THE SLIDE Part 4

Chapter 54: Zed — Part 2

Fantasy: Exit/No Exit

Recap

Zed runs his broadsword through Hrez. The sword turns black and Hrez subsequently turns black. He is pulled up through the central beam while Zed jumps and falls downward.

Zed collides with Ombolo in a geyser of water that originated in the lake. The geyser dissipated slowly until they both are fully immersed in the water of the lake.

Ra elongates himself to the bottom and top of the beam of light. He holds Maria and Kuzma in a kind of floating/rotating stasis.

Hrez’s ascent upwards in the beam of light increases in speed. All his pettiness, dislikes, angers, rages, greed, loathing, avarice, hubris, and hatreds are releasing except for a feedback loop that sucks them back into his habit riddled body. The light beam darkens.

Hrez, completely darkened and almost all evil, stands consumed by the dark black beam on the mirror opposite of the crater’s lake. Hrez, the Dark One, is surrounded in a Sixth Dimensional space with eight ObzKotch warriors. They serve the Dark Force, connected by Ra’s light in order to obliterate it. The ultimate battle where the light of Earth would be extinguished forever is at hand.

Dark Against the Light

The eight ObzKotch warriors channeled electrical energies to The Dark Hrez. He could not resist letting the energies pass through him. If I resist, it will use up the remain light still within me, he thought. He let the energies as electrical discharges depart through his extremities, mainly his hands, feet, and groin. They were released into the whirl of the vortex and down through the dark and light of the beam. When the charges reached the bottom, the lake heated until steam was released in a hissing sizzle.

The original seven of eight were sweating as the heat rose.

There was a flash as the One of Light blinked. She was away — the rebellious woman and was replaced for a nanosecond with Hrez. The Light One and Dark Hrez switched places back and forth until they became an indistinguishable blur. This switching action made the Light One’s companion woman visible for longer intervals.

Oh, my Spirit, it’s my love, Sophie, Sophie L’Mallard, Farha thought. She was aghast. Sophie’s face was in a transmogrified state of flux. When the Dark Hrez appeared, displacing the Light One, Sophie L’Mallard remained fixed on the island and seemed to express the venomous emotions that had possessed and altered Hrez. The formerly demur Sophie’s teeth grew into fangs; her mouth elongated and resembled a snout. And she began drooling excessively and was growling. The ObzKotch warriors appeared, alarmingly near to the original seven of eight, almost usurping their place, but ghost-like, as if the lingering at the edge of the space but in a different dimension. Their skin rotted on their skeletons.

The Dark Force was winnowing the light from the core and the second ring out away in a twelve-foot, plus circle that included the surface of the lake. After the Light force was separated, it was joined by a jet stream of water from the depths of the lake. Orca had duplicated herself several times over and was projecting a force of water upwards with tremendous velocity. Ombolo jetted into the light tube as water shot as much as five hundred to a thousand feet up.

As the ObzKotch skin dropped off their skeletons, a shining stainless-steel inner structure was revealed. Once three of the warriors appeared stripped to bare metal, they moved vigorously and with greater dexterity. They shoved members of the original eight to the ground before the polarity was flipped and they were gone. When they returned, they moved swiftly and without warning.

Ombolo, Zed and a Tube of Light & Dark

As the ObzKotch appeared the third time, four out of the eight of them were steely eyed monsters moving like lightning with ferocity. Ombolo flung herself into the air and was hoisted up onto the contained geyser of upward shooting water.

Three quarters of the way up, Dark Hrez and the eight ObzKotch warriors, without skin or blood, reduced to habituated machines, appeared and attacked. The original seven of eight were able to avoid them by slipping into sandwich dimensions for brief moments. Zed and Ombolo tumbled downward on the water fountain just under half way.

The Sophie L’Mallard chimera of wolf and human continued to transform under a confluence of lightning and, with brief struggles, found peace at the edges of Earth’s atmosphere. She briefly turned human without wild animal manifestations and was momentarily transfixed by the curvature of the planet.

Farha shot a beam of light from one side of the Light One and Kuzma from the left, The Light One, shot lightning and in an eighteen-foot diameter beam into the separated column. The cylindrical ray shot upwards at electrifying speeds.

Ombolo’s Ninth Tentacle and Zed

As the stream decelerated, Ombolo shot her longest tentacle upwards — where Zed was attached. The Dark One and the eight ObzKotch mechanical robotic warriors injected gigawatts of electrical energy towards the apex of the vortex. The combined force of The Dark Hrez and the Chimera Sofie sent a sheath of lightning towards the edge of the vortex and opening of the portal of the event horizon. Ombolo’s ninth tentacle, with Zed fixed in a suction cup and cocooned, flew through in that moment. The sheath of lighting severed the tentacle from Ombolo.

Ombolo fell as an octopus while a sentient part of her transversed the wormhole into another world somewhere in time with Zed.

Chapter 37 — Zed: Part One

An Index of Parts 1 and 2 (with a link to the Index of parts 3 & 4):

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The end is near! One or two more chapters…

Rebecca Romanelli | Blaine Coleman| DL Nemeril | May More | David Price | Dr Mehmet Yildiz | Joseph Lieungh | Camille Grady | Ravyne Hawke | madmess’s thoughts | Orla K. | Margie Willis | Noorain Ali | Dr. Preeti Singh | Lee David Tyrrell | Libby Shively McAvoy | Rip Parker | Ilis Trudie Palmer | Melanie J. | Jean Carfantan | Lady Dr. Gabriella Korosi