A Lullaby For Gods Chapter 144

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: LITTLE DARK AGE

⬚H_ =AN⬚ O$ %#O⬚ ??= S⬚⬚⬚?

Damara Megido of Alternia jolted awake as she felt a tremor rock the house.

Her eyes darted around the room, instinctively searching for danger, and when she found none, she immediately reached for the curtains on the window beside her, pulling them aside. The sky outside was as dark as ever for a planet stuck in eternal night and winter, but instead of the now-familiar sight of stars twinkling above her, there were worrying flashes of color sparking across the night sky.

Alarmed, she knelt closer to the windows and pulled them open, leaning outside to take a better look. An aurora was rippling above, bending and twisting in blue and green coils. A beautiful sight, if it wasn’t so new for this planet – though, given that she’d only been on this planet for a few weeks, she looked down at the small sparring field below, searching for Nightwalker and his reaction. Perhaps this happened every now and then.

The young man was staring up at the light show, eyes wide in horror, frozen and ignorant to the questioning looks the children were given him at his apparent shock at the beautiful display above them. Slowly, said shock melted into a frown, and he reached up, plucking a circle of light from thin air that Damara recognized as the New Moon of Derse.

Kankri Vantas, standing close to him, turned as he held the New Moon as high up as he could, before letting it go.

It disappeared from his fingers.

The light show above died down. When Damara looked up again, the only thing that hung in the sky was the dark shadow of the new moon, barely visible with its faint outline.

The other children whirled around in shock at Nightwalker; he merely motioned for the house, speaking softly in that soothing, calm voice of his as he directed the kids back to the house. Damara shut the windows, grabbed her nightrobe off the rack by the door, and raced downstairs, not minding the fact that she was walking around a cold house, on a planet cursed with eternal snow, barefoot.

As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she saw Nightwalker close the front door, his gaze far off, but his expression stormy. He turned as he heard her, and the tightness on his face chipped, slightly, to give way for weariness.

Softly, he sighed, and motioned for the chairs by the fireplace.

Damara joined the others as they waited for Nightwalker to choose a seat and speak; she ended up sitting next to her descendant, Aradia, who gently set Sabera’s box onto the coffee table at the center of the sitting area. She opened it, allowing a coil of lightning to shoot over their shoulders. Sabera’s glowing form to stood behind them, similarly looking to Nightwalker for explanations, since she was taken off the sparring field along with everyone else.

The young man dithered by the front door, but eventually, and with weariness weighing down his steps, came to sit on one of the empty loveseats. Aradia and Sollux, beside Damara, leaned forward expectantly. Mituna kept scratching his palms impatiently. Meenah crossed her arms, looking slightly pissed, while Aranea sat straight with intrigue. Kankri Vantas kept stealing glances outside, and Porrim beside him shot concerned looks between him and the tired Nightwalker.

“…there was a solar flare,” Nightwalker began. “I am not quite sure if anyone other than myself or Miss Porrim felt it, being that we are Space players.”

He took a pause, and everyone waited for him to elaborate.

“As you know, this planet is stuck in eternal night. There is no star close enough to be its sun,” he said. “So for a solar flare to cause an aurora, to have that much effect on this planet…”

The mere admission made his shoulders drop, as if defeated. Then, his fists clenched, and he sat up straight again.

“Keep an eye out for each other; keep close to the house. Do not leave anywhere without telling any of the adults where you’re going,” he said. “Something is happening out there – whether it concerns Dualscar, or the Heir of Doom, or even Dirk Strider – wherever he is – I don’t know. I just know that something is wrong.”

“Is the end of the world getting faster or something?” Sollux asked.

The room hushed; for a Mage of Doom to be the one to ask had to be an omen of sorts.

“I fear that may be the case,” Aethra Nightwalker said softly. “If the surety of it hasn’t already been sealed in fate.”

