Worlds War One

xxxviii [Treyvon]

Godforsaken.

It was one of Trey's father's favorite insults, reserved for the things he considered the worst of the worst—termites, CNN, the Klan, vulgar rap lyrics, progressives who hate Christmas, Facebook. Trey stared at the tripod trees and the bloody skies and the hungry grass, and he could think only one thing—Godforsaken.

Something stared at him from among the tangle of the alien landscape. He couldn't catch a glimpse of it, but he knew there were eyes on him. Like when he was up piloting his jet, he knew a bogey was near before his radar systems even picked up another aircraft. Trey could sense it. Something was watching.

"We're not alone, Lieutenant," Trey said.

Lieutenant Robinson nodded. She already knew, resting he hand on her sidearm. Trey placed the palm of his hand against the handle of his Bowie knife. They'd come to a clearing at the base of the hill, and pathways led away in three different directions. Penina was the guide, and she stepped forward, checking each way. She might have been a world-class navigator back where they had come from, but that was a different world. The Golem appeared no surer of a direction forward than Trey could have picked.

"I do not know the way forward," Penina confessed.

Quest took her hand, consoling.

Ji squatted down, feeling the strange, spongy stone with his Magi hands. He stared along each path with his Ghostly eye. "I think there's a danger any way we choose."

Autumn appeared, returning from the place to where she sometimes flickered away. "There's danger right here, all around us. Even all adjacent to us. The Nowhere is something else here. Different."

"Are there Ghosts here?" Lieutenant Robinson asked Saanvi.

Saanvi didn't look like she had all the answers for the first time. "There are clues in stories and folk tales. My sister believes in the legend of the Trinity. Three tribes in our world are descendants of the original tribes of the First World. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."

"Yes," Penina agreed. "I have heard of the ideeeea. They beeeelieeeeve the Holyyyy Spirit refers to the original Ghost."

Saanvi nodded. "The Almighty may have spared the Humans and Ghosts the purge of the First World, but most of the original tribes were retired. Some escaped to survive here in the Forsaken Land. And the Almighty decided to create new tribes. The Almighty tasked the fourteen original Architects of the Wider World with designing Earth Version 2.0. And everyone forgot the First World."

"Forsook," Trey corrected. Godforsaken.

"There are tribes that no one has ever heard of roaming around the First World?" Quest asked.

"Unfathomable monsters?" Ji wondered.

"Something," Saanvi said, as she had no more answers.

"Something," Autumn agreed, pointing between the triplet trunks of a nearby copse of trees. From between the legs of the tripod timber, a glint of movement. Something was stalking them.

"We need to keep moving," Lieutenant Robinson said.

She looked at Ji to decide the direction. An amalgamation of multiple tribes, maybe he was more in tune with the ways of this old world than the rest of them. He pointed down one of three pathways. Quest consulted Penina, and the Golem shrugged. It was as good a choice as any.

Lieutenant Robinson went first, leading the way. Trey had never met anyone as fearless. But like Dumbo's feather, he wondered how much of the lieutenant's bravery came from Drill Sergeant Cabello. Without Drill, Trey worried Lieutenant Robinson would be a rudderless ship adrift in an ocean of absurdity. Drill was her anchor.

An anchor that was barely holding on. Trey kept a close eye on Drill. The man was big and strong, but he was cracking under the pressure of constant nonsense. Every new twist and tangent of the Wider World contributed to the cracks and fissures of Drill's fragile sanity. Eventually, he would break.

Trey was right in front of Quest, who was never apart from Penina. "Do you have any idea what the original tribes were like?" Quest asked her. "Rumors? Tall tales?"

Trey glanced over his shoulder at the sculpted Golem. Penina sighed, looking left and right. "My grandmother used to tell meeee tales beeeefore bed. I took them as fables, but maybeeee..."

Trey recalled some of the sermons his father would tell from the pulpit, a homily that covered Angels and Demons and resurrected dead men brought back by the healing hand of Christ. All things that turned out to be authentic. Maybe the stories Penina had heard from her grandmother could also be accurate. Perhaps all those fairy tales were merely ways, to tell the truth without swallowing the Way Things Really Were.

"Sheeee would speeeeak of the sprites," Penina said.

"I'm more of a cola guy myself," Ji quipped, following closely behind the Golem.

Penina stared at him for a while, not understanding cornball humor. Eventually, she gave up without a reply. "The sprites are amorphous beeeeings made of fire, water, air. Entitiiiies that may dissipate or disappeeeear at will. My grandmother would say they are watching, readyyyy to steeeeal away with naughtyyyy little Golems who don't listen."

"Fire, water, air," Trey puzzled out. "The other three elements. Did your grandmother suggest that these sprites are somehow your brethren?"

"I disreeeegarded them as harmless fables. But now, I am not sure."

That summarized everything Trey had felt since they first opened their eyes to the Way Things Really Were. He wasn't sure about anything. His father had built a life on believing in things he couldn't see, touch, or prove. Now Trey could see so much, reach out and touch a tree that resembled a prop from the latest Star Wars, and verify that the Wider World was as accurate as his narrow one. Yet it was more unbelievable than Moses and Jesus and Noah and the Ark.

"Do you hear that?" Quest asked.

It was a sound, something like wind whispering through the woods, but there was no wind, and the woods were alien and acoustically anonymous. They were listening to something else. Trey wondered if it was a sprite, some spirit of the air soughing along the winding path in this Godforsaken Land.

Then they stopped. Lieutenant Robinson stood at a fork in the pathway, three branches leading from another intersection. They could go forward or twist to the left or right. But indecision wasn't what gave the lieutenant pause. Something was standing along each path. Someone. Three familiar faces were waiting for them no matter which direction they picked. But the three figures didn't seem to want to wait for Lieutenant Robinson to choose her path. The three figures along the road in this alien world started stalking toward the Misfits.

Trey's hand froze on the hilt of his Bowie knife.

What was this fresh hell?

The three figures were Ji, Penina, and Saanvi. Duplicates of the allies that still stood in line with the rest of the squad. Doppelgängers. Each with an eerie grin scratched across their face that could only portend bad things.

Why hadn't Penina's grandmother warned her about these diabolical creatures instead of talking about silly sprites?