herself, an alien in a twisted, unfamiliar realm.
“Damn it,” she said. “This sucks.”
“Tell me about it,” agreed Calvin. “I don’t even know what’s waiting out there for me. Can’t really remember. But it’s all a question of scale, isn’t it? Fenris ght be an indestructible force in this plane of existence, but for all I know I’m just a small fish in an infinitely larger pond. I might float free of this reality, only to be devoured by something even greater.”
“It’s just an endless string of mysteries and questions, isn’t it?”
“Maybe that’s just the way life works,” he said.
“Well, crap. That’s just unsatisfying.”
The manor spontaneously collapsed into a heap. No one commented on it.
“I can’t really tell you what to do here, Diana,” he said. “It’s your decision.”
She closed her eyes and willed her monsters to give up their fight. They released Fenris. Her roomies materialized beside her. She found restoring their sentience easier than expected. They shrank to their mortal proportions, stripped of the bulk of their awesome might.
They didn’t look well. Like they’d just woken up with a terrific hangover.
“Did we do it?” asked Vom. “Did we save the universe?”
Diana shrugged. She didn’t have a good answer.
Fenris squealed delightedly as it wrapped its many tentacles around the moon.
Calvin’s flesh fell away. His ebony ethereal form rose into the air. The universe stopped crumbling. The Chosen rose, trapped in their beastly shapes but whole and restored. They didn’t attack, instead submissively slinking toward their master.
Sharon was at the head of the pack. She whimpered, and in all the universe it was the only thing Calvin noticed. He reached out to touch her muzzle, but his immaterial hand passed through her.
He spoke, but the voice resonated from both this shape and the great cosmic monster embracing the moon.
“See that you do,” Diana said.
The moon god turned his attention to her. His gaze was a blast of heat that nearly knocked her to the ground. She dug in her heels and forced him to confront the insignificant thing before him, to remind him that all these tiny things were still down here.
“Maybe it’s our nature to not worry about stepping on ants. But we’d probably think differently if we spent a few thousand years living among them. Do us a favor,” Diana said. “On your way to… whatever… try not to step on too many of us.”
His face lacked features, but she sensed a smile. The pressure let up, and she could stand without feeling as if a thousand worlds rested on her shoulders.
Fenris swallowed the moon. Calvin zipped away in the blink of an eye to merge with the other two parts of his divided selfreat entity glanced down at them, and though he also had no mouth and his body was nothing but a mass of tentacles and eyes, Diana thought she saw something in those eyes.
Fenris winked (or at least blinked half of his eyes in what she took as a wink). Delicately, he tore a rift in the sky with two tentacles. He exerted a fraction of his limitless might to hold the broken strands of the universe together, keeping it from falling into chaos. With a joyous howl Fenris, now possessed of the power to free himself, rejoined with the intellect to do so in subtle ways his monstrous third would never have fathomed, slipped from the universe. On his way out he tied a few threads back together, restoring all the mounds of moss to their former human shapes and erasing all the damage left in his wake. The universe itself took care of the rest, repelling the alien ecosystem and rebuilding everything as it had been.
Except for the moon. There was only a dim star-filled sky left in its place.
The cult howled with ecstasy at the triumphant departure of their god. Except for Sharon, who released a long, miserable wail. For several seconds after the other cultists had returned to their human shapes, Sharon stayed a beast, reluctant to give up the last bits of Fenris left to her. But even she couldn’t hold on to it for long.
Diana took Sharon’s hand. “It’s for the best.”
Sharon nodded. “I know.”
A tendril dipped back into reality just long enough to slide along the celestial rift in Fenris’s wake and seal it shut like an undone zipper. And he was gone, off to whatever and whenever, to realms of possibility that Diana didn’t bother trying to imagine.
From one bewildered hapless entity to another, she wished him the best of luck.
CHAPTER THIRTY
She sat on her lawn chair, enjoying a tall glass of iced tea in the peace and quiet. Not all possible worlds were those of giant mutant insects or mole people. The universe was not just home to cosmic monster-gods and inconceivable horrors. And this reflection of an Earth that might have been (or perhaps once was or would be) was a good place to get away from it all.
This particular world was quiet. Humanity was gone. Here and gone like the hazy details of a forgotten dream. Or perhaps it had never been. The only possible trace of its existence in the endless fields of green was the silhouette of a tower on the horizon. It could’ve been a skyscraper. Or a peculiar rock formation. Diana had never bothered to check.
The floating door opened, and Sharon stuck her head through.
“There you are. West said you’d be here.”
Diana glanced at her watch. “Oh, damn. Sorry. Lost track of time.” She jumped to her feet and exited the universe.
“Are you going to leave your iced tea there?” asked haron.
“It’s not mine.”
“Whose is it?”
“Don’t know. But it’s always there. Sometimes it’s lemonade.”
Sharon didn’t ask for any further explanation. She understood as well as Diana that there were mysteries meant never to be solved.
The door closed on the universe with a peculiar pop. The door was one of five in a cramped hexagonal room. The door they had just exited had the word safe written across it in black marker. Two of the others were marked iffy. One was unmarked. And the last one was stained with red handprints and deep scratches.
They climbed the tight spiral staircase up and out of the room and entered the apartment hallway. The staircase was visible only from certain angles, but that was true of many things in the building. Thanks to Zap’s transference, Diana was getting better at perceiving reality beyond a standard fourdimensional model. It’d bothered her at first, making her think she was losing her humanity, but humanity was found in more than limited awareness. And being able to see into the sixth dimension meant never having to lose her car keys again.
West, holding a broom in each hand, shuffled forward.
“Not Apartment X again,” said Diana.
“’Fraid so.” He held a broom out to her.
“Can’t you take care of this one without me?” she asked.
He stared at her.
She smiled. “I’ve got a dinner date.”
West shrugged. “Fine, but don’t come cryin’ to me when Dread Ghor absorbs the stars, Number Five.” He shambled away, mumbling.
West wasn’t so bad. In his own way he was a friendly sort, and she didn’t mind helping around the building, pitching in here and there. Keeping the universe in order helped pass the time.
“Thanks,” shouted Diana at his back.
“I owe you one.” He made a vague wavelike motion with his hand without turning around. He passed Vom in
