Epilogue 3.17

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---Em---


     The woods are dead quiet save for the crunching of teeth as they grind down bone bark. I approach with caution, stalking through the bone trees, which in these parts of the woods have been growing little patches of what I first assumed was moss but later realized was flesh.

     I lean against the trunk of a tree and peek around it. The sunlight glints off of a patch of golden-brown fur. A hairy boulder with a larger jaw than the ones I've seen up until now takes a bite out of one of the trees. The sound it makes as it crunches on the brittle bone is like teeth scraping against a chalkboard.

     And as I watch the boulder enjoying a calcium-rich meal, I get it in my head that this is the perfect opportunity for a bit of revenge. I mean, this isn't the same boulder that tried to bite my hand off, but a rock is a rock, right? I reach for one of the low hanging branches and tug on it a little to see if there's any give. The bone is just as brittle as I imagined it to be—with a couple of swift movements, I'm able to snap it right off.

     "There's a joke in there somewhere about tugging bones."

     I spin around, armed with the chalky branch. And there's Gail, alive and in one piece. For a moment, I forget all about my desire for petty vengeance. Before I know what I'm doing, I've pulled her into a hug, squeezing her tight to make sure she's real. When I'm convinced on the matter, I back away, because, you know, awkward...

     "Is everyone else...?" we both blurt out at the exact same time.

     Gail glances back over her shoulder. "I'm with Topher, Liluye, Ace, Martha, Jewel, and Eloise. You?"

     "Everyone else, minus Edgar, Rex, and Comma." And Jun, but I feel it's best not to bring that one up.

     Gail stumbles over her words. "They're..."

     "Edgar's dead," I say. "But Comma isn't. She's just..." I sigh and shake my head. "We think she and Rex might've ripped through." The thought that I might never see her again hits me hard, and I have to lean against the tree for support.

     "Maybe they're off fighting zombies like we were," says Gail, taking my hand.

     I raise an eyebrow. "You do realize what you're implying, right?"

     "Thanks for puttin' that image in my head."

     For a moment, we just stare off into the distance, the forest silent around us save for the boulder's obnoxious crunching. Sometimes it helps to just let it all go. Get lost in the moment. But sooner or later, you've got to come back down to reality. And reality isn't a very nice place to be right about now.

     "She'll find her way back," says Gail, squeezing my hand.

     A gentle breeze blows past, carrying with it the scent of the sea. "How do you know?"

     She turns her head to look at me. "We did."

     I can't help but smile at that. "Speaking of finding our way back, I've got good news."

     "Great. I'm going to be letting go of your hand now, if ya don't mind."

     "Oh, right." I blush a little. "Anyway, I think I've found us our ticket out of here." I tell her about my dream—about the pancakes and sea salt. And of course, being Gail, she finds all of this perfectly natural. We agree to rendezvous on the beach, and a few hours later, the whole gang—or at least what's left of it—is back together again. Splitting up never worked out well for us.

     "I thought I saw the birdies eat you," says Eloise, biting her thumbnail. Is it just me, or does she look a little disappointed that I made it out of that bloodbath alive?

     We all gather amongst the rows of maple trees that line the edge of the beach. Ace and Colby are using the strix talons they collected to carve open the bark and get to the sweet sap on the inside. The rest of us stare out to sea, and even though I lived by the beach back home, there's absolutely nothing nostalgic about any of this.

     The beach consists of a thin strip of course, grey grains that you might call sand if you were in a very generous mood. The stuff weighs about a ton, so good luck trying to build a sandcastle. The so-called sand is also incapable of absorbing any heat, so touch it for too long and the cold becomes painful. Oh, and don't get me started on the water.

     I remember learning in grade school that water is blue because when the light hits it, it absorbs all the other colour wavelengths, leaving only blue for it to reflect. Well, this water absorbs the entire spectrum of wavelengths; a shimmering, wet blackness stretches out from the edge of the beach all the way beyond the horizon. Like glowdark soup. Forgive me if I'm not in the mood to go swimming.

     In the middle of the expanse lies our destination—I can already feel the rip tugging at me even from this great a distance. An enormous, grey island protrudes from the giant tar pit of a sea. A mountainous island that culminates in the mouth of a smoking volcano.

     How much do you want to bet the rip's on the inside?


---Comma---


     I count the bodies. Twenty-three lives, all snuffed out in a matter of minutes. I don't know what's worse: that I think they didn't deserve to die like that or that I think they did.

     They didn't scream.

     The worst thing about killing was always the screams. I'd always pull my toque down over my ears to try and block out the sound. It never worked. Selina tried to convince me once that the screaming was something beautiful—that it was the evil clawing its way out of the humans as we cleansed the universe of their wretched presence. And at least part of me believed her. I used to hold my breath so that the evil couldn't slip inside me. But I can only hold my breath for so long. Who knows how much evil I must have breathed in over the years.

