NOVEL WEB CHAPTER 17: THE END IS NIGH
RANDOM ISLAND, NEWFOUNDLAND, CANADA
The portal within the Gate ignited, casting a brilliant burst of purple light. In an instant, where there was once only empty air, a dazzling vortex appeared, suspended in mid-air. Unlike the fluid motion of water, this vortex swirled steadily, its core a mysterious void that gave no hint of what lay on the other side. The portal was a mesmerizing spectacle, a gateway to the unknown, its purple light spiraling into a deep, impenetrable darkness.
This Gate Cerise had designed had only one destination: Nolm. Griffin and Sarah’s gurneys now rested inches from the portal, poised for the final automated command that would send them wheeling into an alien world. A tense forty seconds ticked by as August awaited the program's execution, power surging through him with unbridled ferocity.
He could feel the batteries from the array powering the Gate draining away just like his own tensa reserves. The drain would be too fast, August knew. Alone, this plan was doomed to failure; they had discussed it. With August or Cerise acting as a bridge, their natural tensa draw rate would empty the batteries far too quickly. Once the batteries were empty, they would no longer be acting as a conduit, but as batteries themselves and their natural abilities would then work against the Gate in a catastrophic feedback loop which would lead to an explosion that would destroy the entire Gate Facility. At least.
August wanted to avoid that.
He felt himself start to scream as the pain became too much for him to effectively compartmentalize. He could not stop screaming and he couldn’t let go of the wire cores. He felt his skin blacken and crisp as the power roared through him. He kept screaming but he had not risen to where he was now without enduring a little pain. He could function even like this.
The Herald interrupted his meditative pain trance, its dry, whispery voice mocking him, That looks like it hurts. I can see what you’re doing, and you know what? I don’t really care, because it doesn’t matter. You’re not leaving this Earth, no matter how much pain you think you can suffer. Your efforts are futile, self-sabotaging, and doomed to failure. Do you want to know why?
The next part of this mad “plan” was one where timing was even more crucial than before. He spread his anima even further, as far as he ever had before, blanketing the entire Earth with it, making it gossamer-thin and sensitive as the skin on the back of his hand. He felt The Herald draw even closer. That taut skein of anima he’d stretched out could feel the waves of gravity ripple as the Moon broke apart.
Because you’re ultimately the most selfish creature that has ever set foot on this planet. You Have always been willing to sacrifice everyone and everything for even the hint of a possibility of your return to Nolm. August couldn’t shut the words away, but then again, he couldn’t deny them either. The Herald was not lying now.
You inveigled yourself into their society, taking high positions and amassing great wealth. You used your wealth and power to hurtle the planet closer and closer to the apocalypse, all based on the misguided and completely predictable hope that you would return to your own planet. It is why your kind fails: avarice dooms you to repeat your stupidest mistakes over and over. It would be amusing if it weren’t so predictable.
August was still screaming and clinging to the wire cores on the side of the Gate floating in the middle of a huge spherical room, looking more like a sizzling skeleton gripping the wires than a man anymore, when the entire ceiling of the Facility ripped away. The white ceramic tiles cracked and shattered, and the wiring spat sparks.
Everything was sucked up into the sky, ceramic tiles, rock, ocean water—everything. It was like an enormous hand had reached down and scooped it all away. The Gate was half a kilometer underground, mostly covered by the Atlantic Ocean, but now August could see the whole night sky spangled with stars and the enormous full Moon. But the Moon was far more than full now. It was breaking apart.
August’s burned-out eyes barely functioned at all anymore, but he still caught glimpses of the horror in the sky above him. The Moon had been very full that night, but it had gone beyond full. State-sized chunks of the Moon were slowly accelerating away from each other, spreading across the whole night sky. They still glittered with reflected light from the Sun, and from a certain perspective might even have looked beautiful.
In that critical moment, with the impending firestorm threatening Earth, August strained to draw tensa from his anima membrane. The effort was futile, akin to wringing water from a stone. Desperation rose in him as he screamed, fighting through the agonizing pain, until he felt the portal pierce the dimensional membrane, reaching its intended destination in Nolm. The tensa batteries, under immense strain, began to falter and fail one after the other. He could only feel the increasing burden, powerless to stop the impending catastrophe. The looming explosion, a byproduct of the feedback loop, promised an end to his suffering. Yet, he persevered, clinging to the last shreds of his plan.
