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Chapter 27
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Only briefly did I see the figure, an infinite void of blue and black, pulsating with life, as if the two forces were intertwined on a galactic scale, each vying for dominance on whatever lay beyond. The blue glowed almost white, and the black seemed to seep the light away into nothingness, but both forces were contained between the complex arrangement of a thousand silvery shards, all arranged in the vague shape of a man, who floated now in the air about Monopoly’s vibrating skull.
Wordlessly it glanced at me, its face comprised of five major points emerging from the center, not arranged into a star but more of a mask of sorts. It looked down at me, two particularly bright points functioning as eyes, glowing from in between gaps in the mask. I couldn’t tell if it was a look of resolution or pity.
Turning towards Cordax, who now stood frozen in fear at the entity before him, it reached out and gently took the knife from his quivering fingers, the weapon traveling along its form until it found a gap in its chest and nestled itself inside. The figure slowly extended further and touched the electronic visor which comprised the flaxen fellow’s eyes, lighting them up to a violent degree.
The next second, it was gone, no trace of its presence visible save for the clearly damaged Monopoly skull, which faded more and more until, with a violent SNAP, it disappeared. There was a moment of absolute silence, and then Cordax suddenly dropped down, out of view. I craned my neck around, but I was pretty confident I knew what happened.
The room began to shift one final time, and I decided to grab onto something this time around, but as I reached for the nearest bolted piece of furniture I was appalled at how slowly my arm was moving - far too slowly to reach it in time. My grasping hand eventually did collide with something, which I wrapped myself around as best I could, but it was not secured to anything else, and so I tumbled about with little awareness as to which side of the room I was on at any given moment.
Eventually the room came to a halt, and I wearily looked down at what I had grasped. It was the uncomfortably pointy helmet of Ghidrius, whose heavily concealed eyes glowed out from their individual slits now with the light of resolution, evidently a witness to events that had just unfolded. Something stirred in the corner of my vision, and I turned towards Gofers, who was blubbering and dragging both the unresponsive body of Diero and the decapitated body of Renner into the room, Renner’s head nestled in Gofers’ elbow.
“And- and I can’t find Winger anywhere and I’m mortified and I don’t know what to d-do , w-what do I d-d-” He continued stuttering, earning a little bit of a glare from me. But truth be told, I was pretty mortified at seeing the argent agitator with a spherical cutout where his collar bone was supposed to be. Several more voices began chiming in, and I realized the mucky mimic had reappeared with the full entourage in tow, which was now piling out into the small room which I was beginning to question just how the whole fight had been contained here.
“I don’t know- I don’t know what to do.” Gofers’ voice began to plummet, not in volume but in the will to live that lay behind it. “I couldn’t even see him move. He was so fast, so very… Where is he? Is he still here? He’s not still here, is he?”
“Gone.” Cordax replied, still staring straight forward. His eyes eventually refocused, and he was drawn back into reality. “I just… saw… Oh, no-”
Cordax’s abject horror at Renner’s circumstance was interrupted by his loving stomach, which had decided to whisper in sweet words to go over in the corner and loudly empty its contents onto the floor. Instead of realizing and giving credence to the situation everyone in the room did the immensely unpolite thing and glared at Cordax as he did this.
“Please don’t rotate the room again until that’s cleaned up.” Gofers swallowed, somehow, I have no idea how these stupid skeletons do half the things they do. “Now uh, what do we do? I don’t know if there’s a way to-”
Winger emerged from the Ghid glop, instantly writing on his shoulder in barely-identifiable words. You go ahead and write on your shoulder and tell me you can do any better. Anyway, Gofers’ flapping jaw had his shoulder shoved in it, and he barely was able to close his jaws on the cloth before his eyes burst into flame, reeling the rest of him back in a furious roar. Dropping Diero, he stacked Renner’s head on his neckless body and slammed a flaming fist directly through the hole.
Pulling it out in dramatic fashion, I could feel eyebrows I didn’t have raise in admiration as the action of drawing his fist back out completely restored the hole it passed through. “That was weird.” Gofers said, looking at his hand in disbelief while his other hand still held Renner by the skull. “Why is my hand still-”
“It’s flaming because you aren’t done.” Winger replied, busy trying to wipe the writing off his shoulder in vain. “Do it again. And I think you know where.”
