Fates worse thah

  A couple dang in a resort bedroom stopped mid step, smiles melting from their faces, as the music died to silehe neon su in the window vanished, repced by solid darkness, and the door blinked out of existence leaving only bare wall behind. They held each other, terrified, as ughter echoed all around.

  “The Demons,” Michael said. “They came crashing through like Armageddon. Ued and irresistible.”

  Above the Allcity, the sun dimmed and flickered, swallowed by a great cloud of liquid darkness. In the sky beyond, the stars went out one by one.

  “Powerful makers, keepers, and speakers, they twisted creations into ons, turned fantasies into nightmares, and trapped spirits ihat couldn’t be found. They proved that if paradise could be bought, it could also be stolen.”

  Crafts fshed away from the Allworld like shrapnel and disappeared into the bck. On the surface, people huddled together watg the skies, and each other, in fear.

  “There was no esg them. Those who tried to fight them, outrun them, or buy them off, all met the same fate. The Demons trapped their captives in their own minds, dissected their memories, and vanished, leaving them to cw their way out.”

  A womahrough a circle of shadopeared in the ground. When she nded, she was a child, sobbing, wandering among endless rows of t clothes racks, calling for her mother.

  “Even the supreme makers couldn’t oppose them, so they fled into the bd crafted pces outside their reach. The first fortress worlds.”

  “Jericho”

  An endless mass of gates and doorways floated in the dark, rotating like a slow whirlpool.

  “Chittor”

  A kaleidoscope of polygonal slices of glittering o and white stone walls, lit by brilliant, blinding micro suns that orbited like eyes of god.

  “Ghast”

  A woven mesh of hallways, courtyards, staircases, and colpsing rooms, all shifting like a jigsaw as entire ses were created aroyed.

  “And Paradise, which offered eternal prote and bliss in exge for a life’s worth of memories. Those who went in during that time never returned.”

  It was just a warm glow in the darkness. Figures flew into it and faded hazily into nothing.

  “It felt like the end of the world. But not everyone had given up hope. When those who had seemed like gods abandoned us, new ones arose from the masses. We called them Saviors.”

  Crafts like stars hammered into shapes flew into orbit around the Allworld as shadows seethed on the surface.

  “It was the first and only war. The only kind possible here. A war of wills.”

  A man stood in a featureless room of stone while a voice taunted him from all around. He closed his eyes and disappeared, then burst bato existen a fsh of light inside an orb of doorways, each refleg a different surreal ndscape. A blurry figure flew through one of the frames in terror and the first, still radiant, followed.

  “Those who had abandoned us, now seeing a ce of victory, returned, and a desperate st stand became a fight for freedom.”

  A brilliant figure with six wings and swirling rings of eyes desded upon a geometric structure of bck gss. A prismatic light reflected across the surfaces, shattering them, and something screamed.

  “The first battle drove the Demons from the Allworld. The celebration of that victory, held in the massive area cleared by the destru, is still going strong all over the Allclub.”

  The Allwloulsed as the starlike crafts flew off into the bck, followed by spheres of fire and waves of prismatic dreamers.

  “Unfortunately, the war wasn’t easily won. The Demons proved themselves masters of evasion and surprise.”

  A lone light separated from a swirling steltion and blinked out. The other stars doubled back, seeking their lost member. Gradie felt the fear ihe anguish.

  “flict has a way ing about ge, catastrophic ge, that would be impossible otherwise. This war, even in this world, was no different.”

  Two starcrafts followed a thing as bck as the space around them and only Michael’s visio Gradie se.

  “The st of the demons were on the run. Nightmare had just beeed, and they were its first prisoners. Fearing capture, the stoes, one Demon pushed at the edges of the Otherworld itself, and found something more.”

  Suddenly, Gradie k was gohe stars zipped around frantically, then flew out of sight. A subtle motion formed out of the darkness. There was a click, and a man sat up in bed, his fused face lit by a table mp.

  “They thought they’d gotten out. Gone back to the Real, finally able to remember the Otherworld. Many got lost in it and fot everything else, and some just decided to stay food, but a few came back to tell the tale. They had found the Hardworlds.”

  The man, now dressed in a Brioni suit, walked through brass doors into a marble-floored bank lobby. He took off his sungsses and smiled like a kid opening a Christmas present.

  “What are they?” Gradie asked. His voice broke out through the vision, but Michael didn’t let it waver. The man in the bank dreistol and ughed as everyone around him scrambled and screamed.

  “What they are is debated, but they act like alternate versions of the real world. Being in them feels like dreaming you’re someone else.”

  Gradie felt a chill as the realization took hold. Michael predicted his question.

  “That’s where I found you.”

  Gradie saw himself ba the gas station from Michael’s point of view. He remembered what it had felt like, being that person, and the Hardworlds suddenly made sense. But if that had been him dreaming he was someone else, then who was he really?

  “How did I get there?”

  Michael froze the vision.

  “The same way we all get here. Most people appear iherworld when they break through, as we call it, but there’s no reason a spirit ’t be born in the Hardworlds.”

  Michael waited fradie to probe further, but something about the answer kept him from f another question. He didn’t want to think about anything other thaory, least of all himself. Michael, as if sensing his apprehension, tinued.

  “Finding the Hardworlds was the most important thing to happen sihe discovery of the Otherworld, but at first, no one uood them. Only a few could get in, and even less wao. A pce where all the rules of the Real applied ce to be feared. Which made them the perfect pce to hide.”

  “The st demons fled into the Hardworlds and the Saviors found themselves out of their element, uo finish the war.”

  The man in the Brioni suit leaned out the back window of a speeding car and opened fire with an AK-12. He shot the cop in the driver seat of the pursuing cruiser through the fad brains sprayed on the punctured windshield.

  “With a new base of operations, and the ability to e and go as they pleased, the Demons struck back with renewed force. Thousands flocked to the fortress worlds, giving everything to get inside, some being little more thahe Allworld became the st bastion and the Saviors ruled it with an oppressive tyranny.”

  Defensive crafts and structs orbited the Allworld, where the sun had returned with a harsh gre and searchlights swept the night side. Towers reached impossible heights from the surfad massive walls dissected the nd into a grid.

  “The age of freedom, it seemed, was over.”

  Gradie was ba the craft. Michael waved his hand and a bottle of Glenmie Sig poured itself into two gsses in front of Gradie. The spirals in the decal rotated slowly and the gold reflected the light of an unseen suhey each took one and Michael ked the gsses. It was dreamworld scotch, afterlife ambrosia. Gradie felt the story didn’t call for it. Michael winked and it all went bck again.

  “That’s where we e in.”

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