Q dumped us into a remote island surrounded by nothing but a beautiful ocean. The tropical breeze and calming waves were a nice distraction from the utter chaos that we had just escaped from, and the lazy afternoon sun would have made the scene perfect if not for the giant squirming mass of hair. Attached to it was a Molly who didn’t look all too pleased.
She unraveled the bundle and a huge monstrosity… drooped out? It plopped lifelessly onto the sandy beach sporting an all too familiar shade of purple. It looked kind of…
“It’s sedated,” she explained before I could say anything, “I don’t want to risk anything further until we figure out our next steps.”
“Good idea,” Xalla said with a tired smile.
“All of us should give our input this time,” Molly continued, looking straight at me, “I think that will be a better idea going forward.”
I winced, but couldn’t exactly disagree with her. Xalla gave me a comforting glance although I think that hurt my pride more than it helped. Me and making a mess of things were fast becoming things that went hand and hand.
“Should we get rid of the Calamity creature?” Xalla asked, pointing at the whimpering mass.
The creature struggled feebly when it heard Xalla say that and tried to grumble something in protest. Unfortunately, Molly’s curse was too strong for it to overcome and only half gurgled gibberish came out of its various mouths. Not even Noe’s ability could translate what it was trying to say, and I just gave the creature a gentle pat on its massive head. I almost felt bad for it.
And speaking of mouths, I peered at it further and saw that it was a rather impressive creature for mortal standards... if it were not a sickly shade of purple and looked like it would die at any moment that is. The first thing that anyone would notice was the sheer scale of the thing. Even slumped on the ground, it was the size of a multi-storied shopping mall, and it took up almost the entirety of the small island we were on.
Next thing of note was its eight pairs of massive legs that ended in serrated talons, each the height of an elephant. Scales the size of dinner plates lined the creature’s body, while six pairs of membraned wings lined its back. I couldn’t see how far they extended with the creature all shriveled up, but I can’t imagine them being small or unimpressive.
The most impressive feature - had it been less dead-looking - was its three separate sets of mouths that lined its head. The central mouth was the largest, the opening so large that it made up almost a third of the thing's body mass, while the two smaller ones lined each side of its face. A cacophony of various eyes, all of different shapes and sizes, lined every inch of its body, and I could feel the toxic fumes being breathed out of the thing every time it exhaled. I’m sure it was an impressive beast in its prime.
Q walked around it with an inquisitive eye, studying the creature like he would one of his alchemical creatures, before walking back to us and shaking his head. “No, Xalla… This creature is man-made, or deity-made in this case; I’m not sure which member of this dimension’s pantheon was responsible for its creation, but I think everyone can agree that we shouldn’t destroy even more things on our sojourn.”
Xalla didn’t look happy about Q’s information, although the creature visibly eased upon hearing us spare its fate.
“But surely we can’t just release it,” Xalla added, poking the thing on its big side, “The world’s already in turmoil, and letting something called the Calamity can’t help our cause.”
I furrowed my brows and stared at the massive pain in the butt before us. “Does anyone know how to seal it again? I’ve never been good with the magic side of things.”
“I can’t help either,” Molly said after some thought, “Not without destroying this dimension in any case.”
Xalla frowned and shook her head. She was the head of security, but she usually dealt with existing threats and their prevention. We all turned to look at Q with anticipation.
“I can’t help either,” Q said with a small shake of his head, “I can do the basics like personal wards and barriers, but Lord Babylon would be more suited for something like this.”
“And I’m guessing we can’t just go back and get him,” I said.
Q sighed, “No… After our last little stunt, we risk dimensional collapse if we exit now, not to mention how difficult it will be to enter without being noticed again. This reality needs time to heal, and we’re on our own for the time being.”
I remembered those cracks in spacetime just a few minutes earlier and had to agree with Q.
“Then what do we do with it?” I asked again, pointing to the ill-looking Calamity, “Do we just leave it here?”
Molly shook her head, “That would be irresponsible of us to do so. We can’t leave it crippled like this, and my curse will wear off over time. It seems intelligent, we can send it to the strongest settlement and let the natives handle it.”
