Dangerous Adventures

Dangerous Adventures

(an alternate ending to Dangers ofNon-Adventures)

The Cult of the Undying Eye should have been easy to deal with. Anyone who goes around calling themselves a cult and thinks their god is not only undying but also an actual eye doesn’t have their heads on straight. Only crazy meant many things, and simple was seldom one of them. I wish I’d told myself that earlier, or remembered it. But part of being a god-eater involves policing gods, and I knew what the Undying Eye was. Eating the god wasn’t hard. The sixteen followers armed with blades and guns on the other hand, weren’t something I expected to deal with. The warehouse is big but they know it better than I do and are covering the exits already. Chanting. Not that they can bring the god back, but they could make a new one. Or call something up that would pretend to be a god.

I’m not helpless, but I’m also not stupid. I have a god inside me, a thing of closets and the darkness under beds but I’ve never tested our power against bullets. I don’t plan to begin now. I pull out my phone and text Jay. ‘Need help.’ Nothing else.

There is laughter to my left, and I duck under a crack of gunfire. This late, the warehouse district is empty and the chance of the police showing up practically nil. Which is best for the police. The cult hadn’t got around to sacrificing a human to empower their god, but it had been only a matter of time. Not that a human sacrifice was more than the small animals they’d been using, but they would have believed it to be more.

“Cell phones don’t work here,” a woman says, her laugh sharp, and braying.

I glance down, notice the no service. Also the reply from Jay, because no service is one of those things that doesn’t apply to his phone. “I just ate your god. You might want to rethink what I can do.”

They do. There is more gunfire, directed. Pain spreads across my stomach. I stumble. Swear.

“You – you idiots. You... don’t –” I whisper. I feel the gun more than see it, levelled at my head. My name is Charlie. I am a god-eater. The god inside me roars, rising into its own. But their gun was made by those who know to deal with gods. I’d almost forgot about the Light-Bringers who hunt gods.

They had not forgot about me.

“It’s a trap,” I whisper, knowing Jay can hear me, hoping he will understand. Everything else I want to say vanishes under the next shot.

*

I am not certain what calls me. A warning, perhaps. A feeling of things amiss. The will of the Far Reach that I serve. I may never know. I call myself Moshi, sometimes. I have more names than I remember, and far more faces as well. I am a Walker of the Far Reaches. A Power in the vast wilds Outside the small anomaly that is the universe. I have had cause to enter it before.

This time is different. I am not certain why. Something is – off. Strained. Out of kilter. I pass words, move through suns, make the body I like to use and visit the wandering magician. He is sleeping, and does not stir at my presence. Which is odd. We are not friends. We are not enemies. We have been more and less to each other. Strangers finding commonalities across the gulf of experience. He would know to wake at my coming.

The god-eater, Charlie, sleeps in the other room. Her sleep is deeper. The air in front of me ripples, and Jay appears. He is young. Eleven, from far, far Outside the universe. A force of nature as much as anything else. The Lords of the Far Reaches have power I can barely grasp, controlling the only stable points in the expanses Outside the universe. Each of them could unmake the universe without trying. They have not, perhaps because few of them know it exists. I know this. And, too, that they fear Jay without knowing why.

Even the Lords of the Far Reaches have limits, or there would not be more than one. Sometimes, I think Jay could be to them what they are to me. Not now. Not soon. But all that power is in the future: what he is now is constrained by Charlie, by the wandering magician, by promises and by innocence.

“We’re busy sleeping. Go away.” The words are flat, devoid of binding. He could force me away from here. I could challenge him. Neither of those things happen.

“Is something wrong?”

Jay stiffens. His eyes widen, and then he goes still. “Nothing is wrong,” he says. Something happens, with those words. Jay does bindings on levels magicians barely touch. Some of them even I have trouble sensing. But I feel the universe buckle. Change. Respond to the command.

And nothing is wrong. I shake my head. “What did you –.”

*

I am not destroyed. I think it is because I am very difficult to destroy. I am not certain. It takes time to get around the banishment from the universe, further time to get back. I can hide, though I seldom have cause to. It gives me certain advantages when I do hide. If Moshi is known, and flashy, and beautiful, then this is not-me. I am not certain I could entirely hide from Jay, normally. But I am certain that this is not normally.

They are in another hotel. Eating supper. Jay is eating – at least a buffet, alone. Perhaps more. The other two barely eat, barely talk. I have controlled many in my time, enough to see such power in use. I do not understand. Not yet.

The magician and Charlie goes to bed after supper. Waking to sleeping in moments, and Jay walks outside. He is taking careful breaths, and then orders pizza. And eats the pizzas that arrive methodically, without joy.

He turns toward me after the last of sixteen pizzas. “I told you to go away, Walker.”

“If you truly wished that, I would not be here.”

Anger flickers in his eyes, and it occurs to me that he did mean it. I move back. “I am not your friend, Jay. There are benefits to that.”

This time, I resist the banishment. Jay tries, but his power is spread out. Wide, far, deep and wild. There are disadvantages to being Jay: he senses bindings so deeply that his control of them has to be as deep. So much power. So much food eaten to bolster that power.

“Go away,” he whispers, voice cracking. “Just go away!”

“What. Happened?” I pitch my voice as close to the magician’s as I can.

The look on Jay’s face is mingled hope and horror both. “Charlie died. I fixed it. I am good at fixing ooopses.”

“You fixed it.”

“It’s not hard. But Honcho was mad and tried to undo it and I would let him and.. and...” His face twists. He is Jay. He is still eleven. I think he is spending more power to bind himself to remaining eleven than he is at keeping Charlie and the magician alive and aware. Because he ages is terrible things happen, and so no terrible thing happened. No one is dead. No one died. And everything is fine.

“It is not hard, but to get rid of the memory of dying, to keep that away. To change someone without changing them. To stop them from being a ghost, to stop time from trying to repair what you have done – I imagine that is quite hard, even for you.”

“It’s not.” And saying makes it so. Jay binds himself as deeply as he’s binding everyone else. Everything else. Stopping everything from falling apart, because it almost did at his scream when Charlie died. The universe broke. That, I felt. And he’s holding it back together in stasis. Alone. Barely understanding how he can do it.

“Jayseltosche,” I whisper.

“My name is Jay.” He doesn’t move, glaring at me. “And I am fixing this oops!”

I leave. There is nothing I can do. I move back outside. I watch, knowing what happens. See the universe buckle and reform as Jay tries to undo time again, and again. The wandering magician could do this. But Jay goes too deeply. He has to rewind the whole universe to before Charlie died, and it gets harder each time he does it but he gets better at it as well.

I wonder if this is how the Far Reaches are formed. I dare not ask.

Leaving feels like fleeing, but it is all I can do.

And hope that, some day, I will be forgiven.