Chapter 3: Sundering (Patreon)

Elliot gasped, then shoved the door open again. Instead of the blue-white clouds of chaos, all he saw were beige carpets and gray walls, without a single glowing golden path to be found.

“What are you doing?” Rowan asked nervously. “Who’s there?”

He jerked his head back and forth, the blandness of the hallway refusing to yield to his fevered inspection. “No one. No one at all.” His heart felt like it was going to explode at the rate it was beating. “Did you notice anything strange out here when I opened the door?” She must have seen me looking around like an idiot. Or did she? Was it all in my head?

“No,” she replied, inching closer as if she might need to pull him back inside the apartment, “just the hallway. Are you feeling okay? You know, considering.”

“Yeah,” Elliot replied, forcing his face to relax, “totally cool. Excellent, actually. How are you doing?”

“Um, I’m fine. You’re starting to scare me a bit though.”

“Sorry,” he said, turning and re-entering the apartment. “I’m really okay. This whole text box thing is just getting to me.” He had to distract her. There was no way he could share what he’d seen without seeming clinically insane, even considering the exceptional circumstances. “What did you learn from Emma?”

Her eyes lit up. “We’ve been experimenting. So far no solid materials, light, fire, or magnetic force has been able to interact with the projection. I’m going to put a fork in the outlet and turn so that the message passes through the metal, which should show if a live current affects it, but we’re thinking it won’t.”

“What?” Elliot exclaimed. “How did you light something on fire? We don’t have matches. And there will be absolutely no forks in outlets.”

Rowan frowned. “I’d use an insulator. I’m not stupid. I could just pass it through the wall behind the outlet, but I want to see the contact site.”

“I’m glad. Still no.” Elliot resisted the urge to grasp at his hair. “Did you discover anything…safer?”

“The visual appearance seems to be produced directly in our brain, or at least it’s not mimicking standard light. Emma tried on red-light glasses, and everything went red except the text box. It just stayed exactly the same.”

“Huh,” Elliot replied. He’d been asking largely to buy time to compose himself, but that was actually interesting.

“We were going to try to have one of us take a micro-nap next, and see if it changed after a brain reset.”

“Well…keep up the good work then, I guess.”

“Yup,” she replied, and then vanished back into her room, closing the door as she went.

What the absolute fuck is going on. He forced himself to take one deep breath, then another. That had felt real, like a sheet had been ripped away from reality to expose its underpinnings. And why did the back of his head keep hurting?

Sinking back down onto the couch, he buried his face in his hands and tried to remember the view behind the world in as much detail as possible. The blue-white clouds, the golden roads, the warriors. The colossus below. It was so fantastical, so improbable, and yet he was so certain it was real. That there was a true and vicious battle going on in some dimension somehow adjacent to this one. 

His mind felt like it was being pulled apart. Thoughts of how to convince Rowan of the danger warred with questions about what supplies he should gather, why only he could see the visions, was he going insane, would the defenders accomplish their goal? He had to assume they would hold and the net would finish, because if the rising leviathan arrived there was absolutely nothing anyone on earth was going to do to survive it. But what did it mean for humanity for the net to be finished? Was that the ‘woven into the Loom’ promised in the text box? Would that be any better?

He sucked a deep breath in, held it, then let it out slowly. Focus, Elliot. Something must be doable. He rose to his feet. Tea always calmed him, and it was something he could be confident in achieving despite the imminent end of the world.

The kitchen was small, and decorated in a very 70’s orange and green. Elliot considered it one of the more egregious sacrifices they’d had to make to get cheap rent. He grasped the small bronze knob in the shape of a heart on the cabinet door and started to pull—then another stab at the back of his head.

Instead of a row of mugs, the clouds of chaos stretched off behind the cabinet like it was an open window. Immediately ahead a warrior fought with a giant pike. It looked like obsidian, and every strike sent a spew of ash and flame into the crowds of nearly formless enemies. The figure gripped the pike in both hands, swung it wide—

Elliot slammed the door shut, hissing involuntarily as he scrambled backwards. This couldn’t be happening. Why him? Was he just coincidentally going insane right as the world started to change?

He opened his phone, practically dropping it in his haste, and searched for golden net, warriors, visions, aliens, and blue-white clouds in quick succession. Nothing. Why was no one else experiencing this?

“It’s useless!” Rowan said, popping back out of her room and nearly causing Elliot to release what he was sure would have been a very embarrassing squeak. “I definitely can’t fall asleep right now, and neither can Emma. She had to go, her parents are freaking out.”

“Understandable,” Elliot replied. Stop freaking out. Control your breathing. Do not let your sister down.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m fine.” His heart was pounding again, and he closed his eyes.

“Elliot,” she replied slowly, “please tell me what’s wrong. Are you worried about the world ending? I totally get that, but listen. I’ve been looking at a lot of takes online, and talking with Emma, and we really feel like it’s going to be a metaphor. The message ends on such a nice note, wishing for our ancestors to bless our way. It feels more like it comes from a guide than from an enemy.”

