Chapter 16
Elegant in the Pursuit of Greatness
Tara drank coffee on the couch and in silence, watching a newsreel on her phone that covered a shocking piece of potential news: there were monsters in the world. She knew there were monsters in the world and had known for a whole week now, but apparently, their zombie wolf wasn't alone in invading the Earth. And, so, others slowly began being aware of them, too.
Ronald had gone for a morning jog some twenty minutes ago and Tara heard his footsteps some fifty yards from the lodge, approaching slowly. It was something both of them realised: their senses were heightened extraordinarily. They could see far, far better than before, could hear and discern sounds like the most experienced of hunters, and even some of their aching parts–such as Ronald's right knee that he injured playing basketball in high school–ached no more. They were whole, enrobed in magic.
"Hey," Ronald greeted her as he walked in and she greeted him back. He immediately went for the fridge and took out a beer, gulping half the can down in one go. Tara put the phone down and stretched lazily, standing up from the couch. She was wearing nothing but a white tank top and black shorts, yet felt perfectly content with the temperature–neither cold nor hot.
"Where'd you go?" she asked and added right after: "Toss me one too."
"Down the southern trail," Ronald replied and tossed her a can that she caught effortlessly.
"Ethan told us not to go see it without him," Tara said.
"Yes, yes, Miss Prim-and-Proper who definitely didn't jog there yesterday," Ronald rolled his eyes at her as she shrugged.
"What's it like?"
"The same," Ronald replied. "Swirling, small, like a strange, spatial butthole just hanging in the air."
"Ah, ever the poet."
"That's me," he grinned as he walked over and sat on the couch opposite of her. "What about you? Still glued to the news?"
"Yeah," Tara replied, sitting down as well, tossing her right leg over the left. "Eighteen confirmed sightings."
"Not as many as I thought," he said.
"There are probably more," she shrugged.
"Ethan still asleep?"
"Yeah, think so. Why? You miss your man crush already?"
"What? You want in on our bro-bond?" Ronald grinned as Tara chuckled.
"Yes, yes, sandwich me between your man boobs, please."
"Well, since you've asked nicely," he said, finishing off the beer. "I'm gonna take a shower. Make us some coffee?"
"Sure," she said as both stood up, one moving to the lodge's rear and into the bathroom while the other went to the kitchen.
As soon as she set the pot up for water to boil, she heard the doors of the bedroom open and Layla came strolling out, bobbing like a penguin for a moment and wiping her eyes. Her golden hair was in disarray, but it hardly had much effect on her adorableness–at least to Tara.
"Good morning," Layla said.
"Mornin'," Tara greeted with a smile. "You sleep well?"
"Ah-am," Layla nodded, climbing on top of the rather tall chair in the kitchen.
"Juice?"
"Yes, please."
"Ethan still asleep?" she asked.
"Hm? No. He wasn't there when I woke up." Layla replied, causing Tara to pause ever so slightly before pouring the juice for the girl.
"Probably went to save the world or something."
The two's conversation quickly went toward discussing Layla's current favourite cartoon and how amazing it was. In the meantime, the water for the coffee boiled just as Ronald came strolling in. The trio retreated to the living room and sat watching Layla's cartoon, further commenting on its awesomeness while the young girl's chest swelled in pride.
Some 30 minutes later, just before nine in the morning, the doors of the lodge opened and Ethan came strolling in. Both Tara and Ronald shook, their instinct rousing them to almost jump and fight when they heard the doors click. The reason was simple: they didn't hear him. They'd gotten so used to knowing the approach of everything–including Ethan–that the doors just opening out of nowhere terrified him. As soon as they saw his expression, however, they grew angry: he was smirking. He did it on purpose. For fun.
"Oh, hey kiddo! You woke up?" Layla ran over into his arms as he heaved her up and seated her with his two arms.
"Why didn't you wake me up?" she asked, pouting.
"Oh, no, can't do that. Princesses need their proper sleep, you know? Otherwise, your hair's gonna start falling out and you'll go bald. Look at Tara. At one point, she had hair twice as long as yours, you know? Now she's barely got any!" Ronald swiftly coughed into his elbow, covering up a burst of laughter, while Tara merely sighed. Layla giggled, though, clearly not believing him.
"Then you and Rolly don't sleep at all!"
"Okay, ouch. What? You're saying my hair is bad? How mean of you, Layla."
"He he he~~" he walked over and sat down next to Ronald while Layla jumped off and sat next to Tara, resuming her cartoon-watching.
"Where were you?" Tara asked.
"Exploring."
"Huh. Never took you for an explorer." She commented.
"Never took you for a gossip either, yet, lo and behold."
