Chapter Twelve: Reality Collapses
Written by Ethan
Puffs of ash coated Kaia’s legs as she sprinted along an unfamiliar path. She’d traveled it many times before and knew she was back in the same place again, but the environment seemed to shift every time she returned. Above her, the rust-colored sky was filled with smoke and billowing bursts of flame. Charred pillars surrounded her on all sides, remnants of trees that now stood as blackened spires.
Ahead, the path rose steeply and she climbed up with hands and feet, desperate to get above the flames and heavy air that burned her lungs with toxic fumes. At the summit, as always, stood the wall of famished flame that had consumed everything in its path. The flame burned darkly, and though its reach was all-encompassing and swelteringly hot, it gave off no illuminating light. The dark flame expanded, pushing her to the edge of the cliff and leaving her with only two choices: Step off the edge and plunge into the depths, or give in to the fire.
Looking into the dark flame, she thought she could make out gargantuan limbs moving in and out of billowing smoke, but the heat had scrambled her senses. Kaia closed her eyes and took one last breath as the flames caught up to her and began to singe her skin, then stepped forth and let the fire consume her entirely.
***
Kaia awoke to find Doro shaking her so hard that she was nearly pushed from her bed roll. The boy, now clad in an animal hide ensemble that looked like a shabbier version of the Harvester’s clothes, appeared nervously excited.
“Today is the day!” he exclaimed.
Kaia barely had time to process the unsettling dream before the details started to fade. She’d had the same nightmare every evening since they’d found Ja in the cave behind the waterfall. Every night the dream seemed to morph and change, but the outcome was always the same: she always walked into the flame, never off the side of the cliff. Kaia wasn’t one to dig too deeply into her dreams, but having the same one over and over seemed portentous of something, she just wasn’t sure of what. Selfishly, she wished that Ja had been the one plagued with these visions, as he had a way of finding deeper meaning behind the obscure.
“How is Ja?” she said, wiping her eyes.
“See for yourself,” Doro replied before bounding out of the hut and down to the beach.
Ja was crouched at the end of his own bedroll, carefully packing his satchel with an assortment of items gifted by the Harvester. Hearing she’d awakened, he turned and gave her a sheepish smile through a face that still showed the lingering effects of the Ghora’s attempted assimilation. While his body had mostly healed, Ja’s skin still had a sickly green hue and was clammy to the touch. One of his eyes still remained a dull yellow, though that change was merely cosmetic and didn’t affect his vision. He was wearing his new clothes as well, which covered most of his discolored skin and had a hood he could pull up to cover his face. The young man was more self-conscious about his monstrous appearance now than he had been during his time as the Blood Summoner. Unlike that transformation, his current state didn’t come with any benefits, only a reminder that his uncontrollable curiosity was a danger to himself and those around him.
“Looks like the Harvester was willing to help more than we thought,” he said, bringing his eyes away from Kaia and down to the items on his bed roll.
“Fighting with magical artifacts isn’t really my skill set,” said Kaia, hoping to give her friend some confidence. “I trust you’ll be able to put those to good use?” She’d known Ja long enough to understand that while reassurance did little to help his internal suffering, feeling useful usually did.
“Yeah, I think I’ve got it under control,” Ja said with mild enthusiasm. “All of these artifacts will be helpful for sure, but I feel bad using them. So many beings like Doro probably had to suffer for their creation.”
“At least we can use them now to do some good.”
“Yeah, doing the ‘right thing’ of fixing my mistakes,” Ja responded glumly
“So, what do they do?” Kaia asked, diverting the conversation away from Ja’s self-loathing.
“Quite a bit, actually. The most important thing is having tongues for the whole group. The Harvester said he collected them from a bunch of different realities. Each one has a different name, like how mine is the Tongue of Kathaka, and each tongue belonged to that realities’ ‘First to Speak’. I suppose you’ll all get to know your own weird whisper in your head soon enough. What matters is that everyone will finally understand one another without needing someone to translate.”
