unleash more bolts of magic, but the Old Creatures intercept them and blast them aside or absorb the shots themselves.
“Art?” I whisper, fearing the worst.
“I Am Not Dead,” he says. “You Will Perish Too If I Die.”
We pick up speed again.
“Why are they doing this?” I pant, keeping a close eye on the fighting. The Old Creatures and demons aren’t engaging at close quarters—they hover apart and take long-range shots at one another—but it looks ugly. A few of the balls of light are shattered while I watch, and several of the demons are ripped apart.
“The Demonata Wish For The End Of The Universes,” Art says. “They Must Have Seen The Panels Move, Spotted You, And Guessed You Were The Source Of The Disturbance. Like Us, They Cannot Know What Will Happen If The Panels Join, But They Clearly Wish To Keep You Here And—”
Art is struck again. He doesn’t slow this time, but his scream lasts even longer than before. We’re almost at the ring of fire, but a demon has broken through the ranks of Old Creatures and is narrowing the gap, moving faster than we are.
We hit the wall of fire and plow through. It feels even hotter than it did the last time. Areas of my skin start to smolder.
“You Must Use Magic,” Art says calmly. “I Cannot Protect You As I Did Before. I Am Wounded And Must Focus On Opening A Window.”
“If we make it through the fire, we’ll be safe, right?” I yell, doing what I can to counter the burns breaking out across my flesh. “They can’t follow us into the human universe, can they?”
“No,” Art says. “But We Will Not Make It. The Demon Will Catch Us. We Have To Open The Window From Here.”
“Can you do that?” I ask.
“In Theory,” he says, doing nothing to calm my frayed nerves.
Art is struck again but pushes on, concentrating on the small patches of light that I glimpse through the flicker of the flames. I try to create a barrier to help but there isn’t a strong supply of magic here, at least not the sort I can tap into. The best I can do is cool my skin and quench the worst of the flames.
The demon looks nothing like those I’ve fought in the past. It’s huge, a mass of bulges, not shaped like any animal I’ve ever seen. I’m not even sure where its face is. All I know is that it’s utterly evil, determined to kill us, and closing quickly.
“Art…” I mutter.
“We Know,” he replies. “I Have Almost…”
A window of red light forms in the distance, almost impossible to see against the fiery backdrop. I give a shout of triumph, but it’s drowned out when another blast of magic hits us. Art screeches. The bolt of energy drives us closer towards the window, but Art’s scream cuts out midway and the lights around me shatter.
I realize with horror that Art has been killed, but there’s no time to mourn. My flesh erupts, fire exploding from every pore. I scream silently, consumed by flames. In a mad fury I try to slap them out. It’s a hopeless task, but before the fire can finish the job, I hit the window and plunge into the sub-universe of multicolored lights without anyone to protect or guide me.
NEW FACE, OLD STORY
THERE’S no oxygen, so the flames die away. The pain doesn’t, but I’ve no time to focus on that. It’s freezing and there isn’t any air. If I can’t construct a shell around myself, and soon, I’m finished.
I search for magic, but there’s nothing I can make use of. This zone of lights contains even less magical energy than there was on Earth. I thrash about like a fish on dry land, lips shut, eyes bulging. I feel my skin tighten from the cold, but that doesn’t bother me. I’ll suffocate long before I freeze to death.
As my lungs strain for air that isn’t there, my limbs go still and a calm wave spreads through me. In a way this is fitting. I was always a lonely child. I often felt out of place, not in sync with the people around me. Now I’m going to die in true isolation, more alone than any human has ever been.
A gloomy mist crosses my eyes. I think it’s the shades of death drawing over my face, but then I blink and realize it’s a dark green window that has opened ahead of me. As I stare at it numbly, a ball of light shoots through and envelops me from head to toe. I’ve just enough time to marvel at the warmth it brings. Then my eyelids flutter and I fall unconscious.
I awake on a grey, cold, ashen world. I sit up, groaning. My skin is blistered. Parts feel raw. But I’m alive.
Something moves nearby.
“Art?” I call.
“No.” A tall black man steps into view. He’s fat, with very dark skin, dressed in an expensive-looking suit.
My eyes widen. “Raz?” I gasp.
“Only in appearance,” the man says solemnly.
“I don’t understand.” I start to rise but pain prevents me. Grimacing, I frown at the fat man. Raz Warlo was a Disciple. I met him when I first joined Beranabus. He was killed during the quest to find my baby brother. “Why change?” I wheeze.
“The one you knew as Art is dead,” Raz says. “Although shapes mean nothing to us, we know you need them to make sense of the universe. We felt it would be easier for you if I took a different form.” He looks down at himself and frowns. “The suit was a difficult touch.”
“What happened back there?” I ask.
“The panels of the Kah-Gash reacted to your presence,” Raz says. “The demons attacked. We managed to get you out before they killed you.”