#

JA?U_⬚Y ⬚⬚ ?01=

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“The sky is disappearing,” Jane Crocker mumbled as she stood in the motel parking lot. Behind her, Bruce Banner was desperately trying to call Tony Stark – though he’d since moved on to calling anyone who’d pick up – but to no luck as the already spotty phone reception they’d had in the last few days had suddenly dipped five minutes ago. Television broadcast had cut out at the same time; radio broadcast had met the same fate.

Around them, several people were similarly trying to hunt for reception while casting worried glances at the blinking, glitching sky, which was cycling through the pinks of sunset, the deep ultramarine of night, the lilac of sunrise, and the clear blue of the morning. Alarmingly, it was starting to show more of nothing than any of the weird snapshots of a full day’s sky, like a sputtering transmission.

Those reality is a simulation folks must have been losing their minds right now.

Beside her, Gamzee was looking up at the sky with something akin to awe. Jane would have mistaken his rapturous expression to be similar to a doomsday enthusiast, if not the fact that when the sky had first gone dark earlier, he’d actually frozen up in momentary fear. Even unhinged clownboys had their fight-flight-freeze moments, it seemed.

“I don’t suppose you have any idea what’s going on, Mr. Cryptic?” Jane asked.

“I know about as much as you, sister,” he drawled, though his voice was softer than usual, his attention mostly on the sky.

“Nothing to say about your, uh, motherfuckin’ miracles?” She turned to him.

Gamzee snorted. “It’s miraculous,” he said. “Seems dangerous too. Mad sure the sky’s not s’pposed to do that.”

“It’s not,” Jane said. “Unless it’s some massive TV that we just need to hit to get right. I doubt that’s what’s happening, this seems a little…too wrong for the problem to be as simple as that.”

She’d come from a whole game that was about destroying and building universes and turning children into gods; she’d seen weirder, but something about this whole situation was just off. It was a hunch, but it felt like there was something bigger in the background, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on to point out exactly what was wrong.

Maybe they should have gone with Cronus into New York.

“Come on!” Bruce yelled behind her. She looked over her shoulder briefly to watch him push his hair back in frustration.

“Do you think Cronus was right?” Jane asked.

“Yeah,” Gamzee said. “Motherfucker’s steeped in them holy magics, why wouldn’t he be?”

“Right,” Jane said, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“…Janey?”

Jane abruptly turned to her right at the familiar voice, eyes wide, heart racing. She hadn’t heard said voice in so long, and for a moment, she actually thought she was just hearing things – perhaps another person in the parking lot was named Jane – but no. There she was.

Standing a few feet away from her, in the middle of the parking lot – fair hair, pink eyes, a long winding scarf around her neck.

All around Jane, the parking lot had gone quiet. She had no idea if it was because she’d tunnel-visioned at the sight before her, or if everyone else had quieted.

“Roxy?” Jane whispered, disbelieving.

The girl smiled, nodding.

“Oh my god, Roxy, is that really – ” Jane made to approach, stepping forward, but a clawed hand curled around her wrist and held her in place. She whirled around towards Gamzee, glaring. “What are you – ”

“Wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he murmured. Strangely, he wasn’t looking at her; instead, he was looking ahead at some empty space before him, his expression as placid as ever, though there was a hardness to his gaze. “Don’t fall for ‘em wagging false tongues.”

“What on god’s green earth are you talking about?”

Gamzee grunted, reaching his free hand up to scratch his cheek. Then, he pointed forwards at the empty space in front of him.

Jane looked at the empty air, and then back to him. “What? There’s nothing there.”

“Huh,” he said. “So something is up.”

“Makara.”

“Who’re you talking to?” Gamzee finally turned to her, glancing towards Roxy over her head. “‘Cause I ain’t seein’ nothin’ either.”

Jane frowned, confused, looking between Roxy and him. Roxy had her head tilted in concern, while Gamzee had returned his gaze to the empty spot in front of him. “What are you saying? You can’t – you can’t see Roxy or something, she’s right there?”

