Pain Stones (Coalescence Book 2) Read online

  Then he looked at Yelsa.

  “You know more.” It wasn’t a question.

  Everyone in the space stared at the blue and white Ysidril then. Instead of claiming she didn't get what was meant, she nodded.

  “A bit… Here. Let me slip into something more comfortable.” Then, over the course of half a moment, she melted, grew taller and changed color. Moving from blue and white scales, to a nice pale flesh tone. Dark hair came into place at the same time. Her hips didn’t spread, though they did shift a good bit as her waist moved in and a bust line formed.

  Then, instead of standing there nude, the woman tapped a clothing amulet on. It left her dressed in a nice brown outfit.

  Willum was shocked, slightly, but managed not to show it that much.

  “Elsa. Yelsa. That’s practically the same name and everything. I should have picked that up. Even if I didn’t make the link, I should have noticed that part of things.” He felt stupid for a moment, which got the woman to smile at him.

  “Really, you should have worked it out. There were enough clues and you have the intelligence needed. So… Clearly I’m not who you thought. I’d give you all a moment to process this, but I’m going to have to leave soon, so you don’t kill me. I hate dying, if anyone ever needs to know that kind of thing about me.” She shrugged, then shook her head. “We aren’t your Greater Demons. Once, thousands of years ago, we were related to that sort of being. There was a common point, way back when. Then the worlds slipped and shifted. We came to understand things in a different way than you do. I can’t tell you what’s going on yet. Not totally. The heart of things here is that we have similar abilities to those people. The Greater Demons. We simply use them better, in the main. Largely because we work together.”

  It was Demon Zack who raised his eyebrows at the words.

  “Except?”

  Timon Baker nodded at the words, with Taman crossing her arms off to the side. Several people seemed to be asking the same basic thing. Willum felt slow, not getting it. Then, he was still gasping for air, minutes later, after the fight. Things had been a little more intense for him than the others, it seemed.

  Elsa grinned at the Wizard Tim first, then winked at Demon Zack.

  “Except that we aren’t a few hundred, like in your worlds. We’re a collection of realities, with billions of beings, all working for the same goals. Two of them. One to bring about the end of everything, the other to hold steady on the course. Thankfully, neither side is trying all that hard. It’s more of an academic thing, after all. Which… I can’t speak about yet. It’s needed, but even if you’d understand, I don’t have clearance to share it with you folks here, yet. I can send a memo up the line?”

  She waved her right hand, making a rift in space appear, not using a node at all. It glowed purple. The thing was very round, and kind of pretty.

  Willum sighed at her.

  “So, these others want to kill me… For some kind of reason? They think that doing that will end all of reality or something? I can’t follow that, I have to admit. I’m simply not that important.”

  That got nods, from about half the room. Willum didn't even feel poorly about it. On that level of things, he simply wasn’t that big of a deal.

  Elsa moved closer to the rip in space and shook her head.

  “No. Willum, you are that important. All of you are. Even I am, as hard as that is to believe. Each of you in this room and others that aren’t here today are all central to things working out properly. It’s just that they, these others, think that you’re the right one to focus on for now. That’s all. Also… They aren’t the beings that want reality to end. These are the ones on your side.” She smiled then, looking directly at Will. “Which means that things are kind of messed up, from your perspective, I bet. Don’t let it get to you. You need to survive, regardless. Have you noticed yet how few of you, Willum Baker, are left in the scheme of reality? That’s a huge imbalance. You need to look into that. Now, I need to go, before you work out the rest.”

  No one else spoke, as she stepped toward her escape.

  So Will did it for them.

  “That you’re from the other side? The ones that want to destroy all of reality.”

  Just as she moved into place, a single word came back at them.

  “Exactly.” Then she was gone.

  Leaving a room filled with people, most of whom felt nearly as baffled at he did.

  It was, interestingly enough, Lancaster, who moved in then.

  “I see. Okay, Baker, you’re coming with us first. We need to get you into hiding, at least for a bit. Then… We need to find out more about these people. That’s your job. Mainly because we don’t have anyone else who can do that part. What do we need for that?”

  Oddly enough, Willum knew that one.

  “I need to be totally changed, biologically. Then… I have to learn how to enter the void on my own and to protect my inner being from telepaths and Demons. I’m not sure how to get that last part done.”

  From the side of the room, not far away, Demon Zack laughed.

  “Ah. I can do that part for you. It won’t even cost anything, as long as Avery is in on this part as well?”

  The attractive Dragon Shifter nodded.

  “Right. I’m in on that. I don’t… This is a good thing. Very much so. I can’t believe how lucky we’re getting. That probably means it’s a trap.” It was a bit strange, as far as things like that went.

  Interestingly, most of the people in the room nodded. Only Bridget Chambers made a face at the words.

  “It’s good that Will is being hunted by jerks from a world of virtually unbeatable super beings?”

  Avery looked at her, then nodded somberly.

  “Yes. I mean, it isn’t, but it also is. We know a lot more now. We can find these people. I think… I’m not certain, but my guess is that these are the people at the heart of this thing. The rest of this has been about people off to the sides, but today we know where to look for information about what’s really going on. It’s not going to be easy to find out about it, but…”

  Willum nodded.

  “But that’s my job. I’m going to need some help with it.”

  He also felt a bit conflicted, by Elsa. On the good part, she hadn’t been trying to kill him, personally. Instead, she’d attempted to protect him. For some reason.

  “This is going to be really awkward if it turns out that the way to save reality is for me to die. Just so everyone gets that one.”

  Rather than laugh, which was what he was going for, Eve Benson moved in and slapped him on the shoulder.

  “No worries. If it was that easy, then the um… Killer good guys? They would have just told you that, so you could take care of things. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s clearly something else. Something bigger and more confusing than seems likely at the moment.”

  Willum didn't say what was on his mind then. That was simple enough. He missed woodworking. He missed scooping up the focus stone streets of Pine Creek. The daily labor and predictable grind of life.

  That wouldn’t play well to the room, he didn’t think. So, just to reassure everyone, he nodded once and looked at the others one at a time. First Avery, then Demon Zack. Then he scanned the crowd. A hundred people that had just fought to protect him from certain death. If that was what had really happened at all.

  “Let’s get to work then? I have an odd sense that we don’t have a lot of time left. At least if we want to keep reality together.”

  It was going to be hard, he thought. Possibly dangerous, but that had been what he’d been trained for. Almost as if reading his mind, Taman moved in, her face seeming sad. A hand, small and delicate, hit him on the back.

  “I have some things that might help. More pain stones. We just need to program them… Everything keeps coming back to that for us, doesn’t it? Pain. We either use it to learn, or suffer from it without any benefit at all.”

  Zack, the Greater Demon, nodded somberly
.

  “We can use that. It’s brilliant, by the way. Using the least popular tool in history to change the rules of the game like that. Let’s get to work.”

  Willum nodded.

  “Yes. Let’s.”

  Everyone broke up then, as if they knew what to do. If that was the real case, Willum kind of hoped they’d fill him in on it. That, or reassure him that things would be all right and make sense to him in the end.

  No one did.

  Really, he knew that they simply couldn’t. Things had gone too far for that kind of thing to have meaning anymore.