With a quick nod, Gofers punched through the mechanical heart which had reformed, and the moment he drew his balled-up hand back out, Renner broke into a frenzied fit, swatting at the hand holding his skull until he was dropped in surprise on the floor. “Diero! Don’t let him n- uhh,” He looked around at the destroyed environment. “Where’s the, uh… Hmm. Is everyone alright? Did we win?”
I tried to cough, but nothing happened. No lungs will do that to you, I suppose. “Everyone will be.” I eventually replied, after Renner failed to take the hint from everyone turning to look at me. “In a little while, everyone will be.”
The room of people did me the immense disservice of crowding around me and getting as close as possible. Winger looked down at my now absent left side, too horrified to say anything, which I responded to by pointing at his left shoulder, slowly breaking into a flimsy laugh as the irony of the situation dawned on me.
“There must be something.” Winger’s voice barely remained at normal volume while my emotionally racked laugh died into wooden clicks emanating from the remainder of my artificial lungs. “You can’t die here. We could… AI, there’s a way to turn people into AI, maybe we could-”
“Of course!” Wild said, suddenly reappearing in the room from whatever mechanism he had been inhabiting. “Gofers, that shelf behind you- the drawer with the AI units, please!” The glowing speck verbally patted himself on the back as his accomplice in homelessness unlocked the drawer and dug about. “These babies have a range of sixty feet and can turn anyone dying in that radius into an AI that can live forever. I’m also pretty sure the cops standing on the other side of that hole in the ceiling will arrest us for having them as they defy several conventions, but that’s really only gonna be a problem for bony boy over there, since I can’t be imprisoned.”
“Th-” Gofers began, before pausing to glare at Wild. “There’s one used one. I thought they were all new- ah, here’s one, brand-new, so let’s see if it works…”
I was looking despondently downwards even before Gofers flipped the switch. It buzzed to life, growing annoyingly loud before burning itself out. Winger looked between the device and me several times before a realization made his shoulders fall.
“Ghid…”
“It’s okay.” I replied, my hand feebly extending and taking his. “I’ve overstayed my welcome regardless. Let the rest of the world know Ghid died, and if it pleases them to know, tell them he died small. It’ll help heal some of the wounds I’ve caused. But not all.” My eyes traveled to the stump of his shoulder, and he noticed the motion but refused to follow them.
“Please.” Winger’s voice trembled. “I’ve only just gotten to know you. Don’t go, Ghid. Not now, not so… So soon…”
I looked about at the rest of the people in the room. Racie, Renner, now Bird and Pakari had climbed down to observe. So many faces, horrible faces hiding extremely low intellects behind their ugly eyes, but hidden even further beyond that was a group of hearts so incredibly strong, emboldened by circumstance to reach even higher than the stars. Even Cordax had waddled up, now touching my shoulder, looking for some kind of escape I could take to avoid the fate I so richly deserved.
“You have the keys of immortality in your hand.” I replied, and sensing his thought I slowly shook my head. “No, don’t use him now. It wouldn’t work on me anyway. I’ve been postponing the reaper for a lot longer than you’ve been alive, I… It’s time I payed some debts I’ve owed for a long, long time. I can’t run forever, I can’t make myself the villain forever without ever facing that final trumpet call.”
“Renner.” I eyed him not with any disappointment or disgust, but as an equal for perhaps the first time. “Take care of him. The world is a vast and horrible place… And he deserves so much better than what I’ve done. Please.”
“You have my word.” His voice softly replied, a solemn nod following shortly after. “I won’t let you down.”
“Cordax, that book…” I turned to his yellow visage, then nodded. “Read it sometime. It’s a lot more disappointing than you might imagine, mostly depressing, all of it penned by me.”
“No.” Winger nearly crushed my hand, desperation in his voice. “No. I’m not leaving you. Never. I’m not letting you go.”
“You aren’t. You’re taking me with you wherever you go, a part of me, with a choice.” I replied, ignoring AI returning through the pipe in the ceiling and freezing at the sight of what was happening. “You have the ability to access a world where anything is possible… You have immortality at the hands of your Dreamer. You decide when you want me back, Winger. It’s your destiny to fulfill and your life to live. You decide when you’re ready.”
“And when you do, say the word. Send your Dreamer to collect me. I’ll be waiting.” Winger seemed to ignore the tone, reaching down and hugging me as best as one arm would allow. My free hand reached at the slowest pace possible to grasp Renner’s, who did his best to hide his shaking as he nodded once more.
“Goodbye, everyone. I’ll see you in a while.”
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"…Heh, you could almost say this was the highest fall of………
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