“She sent a squad of her loutish servants to destroy your prophecy.” He nodded at Ed, specifically casting his gaze at the scrolls in his hands.
The pen moved across the paper, stopping when the man paused. It was writing down his words, that much was obvious.
“And did they succeed?” he asked.
“Maybe we got lucky and grabbed the right one. We do currently have serendipity at our side, both of us,” Lorna said.
The pen scribbled down her words as well.
The man said, “That would be quite fortuitous, but I have a hunch it’s not among the surviving documents, Lorna.”
Okay, so yet another person that seemed to know a lot about us.
“You know our names, but we don’t know yours,” I said, doing a poor job of hiding my frustration.
He walked over to the scrolls and began inspecting them. After discarding the third he’d perused to the floor, he said, “Quinn.” He unfurled the fourth parchment and scowled, almost moving to tear it in half but thinking better of it. He tossed it onto the carpet as well.
“It’s always the last one. That’s how dramatic tension works,” I said.
Quinn plucked the fifth scroll from Ed’s hands and unrolled it halfway. He closed it and placed the parchment on the corner of his desk.
He walked around the floating slab of glass and hopped back up on his chair. Quinn rested his hands on his desk, interlacing his fingers. He sighed. “Not the prophecy we were looking for, none of them are. Unless you two are destined to plug a leaky hole in reality in the Frondian dimension.” He nodded at the fifth scroll.
I didn’t say anything. Lorna faintly shook her head.
Kni said, “We had no idea they would be so bold, sir.”
Quinn leaned back in his chair. He pushed his glasses toward the bridge of his nose. “It’s understood that they took their own initiative. And trespassing in the Dominion would normally incur a severe punishment, but I’m afraid some recent developments make administering a consequence rather meaningless.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Well, while the coincidence powers of your deities may have failed you in saving the prophecy, it appears they worked to your advantage from a big-picture sense. You vacated the mortal plane at just the right time.”
We waited for him to continue.
“The Entropy Queen escaped almost an hour ago, shortly after you arrived in the Dominion. She’d amassed enough energy pillaged from the abducted squires to break out.”
“How many?” Lorna said.
“A little more than half the planet.”
I gasped, thinking the number of people the queen had taken out had to now be much more than one hundred and forty-five. “Did she kill all the hosts?”
Quinn shook his head. “Thankfully, no.” He closed his eyes, again tuning into whatever telepathic feed he’d accessed earlier. “She just did that for the first several hundred. That weakened her prison very quickly. But those with missing squires did suffer a setback. When she drained all the squires of their magic to fuel her escape, the backlash sent every single host without a god wheel attendant into a coma.”
“What?” Lorna said.
Quinn slipped out of his chair and walked over to the nearest window. He pulled back the right curtain and looked down. “Come see. I’m afraid rendering one’s host comatose also had an effect on the pantheons.”
We raced over to the window. Kni and Ed hung slightly back but still peered out the window.
On the streets below, a fair number of gods and goddesses lay on the ground, unconscious. Those still on their feet raced about, running to administer aid to their fallen brothers and sisters. It was not a pleasant scene. Even from ten floors up, the anguish and fear was painted readily on their faces.
Quinn said, “It took a little time, but the backlash reached the celestial end just now, sending deities into a coma. The two of you are the only mortals unaffected.”
“Wait, what about the people who weren’t missing their squires?” I said. “They’ve still got working god wheels and pantheons, don’t they?”
Quinn turned his back on the window and stared at us. “Yes, but the prophecy, at least what little I know of the blasted thing, said those who spun their own fate would bring about the Entropy Queen’s demise. And that, I fear, is just you two, Lorna and Felix.”
“This is crazy,” I said. “We can’t be the only ones.”
We retreated from the window.
Lorna pressed Quinn, “Why didn’t you safeguard the prophecy, remove it from the ministry so we could read it?”