“Great!” Kaia said excitedly. “Now I’ll finally know what that big oaf is saying under his breath.”
“Remember, it works both ways, Kaia,” Ja said with a chuckle.
“What else?”
“The Harvester gave us these crystals that will help recharge the mirror faster, so we won’t have to wait in one place too long until it gets its power back. He also gave us some of that pink ooze to heal wounds, and more of the smoke he used in the sarva den, which should keep us safe from dangerous animals. He said it won’t necessarily help against other humans, though.”
“That’s what Torv is for,” Kaia laughed.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, but yeah. Unfortunately, Torv wouldn’t accept any artifacts to use himself. Said he doesn’t trust them.”
“Might be the smartest thing he’s ever said.”
Ja shrugged, knowing that while his use of the Harvester’s artifacts had put them in this terrible situation, they were also likely their only way out.
“And last, is this,” said Ja. He held out a small obsidian cube etched with intricate glyphs and symbols.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. But the Harvester said that if we do decide to save Orn, this thing will help.”
“I guess we’ll find out eventually,” Kaia sighed.
“Figuring it out as we go is the only real plan that we’ve got.” Ja picked up his satchel and rose to his feet. “We better get going, the others are waiting.”
Kaia nodded and followed Ja out of the hut, looking the structure over as they walked into the brush, wondering if they would ever return to this place again. The Harvester had helped them build it to aid in Ja’s recovery; living inside of it had likely soured her on ever wanting to sleep on stone again. As the two approached the beach, the rest of the group stood at the edge of the water, anxiously awaiting the next leg of the journey. Ja handed Kaia and Torv their own tongues, then walked to the front of the group and began to speak.
“Along with the artifacts he gave us, the Harvester also told me about some of the possible effects of the Ghora’s energy on the other worlds. No matter how far away I went from Orn, the creature was able to reach me - and change me - through the power connected to the mirror shard. We accidentally brought that power along with us into every world we visited. We can’t assume everything will be as it was when we left, or that it will have affected each world the same way. We need to be ready for anything.”
“I fear nothing!” Torv yelled as he pounded his chest.
“I also fear nothing!” Doro cried out, mimicking the barbarian.
“Did he give any more detail as to what might have changed?” asked Kaia, ignoring the playful scene playing out between Torv and Doro.
“Of course, he did not,” Ja smirked. “As soon as he decided that I’d asked enough questions he opened up a portal and disappeared.”
“None of this feels right,” said Kaia. “How do we know that anything he’s told us is even true?”
“We won’t know anything for sure until we leave here. I hate to say it, but for now, we don’t have any choice but to trust him.”
With that, Ja pulled the mirror from his satchel and asked it to take them back to the last world they had visited. The jawbones whirred to life and Ja waved it in front of the group to open up a doorway to the forest of the sarva.
Stepping out of the portal, they could see that the change to this world was dramatic, but the cause was unclear. Where mossy ground and thick-canopied trees once stood, there was now nothing but barren earth, stripped of all life like the remnants of the great forest in Torv’s world. It was as if the sarva forest had never existed. If not for the Harvester’s lavish hut still standing stark and alone in the expanse, Ja would have thought the mirror had taken them to the wrong world entirely.
“When The Harvester said he needed to stop the sarva, I didn’t expect this,” Doro said sadly. Despite the trauma he had been exposed to here, this forest had apparently also been a place of comfort and happy memories for the boy.
“I’m sorry, Doro,” Ja replied.
“It is not your fault. I know now that this was not a good place. Maybe it will grow back and become better.”
“Ja!” Kaia exclaimed, “Look!”
She was pointing to a patch of green that had already begun to grow up from the cracked soil. Ja knelt down and took a closer look. The plants were tiny and only barely protruded from the ground, but he recognized them instantly: sapling tentacles of the Ghora, grasping to grow and consume. The invasive flora led off into the distance in a straight line like a seam, and Ja knew that it was the path he had carried the shard through this world.
