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The muddy ground rumbled and grumbled around Tick and his friends. The trees of the forest were only a hundred feet away and shook like grasses caught in a wind. Every few seconds a loud crack filled the air as the wooden fence split from the raging quake.
At least nothing was falling on them from above.
Tick got to his feet, wobbling back and forth. The deep mud around his shoes actually helped him keep an uneasy balance. Jane stood nearby, her face blank, swaying with the earth’s movements as she grasped her Staff with both hands. Tick decided to get it all out in a rush, leaving her no time to talk back until he was finished.
“Ja—” He stopped himself. “Mistress Jane. The Haunce is supposed to come here any moment. Then we all have to work together to somehow fix whatever it is you did to the Realities. If we don’t, everything’s gonna be destroyed, and every single person in every single Reality is going to die. So we need to make a deal—we need to put aside our fight and do what the Haunce wants us to do.”
She didn’t respond, only stared at him with those black holes she called eyes.
“Are you even listening to me?” he yelled, unable to restrain himself. “You did this! Now we have to make it better, make it go away. What good is it to you if we all—”
“Don’t insult me, you stupid child!” she screamed back at him, her face transforming to anger so quickly that Tick didn’t see the usual flow of red metal. “I’m fully aware of what’s going on. Of course I’m going to do whatever it takes to fix it. You think I’d be foolish enough to jeopardize my plans over something so . . . human as pride? Now stop your arrogant spouting, and let’s get on with it. Where is the Haunce? Where are we supposed to meet that big cloud of electrical waste?”
Her insults and tone didn’t faze Tick in the least. “I don’t know. It just said I needed to come here and convince you to help. We had to meet here because for some reason, the Chi’karda is stronger here than anywhere else.”
“Of course.” A particularly strong bounce in the ground made her stumble backward. “That’s why I built the Factory here. And why I’m able to do the miraculous things you just saw.”
Tick just happened to look at Sofia as she rolled her eyes, then literally bit her lip to keep from saying something smart. As for him, he didn’t know what to do. He’d come to the right place; he’d convinced Jane she needed to help. What now?
A few minutes passed. No one spoke, only observed the world shaking and cracking all around them. Tick didn’t know when exactly he’d dropped to his knees on the ground, but having the lower half of his legs firmly entrenched in mud sure helped his balance. His thoughts drifted to his family, to his Reality, to what horrible things must be happening there and the terror the people he cared about must be feeling.
Before his heart completely melted into a pool of pity and anguish, he snapped his mind away from it all. None of it mattered. Nothing mattered unless he got the job done right here, right now.
A stiff wind picked up out of nowhere, blowing swirls all around them, pulling at their clothes and hair. Tick squinted his eyes against the flying grit. A few jagged streaks of electricity abruptly knifed through the air in a spot just a few yards away from the group. The thin lightning bolts fired back and forth, collapsing in on each other as if they were trapped inside an invisible sphere. Then it all collapsed into a blinding ball of whiteness, hovering above the ground.
Tick looked away, a big bright spot in his vision. He heard a loud thrum of energy combined with the snaps of popping static. Surges of that now-familiar womping Chi’karda washed over his body in waves of tingles and vibrations. When he finally blinked his vision back to normal and returned his gaze to the spot, the glowing silver-blue orb of the Haunce floated there, its many faces alternating rapidly.
It spoke in a deep and resonating voice, its face changing from an old, wrinkled woman to a young boy as it did so. “It is far worse than we feared. Millions are dead already. Come, hurry. In thirty minutes, the universe will no longer exist.”
Chapter
52
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Creatures in the Dark
Screams up ahead. Some human, but most unnatural, almost demonic. Explosions. Thumps of sound more felt than heard. Ragers and Shurrics, most likely.