“No, I believe that part.” He’d already decided the message made the most sense coming from the defenders.

“Then what’s wrong? You need to stop trying to protect me.”

He gripped both hands into fists, held them up to his face, and started to rub his temples. “You’re going to have a hard time believing me.”

“There’s floating boxes of imaginary text in front of, as far as I can tell, every person on the planet. Just tell me.”

His brain started cycling through reasonable excuses, but then he caught himself. Maybe he did try to protect her from the world too much. It wasn’t like she was going to get a normal childhood now, no matter what. The thought made his chest feel tight. 

“Okay,” he said, unclenching and lowering his hands. “I’m seeing visions. At first it was me in a massive body of water watching some kind of sea monster rising below, then the next two felt much more real, with some kind of cosmic battle being fought in another dimension. There’s this golden net being woven around the world, and some figures are fighting to try to protect us while others are trying to attack. I think it’s real. I think something is coming to try to eat the world, the people protecting us sent the message, and now they’re doing their best to do something that will help. I can’t prove it, and no one else seems to see it, but there it is.” The words had been coming out faster and faster by the end. He glanced over at her, afraid he would see panic, but there was only surprise. 

“Okay. That’s intense, but okay.” She reached over and put a hand on his shoulder. “Have you figured out how to make it happen intentionally?”

A laugh bubbled up in his chest, and he let it out. That was such a Rowan response to him telling her he was having hallucinations. Anything that could be experimented on would be, and promptly. “Not really. It seems to happen whenever I open any kind of door, and I always feel a sharp pain right at the base of my skull when it does.”

“Well, let's try. What did you open to make it happen last time?”

“The cabinet,” he said, glancing back over into the kitchen. “That one.”

She walked over to the indicated door, its garish orange paint and heart-shaped knob now seeming more threatening than tasteless. Her fingers grasped the bronze handle, pulled, and the door swept open to reveal a cluster of mugs under a narrow shelf with a few stacked boxes of herbal and green teas. “Huh. You didn’t do anything else?” She closed the door. “Maybe try again.”

Elliot walked over slowly. He wasn’t precisely scared, but his shoulders tensed as he approached the cabinet. Easing the door open, the pain hit again, right on cue.

This time he viewed the golden net from within, looking down towards the residual emptiness below where the golden strands still raced to connect. Progress had been made, although there was clearly still work left to do. From this new perspective it was impossible to make out the battles happening outside the weave, but he could sense the colossal figure far below, drawing closer.

“What happened?” Rowan asked, jolting him out of his state of fixed attention, although not out of the vision entirely. “Are you seeing something? I just see mugs and tea.”

“I’m—yes, it worked. I’m seeing the net being drawn around the world. It’s like we’re floating in a sea of fog. Deep below us there’s this thing, so big I can’t even begin to explain it to you, that’s rising up. I’m not sure how I know this, but I really feel like this is a race between that thing and the people trying to make the net.” He paused, trying to decide how to articulate the other thought that had been growing slowly at the back of his mind. “I don’t think the net’s a shield. I think it’s an escape. That thing below us feels…unstoppable. I think the defenders are trying to get us out of here before it arrives.”

“I suppose that makes sense, if we assume that’s what it means to enter the Loom. Scooping up humanity and getting us out while Earth is eaten would track with the world ending and new beginning parts.” She hesitated. “Are they, you know, going fast enough? Who’s winning?”

Elliot frowned. On the one hand it did seem like the net was close to complete, and it was definitely moving fast. But, even though it still felt distant the way stars felt distant, the colossus was getting harder and harder to ignore. Something about its presence felt like it was escalating in intensity, even if the distance was still orders of magnitude beyond what should make that possible. “I’m not sure, to be honest. I think it’s close. I’m seeing—” His eyes widened.

At the far bottom of the sphere, where the golden threads had yet to touch, a figure had risen from the clouds of chaos. It was humanoid, like the defenders, but unlike the rest its presence commanded attention like a lesser version of the rising leviathan. It wore silver armor, and its face was covered in a white mask. Four thin ears swept back to fine points several feet behind its head, and its hair was a brilliant metallic grey, like spun wire. It raised its arms till they were extended at chest height, as if conducting a symphony.

The net responded. It shot forward, sprinting where it had crept, threads advancing like the roots of a great golden tree seeking water. Within a few seconds they converged on the figure in silver, and it clasped both its hands into fists. Existence fractured within the circle of its arms, and an incandescent white orb burned into existence above its head, beginning to spin. Elliot felt like he could perceive some kind of pattern on its surface, something gold flashing in and out of being.

There was a burst of light. The pain flared at the back of his head more intensely than ever before. 

His vision went white, and then the world was gone.