     Back then, I would have given anything for the screaming to stop. But somehow, this was worse. While Rex tore through their flesh, ripping them apart and spilling their guts all over the place, they just sat there with an empty look in their eyes. They didn't so much as flinch. I couldn't tell the dead ones from the living ones.

     Rex doesn't share any of my moral dilemmas. He licks the blood off of his scales. Anastasia has passed out from the pixie dust. Theodore is blind now, but he managed to pull through thanks to my force-feeding him a few mouthfuls of my alpen blood. He and his sister lie on the floor, unconscious, indistinguishable from the dead that surround them.

     "I did them a favour," says Rex, chewing on a flab of flesh that got wedged between his claws. "When the rot gets to 'em, they lose their humanity. Dante explained it to me once. He may have been a bit of a ponce, but he knew a thing or two about the occult."

     "How..." It's hard to get a word out when you're hyperventilating. Rex applies pressure to my chest. Too much pressure. He knocks the breath right out of me. I fall back, crashing into a table. I come up gasping for air. My whole body's shaking, but at least I can breathe again.

     "If it makes you feel any better, they would've done the same to us."

     I try not to stare at the corpses. They don't reciprocate. "How did they get like this?"

     Rex hops over the counter and pulls a bottle off of the shelf. He pours himself a drink. After taking a tentative sip, he tosses me the bottle. "Humans weren't meant to stray from their home dimensions. Their bodies can pass through a rip, no problem. But their souls?" He finds himself another bottle. He fills a shot glass to the brim and then downs the drink in a single gulp, glass and all. "Sometimes their souls lag behind. Every time the thread binding their souls to their meat sacks gets a little thinner. Go through one too many rips, and the soul splits off clean from the body."

     I'm not big on alcohol—not the stuff humans drink, at least. But I gulp down half of the bottle, welcoming the burning in my throat. Rex looks impressed. I neglect to tell him that, to an alpen, this may as well be grape juice. "What happens to their souls afterwards?" I ask.

     Rex takes another drink, this time right from the bottle. "Ain't that the million dollar question?" He leans over the counter. "What do alpen believe?"

     I let the bottle drop. It smashes into dozens of glass shards. The remaining liquid forms a puddle on the floor. "It's kind of like that. Our bodies are the glass bottle. Once the glass breaks, the stuff that's inside spills out. It spreads itself thin. And then, eventually, it evaporates."

     Rex chokes on a mouthful of ale. "That's bloody depressing."

     "From your point of view, maybe. The thought of just dissolving into nothing is comforting when you've been around as long as I have." The alcohol puddle glides across the wooden floorboards until it bumps into one of the blood puddles. "What do kravlar demons believe?"

     "The eternal battle." Rex licks his lips. "The afterlife is a big bloody brawl. If you went undefeated in life, then in the great beyond you always come out on top. But if you were killed in battle, you spend the rest of eternity getting beat to a bloody pulp."

     I chuckle, but that only makes me gag more. "I need air."

     "Well, all you're gonna get on the other side of that door's a mouthful of glowdark." Rex sets down the bottle. "Hello. What have we got here?" He sinks below the counter. "Some kind of trap door." Curious, I join him behind the counter. The door's locked, but a steel padlock's no match for the combined efforts of an alpen and a kravlar.

     As soon as we open the hatch, we're hit with an even viler smell. I pull my shirt up over the bloodstained sleeve that's still fastened over my mouth to filter out the pixie dust.

     "I'll go have a look." Rex climbs down a ladder, vanishing in the darkness of the basement. "Bloody hell!"

     Whatever's down there, it can't be as bad as what's up here. I grab a torch off of the wall. Then, holding my breath, I descend through the hatch.

     So I was wrong about things being worse up there. The basement is full of naked corpses dangling from the ceiling on meat hooks. Suddenly, I don't feel so bad for the dead folks upstairs.

     I hear a grunt. As if things couldn't get any worse. Some of them are still alive. Starved and caked in blood and filth, but alive.

     "We have to get them down," I say, realizing that means we're going to have to examine the bodies one by one to determine which ones are alive. But the thought of being able to save somebody for a change is enough to drive me to action; I block out all of the negative thoughts and start making my way across the damp chamber, checking for pulses.

     And then I freeze. I must be going mad. I could almost swear I recognize...

     "Comma?" A malnourished, bruised-up dhampir forces a weak smile. "See, Aiden?" Her voice is nothing more than a breathy rasp at this point. "Told you we were supposed to come here."



Author's Note:

So we've got a couple of big developments this week. It looks like Aiden and Taryn have finally found Comma—or, rather, she has found them. We also learn about the rot, which is something I've actually been meaning to work into the story for a very long time now, as it will explain one of the big mysteries of the Epilogue multiverse. Oh, and it looks like the climax of our story is going to take us right into the mouth of a volcano! 

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