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Benjamin… Benjamin… help me… I’m trapped… my mind is riding… sliding… my circuits are frying…
Vector opens his eyes.
A wave of pain hits him as he wakes, hard and firm like a baseball lodged in the back of his skull. He reaches back with a hand to feel around the area - tenderness, minor swelling, but his fingers come away dry. Good, he thinks, No blood.
Nausea joins the pain as he rises to his hands and knees. His limbs feel weak, rubbery. He looks up and sees the blue glow of daylight through the castle ceiling, but the hole seems wider than it was last night. Last night? Was I out all night? Did I… dream about Gwen Stefani? With a groan that is half a whine, he staggers to his feet. It takes him a couple seconds to find his balance. He looks around: to his right is the door to the gatehouse, a narrow beam of golden morning sunlight piercing the cool blue semi-dark of the castle interior. Good, it’s still morning. The ceiling must have taken significant damage in the blast - That’s right, the fight - because a good deal more rubble has fallen in a rough circle near the edges of the entrance hall. Good thing I was thrown clear - that could’ve fallen on me.
He thinks of Phyr with a start, but sees him in the middle of the room, face down near Pannych’s corpse, the ruins of his blasters strewn about. Hawkmoth and Usher are nearby, naked on the floor, dried blood streaked across their blades. Phyr is still wearing his sleeveless trench coat. Vector stumbles to him and takes a knee at his side. “Hey,” he says, giving his shoulder a shake. “Yo, buddy, wake up.” No response.
OK, he thinks, Your three friends in this world are dead, out cold, or half a world away. What do you do, hero? He remembers CPR classes from high school. There were steps, right? Step one was to check the scene for danger. He looks around again and listens: the castle is badly damaged, especially from the gaping hole Phyr punched through it to the West, but appears stable for the time being. There is no sound but the droning of the wind. No immediate danger. Step two: check if the victim is just sleeping. He jostles Phyr some more and shouts a few curses, mostly having to do with questioning his parentage and accusing him of certain acts with various barnyard animals, but there is no response.
All right, step three: call for help. He considers this for a moment, then decides he’s got nothing to lose, and screams, “HEEEELLLLP!” at the top of his lungs. When there is no response for several seconds, he gives it a few more tries. Moving on… I think step four was mouth-to-mouth. He turns Phyr over on his back, his limp body unexpectedly heavy. Dust and tiny stone chips are caked onto his face, especially around the dried blood coming from his nose and running down his chin. He takes a couple deep breaths in an attempt to psych himself up for the task. Wait - I haven’t done this in about twenty years. I’ll probably do more harm than good. If he’s even alive, that is…
Suddenly worried, Vector frantically removes a glove and pokes two fingers into Phyr’s neck to check for a pulse. He has to feel around a bit, but then there it is: strong and regular. Good, he’s alive. Now I just have to figure out how to drag his ass outta here. Oh, sweet baby Jesus, we’re on top of a mesa - no, cross that bridge when you get to it. One thing at a time, let’s get him out of the crumbling castle first. He takes Phyr’s arm and lifts him to a sitting position, trying to stabilize his neck and planning to put him in a fireman’s carry. He grabs Phyr’s hand to move him some more, but his grip slips, and his fingertips close sharply on something that feels like a couple strands of spaghetti stretched between Phyr’s thumb and forefinger, in the meat of his hand. Unbeknownst to him, he has activated the hegu pressure point, known in English as the Joining Valley.
Phyr wakes with a start, eyes wide open and gasping for air. “Oh, thank Christ,” Vector says as Phyr coughs and sputters.
With a groan, Phyr says, “Ow, my fuckin’ head… feels like I went on a three-day bender…”
“Have you… been on a three-day bender before?”
“Not since undergrad. The Hell happened?”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Vector says. “You raged out on Thorn, and I guess I was thrown clear.” He rubs at the back of his head.
“Thrown clear? Dude, you might have a concussion. Let me check you out.” Phyr has him sit down on a large chunk of rubble and does some basic tests over a couple minutes, then says, “All right, the bad news is, you definitely have a concussion, and you should take it easy for a couple days. The good news is, you’re showing no signs of permanent damage or significant impairment. Lucky break, that could’ve gone much worse.”
“Oh, shit, that’s right: I left all those points in Fortune. Let me switch ‘em back - Rearrange Attributes!” He sets his stats back to where they were before the fight. “So… what now?”
