Free Omega Point by Guy Haley Page A

them!" bellowed Piccolo, making Richards jump. "For when the armies of darkness descended upon Optimizja its folk were caught unawares, rousted from their beds by horrors far beyond their cheerful imaginings. Scattered and slaughtered were they, reaped as easily as the wheat they harvested. Bucks, does and kittens, their essences drained by haemites. Their crops and homes burnt.
      "But that, that, dear gentlefolk, is not the end of it. Oh, precious life of ours, no. Soon the very land upon which this village stands will be consumed by the Great Terror, the terrible vortex that follows in the wake of Penumbra's depravities, leaving nothing, not one grain of sand but, in the stead of life, a terrible void. As it is now for thousands of leagues to the east, and as all will be when the dark finally reaches the sea to the west." Piccolo bowed his head.
      "So," said Richards, "you're telling me there is a, for want of a better word, 'shadow lord', and the entire world is being eaten alive by some terrible darkness?"
      "A little imprecise, but yes. Some fragments persist, here and there in the dark – those places which hold the soul of a land remain for a while dotted in the starless night, until they, too, fade."
      "Hmmm," said Richards. "Tell me, do you know of an entity such as myself, one called k52?"
      "That I know not, good Richards," said Piccolo regretfully. "I am a fragment of a world gone, a world where I had no more will than a blade of grass. Only the Flower King gave me form, and in truth this life is no more real. We will all die eventually from this war. Best to flee to the west, as I was attempting to do before my ship threw a wheel, costing me my crew, lost to those iron devils. Oh! They were a bitter tax levied that I may live the longer! Woe is Piccolo! Woe! It makes me wish to weep when I think of the fine day we set out across land. It was seven weeks past, I remember it well, a glorious morning full of promise…"
      "Thanks," said Bear, hauling Richards upright. "I think that'll do."
      "It may seem trite to you, my friend," said Piccolo, fixing Bear with a sorry eye. "But our world is dying." He seemed diminished, crumpled.
      "Yeah. I know," said Bear, tapping his helm with a claw. "Helmet see? Me brave soldier, fighting armies of darkness? I understand entirely. That's why we're sooooooo out of here." He began to walk away. "If the Terror has come this far in," he confided to Richards, "we'll need to get Geoff. This place won't be here for much longer." He thought for a second, then added halfheartedly, "You should come with us, Piccolo."
      "Aha!" cried Piccolo, once more a dashing figure. "I cannot, for, before the end of it all, I must chase down my arch-adversary, the Punning Pastry Chef!"
      "Puh-lease," said the bear, and grabbed Richards by the shoulder.
      "Who?" called Richards, as Bear dragged him away.
      "He bakes pies and tells lies, with not a good rhyme between them. He will taste my steel before the world is done! I will slice his final cake with glee! Farewell, my friends!" called Piccolo through cupped hands. "Keep well, and remember, head west. Always to the west!"
      And with that they turned a corner and the cavalier was lost to sight.
      "Good riddance," said Bear.
     
    Richards stopped. Bear tried to pull him on, but he resisted.
      "What's he doing here?" said Richards. "Very interesting."
      "What?"
      "Him, there," Richards pointed to a corpse. From a distance it looked like a YamaYama, shrivelled by haemite touch, but closer they could see it had once been a man. "East Asian?" said Richards as he approached. He squatted down and poked at the woody corpse with a piece of charred lath. "Chinese. Could be, but hard to tell in here, could be anything." And then, something, something he'd not felt since he'd arrived. His head snapped round, and he practically jumped up. A stream of information, a tug of numbers, the weft of the place he was in,