12

Brett hurled himself more than flew toward the northern rip. It had expanded to an even greater size. The ichor void really did seem like the edge of the universe. But the glitch’s threatening presence didn’t stop the enraged and broken-hearted man for a second. He flung himself to within three feet of the glitch and felt the electrical static dance across his skin.

“You promised!” Brett bawled into the dead space. “You promised!”

With water rushing through the bottom third of the rip, the noise in the region was overwhelming. But the void itself was utterly silent. This enraged Brett even more.

“You fucker!” he bellowed. “After all you’ve put me through…” He started crying again. “After all I’ve had to endure, you… you are abandoning me?” He sniffled as his rage tipped the delicate balance of reason and emotions. “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”

Unobserved below him, the white wolves with red eyes and ears circled him, perching on the largest boulders. They bared their teeth and growled at him, but the cacophonous torrent drowned the sound out. Had Brett looked down at the pack, his Creature Description would have shown something both interesting and vital to his survival. The name assigned to the creatures was no longer Timber Wolf. It had changed to Cŵn Annwn. Brett wouldn’t have known about the Welsh myth, but it would have still signaled an ominous change. One that might have held his tongue.

But Brett never averted his attention from the Wendigo’s home. He spewed swear words and spit as his rage mushroomed unfettered. “Fuck you. You told me I would have Emma! You told me…”

The glitch appeared to stretch toward him for an instant, like something was trying to push through a thick layer of cellophane. Then a three-foot-wide hand emerged from the black static, carrying with it qubits that popped and whisked across its hairy and leathery skin. The hand grabbed him, and its long claws circled his torso.

Below him, the wolves started snarling and barking loudly, cutting through the din of the rushing water. The hand tightened on Brett’s body and his ribs broke in an orderly succession, sounding like popping firecrackers. He moaned as the Wendigo’s face pushed through the ichor veil. A huge animal’s skull lined with massive antlers burst from the darkness. Only this skull had three eye sockets on each side. In the shadows of those sockets, small yellow eyes stared at him mercilessly.

As the creature advanced further out of the glitch, Brett saw the hairy shoulders of a massive but gaunt beast. The large fingers that gripped him squeezed again, and his broken ribs punctured his organs. Another hand protruded from the void and cast a spell on him. A black, whirling line flowed through Brett’s body and he felt a change take place, but couldn’t determine what it was.

The jaws of the animal skull opened. In it, Brett saw the end of the universe, where the light of stars never appeared, life was extinguished, and the dead cold of millennia festered like a rotten corpse.

I took you in. I made you my own, the Wendigo roared into his anguished mind, repeating the words Brett had used earlier that day. Through the intoxication of his pain, he wasn’t sure if the beast was mocking him. You weren’t an important player in the grand scheme, Brett, the Wendigo telepathed as it emerged fully from the void. Its skeletal frame was covered with matted, long black hair. An odor of decay rose from it.

As Brett stared into the face of what he’d once considered his god, but knew now was closer to a devil, the Wendigo telepathed in a very measured tone, You weren’t an important player, Brett, but I could have allowed you to have a good life. The beast’s jaws opened then closed on his legs, ripping them from his body. Brett grunted painfully as his organs dropped and dangled over the rushing waters. The Wendigo’s clawed hand still gripped him as he saw his legs roll down the boney jaws and disappear into the black chasm.

The Wendigo seemed to grow. Incredibly, Brett could feel sensations from his legs—and it wasn’t the phantom signals that amputees normally experience. He could feel his legs bump against the lining of the monster’s throat. How can that be? he wondered. And how am I not dead yet?

The skull face appeared to grin. Its long teeth, coated with his blood, shimmered in the surreal daylight. You will never die, the Wendigo answered. You are in a permanent state of respawn now. It grabbed a handful of his intestines and threw it down to the hungry wolves.

Brett could feel their teeth grinding through his entrails. His mind finally broke, bringing a detached relief from his agony. His eyes stared blankly at the sky as tears rolled down his bloody face.

The Wendigo cast the black spell once again, and suddenly Brett’s mind snapped back to full and vivid cognition. “Aaaauuuuggghh,” he moaned as the pain reflooded his brain.

I will continue to regenerate you, Brett, the Wendigo informed him. You will exist to feed me. The jaws swooped in again and tore off his left arm. The pain was unbearable, yet the life didn’t seep from his being. His mind became cloudy again and Brett felt brief relief again, Then the black spell showered him and he was yanked back to full cognition. It was then that Brett remembered his thoughts from before he’d been freed from the tower: “Maybe there are worse things than death?” As the Wendigo tossed the rest of his dismembered body down its throat and Brett was cast into the black universe where pain was constant, he realized that the statement was true.