“Ah, that’s the interesting wrinkle in all this,” Quinn said. “The prophecy required you never lay eyes on it.”
“Wait, what?” I said, hating how much my head hurt.
“I don’t know all of the prophecy, just what I’m supposed to pass on to you. You were never meant to read it, but I can assure you this . . . It is you two, Felix Martin and Lorna Wesson, who will see this through. You names were the only mortals mentioned in it. It is you that will save all of reality from the Entropy Queen.”
Chapter 10
Spin Happy
Quinn gestured at us and said, “I tire of staring at your mouths all agape. Time to head back and start with the saving. You will face impossible odds.” He snapped his fingers, and a ragged gash in time and space opened up to our right. Resembling a lightning bolt, it went from floor to ceiling and was wide enough for two people walking hand-in-hand to pass through. Its edges coursed with yellow flaring energy, while the rift itself was a deep violet. “But apparently, the universe, along with a majority of the powers that be, has faith in you. Be bold.”
Nobody entered the portal. Instead, a strong suction pulled the four of us in. The gate’s intense gravity didn’t affect Quinn. It didn’t even ruffle the papers of his legal pad. He watched us disappear into the portal, shrugging slightly and turning away at the last second.
We arrived at my god wheel, the portal spitting us out less forcefully than it had gathered us up.
I glared at Kni and Ed. “This is insane! Lorna and I have no idea what to do.”
Ed patted the wheel. “Then spin and find out the next course of action. To rely further on coincidence might prove an error.”
Kni said, “Hey, speak for yourself. It was us that saved them.”
Lorna said, “Was it? I don’t recall either of you involved in the decision-making process that got us to the Dominion. I think that was all on us and not you two.”
Emboldened by Lorna’s rebellious tone, I spun the wheel hard. “How about this? Seems to me, we might be a little behind schedule with our spins. How about I remedy that?”
The wheel stopped on someone new, Xexxer. Ed disappeared. Kni breathed a sigh of relief, suddenly realizing my spins wouldn’t affect him.
An older man dressed in a hooded black robe appeared next to Lorna. He held up a hand. He kept his head pointed down, allowing me to see his long nose and pointy chin but not his eyes. He frowned. “Perhaps a cogent assessment of your skills would be in order. I believe a firm understanding of the strategies you should employ is the next—”
“Nope, I don’t think anyone called for the god of stuffiness.” I spun the wheel again.
The wordy god winked out, replaced by Yolla. She gave me a serious look and put her hands on her hips. “Felix, this isn’t solving any—”
I waved at her dismissively. “Been there, done that.”
I heaved the wheel harder than before. It flew round and round.
“This isn’t productive,” Kni offered, looking at Lorna to back him up.
She said, “Um, Felix, maybe this isn’t what we should be doing right now.”
“I don’t care.”
The wheel stopped on Dark Cloud. Yolla left, replaced by a Native American wearing blue jeans, leather boots, and a red dress shirt with a bolo tie hanging from his collar. His raven-black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and h
e squinted at me with suspicion.
I spun. The wheel went around twice and landed on Ed again.
The mysterious god vanished in a cloud of smoke. His exit was far more theatrical than the others had been. Did that have something to do with his godly powers?
The god of happenstance reappeared.
“This is stupid! You are not doing anything more than spinning your wheels,” Ed said, grinning at his word play.
I wagged a finger at him. “It’s my wheel and I’ll spin if I want to, Ed.”
I flung the wheel hard.
Lorna stuck her hands on my wheel to stop it. A bright flash of energy erupted where she made contact, sending her flying into the wall.
A panic-stricken Ed evaporated.
I raced over to Lorna who slouched against the wall, her head lolling about.
“Are you okay?” I gently put two fingers under her chin and lifted her head. “I’m so sorry.”
She looked at me, struggling to focus in. “Wow, that hurt.” She probed her lower back with her right hand and shifted her weight.
“Take it easy. You might have a broken bone or two,” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder to keep her from tipping to the side.
