Day 30 (The Word That Ends the World)

"It isn't a matter of letting it happen." Craig replied, just as coolly. "It is a matter of the inevitable. How long can you stand their assault? How long can you concentrate to impose order upon chaos? Just because this world exists within your own mind does not mean your control over it will be effortless. Your enemy possesses as much strength, if not more, than you. You strive against yourself. Take our current argument, for example. My name is the same as yours, we even wear the same title. Like everyone around us, we exist within you. Yet you can make no headway against me, because whatever else I am, I am a symbol. I am the rational part of your mind, telling you the rational thing to do. You cannot use reasoning against me, because anything you say would be turned against you. You cannot win in an argument."

Alyssa shrugged. "I don't need to. I see why Savant had me talk to you, now, but there's nothing more I need to know. We will simply leave this place."

"Suppose the monks bar your way?" his eyebrow quirked toward the elder, who had been sitting relatively still near them.

The elder frowned, apparently somewhat resentful at having been drawn into the argument. "I am afraid, " he said finally, "that I must side with our student. If he speaks the truth, your departure would mean the end of us all. If you stay here and he is wrong, there is no problem. You would learn much with us. If you leave and he is wrong, we still lose you and are likely to never see you again. If you stay here and he is right, then you have made the wisest of choices. And if you leave and he remains correct, then you have doomed yourself with folly." he didn't look up at her, seemed to refuse to meet her gaze.

"If Craig asked you to, you'd bar me from leaving?" Alyssa said, somewhat hurt. She'd been assuming the monks were a neutral party.

The elder sighed. "We do not believe in violence. We would merely bar the path."

Alyssa shrugged. "I can remove you without hurting you."

"Can you?" Craig challenged again. "This room is full to capacity as it is. How would you move without causing harm to anyone? Any displaced will crush another. You could move them the same way you moved the bookcase, of course, but there are more monks here than you know. Others would take their place, and you would make no headway."

"It doesn't matter." she insisted, getting increasingly annoyed by the monks' calm insistence. "I could pull myself through chaos out of here. I did it outside, and though it's not easy, I know it's possible."

Craig smiled sadly. "We are a refuge of order. Knowledge and learning, respect for what can be built when one tames chaos. You could bring chaos to this place, as you did with your demonstration. To take you from here, though, you would open a doorway to our very antithesis, so that you might step through it. You would survive it, but we would not. You would annihilate us all in one fell stroke."

She sighed. "Why don't you just let me go, then? It'd be a lot easier for everyone, and I'd really like to get back to Savant and have a few words with him about that book."

"Because if you leave, you sign not only our death warrant, but your own. It would not be a simple, painless death either. If you would depart this place, I would have you perform the deed directly. You are making a choice, turning your back on this place. I want you to realize its consequences."

Alyssa concentrated then, quickly, with no visible effort. A light mist appeared at the top of the room. "Knockout gas. I let it fall, everyone falls asleep, me and Jacob get out of here easily."

Craig seemed torn between laughing and simply rolling his eyes. He settled for the latter. "We're monks. We can hold our breath longer than you."

She concentrated again, the mist vanished, and a cylindrical device appeared in her hand. "Flashbang grenade. I set it off, you're all stunned, me and Jacob escape."

"Such things are not entirely safe. This room is so crowded, you are almost certain to injure someone."

"Perhaps I have constructed a perfectly safe one?" she said with mock certainty.

"Perhaps. But I have planted the seeds of doubt. You have seen Chaos, you have fought against the Unknown and Unknowable - you know what such seeds can do. Such seeds will apply to any plan you construct, anything you think of to escape here without paying the blood debt you will incur by doing so."

She clenched her fist. "I don't care. I will not kill you. I think killing the symbol of my reason would be a lot more damaging than simply turning my back on it, don't you? I will struggle, until I can struggle no more, to leave this place."

"And while you waste time in such a way, you leave yourself open to attack from your enemies. The answer is the same."

"I don't care!" she finally shouted. "This is my goddamn world, right? This is my horrible nightmare I've got to work through, so let me go and do it!"

"No!" he shouted back. "I will not allow it."

"You cannot prevent me."

"I can." he insisted. "I can say one word, and take all of this away."

"So you don't want me to leave because if I do, it means the end of everything, but you're willing to end everything anyway?"

"If you come out of the dream and remember, then we are saved. If you forget, then we are doomed. But if you are allowed to continue on this path, we are doomed in worse ways. Yes, I will speak the word if you force me to."

She turned from him, then, reaching into Chaos to displace the monks which stood between her and the doorway, pulling on her skill to slow time down and speed herself up. The word wasn't potent to him, as he wasn't the true dreamer. He was close enough, though - they shared two names, and Alyssa suspected that if he uttered the word within her hearing, it would have its intended effect. She intended to make good her escape before that could happen.

She was fast because she could change the world around her to run slowly. Her control over Order allowed this, allowed the changing of time's flow itself. If she could conceive of a way to remain sane while her own thought ran backwards, she could likely even reverse it. Her concern was merely to escape, though.

She wasn't going to, she could tell already. She heard the slow intake of breath from behind her. None of the monks moved to intervene, their eyes closed in meditation, no doubt contemplating the end. Craig gave voice to the first syllable, and she felt the air around her crack with broken and distorted power, felt herself jolted, felt the entire world heave in objection. His tongue blended the first into the second, and the bubble of order which made up her world shrunk, the cauldron of chaos supporting it shrank. When he finished, it would all be gone.

There was a hard stop at the beginning of the third, and reality seemed to snap with it. This wasn't Chaos she fought, it was nothingness itself. How could she run from a world which followed her, which was coming apart from within her own mind?

There was a thunderous roar, deafening. Alyssa realized Craig had been merely whispering the word, and she had been so attuned to it that it had drowned out everything else. Everything but the terrible crashing sound of the universe coming apart.

She fell, the first time she could ever remember doing so. Her reflexes deserted her, her sense of the world around her fled, her mastery over order and chaos was a thing forgotten. She lost her balance, and fell.

Fell.

....

She didn't know how long it took her to hit the floor, but she did. Pain ripped through her, her arm twisted under her weight. She felt like she'd been flung against the stone surface by a power far greater than her. She opened her eyes, and reality came back.

No, not reality, she corrected immediately. The dream.

The monks who remained in the room were on their feet, shock in their eyes. The elder had fallen to the floor and a few of his acolytes were in the process of picking him up. Craig stood in the center of the room, eyes wide, comprehension dawning on him. He was trying to speak, she could see, trying to finish what he'd begun, but could not. A small hole, welling with blood, had blossomed in his neck.

Jacob stood where he had the entire time. He'd made only the slightest of movements. His stance was that of a shooter's, and his hand - clutching a smoking gun - was aimed directly at Craig.

Craig fell over.

"Murderer!" the elder shouted, just now coming to his feet. His accusation and condemning glare seemed directed at her rather than her partner who had done the actual work. "Coward and traitor! You cannot stand to end him yourself, so you delegate it to your half-breed slave! Get out of this place! Darkness take you, for all I care, and when it comes to this place to claim us we will die enthusiastically, glad to be rid of a world which possesses your madness."

He was in a shaking, furious rage, and his assistants had to brace him lest he lose his balance. Alyssa didn't bother to argue his point. He'd told her to get out, and she was going to. The blood Craig had insisted be spilled had been. It'd been enough. Whatever his arguments, they were moot now. She left.

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