“Doro, look. The ground has begun to heal,” Torv said with a reassuring smile.
“No,” Ja interjected. “This growth is the Ghora. Though I suppose that thanks to the sarva eating everything, there won’t be much for it to assimilate here.”
“But, how did it get here?” Kaia asked.
“We brought it with us, just like the Harvester said. We need to get the shard back to the rest of the mirror.”
With a look of renewed determination, Ja pulled one of the crystals out of his satchel and placed it against the mirror. The crystal glistened and then went dull and Ja tossed it back in his bag. He spoke the next destination to the mirror and it whirred to life.
As the group stepped out onto the plateau, they were relieved to find it in the same state as when they had left: Temperate climate, a beautiful sky perpetually at dawn, and a forest of massive trees filled with disgusting fruit. There was no sign of the Ghora here that they could see. But as they closed the portal and examined their surroundings more closely, they realized the plateau was changing as well.
The first thing they noticed was an odd, electric feeling in the air that made their hair stand on end. Then they began to see ripples of light that would flash through the sky. Some were barely perceptible and then vanished, while others lingered longer, showing distorted scenes of the worlds they had visited previously.
One of the flashes resulted in a prolonged view of the dead forest in Torv’s world. Curious, Ja approached the ripple and could feel cold air flow through from the other side. A single snowflake floated out and landed on his arm.
“I think we have a big problem here,” said Ja. The others turned and gathered around him. “Do you see these rips in the sky? I think this is what the Harvester was talking about when he said I was ‘tearing holes in time and space.’ These flashes are like quick, unstable portals. If they open up long enough, anything could travel through to the other places we’ve been. The monsters in the Putrid Coast need to stay in the Putrid Coast.”
“There’s something else,” Doro said sternly. “We should only have been able to arrive on this plane in the chamber that I used to guard.”
Ja hadn’t thought about the fact that the mirror had deposited them in the expanse between the village and the rocky staircase from where they had first entered the plateau.
“But we left the plateau from a different place than we arrived,” asked Ja. “At the bottom of the cliff, where the totems couldn’t affect our artifacts anymore. Why does it matter if the mirror took us here?”
“We only were able to leave from that place because I made the portal,” said Doro. “You should not have been able to enter anywhere else.”
Ja remembered then that Doro had indeed once said that the chamber at the bottom of the stairs was “the only place where people like you can move in and out of this world.” He bristled, but knew there was no point in chastising the boy any further for his inability to provide specific, important information.
“The Harvester said that we didn’t have to come and go from exactly the same points on each world,” said Ja. “I still don’t understand why it matters that we showed up here.”
“The totems should not have allowed us to create a portal in this place.”
“Maybe the crystal enhanced the mirror,” Ja said with a shrug.
“No, the totems are more powerful than anything the Harvester could create. Something bad has happened here.”
Without another word, the giant boy dashed off towards the tree line.
The rest of the group immediately gave chase, but Doro’s long legs propelled him farther and faster than any of them, despite his movements looking like a clumsy gallop. While Kaia and Torv were well-conditioned to keep up, Ja was still recovering and soon fell behind.
“Torv, stay with Ja,” Kaia ordered. “I will bring Doro back.”
Surprisingly, Torv nodded and stopped without an argument. Kaia thought at first that this might be a sign that Torv was learning to cooperate better. Then she glanced back and noticed the barbarian was leaning over with his hands on his knees, chest heaving. His massively-muscled frame was built for battle, not long-distance running.
Untethered from her slower companions, Kaia picked up her pace and fought to catch up with Doro. Before long, a clearing in the woods came into view, and as Doro reached it, his pace slowed and then stopped.
“Doro, you can’t just run off like that,” Kaia said through labored breaths. “You have to consider--” Before she could finish, she saw why Doro had stopped so suddenly.
In the middle of the clearing was a gaping hole where the Descendant’s great mound had once stood. Around it, the broken stone, colorful wood, and ornamental skulls of the Descendants' totems lay strewn across the ground. Doro stood at the edge of the hole looking down into the darkness below. Kaia approached him delicately and placed a hand on the side of his thigh, realizing that the boy had now lost not one, but two worlds.