"Ha ha. Bite me."
"You two need to roll the dice," Ethan said. "Of who's coming with me tonight and who's watching Layla."
"..." Ronald and Tara grew silent. They didn't know where they were going, but realised they were going into another battle. Some ten seconds later, Ronald spoke up. "I'll watch Layla," he said. "Tara did it the last time."
"... how knightly of you," Ethan smiled. "You're giving up a lot, you know?"
"All the same," Ronald shrugged, though felt a twinge of regret swell inside his heart.
"You'll catch up, don't worry," Ethan said, lazily yawning. "Eat lightly, miss Righteous. Tonight, we hunt."
**
Tara expected them to hunt another beast–but she was wrong. Dead wrong. Perhaps, rather than affording her the opportunity to get stronger by volunteering to watch over Layla, Ronald had tossed her into the fire to see if it burns.
Ethan had brought her to the phantom phenomenon they first found some four days ago. He didn't say much to either of them past 'don't touch it or lick it or come close to it', and they didn't. They just came to stare at it from a distance–a partial disruption in space, child-sized, its edges flamed and embossed, bleeding out into the cracked 'air'. Tara couldn't wrap her head around it, even though she knew it was a wormhole or some other variant of it. It was a rot in spacetime, a tunnel that led elsewhere, past the surrounding, green mountains.
"... so. You're gonna tell me you don't have a clue where that will take us?" Tara asked, glancing at him. Ethan looked back at her, his eyes shimmering with a trace of red. All their eyes were slowly shifting in hue toward crimson, they noticed, but Ethan's were by far the most 'along the way' in change.
"What are you afraid of more, Tara?" he asked, his tone, for a change, serious. She'd never noticed the depth and bevel of his voice, she realised, as he always had a playful tone to him. "That I do have a clue or that I'm that good at making you guess?"
"Either's terrifying," she shrugged. "I don't need to know, Ethan. Neither one of us does. Just promise me one thing."
"..."
"You didn't drag us into a cult that will be responsible for the end of humanity, right?" Ethan's serious face cracked as he smiled. Tara's mind danced with two versions of him–the older man who clearly knew far more than her, a psychiatrist capable of drilling through her mind with an invisible instrument and scrambling about her thoughts like they were a novel; and then there was the roguish boy, sporting a perpetual smile or a smirk who divined everything through cheesy one-liners and hollow dad jokes.
"No, I didn't drag you into a cult that will be responsible for the end of humanity," he said. "If it helps your ever-changing ego, it's the opposite of that."
"The opposite?"
"Ask yourself," he said. "Should I have all this knowledge and foresight, why wouldn't I be scrambling about like mad to drink all the dew myself?"
"..." Tara stayed silent, staring into his eyes unblinkingly.
"People are mad; long and wide," he continued. "Angry, confused, dredged up from the sleep of modern comfort and drug-addled sedation, tasked with surviving hell. Some will die, some will survive, but very few will live. It's like war–you're not fighting for your life, but for life. Except, here, you aren't a nobody dressed in nothing wielding a gun with no magazine, faced with an encroaching army that will tear you limb for limb just on the off chance you know where a barrel of oil is stashed. You become a God. And gods never concern themselves with the woes of men.
"I don't want to save humanity," he said, looking back at the spinning vortex in front of them. "So much as I want to preserve it. I could teach and guide and educate Layla and turn her into the perfect killing machine–she's still young enough for it–and mould her into a weapon that would survive every hell imaginable. But I'd rather kill both of us before condemning her to that life. So, instead of changing her, I will change the world. For her, for every kid like her, and for all of those whose first thought upon realising they can use magic wasn't 'dude, I can kill people so easily'."
"... and you call me righteous." Tara rolled her eyes with a chuckle, though grew warm in her heart.
"I'm not righteous," he said. "I'm the craziest one of all. You think folk with a raging boner for murder will hear my little speech and go 'oh, woooow, I really didn't think about it that way! Thank you for opening my eyes man! I'll never kill again!'." Tara turned silent, recognising that the question didn't need an answer.
"Why?" she asked. "Why, of all the things you could have become, should you have this foresight, you chose to be a frantic, righteous nutbag?"
"... why?" he glanced back at her, smirking. The roguish boy was back, Tara sighed. "Why play the game on the hardest difficulty when you can do it on the easiest?"
"Right. So, what now?" she asked, knowing the answer.
"Now… now we go decimate a realm of all that is holy," he said, taking charge. He walked toward the swirling colours and Tara followed. Her life, should it be long, would become beyond complicated–but she hoped it would be long, all so she could see him realise a dream worthy of deafening ridicule, yet gaping, silent worship and admiration.