“And the panels? Did they stop?”
“The fact that we still exist makes me think so,” Raz says dryly.
I nod slowly, then clear my throat. “Art sacrificed himself to save me.”
“Evidently.”
“And you placed your life at risk by coming after me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?” I groan. “Why take me to the Crux and risk your lives for my sake?”
“That will become clear very soon,” Raz says and nods at a rock behind me. “That is a lodestone. It is the reason I brought you to this world. I suggest you use its power to heal yourself before we continue.”
Now that I focus, I realize there’s a strong current of magic flowing around me. I tap into it gratefully and set to work on my wounds, patching up the holes burned in my flesh.
As I’m sealing the last of the gashes, Raz looks around at the dead land, then says, “Did you ever plan to have children?”
The question throws me and I squint at him. “I hadn’t given it much thought. Probably not. It’s hard to bring up a child when you’re busy battling demons.”
“The Old Creatures can’t reproduce,” Raz says. “It didn’t matter in the original universe, since we were immortal. That changed when the Kah-Gash fractured. Now every creature ages. We are captives of time and the price of our captivity is death.”
As Raz speaks, I stand and stretch. My stomach rumbles. I’m ravenous and thirsty, but there’s nothing to eat or drink, so I do my best to ignore the cries of my deprived body and focus on the Old Creature’s lecture.
“We accepted our mortality,” Raz continues, “but the Demonata craved a return to the way things were. They wanted to live forever. So they set about thwarting the hold of death.”
“How?” I frown.
“As long as the new universes exist, death will claim us all,” Raz says. “But if those universes are eradicated… if the Kah-Gash is reassembled and the old laws are reestablished…”
I start to tremble. “Beranabus said the Kah-Gash could destroy a universe. But you’re saying it could destroy both?”
“Yes. The Kah-Gash could draw everything back through time to the moment of the Big Bang, eliminate all that that has happened since, and restore the original universe.”
“What would happen to us?” I gasp.
“You would have never existed,” Raz says. “Time would be reversed. All the creatures and planets of the new universes would be wiped out. Only the Old Creatures and the Demonata would survive.”
“Why wouldn’t you be killed too?”
“We think we would be protected, as we were when the Kah-Gash exploded. If we are correct, even the new Demonata—the spawn of the original beasts—would be spared, since they carry the genes of their parents.”
“Then why not us?” I ask hollowly.
“You are not our offspring,” Raz says sadly. “New life was created when this universe was born. We have guided many species and helped souls develop. But you are not ours.
“We must go,” Raz says abruptly. “You need to eat, so we will move on.” He sets to work on the tiny patches of light in the air around us.
“What world of wonders are we heading for now?” I ask.
“We’re not going to a world,” Raz says. “We are going to a spaceship.”
PICKING UP THE PIECES
I WANTED to be an astronaut when I was younger, walk on the moon, fly around in a rocket, zap aliens with a laser gun, teleport across galaxies. I’ve done a lot more than that in the years since, boldly going places where no man would ever want to go. Still, that love of spacemen and rockets remains, and when Raz tells me we’re heading for a spaceship, I fill with excitement. But when we slide through the window, it’s into a large room of concrete walls, boxes stacked neatly to the sides, fluorescent lights overhead. There’s a small garden in the middle of the room.
“This isn’t a spaceship,” I grumble. “Spaceships are made of metal, full of stuff like…” I stop, realizing how ridiculous that sounds. Spaceships in movies and comics might be like that. But in the real world, built by beings of another planet, why should they be?
“Precisely,” Raz says. “This is a massive craft designed to navigate the vastness of space. It is the size of a city, home to two million creatures. They fled their dying planet long ago and have sailed among the stars ever since.
“Now eat.”
“Eat what?” I ask, looking around.
“Anything,” Raz says. “The crates are packed with nutritious substances. And there are bottles of liquid in those.” He points at the boxes to my left.
“Won’t anyone mind?” I ask nervously, not wanting to get on the wrong side of short-tempered aliens.
“These are excess supplies. Nobody will notice.”
I shuffle over to the crates and lift off the lid of the nearest box. There are large plastic bottles inside. The liquid in them is an unpleasant green color. The stench, when I snap the top off, is vile.
“Are you sure this is safe?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Why aren’t you drinking any?”
“I don’t need it.”
Skeptical, I raise the bottle and take a sip. It’s disgusting! I spit it out and grimace, then reluctantly drain a mouthful and swish it around. The taste doesn’t improve, but after half a minute of swishing, I gulp, then lower the bottle and wait to be sick. When nothing happens, I drink some more, then look for something to sink my teeth into. The food is as unappealing as the liquid, but it fills me up. When my stomach can hold no more, I wipe my lips with a hand and glance at Raz.
“Done?” he asks.