Lorna shook her head and rose to her knees, grunting slightly as she pressed on her back with more force. “Relax, I’m fine. No worse for the wear.”
Still uncertain if she was hurt or not, I helped her up. She shivered and twisted at the waist both left and right to work out any kinks. She cracked her knuckles and grinned. “I’m good, Felix. You can stop fawning over me.”
I kept a hand on her shoulder more to reassure myself.
She put her hand on mine and slipped it free. She squeezed it once before letting it go. “We’re strong together. We have to be.”
A new voice entered the conversation, definitely not Kni offering his assessment. “I like this one. She would make a suitable mate for you, Felix Martin.”
I turned around to see a seven-foot-tall woman eyeing the two of us. She nodded with approval and winked at me. Her chiseled physique and strong cheekbones made me think she might be an Amazon, like Wonder Woman. Her wardrobe only encouraged this notion. She wore a golden breastplate, thick gray gloves, and boots along with a skirt of chainmail. A sword rested in a scabbard against her right hip, and she held an impressive hammer in her left hand.
Her silver hair was done up in a ponytail, and she wore dangling earrings depicting crescent moons.
“Holy cow!” I said.
She leapt at me, grabbing my throat with her free hand and shoving me into the rock wall hard.
I groaned, but didn’t look away from her. “Uh . . .”
“I will lay claim to the first half of that title, but take insult to the bovine comparison. You are not a gentleman, Felix.”
“Sorry, just an expression. I didn’t mean—”
The goddess let go of my throat and pulled me in for a hug. She thumped me twice on the back, being careful not to drive her war hammer into my spine, thankfully. She laughed rather dramatically. “I know the turn of phrase you employed, young warrior. Can’t you spot a jest?”
I slid away from the rock wall, rubbing at my back. “Evidently not,” I mumbled to myself.
Lorna checked on me. “Sorry, I had no clue the wheel would do that.”
Kni hovered over my god wheel, leaning in pretty far to inspect it. “I had no idea this would happen either. This is new.”
Lorna and I walked over and studied the wheel.
The warrior goddess hung back, assessing our reactions.
The god wheel sat at an angle. The names of each deity were gone except for the scratched-out god. Noxious green smoke trickled up from the edges of the wheel. I held my nose as the stench was pretty bad.
“”Sulfur,” Lorna said, taking in two more nosefuls to confirm. “What, is there a volcano under this thing?” She jokingly pretended to look around its pedestal base.
Most of the lights were dead. The cave was much darker, what with it now only lit by about a dozen bulbs. The only working ones were around the perimeter of the wheel, and even then, just a third gave off light with a random flickering.
I felt the urge to touch the god wheel. I placed my hands on two adjacent wedges. The entire surface of the wheel suddenly shook and glowed a bright yellow.
The LED lights demarking the slices flashed once, then twice. They went out for a second and then burned brighter than before.
I removed my hands.
The wheel slowly started to turn. As we watched, it picked up speed until the lights and individual wedges were just a blur.
“Did I make it worse?” I said.
Kni replied, “I don’t think so. Maybe you even fixed it, but it might take time.”
Lorna looked at the strange sight. “It’s rebooting. That has to be it. Maybe a few minutes from now, or at worse a few hours, and it will be as good as new.”
I could tell she was more trying to convince herself. It was clear she felt guilty.
“I think you’re right.”
“And in the meantime, we can get acquainted,” the goddess said. She bowed. “I’m Zartua, goddess of war. My arrival is such perfect timing. You have a war to wage against a foul evil.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said.
Lorna shook Zartua’s hand, while I tipped my head at her. After all, we’d already embraced and I worried that, if I went in for a simple handshake, she’d pull me in for a second bear hug.
“Let us get to know one another on the go. Nothing speeds up familiarity like relying on each other in the heat of battle.”