But before she could speak a sympathetic word, the air was filled with hollow screams. Looking to the ground, Kaia realized that the skulls of the totems were shaking back and forth, jaws swinging wildly as the horrifying shrieks broke the solemn silence. In the distance, the sound of heavy footfall and shattering branches could be heard, as if an army was marching towards them.
“What’s happening?” Kaia shouted, covering her ears.
“The Descendants have abandoned us…” Doro stammered.
Kaia peered across the hole and saw a group of the Descendants’ skeleton protectors stomping through the undergrowth. There was something different about their movement now, their posture hunched and animalistic. There were no blue stones in their eyes anymore, but instead empty sockets that she swore glowed a faint but fearsome red. It would seem that if the Descendents were gone, so too was their control over these skeletons. Their humble servants were now vicious combatants.
“Doro, we need to go!” Kaia shouted, pulling at the giant boy’s leg.
Doro nodded somberly, then swooped Kaia up with one arm and began to gallop back through the forest.
“I can run just fine!” Kaia protested.
“Not fast enough,” he said, picking up his pace as the skeletons closed in. Kaia looked back at the horde of bones and shuddered. A fury drove their reanimated limbs so mercilessly that their feet and legs cracked and splintered as they ran. As the skeletons gained ground, their otherworldly howls grew louder and louder.
“Open the portal now!” Kaia screamed as Torv and Ja came into view.
“What's wrong?” Ja called out across the field.
“NOW!” Doro boomed with an intensity never heard from the boy before.
Ja saw the mob of skeletons break through the tree line and fumbled to get the mirror out of his satchel. Wide-eyed and shaking, Ja ordered the mirror to take them back to Orn, then began to frantically paint a portal in the sky. Torv ran through first, and then, noticing Ja was still standing on the plateau staring at the skeletons, grabbed him by his arm and yanked him through to the other side. On his back, Ja saw Doro dive through the portal above him, delicately cradling Kaia in his arms and protecting her as he rolled onto the stone floor. Ja sprung to his feet and screamed for the mirror to close the portal, waving it wildly to paint the hole shut. As he swiped the doorway to the plateau out of existence, one of the skeletons managed to jump through, but was severed at the waist. The bony torso squirmed violently on the floor, grasping angrily at the group with its one hand.
“Ony…” Doro said softly, recognizing his mentor.
A voice could be faintly heard through the insane screeching, saying Doro’s name.
The boy walked over and knelt down next to Ony, securing the skeleton’s thrashing arm with one hand and placing the other upon its head. After a short time, the red glow in Ony’s eyes softened and the skeleton stopped its violent spasms.
“Ony, what happened?”
“The Descendants sensed a great danger and fled to a different realm, leaving us behind. Without their magic, the link between the stones and the spirit world reopened and we were bombarded by cursed souls vying for vessels. We tried breaking the stones, but it was too late…”
Without warning, Ony’s body began to convulse again and lashed out at Doro, knocking him to the ground and climbing on top of him, holding his throat tight with its one hand.
“Ony, stop…” the boy gasped.
Before the words had fully left his lips, Doro’s face was showered with bone fragments as Torv’s axe exploded through Ony’s skull. Not wanting to take any chances, the barbarian promptly began to smash the rest of the body as well.
“Sorry, Doro,” Torv said in an awkward attempt at sympathy. He continued smashing the bones.
“We’re inside the Blood Summoner’s chamber,” Ja announced. “Luckily, he’s not here. We need to move on as quickly as possible.”
“The real Blood Summoner almost never left this place,” said Kaia. “So where is he?”
Ja looked around the room and peered up the corridor. The guards were gone as well. He looked at the stone table and several of the mirrors he had seen every day while living in these chambers - but never touched - were gone.
“I wasn’t looking forward to seeing him again,” Ja frowned, “but I think the Blood Summoner not being here is somehow even worse.”