“Who’s Roxy?”

“She’s my friend, you fool,” Jane said, ripping her hand out from his hold. “And she’s right there – ”

“She dead?”

Jane froze. Gamzee took advantage of her surprise to pull her back by her shirt. “What?”

“Your friend dead or what?” he asked, then motioned his head towards whatever apparition he was seeing at the empty space in front of him. “‘Cause the one I’m seein’s dead. I’d know.”

“Janey?” Roxy asked, prompting Jane to turn her attention to her again. “What’s he talking about?”

“Whatever we’re seein’, they ain’t no friend of ours,” Gamzee drawled, and then chuckled. “Them devils gonna appear to ya as what you’re lookin’ for, sister, remember that.”

There was a loud shriek behind them. Both of them turned, alert, just in time to see a man get torn in half, his head splitting, followed by his torso, until he was bisected through the middle.

“What the fuck!” someone screamed.

“Should probably get inside,” Gamzee mumbled.

“Roxy – ” Jane turned, only to be yanked back by Gamzee as he suddenly started sprinting towards the motel. She hit his arm, and he let her go, but only to pick her up – getting a shriek out of her – and run faster. “What are you doing, you fiend!”

Her surprise was shoved away violently as the parking lot suddenly erupted in screams. Jane’s suddenly-fearful eyes looked around erratically, trying to see what was going on, and found herself retching as more and more people around them spontaneously got torn to shreds.

She turned to find Roxy, clawing against the arm Makara had around her waist, but froze as she found her friend’s face contorting, her lips peeling back into a massive, unholy maw. Slowly, Jane felt herself getting pulled towards the thing’s direction. Makara grunted as he dug his heels into the ground, coming to a stop at the sudden force pulling them backwards.

“Makara,” Jane said, now holding onto him tightly and leaning away from the thing wearing Roxy’s face. “Let’s get inside. Let’s get inside – for the love of god, move! Go!”

#

???

Sapphrel Angeles, sitting in a puddle of their own blood and waiting for their lower half to reform from being a ground-up mess of gore, froze as they felt something shift in the air. Nothing about the beach changed, save for the very slow reformation of the house behind them. But there was something electric in the air, slowly seeping into the atmosphere around them – with how they and the Heir of Doom had been brutalizing each other for god knows how long, whatever injection of energy or magic made their surroundings volatile, and it was now reacting to whatever faint trace of it was slowly working its way into the area.

The Heir of Doom, meters away from them with a massive bloody hole in their middle and half of their face blown off and still stitching itself together, carefully angled their broken neck to the sky.

The pros of being dead and having access to their powers was that they could regenerate at a rapid rate, but unfortunately, given that the Heir of Doom was godtier, they could do the same thing. Life was unfair sometimes, even in death.

“You feel that?” the Heir of Doom asked.

Angeles hummed. “Yeah,” they said. “What is that?”

The Heir of Doom said nothing. Then, they raised their right arm – the only remaining one as Angeles had ripped the left one off its socket – to snap their neck back into place. “Well,” they muttered. “Time to get going, I guess. Hopefully whatever time shit this place’s got going on means I’m not going to be too late.”

“Apocalypse matters, then?” Angeles concluded. “The Sylph?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” the Heir said, sweetly, though they bared their teeth.

“You might as well tell me given that I’m the Anathema Point. I’m still taking the universe’s damage, you know, as a ghost,” Angeles said. They looked down at their torso – their hips were back now, but still, this regeneration was far too slow for their tastes.

“Figure it out yourself, then. You’re smart enough, aren’t you?” The Heir of Doom’s left arm was now half-healed up to their forearm; they lifted it up, waiting for the few seconds it took for their hand to grow back in, before pushing themself up to their feet. By the time they did, the hole in their torso had dwindled to the size of a coin, and that quickly sealed itself up.

The god stretched their arms high, their joints popping as they did. Angeles watched in mild envy, since their legs were only healed up to their calves and they couldn’t stand yet.