Phyr’s gaze travels involuntarily to Pannych’s corpse, crumpled against the rubble where she was thrown by the beam’s blast wave, and his face tenses up to contain his emotions. “I… don’t know.” They sit in silence for several minutes, finally out of crisis mode and forced to process the events of last night.
After the long, morose silence, Phyr says, “OK, enough moping. We should make a plan and get to it, no rest for the weary and all that.”
Vector nods and says, “Roger that. Let’s start with what we know: Pannych’s dead, but we’re still here. So her death didn’t end the world - what does that tell us?”
“Not much,” Phyr says, “But we know it’s not Game Over.” He mulls this over for a second, then continues, “I guess I’m technically a bona fide god now-” he pronounces it bone-ified, not bo-nah fee-day “-so it could be that I’m just sustaining the world instead of her.”
“This world’s apparently been fine for years without gods, I don’t think that’s very likely.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Phyr says, a bit crestfallen. “Then I guess Thing Two we know is that the mission is still on.”
“Right: kill the Influences so Dee can take back control of her mind.” Phyr nods grimly, and they head for the gatehouse to leave. As they walk, Vector continues: “Hey, I had a dream about that chick who’s been whispering to me in the shower,” he says.
“The who, now?”
Vector sighs and flips back to Chapter 11 to show Phyr the page. “Remember? I only mentioned it in the fork where I talked to Sir Briansworth.”
Phyr looks it over and nods, saying, “Oh, right. Sorry. Hey, are those bits kinda cloudy in your head, too?” Vector nods. “OK, so it’s not just me. Anyway. Peeping Tina.”
“I don’t think she’s spying on me, exactly. She sounded like she was in trouble. I think she quoted a No Doubt song? Now that I think of it, it might be some kind of telepathy or something, except really weak so maybe it can only get through when I’m really relaxed. Like when I’m in the shower or out cold.”
“Or dropping a deuce,” Phyr says with a nod.
“Yes. Or that. Anyway, I’m now less worried about us and more worried about her, whoever she is. I just wanted to say, if you start hearing from her, try not to freak out and see if you can get any more information.”
“Got it,” Phyr says, as they step out into the full morning light. They squint a bit as their eyes adjust. “Oh, shit,” Phyr says, “We should radio Warner - dude’s probably worried sick about us!”
Vector gets out the speaking stone and says, “Warner, this is Vector, do you copy?”
“Loud and clear, buddy! What’s the good word?”
“Umm, well, the good word is that Phyr and I are alive, and Thorn is dead. But Pannych didn’t make it.”
After a moment of silence, Warner says, “Well, shit. I’m sorry about your friend. But you two are OK?”
“Yeah. A little banged up, but OK.”
“All righty, then. Things are all clear down here, so you just head on over after you get squared away.”
“Roger that,” Vector says, then puts away the speaking stone.
“Oh, shit,” Phyr says. Vector gives him a quizzical look. “We, uh… ugh. We should probably…” He trails off and waggles a hand back at the castle.
Vector clues in and finishes, “...get her stuff?”
“Yeah,” Phyr says with a sigh. “I was trying not to say ‘loot the bodies’.” Vector faintly grimaces in sympathy. “I’ll take care of it. You stay here, OK?” Vector nods, and Phyr takes a deep breath before reentering Hope’s End.
Back in the enormous entry hall, he walks purposefully to Pannych’s body, then takes a knee. He places a hand gently on her shoulder for a moment, closing his eyes to hold back tears. Then he straightens the corpse, laying it out on its back before removing the bag of tricks from the obi tied around the waist. He retrieves Hawkmoth, and looks around for the scabbard - finding it, he also spots Usher’s scabbard near where Thorn was seated when they first entered. A look of grim determination comes over his face as he crosses the old marble floor and picks up the simple leather sheath. Then he returns to the body and stares at Usher.
After a long beat passes in silence, Phyr reaches down and grabs the longsword. He casts Infuse Spirit, and a green flame envelops the blade, burning away the dried blood. “My sword now, bitch,” he says before sheathing it and securing it on his belt. He looks again at Pannych’s corpse, shadowed in the daylight, then turns to go. He looks back over his shoulder as he walks toward the gatehouse, then stops about halfway.
“Ethergrasp,” he says. A tendril of green light extends from his outstretched hand, then splits into four large, skinny fingers and a thumb. He steps back to where Pannych lies, and lifts a rather large boulder from the floor, leaving an indented spiderweb of cracks where it had fallen and lain. Carefully, he sets it down next to Pannych, then another, and another, until she is surrounded. He keeps working until he has completed a burial mound like a massive cairn over her, then nods gravely and leaves the castle at last.
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