The final movements before the end

The visitor’s smile widened when he saw me open my eyes in shock.

“I knew you would make that face, you dork!” He said, letting me go and starting to laugh.

I didn’t know what to do with that information. I looked all around me. The city wasn’t big compared to the cities on earth, but there was no doubt that at the very least, a few dozens of thousands of people lived here.

And he wanted to destroy it?

The visitor continued his spiel.

“Before you ask, I don’t have anything in particular agaisnt them. It's just that I’m curious about it. Doing it with my own hands would be too easy, but I like a challenge, so I decided to try a more sophisticated approach this time. I’m thinking about simply moving some stuff around, telling people a thing or two and letting everything else work itself out, if you know what I mean.” He said, while pacing around, gladly boasting about his work.

He was saying it in ambiguous terms in case someone heard, but his intention was completely clear. I could barely grasp my head around the idea, I could not find what to respond to such a statement. Why did he even tell me all of that?

The question could as well have been written in my face, as he continued boasting without me needing to ask.

“Why am I telling you this? First, because nobody is gonna believe you if you say anything you idiot. Secondly, because I do have a little favor to ask of you, so I consider fair to let you know that after that you must get out of this city ASAP.” He said, starting to walk towards me.

I only managed to go back a couple steps by the time he caught me and grabbed me by the shoulders again. He was basically rambling at that point.

“I’ll give you one more question, but after that, I have to take you back to your cell. All you have to do is take the package I left for you behind the cell’s door. Believe me, I’m on your side, and if you don’t take it not only will you regret it, but I’ll go out of my way to make sure you really, truly, regret not following my instructions. Understood?”

The visitor looked at me with his freakishly wide eyes, looking deep into mine, as if to determine if I was being honest.

“Yes, understood.” I managed to blurb out while trying to get him away from me. He had pulled me at a mere couple inches of his face.

“Great, so, one more question, make it count.” The visitor said, letting me go, and starting to pace around again. He seemed to be a lot more anxious this time than when I met him in the pond.

I went through my thoughts really quick. There had to be something, what was the best possible question I could ask? I got most of everything out of Howard and Swerans, I heard about the summoning, the ritual for the sacrifice, even the things that were in the notebook were confirmed by Swerans.

Wait, the notebook. When I thought of it, a question popped out in my mind and spilled out of my mouth immediately.

“The ritual they want to sacrifice me with requires me to insert myself in the stream. But, I know from a good source that there’s a method that would allow me to survive the ritual. Do you have any information about it?”

The visitor stopped pacing around, and looked at me with surprise. Then, he laughed again.

“Where the hell did you even hear that kind of foolishness?” He said, genuine curiosity seeping into his voice. “I mean, it is possible to survive entering the stream, I have done it before, but the ritual is only complete if you die, no way around it.”

I took note of what he was saying, he seemed to be going into another tirade, but anything he said could be useful.

“Whoever you heard this from is surely an idiot, or a liar. Probably both. If you want to survive the stream, you need an extremely refined control of the forces, which let me tell you, you don’t and won’t have. It is possible to go around it with tools… but you also don’t have them. Getting one of those is hard even for me, you know?”

The visitor opened his cloak. Under it, an assortment of strange, unidentifiable devices showed up. Between them, he grabbed a very small one, it looked like a scalpel.

“The only thing that could help you would probably be one of these, a stream cutter. It would allow you to cut the stream, which instead of killing you, if you control light well enough, would slingshot you all the way into the world above us. That would bring you a whole nother set of problems that you can’t even imagine, but you would survive… for a while at least.”

He stopped his tirade, looking at me, pointing at me with the stream cutter.

“Do you want it?” He said, turning it around and putting the handle towards me.

I walked towards him, unsure, but intrigued by everything he had shown me. I could not understand the implications of what he said about the world above us, but this could save my life, right?

I extended my hand to grab it and then… he retracted it at the last second and hid it again in his cloak. He started laughing again.

“Man, I can’t believe you thought I was gonna give you this thing. This shit is my ticket out of jail in most worlds. Do you know how much this cost me? You are an idiot if you think I would give it to you.”

I stayed there, with my hand extended for a moment, when he started laughing again I finally understood the kind of person I was dealing with.

He’s just trying to mess around with everyone, isn’t he? Completely disregarding any consequence, just acting for his own fun.

I must avoid associating with him, at all costs.

“Well, I hoped you liked that answer, cause that’s all you're gonna get from me today. If we ever meet again, I may give you a question or two again, hope you actually get enough of a brain to find out what’s the real questions you should be asking.

Also, Remember, I’ll look the other way and you get the package, if not, I’ll show you which ones are my torture tools.” The visitor said, before grabbing me by the arm and pulling me back inside the building.

He walked with quick steps, almost making me trip when he pulled me down the stairs. Then, when we reached my cell, he let me go and started whistling while pacing around, looking straight at the wall.

I would find his stupid act fun, if he wasn’t such an unnerving person to begin with.

I knelt and found the package he had hidden, holding it next to my chest and entering the cell.

I had half a mind about trying to escape… but I wasn’t dumb enough to tempt my luck like that. Not with him.

Finally, the visitor turned around and looked at me, holding the cell key in his hand and a smile from ear to ear as he spoke:

“If I were you, I would think very hard about my next step. If we see each other again, I fear it may not be as amenable.”

Then, he closed the door and locked it, almost hitting my face with it.

I took a couple of steps back. I looked at Swerans, Caspio and Lasan, showing them the package I had “smuggled” in.

We reunited under the slit of light, but as soon as I opened the cloth that covered it i understood what was going on.

It was my backpack.

I opened it quickly, right from the get go, the big green knife and my swiss army knife they had taken away popped into view. Under it, my half spent first aid kit, a change of clothes, a very long and sturdy rope and my canteen, full of water.

It was like we had been blessed by the heavens.

The three of them started celebrating, taking the green knife and weighing it in their hands, preparing to use it, probably planning an escape. I grabbed the swiss army knife and hid it in my back pocket.

I wanted to feel blessed, but I could not feel like that when I knew that this was not a blessing, but a gift from the visitor. If we escaped, it was because he wanted to do so. Because he had a plan, and from the start he had designated me a pawn in it.

And as things stood, by escaping, we would get the whole city one step closer to its destruction, one way or the other.