Derek was the one who got the notice from Tamaron. He figured it was probably part of Frank's old assertion, that one day he will lead us. Out of the blue, he knew that he had gotten an email, and sure enough, there it was:
THE TIME CAVE.
WE WILL END THIS NOW.
And sure enough, we all knew it was time. All four of us loaded up. Even me. We all had a role to play--we sensed it in Gaudium.
Since I guess I'm the leader, I drove us there. I didn't and don't feel like I've led any of this. A.S. started the site, and Qom is the only one who realized his potential before this fight. I'm just the fucking token queer, and I don't feel like there's any point to me. They're trying to tell me now that I'm the center of things, just as Garry is the ground, Qom is the sword, and A.S. is the one who tells the story, but I don't ever think that's been well conveyed. Who knows what our story has lost. We've had a lot of red herrings--which almost seems like a pun given what Tamaron appropriated from Marcel--and things that are still vague, or things erased from the record by the Syzygy. This really is just the beginning. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
I was the one in charge of weapons when we went to confront them. To be honest, we never learned much about the Tarasque, and as such I didn't really think the weapons would do anything. But still, it was worth a shot to bring what was left of our guns--and that's a pun. I guess I was sort of praying that something would happen and we'd finally be realized entirely as Gauds. I don't who I was praying to.
Derek took us to the cave, and I helped A.S. move as well as I could. We descended into the ravine, and that was when we saw it. Or him, I suppose. Edward Tamaron, in Marcel's body. He just didn't look like Marcel anymore. You saw the picture--he had no eyes, ears, nose, or hair to speak of. Just a perpetually grinning mouth. He was taller than Marcel ever was and Marcel was a big guy. He was wearing the Abbey's robes, an extra large set, which must had cuts in the back to accommodate something I never saw in the pictures. He had wings--sickly, leathery ones, that weren't even like bat wings because bat wings could never be so ugly. It wasn't until we were close that we saw that he was even less like a person and more a tree. His feet were bare, but they weren't feet at all--they were roots, reaching down into the Earth. I at least felt Ether sucking up into him. It must have been the energy that made our Earth, Earth-Gamma, into the Paradise World. The same stuff that charged the fuschium that I brought with us.
He said he had been waiting for us.
He didn't talk anymore, though. His voice, ringing red, just sort of hissed in our minds. And I think we all felt that the Tarasque was something bestial--a physical and brutal incarnation of the Zom that created the fuschium. We'll never know why Marcel was born in a Tarasque's body, if there was a reason. But it was a creature beyond any of us, except for maybe Qom. And feeling its voice slither in our heads was doubtlessly one of the worst things about everything that's happened.
I didn't fucking know what to say. You don't look into the shiny-smooth face of some sort of demon (behind which swirls the ungodly fucking soul of a man so old he's basically a demon himself) and come up with a shitty one-liner. Not this time. The jikininki, we trounced them, it's safe to say. But I was just a guy with a knife and a handgun. And I raised said handgun, and shot the motherfucker in the face.
I'm pretty sure the bullet just vanished before it hit him. Or it did hit him, and was just sucked into him. And his smile got wider. The snake voice then burst out into this goddamn Satanic cackle.
And he raised his hand, which were not Marcel's hands now but these monster claws with long-ass fingers.
We all heard him say "bang," before a flash of white light went for my head.
I stopped it with Fire, but I already knew the elements weren't going to be enough. Still, I felt Ether in what he shot, and I knew then I had to take the Paradise energies away from him.
Through our connection--a Gaud-link--I knew what Qom was going to do. I had two of the stolen guns, and so I let the fucker have it. I saw something that was too quick to see when Derek shot him--the Tarasque body was swirling around the bullets like smoke. But in changing his body's form like this, Tamaron didn't see what Qom was doing. He ripped the earth away from him, and suddenly his vine-legs were no longer soaking up the ether.
Of course he took this opportunity to lunge at Qom. Still smiling. The same smile he doubtlessly had when he murdered Jacob. I remembered what his men did to my family, but also to me--to my skin, to my hands. And I used the last weapon I had, as Qom's burning winds dispelled him in his lunge. (I knew he was after the fuschium.) "Where the fuck's your cult?" I asked him. "Or did we kill everyone you had left?"
No.
I did. Drank their souls deep to give me even more Ether. So that when I rip the fuschium from your corpses I can leave this world instantly.
I tried to say something about how alone he was. But he only laughed at that.
I need no one.
I will be the only Enemy.
I will shred the Time King and the Emperor until all that remains is my Sorcery. And I bring down the Heavens and gut the Multiversal Architects, and rule the ruins so that none can ever oppose me.
"Like the way Yulmer Purrlzig opposed you? Or the Prince of Space? Or the O'Grady Mob, and all those children you butchered on Earth-13151518?"
And he screamed again, but in frustration more than anything else. And the Tarasque's scream blew us back. I didn't need hands to know my nose was bloody, but I felt like I had cut him just a little. What I did next was stupid.
"We know you keep killing because..."
Because why?
"...because you're still pissy that Sincodemius tricked you into murdering your own family."
And he was on Amos then. And those claws tore out his heart, his lungs, and his entrails. All the time, he was screaming so loud the rocks around us split.
But I screamed with him, as I jumped onto his back. Magic flesh feels fucking weird and tingly and shit. I had my knife and I sliced those goddamn wings right off his back. Not even ether could stop that. And I kept fucking cutting, slashing diagonals right across his non-spine in a giant X. His shriek turned to pain, and I was fucking loving it.