“See you later, Mini-me,” the Heir said. “If there’s any of you left, anyway.”

“Eat shit.”

“Die quick.” The Heir grinned; Angeles blinked, and in the time that they did, they heard the flap of massive wings, and suddenly their older, alternate self wasn’t there anymore.

They glared at their newly-regenerated feet as they tested out flexing their toes. They worked. Everything healed up fine.

With a sigh, they stood up and went back into their similarly fixed-up house. Hopefully, the real world was keeping its shit together.

#

JANUARY 28, 2014

NIGHT VALE

It took Terezi three hours to convince everyone to leave Hal’s mind up to Angeles. It was expected given that most of them were actually friends with the boy and were rather worried about what leaving him trapped in some fake dream world would do to his psyche (and one of them was Vriska, who decided she could probably wake Hal up without incurring much damage, before Terezi gave her a whack over the head and reminded her that her skills with machinery were limited to making in incredibly clunky and astonishingly useless doomsday devices), but still, she felt a little let down that Hal’s friends took so long to be convinced that none of them were well-equipped to handle his situation given their lack of technological expertise and magical prowess.

As it stood, Angeles was the only one who could wake Hal up, though due to the massive time difference, they had no proper ETA on when the kid was going to wake up.

Eventually, thankfully, they did come to their senses. They kept Hal in his room, safe and asleep, and in the meantime, did their best to get to some semblance of normal.

The Angeles estate was now without its owner; Ruben had to take care of whatever instructions Angeles left behind regarding their possessions, so he was in and out of the house for hours at a time; Kevin and Cecil did their best to assist him, often running back to the house to get paperwork before heading out again. Eugene, Leon, and Jeremiah did their best to keep the house in order, while Mr. G and Mrs. H tended to the garden and the grounds, toddled after by the two human children, Kristina and Mai.

With nothing much to do, Terezi often lent them her help – roping Vriska in every now and again just to cure her boredom. Every evening, a few of them would try to get news from the outside world, and inevitably fail with the city’s weird relationship with time and space.

Tonight, however, at the dinner table, Jeremiah stood up in shock as he stared down at his phone. He’d been the one to try to breach Night Vale’s weird technological barrier tonight, and as he began to babble in surprise, Terezi managed to piece together what he’d found from his cut-off, hurried sentences.

Today’s date online lined up with reality’s actual, linear timeline. Not only that, Jeremiah was getting updates in real time. A brief burst of audio told Terezi he was even able to access a livestream.

“What the fuck,” Eugene whispered.

“Well, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, show us what’s going on!” Leon said, ever the voice of reason.

Multiple communication and electrical blackouts were happening across the nation. The cities nearest to NYC appeared to have gone first, and from there, the sudden dead zones spread outward and were working their way throughout the continent with alarming speed – in fact, it was rapidly approaching the edges of Night Vale. Along with that, the last posts and communications sent out by residents in affected areas appeared to be of their surroundings acting weird – concrete turning into soil, or water, or lava; buildings disappearing and reappearing; entering long hallways that weren’t there before with no way out before sudden reception cut-off silenced the rest of their plight; the sky rapidly changing as if glitching from one phase to another.

It was like if Night Vale, with its shaky place in timespace, had suddenly switched out with the rest of the world.

Shit. They didn’t have much time.

But with how isolated in Night Vale as they were – with Angeles prioritizing their safety above their utility, there wasn’t much they could do. Granted, Terezi didn’t know if there was anything they could do. They had no access to the Scratch here, and there was no game active at the moment to even make a universal reset possible. None of them had controllable time powers. None of them knew how long they would last outside of the city if they did leave.

They were sitting ducks, waiting for the end of the world to kill them, or to blow over.

But there had to be something that could be done to stop things. The Heir of Doom and their friends had these massive winding schemes in the background before, why on earth would they suddenly stop now? Had the Heir of Blood outsmarted them? Had they finally run out of plans? Had a wrench so great and powerful been suddenly thrown into the mix that none of their contingencies were viable anymore?