“Done,” I confirm.
“Are you ready to go on a quick tour?”
“Can I?” I ask eagerly.
“I know you want to. I can disguise us to look like natives.”
“Great! Let’s do it.”
Leaving the storeroom, we walk down a long corridor, then take an elevator to an upper level. It looks remarkably like the elevators on Earth.
“You shouldn’t be surprised,” Raz says. “We sowed the seeds of intelligence among most of the universe’s beings, and the rest were assisted by those we first helped. There are many similarities between species.”
The elevator comes to a halt and the doors slide open. I step out into a noisy street that could be any of Earth’s busier cities. Buildings like ours, vehicles that look like cars, streetlamps and power cables. The only difference is that instead of a sky, there’s another level overhead. Otherwise it’s unnervingly familiar.
The same can’t be said for the people. They have no human traits. Long tendrils instead of arms and legs. Their faces, which are in the middle of their bodies, have several gloopy eyes set in a semi-circle around a small, toothless mouth. No ears or nose. Each is a mix of colors. They’re slimy, dripping freely as they pass. Smaller creatures feast on the mucus, an army of insect-like slime-eaters who gobble it up, keeping the paths clean.
I stare for a long time at the aliens, then glance at Raz and myself and frown. “We don’t look any different. I thought you were going to disguise us.”
“I haven’t altered our bodies,” Raz says. “I’m affecting the visual sensors of those around us, so that to their eyes we appear as they do. Yes,” he adds with a grin before I can say anything, “that is pretty cool.”
We wander down the street. I peer in windows as we pass, and even enter a few of the buildings, trying to figure out what the stores are selling, what the creatures are doing, what the buildings are for. Raz whispers in my ear as we wind our way down the street, then turn into another, and another, exploring.
“When the Kah-Gash split, the pieces of its soul shot off ahead of the blast, traveling faster than light or any of the other forces unleashed by the explosion. They darted in and out of the new universes, passing from one to the other as they flew farther apart.
“Eventually they slowed and drifted. Sometimes they floated across realms like cosmic butterflies. Other times they disappeared from one part of a universe and popped up on the opposite side in the blink of an eye.
“The patches of light you have seen since birth are physical remnants of the Kah-Gash. There were barriers of energy and magic between the squares of the original universe. When the Kah-Gash exploded, the barriers shattered, but their fragments were used to stitch the fabric of the new universes together. It took us a long time to realize that, since we cannot see them.”
“You can’t see the lights?” I frown.
“No,” Raz says. “They only reveal themselves to the eyes of the Kah-Gash.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There are three parts of the Kah-Gash,” Raz says. “The trigger, memory, and eyes. The trigger is the commanding force. The memory stores all that happens. The eyes see the hidden strings which bind the universes in place.
“This only became clear to us over the long course of time. In the beginning we didn’t know how many pieces there were, what function they played, where they’d gone. We were not even sure that parts of the Kah-Gash still existed.
“The Demonata knew no more than we did, but threw themselves into the search. Their desperate plan was to find the parts of the Kah-Gash, reassemble them, and restore the original universe. It’s a plan they haven’t wavered from.
“For a time we saw no threat. We thought it was a fool’s quest. But then the parts began to reappear. They had the ability to turn up anywhere, in a comet, a rock, a tree, an animal, even one of the new demons. The pieces never merged with any of the Old Creatures or original demons, but all other forms were fair game. They caused no harm, existing in harmony with their hosts, but their reemergence filled us with panic.”
Raz shivers, then continues. “The Demonata pursued the pieces with a mad passion. When they finally found one, they experimented, seeking ways to harness its power. They found they could influence its destination when it moved from one form to another, ensuring it stayed within their grasp.
“The demons searched hard for the other pieces. They couldn’t cross from their universe to ours, but they didn’t need to. The parts of the Kah-Gash passed freely between universes. The Demonata could wait, even though it might take billions of years.”
We come to another elevator and ride it down to a random lower level. I find a park, full of strangely shaped trees and bushes. I dodge between them as Raz speaks.
“We couldn’t let them reunite the Kah-Gash,” Raz says. “We felt responsible for this universe’s new life-forms. They were simple creatures, but th
ey had a right to exist. So we counter plotted. Although the demons couldn’t cross universes, we had the power to enter theirs. We launched a raiding party. After a brief battle, we freed the piece of the Kah-Gash and fled. The Demonata couldn’t follow. All they could do was keep searching and waiting.
“That’s how things continued over millions of years,” Raz says as if talking about the passing of a couple of weeks. “The Demonata imprisoned pieces of the Kah-Gash. We crossed, fought, and freed them.”
“Are you stronger than the demons?” I ask.
“No,” Raz says. “But we only needed to destroy the form in which a piece was stuck. When that happened, it shot free. If the demons had been able to focus, they could have directed it into another form of their