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Chapter 26
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“Wait, do you mean Cordax or Winger?” Diero blurted out.
“Wait, you mean the Sun?” Sonus immediately followed suit.
“Wait, you have a kid?” Renner’s mostly dead head suddenly asked.
I gripped what equated the nose bridge on my wooden Akaku and tried not to scream. “How… How are you talking?”
“How did you have a kid?” Renner asked, still extremely confused. “Diero, being upside down isn’t very- thank you. And please tell me your son is somewhere far away and isn’t that yellow-faced turd ball who stabbed you in the stomach.”
“It was the chest, boss.” Diero murmured.
“I, uh, hate to break up the mood like this,” Sonus interjected. “But I found something you all should see. It could be important to us. Also,” He continued, “I was far more interested in the prospect when I was under the impression you had your own personal Sun, but since that isn’t the case I don’t care anymore.”
The resulting silence was so incredibly awkward nobody else felt like talking.
It was a very short walk to the spot were Sonus had first fallen, and a stone’s throw from there brought us to the base of an elevator shaft. In front of it was a brownish pile of powder, sand-like in consistency, with a shock of white hair above it. Diero scraped his hand through it and dragged a small child’s coat from under the pile. I visibly jumped.
“You want to tell us what that’s about now?” Renner glared, upside-down, dangling from his synthetic spine.
“Your voice…” I began, looking for an easy way to change the subject.
“Oh crap,” Renner looked about suddenly. “Diero, get me to a power source fast - I could die if my temporary supply drains without any self-regulating capability! Do whatever you have to, just-- GO!!”
Grabbing me with one hand and Sonus with the other, wearing his master’s spine like a necklace, Diero vaulted over debris in the direction of the orange lights from before. He followed them at a rapid pace until a wall of heat convinced him to slow his endeavors.
“Yikearoni, that’s hot.” He peered over the edge of a large container of molten rock, flowing constantly as if guided along. “You telling me that Ghid’s evil nuclear reactor is also a stereotypical villain base with a lava river? This is so cliché.”
“Yeah, it doesn’t look remotely cool.” I sent an ineffective elbow towards Diero which either prompted or added to the prompting of a horrible joke to glare at me.
“POWER SOURCE, MORONS!!” Renner snapped.
“Aha, here’s something.” Diero vaulted across the gap of lava like he was simply jumping a crack in the sidewalk, but it thoroughly scared me to pieces. I was clawing at his arm in desperation when he landed on the other side, setting me down as he approached his target: a small pillar centralized atop a large cylindrical platform. Unlike the rest of the technology present in the room it appeared to have electricity running through it, which was strange because it definitely did not the last time I was here.
Of course, this was all realized later; I was too busy backpedaling away from the edge of the platform in shock. My body was violently shaking again and I was really wanting to punch Sonus for just giving me a confused stare with that big creepy head of his instead of doing something useful, like jumping in the lava so I didn’t have to think about him. Diero was mumbling out non-words as the central pillar did not appear to have a port of any kind present, and Renner’s lights were waning.
“This stupid thing!” Diero suddenly yelled, kicking at the pillar. “We are this close to fixing things and the stupid thing doesn’t even have an outlet! What the heck do I do?!”
But my mind was not reveling on the things of the present, but those of the past. A realization had crossed my mind that this Sonus fellow had his name written on the wall during that ghastly confrontation with what turned out to be Monopoly, and if one thing managed to come about from that, perhaps others…
“Sonus,” I began, looking at the disfigured Dreamer and trying to fight off the need to glare at him. “Who is the story departed?”
Sonus gave me the wildest look. “How do you know about that?!”
“Before you… Appeared,” I carefully refrained from saying possessed the talking butt of a half-wit, “There was some writing done by that Monopoly fellow. It mentioned you and a few other things, but only you by name. Something about a story departed and chronicler gone, he who swallowed the sun… Mostly nonsense.”
Sonus gave me an even wilder stare, which slowly contorted itself into one of concentrated hate. “I don’t know anything about any writing. But I think you’re just lying to see how much I know. You’re with him, aren’t you?”
His body suddenly glowed a fiery white. “You’re with the one to trust.”
Diero saw this and quickly dropped his boss, whipping out his revolvers. “Hey, boss says he survives for now. Okay? We need this ragamuffin despite how much of an annoying, braindead, cuckoo, dimwitted, egocentric, foolhardy, gabby, horrid, idiotic-”
“Is this a distraction?” Sonus growled.
“Yes.”
Diero tossed one revolver towards me as he sent three shots into Sonus’ eyes, but they all sank into his white-hot skull and dissipated. Smashing the butt end of his revolver into the figure only slightly staggered him, and thoroughly ruined the gun. Ticked off at the sight of his second favorite revolver being ruined, Diero yelled some noise and slammed into the tiny figure, his body immediately beginning to melt and bubble on contact.
“I have to kill him. Don’t you see?” Sonus grabbed Diero by the arm and pinched it right off. “He knows about the world I came from. The world He died trying to redeem… He clearly works with the one to trust, the one you call Ghid. He-”
“Do me a favor.” Diero said, grabbing the figure by the eye sockets with his remaining hand and holding him over the brink. “When you get back to wherever morons come from, tell them to stop coming.”
His hand melted through and Sonus plummeted - for a brief moment he sammed his hand into the lip of the structure, but his white-hot fingers ate right through it all the way to the bottom. He only thrashed for a moment; the molten rock bubbled over his eyes and extinguished the flame. Unconscious, the little figure statically drifted to a fiery sleep submerged in heat and darkness.
“Tott,” Diero murmured wearily, turning around and staring at me with those needle-like eyes. “If you ever betray me, I’m so going to kill you to pieces.”
“Cool.” I murmured back. “Your boss’ battery is looking really low, though - perhaps we should get this pillar figured out and then try to, I dunno, revive him or-”
Diero had stopped moving. The lights were gone. Looking back, I saw the last sign of life leave the already fairly destroyed mechanical head. They were both gone, possibly forever. Monopoly had managed to eliminate them all.
“It’s just you, then?”
The voice seemed to sound from the room itself. I jumped in reply, thoroughly spooked - last I had checked, there was no ominous room voice installed down here. Then again, I hadn’t been this deep in Uncle Ghid’s Cider Factory in a long time.
“Good.” The room said, seemingly pleased with my being alone. “Let’s get this over with, Tott.”
Well that wasn’t ominous at all. Neither was the center planform suddenly lowering down in the middle, the lifeless body of Diero tipping forward and falling on top of me as it descended. Not ominous in the slightest bit.
If you can’t tell, I’m being overly sarcastic.
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