As if responding to his comment, a thundering crash boomed in the distance. The group steadied themselves as the ground shook and bits of rock broke free from the ceiling. A second impact followed shortly after, paired with a hideous roar that sank into their souls. Kaia’s voice snapped the group out of their stupor.
“Get us out of here, Ja!”
Ja pulled another crystal from his satchel, let the mirror absorb its power, and created an exit from the rumbling cavern.
They smelled the oppressive air of the Putrid Coast well before their eyes adjusted to the bright sunlight, arriving just outside the hilltop shelter where they had met Luto. Almost as soon as Ja had closed the portal, something massive charged through the hillside and collided with the group, sending each member flying off in different directions.
Ja landed on a sand dune and tumbled down head over feet until he slid to a stop at the edge of the beach. He pulled himself up from the ground and felt pain shoot through his entire body, sending him back down immediately. A giant, taloned foot came to rest just in front of his face, spraying a puff of sand into his eyes. Something wet hit the back of his neck and his skin began to sting like a sunburn. Hurt, yet terrified to move, he wiped his face and slowly raised his head to see a gargantuan hawk standing over him.
Though not quite as enormous as the wolf they had seen the last time they visited the Putrid Coast, this bird was still monstrously large. The feathers on its wings had long-since rotted away, leaving behind a semi-opaque skin that stretched across visible bones. The rest of its body had a few patches of withered feathers, looking like a half-plucked chicken that had been left to rot.
The creature cocked its head and stared down at Ja with equal parts curiosity and hunger. Ja began to cautiously reach for his satchel but could feel that it was pinned beneath his back and the sand. He needed to get the vial of smoke the Harvester had given him if he had any hope of warding this creature off, but that would require moving his body and drawing unwanted attention. Ja turned and tried to slide his hand behind him, and as he did, the towering bird opened its beak and began to lower its head to consume him. He quickly rolled to his side and pulled the satchel open, knowing it would likely cause the creature to pounce, but its beak remained motionless in the air.
Confused, Ja looked over to see Doro resting both of his hands upon the creature's leg, rubbing them up and down as if he was comforting it.
“Doro, run!” Ja yelled through clenched teeth, but the giant boy only shook his head and smiled back.
“It's ok, it will leave soon.” Sure enough, the disgusting bird quickly lost interest in Ja and flew off, coating the two in a layer of sand with the air from its decrepit wings.
“Come on Ja, we should hurry,” Doro said, pulling him from the sand. “Torv is fighting a big bug and I’m not sure if he’s winning.”
As the two scrambled up the sand dune, Ja could hear the exaggerated grunts Torv always made when he swung his axe. Then, the barbarian flew into view and crashed into the sand just a few steps from them. Ja heard Kaia make a similar grunt and yelled out for her, ignoring his pain and sprinting up over the hill.
In front of the shelter, Kaia stood over the lifeless body of a boulder-sized beetle with an exhausted look of pride on her face. Torv’s axe was lodged in the insect’s mandible and Kaia’s spear was sticking out from the middle of the forehead, tip buried in the insect’s brain. She dislodged both weapons and walked over to Torv, handing him his axe.
“You need to work on your aim,” she smirked, giving the man a patronizing pat on the arm.
Expecting Torv to blow up in anger, Ja started to step between them, but then noticed a look of admiration spreading across the Ulvson man’s face.
“You are very scary, tiny woman. You would make a great chieftain.”
Ja smiled, happy to see some unity finally forming in the group. That smile faded as he looked out across the horizon.
The Ghora’s influence was strong in the Putrid Coast: The tentacle-like vines from the jungles outside of Orn were already sprouting up from the ground and overtaking the thorny trees that dotted the landscape. The vines were growing at the top of the hill as well, climbing up around the base of Luto’s shack. Ja walked over and examined them, and as he got a closer look, he realized that they were not slick and pulsating as they were back home. These vines looked dry, wilted, and lifeless.