Derek floated into the air, and was slammed against the ground next to A.S.'s pulped remains. He was still breathing but that was still in Tamaron's plan.
WHERE'S JENKINS.
I NEED THE REST OF HIS SKIN TO JOIN HIS FACE ON THE GROUND, ROTTING.
And I was curious about that myself. My mind had been wandering even as I fought off Tamaron's smoke-form...
I saw something. A flash of a metal mask. And the words "Saaamaaa."
I started to get a good picture in my mind, but I needed a distraction. I sent my vision of said distraction to the others.
ALL OF YOU LITTLE SHITS. WASTING MY TIME ON THIS WORLD.
I WILL USE THE FUSCHIUM TO WIPE YOUR ENTIRE UNIVERSE FROM ALL EXISTENCE. TAKING TIME TO MAKE SURE THAT AS YOU WORTHLESSNESS EVAPORATES, EVERY LIVING BEING ON EARTH-GAMMA IS SLOWLY DISSECTED IN WHAT TO SEEMS TO THEM A MILLION--A BILLION--YEARS.
Derek was up again, and even with broken bones still drove his knife into Tamaron's arm. His anger was blinding him, and he was staggered. I had him in my sights again, even if I was low on ammo. But there was another one of those scream-pulses, and I was knocked aside. Qom was staggered next to me, but didn't fall down. I saw that he was crying, but he had the fuschium in his hands, and he whispered to it. He said: "I was Amos Slimechap Berkley was still alive."
And A.S. was back up again too. The next part of Qom's plan went into motion, as Qom hurled the purple crystal at A.S. He caught it. With his new hands.
Then he whispered to it also.
Something unbelievably stupid happened. A.S. triggered his stupid Gaud powers.
I guess A.S.'s Gaud self is a stupid fictional god, from one of his idiot movies. Because now he was yelling about "Manos, God of Primal Darkness." Even as his new hands were creating these glowing red energy-hands that seized the Tarasque.
I don't what else he was planning to do, because even when he transformed into Manos of Gaudium, he wasn't a match for Tamaron. He was still repelled back, against the cliff face of the ravine. The energy hands melted away, as did the crackling power--or melodrama--that the ravine was filled with in his presence. Tamaron was just a little bit further away from us now, close to that goddamn cave. Anything that "Manos" gave us in the way of hope was replaced only by Tamaron's unstoppable fucking rage.
My mind kinda vanished when I turned into Manos, so when I came back, I was being throttled against the canyon wall. I lost sight of everything as my eyes blurred. The power the fuschium gave me when I held it was gone, and my new hands lost all feeling. I realized that the smudged look my eyes saw through was tinged red, probably because I heard my skull fracture when I hit the wall. All the same--I could see the others slowly turn around, and I tried to see what they were looking at. Even with my eyes probably being filled with blood, I could tell who it was. His face--or what was left of it--was hidden behind an Iron Mask. It was Frank Jenkins.
"Guys," he said. (His voice was a little screwed up.) "Follow me in what I'm doing. Qom will brief you on the lyrics."
There was a sort of hymn in the air, then.
A hymn to trap the Tarasque.
Frank's mind was in mine, and together we sang the song of the Saaamaaa Ritual.
Around Tamaron, a magic circle began to form. Something that would bind him and prevent him from draining more Ether from our world. But also something else, because it was Ether that formed that vortex when the Prince of Space killed him and destroyed his ship when he was Krankor--and when he, as the Homunculus of Akinos, was torn apart on Earth-20181. We were building another such vortex to banish him. It was all we could do--and Frank told me it would destroy yet another one of his bodies. Perhaps in the void between the worlds, his spirit would finally die...
The last words of the Ritual were almost impossible to say. But the Heroes of Gaudium are more than human, and we realized our potential in that moment.
Yet things did not go as we intended.
The Cave behind him opened its gateway. Whether it was our misuse of magic, or Tamaron's own power, I don't know. We all sensed at once that the Syzygy was closing, and so the Multiversal gateway was opening onto the world we were joining with. Earth-Alpha.
And before we could do anything--the vortex dragged him not into the interuniversal void, but into this gateway.
There was a flash of light as the Syzygy broke, and we saw the Cave collapse. Before all went black, and the music of the hymn stopped.
The breaking of the Syzygy also shattered certain barriers over our story. Continuity, it could be said, was cracked in that instant. Because we were no longer in the Cave. We were in the hospital A.S. went to after what happened to him, and that scared me for a second. But I remembered that Tamaron destroyed the Abbey of Serpentis himself, and that we were free.
Our families were there. They had been gone such an unrealistically long time because they were held back by the Syzygy--just as many of the people of Alberta had vanished so as to not interpret our--quest? Our fiction? I don't know. A.S. was sobbing so hard that he couldn't explain his scars. His parents were almost screaming. I'm guessing they were talking about Jacob. Garry, meanwhile, was trying to balance his parents while also pulling Derek close--because no one came for Derek. As Garry babbled Derek was just staring forward, his eyes empty, and his breath shallow.
Somehow I got someone to bring me a computer. And once everything was calm again, he put this all together.
It's over.
There are some other developments, but this is getting long enough as is. It's also getting late. Maybe not on your Earth but I think the Syzygy has enough traces where this will show up on some other worlds for a time. But I'll finish it ASAP--our last testament, on this. A day that seemed like it was the last in the history of our world.
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