What about Angeles? The kid displayed the same ridiculous overplanning tendencies as their alternate self – they had to have something in place.

This couldn’t be the end. It couldn’t be. Night Vale was now, at least through communication devices, able to reach the rest of the world. They had to be able to do something with that.

They had to have some hope in this situation.

But even with their now new ability to communicate, the communication blackouts were preventing them from reaching out.

Damn it.

Terezi heard Vriska’s nails tapping on the table in impatience. No doubt the girl was thinking the same thing, trying to find a way out of the roadblocks that were unknown dangers outside of the city and the spreading dead zones.

“Can you track where the dead zones are now?” Vriska asked lowly, tone tight.

“Y-yeah,” Jeremiah managed.

The girl stood, barking orders for the boys to bring out a map and start charting. Terezi sighed and stood with her, listening as chairs scraped and people stood. Soon, there was a massive map of the U.S.A. spread out on the dining table, all of their dishes now brought away into the sink, and Eugene and Leon were marking the dead zones with bright red marker – the redhead had decided on the color for Terezi’s sake, so she could read the map with them by scent.

At the current time, 11:09 p.m. in the evening, of January 28, 2014, 3/4ths of the country had been lost to the blackouts and to reality folding in on itself. Jeremiah kept everyone updated on strange posts about people seeing chunks of the sky falling, or sudden sinkholes taking entire towns with them, or people opening a door and ending up in another city entirely.

Soon, it wouldn’t just be the country overtaken by reality glitching. It’d be the continent. Then their continental neighbors. And, perhaps in a day or two’s time, the whole planet.

Who knew what happened after the communication blackouts? Who knew how long people survived when the world around them was fluctuating? They didn’t. They had no way to know with every broadcasting outlet the affected cities had out of commission. Hopefully, when their cell towers died, it was just hardware failure instead of something more tragic.

Maybe, if that was the case, they still had a chance of riding out the end times. Some hope for making it.

Sometime past midnight, when everyone had mostly passed out from emotional and mental exhaustion in the living room, there were three knocks on the front door. The only one awake and close by said door, as she was on her way to the kitchen, Terezi turned towards the direction of the sound.

Three more knocks sounded again, this time louder and more frantic.

Terezi neared the door, but didn’t open it. Instead, she sniffed it experimentally, trying to scent out who was on the other side.

It smelled like burning cloth and flesh, along with an overwhelming amount of…grape? Whatever it was, it was violet. A very rich violet. And there was so much of it that if it was someone’s blood color, that person must be dying of blood loss.

But humans didn’t bleed violet –

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!

Terezi jumped. Whoever was on the other side of the door wanted to get in badly.

“Terezi?” she heard Cecil’s voice behind her. “Who’s there?”

“I don’t know, I don’t recognize the scent,” she said, then corrected herself. “It smells like a lot of violet with a hint of metal, but…humans don’t bleed violet, right?”

She turned to where she heard Cecil from. The boy approached, and, after a moment’s hesitation, went around her and opened the door.

A tidal wave of violet assaulted Terezi’s nose, soured by the smell of burning meat. She pinched her nose and drew back. Cecil gasped loudly, cursing.

“E-Eridan?” Cecil asked.

Eridan? Wasn’t he supposed to be in New York?

“Not quite,” the person said, voice raspy. He had to be a troll if Cecil mistook him for Eridan, and with that much violet…good lord, how was he standing?

There was a grunt and a shift, and Terezi realized he must have been carrying someone else. Oh. That made much more sense. He wasn’t bleeding out his entire circulatory system on the porch, there were two of them. Both violetbloods.

Wait, what the fuck?

“I know the brat, though, nearly fucking killed me,” the person on the porch said. “Anyway, the Moon brought us here, so uh…any chance you guys can offer us help before Dualscar bleeds out?”