Q smiled and nodded, “I see, so your plan is to send it weakened so that it will be easily captured without doing too much damage, am I correct in my assumptions, Lady Malice?”
“Exactly,” she answered, “I have a good grasp of the abilities of the locals here, and I can ensure that my curse is just strong enough for this Calamity to reach its needed destination without causing unnecessary harm when it arrives.”
I thought about her proposal for a moment but couldn’t help but worry that something would go wrong again. After everything we've been through, I was starting to severely doubt our abilities to be subtle or careful.
“Are you sure that’s our best course of action?” I asked, “This thing is called the Calamity, and we have a track record of overestimating mortals…”
“The alternative is leaving it here to recover to full strength, which is problematic in many ways, or killing it outright, which may severely hamper our already strained relations with the local gods,” Molly said, "Whoever created this beast must have put a lot of effort into it, and let me be the first to say just how much a large project like this may mean to its creator."
“So either option's a no-go,” I said with a sigh, “Alright, I don’t think we have any alternatives here, but let the record show that I think it’s a bad idea to send this thing to a settlement.”
"And your opinion is noted," Molly answered with a dismissive shake of her head.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“The cities should be well defended now more than ever with those prophecies,” Xalla added quickly, “This is the best time to release it. And if things really don’t go as planned, we still have the alternative of killing it.”
The beast shuddered again and made another feeble attempt to say something.
“Alright,” I said and turned my attention to this Calamity, “You heard that, right?”
A tiny nod answered my inquiry.
“In a little bit, Molly here will weaken the curse and you’ll have to go fly to the strongest human- er, I mean native settlement here. The absolute strongest and most well-defended place, do you get that?”
Another nod.
“Then you are to… I don’t know, cause some trouble I guess,” I continued, looking around at my friends to make sure that I was on the right track. They didn’t contradict me.
“Should we tell it to lose on purpose?” Xalla added, “We do want to minimize damage.”
Molly shook her head, “It’ll barely be alive when it goes there; having it hold back might just lead to its demise. We’re trying to strike a delicate balance here.”
“Alright,” I continued, speaking to the beast again, “So you’re to go and cause trouble and do your best not to get killed. Do you understand?”
It nudged its massive head up and down. It really did look pathetic. Well, guess there's nothing else to do but release it into the wild.
I gestured to Molly with a nod, “Let the poor thing fly.”
A huge amount of tendril-like hair started to pour out between the gaps in the thing’s scales. The beast’s color started to recover almost immediately, although it was still clearly lethargic.
“Go,” she said, “And don’t think you’re free from me. If I hear that you’re not doing what we told you, we can always find you.”
It screeched in fear and immediately flew away. Well, after stumbling a few times and uprooting several trees that is. The force of its lift-off was like a localized typhoon as entire trees were uprooted from the sheer volume of wind being displaced. Just seeing it leave toward the horizon sent chills down my back, and I just hoped whatever poor settlement it decided to visit was ready for what was to come, weakened state or not.
I took a big breath, feeling relieved now that one of our bigger problems had disappeared into the gloomy darkness of the horizon. Wait a second… I frowned and looked up. The sun was clearly there, and if this planet was at all similar to the Main Stage and Earth, then it should be around mid-noon, so how was there a dark horizon? In fact, looking at the horizon closer, it was becoming abundantly clear that the darkness was spreading.
“That…” I muttered, pointing to the direction the Calamity left, “That’s not normal, right?”
The others stopped what they were doing and looked toward the horizon. It was still far, far off in the distance, but thanks to the endless expanse of the ocean around us, our views were not obstructed.
“Ah.” Q said.
“It is coming from the direction of the city we destroyed…” Xalla added, “Do you suppose we messed up the weather or atmosphere when the beast was unsealed?”
Q squinted before frowning, “No.”
Molly looked up and sighed again, “That’s a phenomenon I’m all too familiar with. We’ve destabilized the dimension with our last little jaunt. Wonderful.”