13

Emma explained the Explodo ability to Thao and the two mages, saying it was like a glitched spell. “I think it’s an offshoot of the levitation ability that became corrupted,” she said, then turned to the massive beast anchored in the landscape. “But it just might take this boss down.”

She levitated to one hundred feet above the lanscape. The Golem reached for her, but she was out of its range. Below her, everyone stopped attacking except for Thao and the mages. Their flash spells still had a minimal effect.

“Here goes,” Emma said apprehensively.

She raised her arm and pointed at the behemoth’s chest. Although there were no outward signs of the ability working, the Golem reacted instantly. It roared, only this time the sound was higher pitched. The monster leaned forward and reached for Emma. She let out a startled yelp and quickly levitated backward. The hard tip of one of its fingers jolted her and sent her spinning. She lost the charged effect of the Explodo ability as she tried to regain control of her levitation.

Below her, the Earth Flash spells continued to chip away at the beast’s defenses. Shards of orange stone plunked into the raging waters. Having straightened herself out, Emma re-launched the Explodo ability. The behemoth reacted viscerally again, but this time, she accounted for its extended range. Within seconds, the cobbling of large stones on the monster’s torso shook erratically. The tremors spread through the giant’s body. It howled in pain and fury.

Emma looked at the team gathered below her. “Get ready,” she yelled. “Those boulders are going to explode outward.”

The members retreated further into the woods. Meanwhile, smoke rose from the gaps in the boss’s stone armor. It roared again, but was never able to finish. Ten-foot-high boulders exploded out from the monster’s body. One headed right for Emma, but before it could reach her, it burst into fragments. Rocks the size of her hand surged past her, but two struck her, one on the shoulder and the other square in her stomach.

“Uuuugghh,” she cried as she bent over, then watched the stone that had hit her fall into the flooding waters. As she groaned and straightened out again, she saw another battle taking place far away. Only this one was much more one-sided. “The Wendigo,” she muttered as she saw the beast just over the trees.

It held Brett, whose legs were gone. Emma turned away from the sight and looked up at the Golem. It had another layer of protection under what she’d been blown away. And she saw how more of its body was covered by the glitch now.

Hovering in the humid air and still favoring her stomach, Emma pointed at the beast. It leaned back, and she thought it was going to roar again. Below her, she heard Harper yell, “Watch out! It shoots gl—”

The beast lunged forward. Its mouth gaped open, and suddenly dozens of glitched blobs shot straight for her. It caught Emma completely by surprise, and she froze. The horrors of her glitch infection flashed before her eyes.

“No,” she whispered as the black shapes bore down on her. She saw the white stars that circled erratically in their ichor matter. She tried to levitate out of its path, but was too late. The levitation ability could build up speed, but it was slow accelerating. As she inched to her left, she knew it wouldn’t be enough. After everything, she thought, I am going to be infected again.

14

Spurred by the perpetual feeding of the man he had doomed, the Wendigo doubled in size and crashed through the eastern forest, toppling trees like matchsticks. The Cŵn Annwn hounds ran with the beast, bounding over the hills at top speed. As the giant raced closer to the eastern border, it started to change. Its animal surfaces became more human. Its hair and fur fell away to reveal muscular legs and arms. The animal’s skull broke in two and shifted to the sides of the marauding monster’s head. The horns sunk under its skin, becoming no longer a fixture, but part of the creature’s new anatomy. Its six yellow eyes melted into a pair of soulless white eyes. Most significantly, its descriptor name ‘Wendigo’ blinked out and turned to gibberish for many minutes before appearing again with a new title: Arawn.

As it silently pounded through the terrain, the metal in the realm lifted as particles from the ground. Weapons rose from the muck they had been discarded in and rocketed over the trees, converging on the giant human beast. Swords wrapped like clay around the behemoth’s body, forming pieces of armor. Particles of metal pulled from the soil melded together to form an elaborate headpiece.

The monster reached the border and slowed. Its pale eyes gazed at the shimmering boundary. As a new glitch spread like a tattoo across its chest, the giant cast its black spell at the border. A new slit tore through the reflective plane, expanding more quickly than the northern rip. Arawn stared at it impassively, then jumped through the opening, disappearing into the blackness. The hounds that had followed the beast over the disintegrating landscape leaped in after it.