Page 85 of The Vampire King's War

WORLD'S END

The sickening lurch of exiting a gate had Christian gritting his teeth in order to keep from vomiting. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to that. Teleporting was almost just as bad and he’d been teleported plus gone through a gate. He really deserved a prize for not throwing up all over Julian’s boots.

But the nausea he felt fell away as he saw what was before them. The gate had taken them to a new area of the Ever Dark. They were standing at the top of a rocky path on the side of a mountain. The path led down towards a gorge below them that was shrouded in mist. He felt the pull of the Harrows' souls from somewhere beyond that mist. But that was not what caught and kept his attention.

The moons…

The twin moons…

They were broken. Shattered. It was as if a giant had cut them in two and then smashed the remaining pieces into bits. They were breaking further apart. The force of whatever had done this was still causing them to hurtle away from one another. The destruction was shocking. What could have done that? What was going to happen to the Ever Dark because of it?

“What’s happened here?” Julian breathed out.

Julian’s face was lit with the red and blue destroyed moons. There was pain in his eyes as if he were seeing a beautiful work of art marred beyond repair. Christian agreed with him. This was wrong.

There were red streaks in the night sky. Pieces of the moons were falling towards the Ever Dark. Some would burn up in the atmosphere, but others? Others might be too big.

Might be? No, some are too big. And when they strike the ground…

He thought of the Tunguska Event in 1908 in Russia. It was a massive explosion that flattened 80 million trees, but, thankfully, only killed three people because it happened over a sparsely occupied region. The thinking was that the explosion was caused by an impact event by a meteorite though no crater had been found to this day. His mind then danced to what he’d read of the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan. The timing of that impact coincided with the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary and was commonly thought to have led to climate change that killed the dinosaurs. The chunks of moons–if they made their way down to the Ever Dark’s surface–would make those impacts seem like a light pat.

Everything will be destroyed. How could this have happened in the short time since we were in Solace? And wouldn’t the Vampires there have alerted us? Wouldn’t Daemon have sensed it?

“Was this what Seeyr saw?” Christian asked. “And, if so, why didn’t she just speak plainly! For God’s sake, there are people here!”

Perhaps not here. Not in Moonfall. But what about the other Vampire cities? People had to be evacuated. Precious objects of art, magical weapons, and any texts had to be saved. As much as could be saved. He assumed that the Vampires would know this. Would see the devastation and run for their Second Lives.

But it would be better if they had a leader. Already, things probably seem apocalyptic to them with Daemon’s return and the end of the Order...

He turned to look back at the location of the gate they had come through. But it was no longer there. Like the one that had taken them to Nighvallen, this gate was a one-way ticket. There was no way to simply go back. Christian tried to reach Balthazar’s mind, to tell him what they were seeing, but he could not sense his Master at all. He swallowed dryly.

“Perhaps we should not have gone here on our own. This is beyond us,” Christian stated, feeling that this was simply too big for them to handle.

“We had to. No choice. The only way this will work,” Julian whispered, even as the horror grew on his face.

“What to work?” Christian demanded.

Julian seemed to have more knowledge than he did. He trusted his best friend implicitly, but he wanted to know what was going on.

“Everything. The way things will be. If we stayed, it would be awful. We had to come here, Christian. We had to come alone.” The words rushed out of Julian’s mouth. “And if we succeed, everything will be fine. I can’t explain it. I don’t know why. But it’s true.”

“How can everything be fine with this?” Christian gestured to the destruction.

He saw Julian’s Adam's apple bob up and down his throat as his best friend swallowed deeply. “I don’t know.”

Christian could feel Julian’s terror for Daemon. His best friend feared that he had left the Vampire King the one time that Daemon might have actually needed him. But there was also a strong thread of certainty that this was the right move.

We’re here and it cannot be undone. So I must make him focus on that certainty. I will as well.

“Don’t get me wrong, Julian,” Christian said, not wanting his best friend to think he regretted anything. He didn’t. “I think it's fitting that you and I are on our own in the Ever Dark. This is how we began our journey after all. It also may be how we end it.”

Julian’s gaze swung from the destroyed moons to him. “This isn’t the end.”

Christian hadn’t actually meant to say that. He opened his mouth to say something, but then the ground suddenly rumbled beneath his and Julian’s feet and his words were lost. Julian reached out and caught Christian’s arm, helping to steady him. There was a cracking sound and Christian saw a rift open on the ground ahead of them. The path started to collapse into it.

“C’mon!” Julian cried. “Run for it!”

The two of them dashed forward at Vampire speed. Then they both leaped as the ground crumbled beneath them. They landed gracefully on slightly firmer earth on the opposite side. Christian spun around to see the place where they had been standing only to see it slide into an abyss. And that wasn’t the end of the destruction. The path was still disintegrating. Both of them took several large steps back as the ground proceeded to shake and shimmy like someone trying to get into too tight pants. He closed his eyes and counted to ten. The movement stopped. He opened his eyes and let a breath hiss out of his teeth.

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