahead the entire time. “Sure, yeah, I bet you think I’m real choked up about this! Miserable! No! None of you want to actually work to help people! Just hand it off to the first loser you can get your hands on who has more power than you! First the Indians, now Deus! At least you’re predictable with your patheticness…!”
Quet helped Horan to his feet. As he got back up, he pointed silently to Quet’s gloves and looked at her expectantly.
“Why am I even surprised?!” continued Waia. “You’ve all always been like this, and you won’t change even when it starts getting you killed! No, change is sca…!”
She halted in her tracks, staring ahead silently as the entryway stretched away into the far distance. Looking down, she saw a line of green glyphs stretching from one end of the structure to the other. A similar line was barely visible in front of the entryway, over a thousand feet away.
Waia looked over her shoulder at Quet, whose hands were raised defensively. “You…”
“I… I can’t, okay?!” Quet looked at Waia pleadingly. “I don’t know how to stop this!”
“You can stop this by putting this place back the way it was and letting me stop Mark,” replied Waia. “Once I’ve gotten the opportunity to explain to you why you can’t just cry for daddy the moment things go wrong, we can put this behind us and everyone can treat me like some blindly loyal meat-stick again. We’re all more comfortable that way, aren’t we? Waia never loses. Winning’s what she’s good for.”
Quet took a shaky step back. “M–Mark said that there’s something out there that can mess with your head. Don’t you think that maybe–?”
Waia scoffed, turned around, and started walking back towards Quet and Horan. “Oh, you keep looking for excuses, don’t you?! Sorry pal, this is who I am! Who I’ve always been! You’ve acknowledged it! I’ve been solving my problems the only way I can for the past year, and I’m not gonna have a change of heart just because you’re the one who has to deal with it.”
Quet took another step back, but Waia was nevertheless rapidly closing the distance between the two. “You were talking about what we agreed to just now! Isn’t this just what whoever’s doing all this wa–?”
“And now, because you feel like it, the rules suddenly apply to you again!” Waia heard a quiet groan behind her as Quet’s glyphs timed out and space returned to normal behind her. She didn’t care at that point. “You think you’re special? You think that what you’ve gone through makes you unique?! Nobody’s gonna change who they are because of a pair of freshly mortal puppy-dog eyes! People don’t change! I’m always gonna be the one who has to stick to punching her problems away, just like everyone figured out I would be the minute I started thinking for myself!”
Horan stepped between Quet and Waia, arms held out wide like a human shield. “Don’t hurt her.” His eye scanned Waia for anything, any indicator that proved that Waia wasn’t herself. That Mark was right again, and her actions and words weren’t her own. He couldn’t find anything.
Waia chopped Horan in the ribs, making him crumple to the floor like a house of cards. Waia stepped over Horan’s wheezing form and stared daggers at Quet. “Everyone keeps figuring me out so quickly. I guess that means my ‘deep-down’ truth isn’t all that deep, huh? It’s not like I’ve been hiding it. I said what would happen if you tried to stop me from doing what nobody cares enough to take my word on, and here I am, true to my word. You’ll thank me when you come to in a few hours.”
Quet lowered her hands and accepted her fate. “I know who you are.”
Waia pulled back her fist. “Yeah. You do.”
A gunshot echoed throughout the misty expanse, fading from hearing after a far longer time than one would have expected. Maybe it was the acoustics of the structure’s peak. Maybe it was just a trick of the mind.
Waia stumbled forward, lurching past Quet and stumbling to her knees. The back of her vest, the only part of her torso not yet stained through with golden blood, blossomed into a stain of the very same kind, centered on the bullet hole just to the right of her spine.
Quet looked at the bleeding out Waia on the floor, then traced the origin of the bullet.
The Seraphium clattered to the floor and rolled away from Mark as it was released from its position tucked under his arm. Mark ran towards the three Primoi, dropping his gun in his wake. “No, no, no-no-no…” He dropped to his knees next to the face-down Waia and examined the bullet wound in horror. “I didn’t… it worked…”
Waia stared ahead, glassy-eyed from accumulated blood loss, and felt her legs growing weaker. “…Huh.”
Mark cupped his hands around Waia’s bullet wound and focused on it as intensely as he could manage. “She’ll… She’ll be fine. She’ll heal. She’s way tougher than Omet ever was…” He looked over his shoulder at the remaining two. “I–I saw what was happening, but I was just acting on reflex! What happened?!”
Quet helped a short-of-breath Horan to his feet, then slowly lay him back down when he grunted in pain and clutched the spot Waia had struck. Quet glanced momentarily in Mark’s direction. “I don’t… I can’t think about that right now. I don’t know what’s going on…”
“Okay, it’s…” Mark futilely covered Waia’s bullet wound with his hands. “It’ll be fine. We’re fine.”
Everyone froze when they heard something crack off to the side.
Evidently, the floor of Deus’ structure wasn’t quite level, as when Mark had dropped the Seraphium, it had simply kept on rolling all the way to the edge.
Thankfully, something had stopped it from falling over the edge.
Torch’s shrivelled, blood-soaked form rose into view, hauled up the vertical side of the structure by a pair of long, thin tentacles of flesh sprouting from their shoulder blades that dug into the stone via the claws on the tips. In their one remaining arm, the Seraphium was held tight between the steel shards still embedded in their fingers. The last vestiges of their jumpsuit, cloak and armor, already shredded to pieces by their fight with Waia and the proceeding transformations, fell off their body and returned to the abyss below.
Mark, Quet and Horan looked on in terror as Torch pulled themself up onto the top of the structure once more. They knew that Torch could do whatever they wanted long before anyone could stop them. They wouldn’t be slowed down by bragging this time. They had no need to do so.
Torch’s mouth spread wide open, revealing row upon row of unnaturally long teeth that formed something that few could ever recognize as a grin. They raised the Seraphium to their mouth, stared at the four victims with bloodshot blue eyes, and slowly hissed through their teeth.
“Successful work… contingency. Creator, come forth.”
Torch became silhouetted in a wave of blue light, coming from somewhere behind the other four. Mark, Quet and Horan all turned to see the thin vertical line of the Pillar, making itself visible through the fog as the light within brightened to impossible levels. A moment later, however, the Pillar reached its limit, and exploded.
A wave of light rippled outwards from the shattered monolith, filling the horizon as it raced towards the lonely castle in the sky. But a split second before it washed over them, the purposeless structure’s five inhabitants were whisked away, brought back to witness the true end of the world.