“So definitely no backup from the outside then, although I don’t think even Big Bob can fix this mess we’ve made,” I grumbled, “And here I thought things couldn’t get worse.”
Xalla looked around in confusion. “Sorry, but what’s going on? I’m not used to going to these small dimensions, at least not when I had to be careful, but what did we do?”
“We broke the fabric of spacetime,” Molly answered, “Well, maybe wounded it is more accurate to say. The fact that we’re still standing on solid ground instead of an empty vacuum is a good sign, we haven’t caused irreversible damage yet.”
Xalla frowned, “But we barely did anything back there.”
Q cut in, “Our entrance to this plane already stressed the dimension to its breaking point, and given its remarkably fragile nature, you can imagine what would happen after our little stunt.”
I recalled the exploding council members and what we did. Molly’s disappearing act tore away at the space around us, while Xalla’s causal swipe fractured the dimension even further. I didn’t really help by summoning the abyss here either. I sighed again, Q was the only one among us with any sense of tact or subtly. We all looked at each other in embarrassment.
Xalla winced and pointed at the expanding void in the sky, “But we can fix that, right?”
I could even see horrible-looking lightning and supernatural weather patterns clearly now that it had encroached further toward us. The sky was alight with the crackling of electrical discharge and the football-sized hail looked like missiles as they hurled into the ocean’s waters. Waves the size of condominiums were flailing away, and I could almost hear the rush of wind even from here. All of that’s bad enough, and that was ignoring the obvious cracks forming in the very space around it.
End Bringers, what a fitting name.
Molly sighed again, “No. At least it’s outside the scope of my abilities. The good news is that the weather should get better as it expands away from the epicenter, so there’s that.”
Yeah, a whole lot of good that’ll do.
“We fucked up,” I muttered.
“I can perhaps stop it,” Q said, he was the most adept individual here when it came to the galaxies and universes. “But not here in the mortal world, and not without a better understanding of the dimension. But it’ll ultimately be up to the local pantheon to do the repairs, it is their world after all.”
I shook my head. “So it’s even more important that we see the gods as soon as possible. Nothing new. So what do you think our chances of explaining things calmly and rationally to the local gods now?”
My friends gave me a scathing look. I think the consensus was clear here.
“So what do we do now?” Xalla asked.
“We stick with the initial plan,” Q answered, “although some things might need adjustments with the new developments. I’m sure that if we visit a different holy city that’s in need of help and prove ourselves, we can at least convene with the leaders there and potentially establish basic relations with the gods here. This world seems deeply religious, and we’ve already seen that the gods’ priests have direct lines of communication with their patron deity.”
“So we go through the priests to get to the gods,” Xalla said, “Got it.”
"I think subtly is out the window at this point, so we'll use force if need me," I added, "Er, within reason, that is."
No one disagreed there. I looked around and saw that no one else had a better idea. Then again, the options available to us were already strained as is. At this point, all we could do was hope to avoid an all-out confrontation with the local pantheon. Of course, there was still one big issue remaining.
“Now the problem is how we’re getting there,” I said, “You dropped us pretty far from anything, and I don’t think we can afford to swim back to civilization.”
“Ah.”
“Ah indeed, Q.” Molly shook her head. “There’s no helping it, if we’d known this sooner, we might have been able to hitch a ride on that Calamity beast, but as is, we’ll have to exit via a portal. At least a local gateway will not stress the world… much.”
I winced when I saw the rapidly expanding patch of dusk. At this rate, it’d only be a matter of days or weeks until the entire planet was covered in supernatural darkness and abnormal weather. I recalled that corrupt Earth I was in before and could already imagine what life would be like on this planet if we didn’t fix things.
Once again I was impressed by how accurate the prophecies were, although I think the god of fate or whatever didn’t consider that all of the damage we caused was because of incompetence and not malice. I just hope that god actually believes that.
“I’ve located the next largest civilization with a high concentration of faith, it’s not too far from here either so the damage should be minimal,” Q said. “Let’s go before things get even worse.”