Universe's End

“Where are we going?” Allison asked, the two of them sprinting.

“Nowhere. Everywhere. There.”

“Alright, you’re doing that on purpose,” Allison complained. “English, clear answers please!”

“You know the old cartoons where you could see Bugs Bunny tunneling through the ground, and the ground would bulge along the way?”

“No?”

“God, you had a sad childhood. The point is, Eon is trying to drag something out of the information decay of this place, and while I have no idea why I can recognize its ‘signature,’ the fact is that I can. I’m hunting it because once it’s ripped free, we might be able to take advantage and step through.”

“And the catalyst event allowing this?”

“I already said I don’t know!” Rory playfully shouted. “No TV in here to see what’s going on out there.”

That was the reality of their situation; the odd trash-heap dimension was about as useful as staring at a brick wall for figuring anything out, disconnected from the rest of reality.

Sprinting, jumping, and otherwise avoiding anything about the decaying reality that could endanger their goal of escaping, the pair finally came into view of something that made them pause.

“I take it that’s probably the destination.”

“I think so,” Rory said.

“You think so?”

“Well, no one gave me a manual on how any of this place works.”

The strange reality was already an oddity unlike anything Rory had experienced. Now he stared at what looked like a rippling distortion of shapes overlapping one another, uncaring about trite concepts like matter being unable to coexist in the same space. Of course, applying those rules here was about as useful as a screen door on a submarine, but even just looking at the weirdly rippling space was starting to hurt his head.

Which said something, given all his cognitive investment; it took quite a bit for him to witness something his brain couldn’t rationalize or make sense of.

“Now what?” Allison asked.

“I don’t know,” Rory said, a sentiment he didn't like and wasn't used to saying so often. Staring at the distorted space for several more moments, Rory finally sighed as his eyes began to glow. This realm had no naturally occurring pneuma, so anything they used had to come from within, and bottoming out their internal reserves meant that if the need arose to use magic or skills that required pneuma, he’d be shit out of luck.

Except, Rory figured this was probably one of those times to begin with.

Unleashing the ocular release of Eyes of the Architect to their utmost maximum, Rory began to digest as much information as he could, trying to make sense of something. Yet even with the full release, the sight before him still looked like little more than a bunch of geometric shapes morphing and reshaping themselves while simultaneously sharing space.

C’mon, there has to be something.

Squinting hard, Rory flipped his palms upward as a golden circle appeared beneath him, drawing even more of his internal reserves out as he attempted to use a magic circle to boost the skill further. It was a rather forcible methodology for juicing out even more from the skill, and one that almost anyone with half a brain would advise against doing when it came to internal skills like Eyes of the Architect, but now wasn’t the time for caution.

With that said.

Taking a deep breath, Rory activated one final ‘skill’ and uncapped his cognition. Everything seemed to slow to a crawl, and Rory became acutely aware of the blood beginning to flow from his orifices in response, dripping in slow motion as his perception of the world accelerated.

Alright, there has to be something here to make sense of.

He felt as if he were trying to see through a sheet of steel just by staring at it really hard, but being a Founder was about being that person who could still somehow make that work, that could squint that much harder than anyone else only to unlock X-ray vision.

And so Rory squinted until, at last, something clicked. He wasn’t sure what, but it was something, as if in the chaos of the jumbling geometric shapes he’d recognized a single pattern, a pinhole-worth of space to thread a needle to elsewhere. From that pinhole crack, Rory felt the pull of familiarity more strongly than ever before.

My… My old doctor’s office?

It had finally clicked now that he was so close, but he swore he had the oddest sense of déjà vu, as if he were a child again, waiting to get checked out by his childhood doctor. Why exactly that was the tether that Eon was using, Rory had absolutely no idea; it really shouldn’t have been that strong of a connection, and time that he’d spent in the –

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Oh!

All at once, Rory finally figured it out, but there wasn’t time to dwell on it, as time suddenly snapped back into its normal flow. Dropping, he was saved from collapsing as Allison caught him.

“The hell were you doing? You look like a mess?” Allison asked. “I’ve seen you take hits from territory alphas and receive less damage than whatever you just said.”

Blood was pouring from the corners of his eyes, his nose, and even his ears, and all over his body, his skin was burning up like he’d been sitting under the scorching Sahara sun for days straight.

“Something, something.” Rory took a moment to catch his breath, struggling to form words. “Stare into the abyss, and it stares back. The gist of it, at least.”

“Well?”

“It will work.”

“How? What do you need to do?”

“Not me.” Rory shook his head. “You.”

“Me?”

“You. Your armor. Pierce through reality. Then I ‘push’ us through.”

“So, I just stab the thing?”

“No… Yes,” Rory finally sighed. He had no chance of explaining the intricacies of what she’d actually need to do in such a short time. “Just don’t fuck up.”

“So, stab the thing, don’t fuck up, but also, no explanation. You’re just going to trust me?”

“Sure.” Rory shrugged. “Another opportunity might not come; can’t afford to waste this one by wringing our hands.”