I’ve broken free of that prison you put me in now, The Herald said, its whispery voice triumphantly mocking. Soon, I’ll be there in person. I thought I’d be more upset not to witness your death personally, but you know what? I’ve made my peace with it. I’ve moved on.
Suddenly, tensa surged into him, flowing through his anima. This technique, imparted by Cerise millennia ago, had seen them expend vast quantities of tensa. Earth had absorbed most of it, leaving August to painstakingly reclaim a mere fraction - never more than eight percent. Yet now, with the planet on the brink of death, he clung to a sliver of hope, believing he could offer some salvation beyond The Herald’s merciless designs, not only for Griffin and Sarah but for others as well.
As the Moon loomed larger in the night sky, The Herald remained aloft, formless, and void, its presence a bizarre distortion in space. Its "appendages" oscillated between grotesque forms - at times, slime-coated tongues flailing wildly, at others, fleshy, undulating masses. It reveled in its newfound freedom, basking in the void of space. Its gaze, formless as it was, fixated on the insignificant planet below, particularly on August Vasilias at his Gate.
Suddenly, The Herald extended an appendage, morphing into a horrifying array of fifteen human-like hands, each twisting into a clawed form. Black lightning crackled menacingly between its fingers as it thrust this monstrous limb toward Earth.
Across the planet, black tendrils of lightning struck without sound or fury. Instead of fiery destruction, they left only voids in their wake, an instantaneous wave of obliteration. The world shuddered under this singular, devastating assault, a chilling testament to The Herald's terrifying power.
August felt all those deaths in his anima as the combined absorbed tensa of the dying Earth and all its people started pouring into him. It rushed faster and faster and the Gate screamed as it rocketed way past the safe operating conditions. Its housing had been torn away and reality-bending etheric forces pulsed out from the overloaded Gate. The threshold of the active Gate had expanded far beyond its normal limit. August glanced down one last time before his eyes finally gave up the ghost and crisped away and saw that Griffin and Sarah’s gurneys were gone. So was the walkway.
The Bleakness was nearly done with him now, but the tensa flow within him had a will of its own. It poured into the Gate in an ever-increasing torrent. August was no longer able to maintain even a semblance of control. He died holding the wire cores, the Gate still using him as a closed circuit and pouring that captured tensa into the Gate itself.
August’s execution of his mad plan meant that the resulting feedback loop did not merely explode. It did explode; and when it did, it took all of Random Island with it in a flash of superheated gas leaving a mushroom cloud half a kilometer tall. It also unleashed a swarm of Gates on the world in random locations. August’s last desperate hope was to give whoever went through them—or happened to be forced through when they randomly appeared—more of a chance than The Herald would. The unstable portals would only last a moment or two before they winked out so it was a slim chance at best. Of course, Earth didn’t have that much time left.
August did not see the last twenty minutes of the Earth’s life. He did not see the fiery death rain down from above, as all the disparate pieces of the moon were arrested in their trajectories by tethers of unimaginable power and then flung down to the surface. The Herald floated above it all, its appendages retracted for now, looking more like an optical illusion than a world-destroying monster. It watched impassively as the chunks of its former prison rained down on the world below. He felt the planet shake and shudder, but still hold together. It moved its physical presence from the Moon to the surface of the Earth. It did not pass any intervening space: one moment it was suspended above the Earth raining destruction down, the next, it was on the surface.
It perceived that it was in a populated area, though it did not know how populous it was on the planet. It was in the Northern Hemisphere and on a large landmass. The more important thing to The Herald was all the geothermal activity it had felt there. Underground vents reached deep into the bones of the Earth: perfect for its purposes. It plunged into one of the vents, worming itself deep into the crust of the planet. It squirmed down and down, squeezing between cracks and crevices. It didn’t need to physically be here to do this. It didn’t need to go this deep. The Herald just liked to feel the planets’ death rattles from within when they happened.
It flexed with one of its appendages and once more, black lightning ripped through the planet. It tore the crust of the earth apart from the inside, ripping it away in smoking chunks. Cities crumbled and oceans boiled away as The Herald shuddered in otherworldly joy. It had felt the portals suck away a few of the people in this place, but that was no worry. For The Herald, time was no obstacle. It would find them and just like August, they would also all be destroyed.
Where the Earth once orbited the Sun, there was now only a slowly cooling and spreading asteroid belt, tumbling and rolling through space. The Herald took one last moment to observe its handiwork before it turned inward on itself and seemed to eat itself. It disappeared from Earth’s orbit, eager to explore its freedom after such an extended imprisonment.