Worlds War One

li [Ji]

The world made sense.

Ji looked around with his Ghost eye, seeing the Way Things Really Were. How many times had his father told him he was wrong? How often had his sisters made him feel stupid for saying something incorrectly? Yet now he saw the truth, and they were the ones who had been wrong their entire lives. Angels did exist. Frankenstein was real. Monsters as massive as mountains. Aliens walked among us. Zombies were the real enemy.

What else?

He remembered finding A-ra one summer evening while he'd been home on leave, not so long ago. She'd been crying. He had never seen either of his sisters shed a tear before. He hadn't thought them capable of emotion intense enough to produce tears. Yet A-ra had been sobbing uncontrollably, inconsolably, so he had sat beside her until the fit abated. Ji had reached out to take her hand, and she'd yanked it away. He'd asked what was wrong. "I think I've learned everything there is to know," she had answered—what a foolish genius.

Mostly, Ji noted the things he couldn't see, the worlds beyond this one behind a veil that he couldn't penetrate with even a Ghost for an eye. He had only read the first chapter in this book of the Wider World. There was so much yet to explore. He examined hands that had magic and a leg from a Golem, and he wondered if he would survive long enough to see at least some of all the rest.

Fox and Quest approached where Ji stood. The Misfits. The greenies. They weren't so green anymore, as experienced in the Way Things Really Were as Lieutenant Robinson and Sergeant Cabello. The lieutenant gathered with Drill, Penina, and the princess a few feet away. This part was just for the young soldiers.

"This is it," Fox declared.

"Ready to get the bad guy," Quest said. He put his hand over his heart against the pocket where he kept the obol that contained Callie's spirit. "And we rescue Private Golden. We get her soul back into her body."

"Listen, guys, if we—" Ji paused. Did he want to put it into words? Believing in superstition was as silly as thinking you had learned everything at age twenty. "We might not all make it. I should've been dead already. If my time's up in She'ol, I want you to tell my sisters that they have more to learn. Give them as much of the truth as we've seen. Maybe there's a chance for them yet."

The other soldiers nodded.

"My dads knew that I might not come back," Quest told his band of brothers. "The only one that matters to meis Penina. If I don't make it, promise me that you'll save her. That you'll get her home."

Ji and Fox promised.

"What about you, Fox?" Ji asked. "What should we tell your girl?"

Treyvon Fox looked back the way they'd come. That wasn't necessarily the direction of home. Home was far beyond north or south or west. Faith had gotten him this far, but faith had turned to proof. He didn't have to believe in things that weren't certain anymore—all his maybes had become for sure.

"Nothing," Fox said. "She left me before I came on the mission."

"What?" Ji blurted.

"What happened?" Quest asked a little more tenderly.

"They were flying the rest of you in, but I was already on the east coast. I had time to run home to say goodbye. I told her it was a secret mission and I might be gone a while. She wanted to...she tried to seduce me. I told her no. I was waiting for that until we were married. She accused me of making my religion more important than her. And I couldn't tell her that she was wrong. She told me it was over."

"But I thought—" Ji started, and Quest elbowed him.

"I had faith she would change her mind," Fox said. "But I know what kind of things to believe in now. And saving my love for a woman who doesn't deserve it is no longer on the list."

Ji clapped both his fellow Misfits on the back. "Let's make sure we all make it out of there. We go home. I'll show my sisters what an Angel/Human/Golem/Magi/Ghost hybrid looks like and get to see which one of them passes out first. Callie can have her body back and someday tell her grandkids how she saved the world as a haunted coin. Quest can have little pebbles with his Golem true love. And Fox can find the woman he deserves in this vast, Wide, endless World."

The other Misfits nodded.

The young soldiers joined the seasoned officers and the two civvies. The squad stood together before the side of a sheer cliff that stretched up to a tall plateau. It might act as a seat for one of the immense Leviathan. It featured another slot like the one that opened the door to Arcadia. This time, Drill would not stay behind. They needed every soldier in the final stand against Mot. If they successfully defeated Johnny Rotten and his undead children, Saanvi assured them there were other ways home from She'ol.

If Ji lived through this, getting back to Earth would be a welcome problem to solve. Because the deceased didn't need to find a way home.

Quest took Callie's coin out of his pocket and inserted it into the slot in the stone. Swinging open on an invisible hinge, a panel of rock moved outward, making a cave into the side of the escarpment. It was dark within, and Ji conjured a spell with his Magi handgun, a golden glow that would light the way through.

"Do we know what to expect?" Ji asked.

Penina was their guide, but she had never been this deep into the Wider World. She shook her marble head.

Saanvi stared into the tunnel, rock on all sides. They couldn't see through to where the tunnel let out the other side. "They say that She'ol is the oldest place that ever existed, created at the beginning of everything. It is where God started from, the origin of all. A dark and dank place devoid of all His wonders. They say this darkness birthed the first Architects to remedy the endless banality. Maybe that's why the first attempt at a universe had as many missteps as it had successes. To make something from nothing takes more than one try. Yet you cannot have something without nothing. There must be a balance. The dark draws Mot. He retreated to She'ol and created a kingdom of rot. Because there is entropy in the universe, and every start balances an end."

"This doesn't sound like the beach vacation they promised me," Ji opined.

Then it was time. Forward. Onward. Toward the next thing. They went into the cave, and Quest reached back and removed the obol from the lock. The door closed behind them. There was no going back. They'd arrived in She'ol, and it was time to get to the end of it.

The only way out was with Johnny Rotten dead.