“Isn’t that more reason to make sure it’s done properly?”

“In a perfect world,” Rory admitted. “But that’s not what we have. This fluctuation is unstable; it won’t last. Eon is doing some serious attempts at rule-breaking right now.”

“So, stab and pray.”

“Stab and pray,” Rory confirmed. “Instinct. Feel, act, and hopefully all that Jedi bullshit works.”

“Oh, I’ve seen Star Wars at least.”

“There is some hope for you then,” Rory sighed. “So, young Padawan, go, do, and get us the fuck out of here.”

“I don’t want to be the Padawan,” Allison sighed. “But fine. Time to Beam Us up out of here.”

“That’s… never mind.”

Angling her arm back, she summoned her spear, and at the same moment, her armor began to radiate power.

One shot.

There were plenty of details that Rory wasn’t clear on. Still, if his theories were correct, then yeah, Eon was definitely going to the distance for them, as much as it possibly could. Trying to pray for another shot might be something that never happened again, at least not like this.

With that in mind, Rory held his breath as Allison closed her eyes, steadying her breathing as if waiting for the perfect moment. At the zenith of utter stillness, everything froze for a single moment until, all at once, Allison lunged forward, spearing through the reality flux point.

Bingo.

Banking on the woman to perfectly lance the pinhead connection between this offshoot and their true reality should have been a one-in-a-trillion chance.

That was if she didn’t use her armor.

Instead, it was as if Allison had pruned away every possible outcome exceptthe exact one she needed. Spearing the connection point, Rory latched onto it, utterly disregarding his own safety as he yanked them both through the single existing gateway from one reality into another.

And just like that, the pair vanished.

“I really can’t hold this open much longer,” Eric said through gritted teeth. The three of them huddled inside a field of darkness that had been slowly pressed inward, the man forced to cede ground to the oversized worm’s domain. Beyond the limits of Nightfall, the world had turned to an utter hellscape as Kal-Rok’s anchored domain utterly terraformed the landscape into ash and death, beams of pure desiccating energy lancing from the clouds to the ground at seemingly random intervals.

The oversized monster was otherwise content to watch them; for all of their power, they’d been unable to meaningfully handle the sheer, overwhelming vital energy it had- a nearly infinite expanse. Of the three of them, only the Rogue had the sheer firepower to make any real progress, and there was only one of him. Anything the Vanguard could do was limited to single big hits, and those came at a cost; the Monk was hardly suited for such opponents if it came to actually leaving lasting damage.

“I can try to go out there and-”

“And what?” Tom snapped, the man clearly annoyed. “I warned you two. It doesn’t matter if you can survive in its domain for a period of time; what are we going to do with that?”

“Stop bitching,” Eric groaned, sweat pouring from his brow, the darkness veiling them, retreating further, now barely larger than the average bedroom. “It’s making it harder to focus.”

At the seams between the two clashing domains, it was like sparks were flying up, two overlapping images of reality snapping and biting at one another as they fought for dominance. The winner was inevitable, but that didn’t mean Eric would take it lying down. Pushing with everything he had, for a single moment it was like his Nightfall proto-domain managed to gain an inch of ground.

Then it shattered in a single catastrophic failure as his imposed reality collapsed.

Instantly, the hostile domain rushed forward to claim the space it had been denied, but before it could, something else filled that space. In the single moment when Eric’s version of reality shattered, actual reality wavered, if only barely.

But barely was enough, as a presence and energy unlike any they’d ever felt before rushed outward, utterly consuming Kal-Rok’s domain as if it existed purely to destroy such things.

More importantly, in the same moment that strange ‘energy’ appeared, two other figures appeared.

“Took you two god damn long enough,” Zoey huffed.

Looking nearly identical to the day they had vanished, both the Architect and the Spear had reappeared. In this case, the Spear supported the Architect, who looked like a bloody mess, as if he’d been put through a spin cycle in a blender full of tomatoes.

The Spear’s eyes darted around, her head swiveling as she assessed the situation as quickly as she could before nodding once.

“We need to run.”

“Thank you,” Tom said, wringing his hands.

“Rory isn’t in shape to fight,” The Spear said, pointing at the man she’d tossed over her shoulder, who grumbled incoherently.

“Neither are we,” Eric said. “Alright, bug out time!”

Instantly, shadows leaped up around them, cocooning them like a black silk blanket before dragging them away. Having realized victory was pretty much impossible after the initial three-hour mark, Eric had been mentally weaving the magic of their escape, holding it in the recesses of his mind until he was finally given the signal to scram, something he’d figured was coming shortly one way or another.

The chance of success would have been far more up in the air if he'd tried it within the enclosed domain of the oversized worm. Thankfully, the invading energy was still eating away at it, although that odd energy had already been rapidly fading. Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, a phrase that Eric had zero context for even as a denizen of their original universe, when the black shadow shell cracked, they had appeared far away, albeit still somewhere in the regions controlled by Ganju-ai.

“Good job, folks,” Eric said, just happy to be gone. “Now, let’s get the fuck out of here.”