He prodded at the limp vines curiously, then his eyes caught something he hadn’t noticed before on the side of the structure. A symbol had been painted there long ago, faded by unrelenting sun but still visible. The image was still partially covered in sand, so he began to brush it away, revealing a string of runes beneath. He recognized the symbols, but it took a while to place where he had seen them before.
Ja reached into his bag and pulled out the obsidian cube the Harvester had given him. It was etched with the same markings. He looked at the item more closely now, feeling the edges with his squishy green fingers, and realized that the cube was actually a box that could be opened. He pulled the interlocking pieces apart and inside was a tiny vial of liquid that was the same sickly yellow color as the sea of the Putrid Coast.
He realized then why the Harvester hadn't specifically told him what the obsidian cube was for - only that they could use it if they decided to try and stop the Ghora. The plague that had destroyed this world so long ago wasn’t halted by powerful visitors - it was brought by them. And now, that horrible plague was the only thing that could stop the Ghora back home. Ja would have to decide which way his world would be destroyed.
“Ja, come on,” Kaia called out. “We need to leave.”
He contemplated revealing what he learned to Kaia and the group, but decided to keep the information to himself for now. This burden was his alone to hold. The instability of the Putrid Coast was beginning to worsen before their eyes: The small ripples they had seen on the plateau were tearing across the sky like lightning here, revealing strips of landscapes from other worlds. They needed to get the shard back where it belonged immediately.
Ja commanded the portal to take them back to Torv’s world. Moments later, they found themselves inside of the Gamle’s cavern meadow. It appeared that things were relatively normal inside: The Gamle were nowhere to be seen, but the forest was intact and the wildlife grazed carelessly as it had before. Cautiously, the group exited the cavern to the mountain pass outside, where Torv had first met the gray-haired man. There, they discovered that Torv’s world had suffered the worst of the devastation.
Rather than quick flashes like doors opening and slamming shut, the errant portals in Torv’s world stayed open all around them like gaping wounds. Even the ground had massive, illuminated gateways to other realities. This world now looked like a quilt constructed of all of the other destinations they had traveled.
Where the clean-flowing stream had once run was now a portal directly to the Putrid Coast’s sea, creating the look of a perfectly-round lake of caustic yellow liquid. The heat of the water met the chill in the air and created a sheet of steam that cast yellow light over the area. Half of the sky was locked in permanent dawn, and below, wide-leafed jungle palms poked through from a portal in the side of a massive boulder.
Torv turned to Ja with a look of sheer desperation and mouthed the words, “Please help.”
“This is really bad Ja,” said Kaia. “It’s probably even worse in Orn. How are we going to fix this?”
Ja didn’t respond immediately, only pulled out a crystal and reactivated the mirror. He looked at his friends with stoic determination.
“The only thing we can do now is put the mirror shard back where it belongs. Once we do that - and figure out a way to stop the Ghora - we might be able to make things right again. All of these worlds depend on us. This is it, everyone. Let’s end this.”
FATE INDEX:
1. Messiah-like figure attempts to remake society
2. Character loses one of their senses
3. Protagonist finds a source of healing/resurrection
4. Include a historical figure
5. A hidden foe is revealed
6. An obscure side character suddenly gets a crucial role in the story
7. Traditional gender roles are switched
8. Character finds a large egg of unknown origin
9. The inevitable end is actually a rebirth
10. Physical confrontation with an inanimate object11. Discovery of higher technology
12. Monotony is broken
13. Character has portentous visions of a world they don’t recognize
14. A catastrophic end
15. Too many cooks in the kitchen
16. Torrential rain causes big problems
17. A stranger shares consequential information
18. Ghost story
19. A dam breaks creating massive flooding
20. Cat eat food
Outcomes Used:
9. The inevitable end is actually a rebirth
13. Character has portentous visions of a world they don’t recognize
Added outcomes:
A betrayal brings thoughtful growth
(thanks to Ric)
One of the protagonists is actually a spy
(thanks to Dennis)