I held up my hands. “Whoa, not just yet.” I pointed to the god wheel. “It might be a while before I spin again, but I think rushing off to fight will have to wait. Lorna and I need you to take us somewhere.”
Zartua slouched slightly, disappointed that I was delaying her violence fix. “Of course. Where do you desire to go?”
The warrior goddess sliced through the air with her sword, leaving behind a slender gash in the fabric of reality. She stowed her weapon away and then grabbed hold of either side of the rift. She pulled it farther apart with great effort. After much exerting, and a fair share of creative cursing, she had reshaped the portal to be just big enough to go through sideways, making it the narrowest gateway to travel through to date. Each celestial seemed to interact with time and space differently when it came to portal creation.
Zartua glared at the opening, clearly not pleased with her handiwork. “‘Plays nice with physics’ is something no one’s said about me ever. Time and space take umbrage with my every passage. Not sure why that is, exactly.”
I had a guess. Maybe time and space rejected her basic nature, maybe they resisted allowing war entrance. I dismissed the notion as too metaphysical. I got the impression Zartua probably just wasn’t very good at making portals. Would she need to recharge after the strain of just a few gateway summonings? The rest of my pantheon had no such seeming handicap, at least not that I noticed so far.
I turned to Lorna. “We both should check if our loved ones are okay. If half the world’s in a coma, there’s a good chance . . .”
She nodded.
I addressed Zartua, “Take us to see Lorna’s family first.”
The goddess tipped her head and motioned for us to enter the rift.
We leapt in.
Chapter 11
Relative Safety
We arrived at her parents’ house a little past ten at night. Our phones chimed in with tons of notifications. We poured over them and numerous texts as we rushed up the walk.
“Guess we didn’t have service in the Dominion,” I said. Come to think of it, my phone had been pretty much dormant in our respective god wheels, too. At least I thought that to be the case. With all the crazy swirling around me in the last day, I’d really not fixated on my phone.
Zartua and Kni marched toward a copse of trees.
The goddess said, “We’ll hang back.
Don’t really think you need to field any questions about why a warrior of my stature is accompanying you.”
The news was disturbing. Planes dropping out of the sky. Cars, their drivers suddenly comatose, crashing. The magnitude of so many different vehicles abruptly without human guidance was staggering. What about all the trains barreling down their tracks without conductors? And boats? And military craft from every branch? Could any army in the world muster an adequate fighting force with half their numbers knocked out? Law enforcement had to be stretched to the limit. Hospitals and emergency services must be overwhelmed. There was so much tragedy. It was the Twin Towers on a global scale.
We continued to pour over the depressing news. The National Guard was being deployed just about everywhere. States of emergency were being called. Panicked newscasters were cautioning everyone to stay holed up in their homes, floating the idea that this was a biological attack.
The loss of life was too much to comprehend. I could only imagine the fear running rampant. Judging from the news, no one had any idea who to blame, what was attacking them. I, at least, knew what was causing all the disasters.
And it was maybe that awareness that kept me from dropping to my knees and retreating from the madness. If I allowed myself to truly fathom the scale of the loss, I would freeze in my tracks. And Lorna must be registering the same. I looked over at her, noting her abrupt paleness and labored breathing. No doubt, she was going through the same internal panic and chaos as I was.
We both stopped midway along the sidewalk leading to the front porch, unwilling to move forward and confront what awaited us inside her parents’ house. But we had to move forward.
Lorna said, “This is bad.”
“And it’s only going to get worse when she really goes on the offensive.”
Lorna put her phone away and raced toward the front door. She rang the doorbell repeatedly and pelted the entrance with rapid-fire knocks. “I don’t have my key with me,” she said, slightly panic-stricken.
When a light came on inside, she sighed and lessened her assault on the door.
A man with grey hair and a kind smile opened the door and immediately wrapped his arms around Lorna. “Oh, honey, we’re so glad you’re okay. We’ve been calling you and your sister non-stop since this madness began.”
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