Perfect World

Chapter 20: Wake-Up Call

CHAPTER 20

Wake-Up Call

            Monaxia was still standing along the edge of the tunnel ruin with Gal, his right hand man, a great man who was incredibly old and who was now apparently his oblivious court jester. However, despite his wide eyes and expression of horror, he seemed to know exactly what Mona was doing here. This was the scene of Eidan and Farrah’s death. Gal had been the one to devise this plan, and the only reason Mona would’ve brought him back with him to Eidan’s past was if Gal had made a mistake.

            Mona disregarded his skinny friend’s alarmed expression. He patted him on the cheek, a gesture that hopefully declared that they were still on good terms, and then leapt down into the subterranean pit.

            The wind felt clean and crisp as he fell into the ruin, and the corpses of shions beneath his feet cried out for their master to save them, but he couldn’t, not this time. No, Mona was reserving his energy for something special, and if he were to revive each of the decrepit shions, he’d have to take even more lives that had just as much a right to live as Eidan and Farrah did.

            Behind him, Gal seemed anxious. “Wait!” he exclaimed. He tried to jump down from the jungle terrace, but his landing lacked in elegance. “Stop, Mona! You’ll create a paradox!”

            Mona, however, wasn’t worried about a paradox. This was his world now. He was the god who’d revived it, and if he said that two Gals could exist at once without the typical fracture of space-time, then two Gals could exist simultaneously.

            Immediately, the three agents of Providence at the other end of the ruin were alerted to his presence. The cloaked man that must’ve acted as Eidan’s murderer vanished in a swarm of black smoke, and Zuri, Everest and the Gal from seventeen years ago all stared at Mona with entertaining expressions of stupefaction.

            Mona smiled and waved, a titanium mask of cheer and nonchalance.

            Gal and Everest quickly exchanged glances before deciding that it was best to approach him. Meanwhile, Zuri remained where he stood, trembling, pale and shaken from being forced to watch his brother’s cruel death.

            “Mona!” Everest exclaimed. “Mona, is that truly you?”

            Gal was gesturing wildly with his hands. “No, no, that can’t be right! How am I both here and there? And why am I so thin! Is this a glitch? What the hell are you two doing here?”

            Mona had no intention of responding to them. The real Everest and Gal, the ones with their own unique souls, had been dealt with accordingly in the present time. These two men here were no more than imprints left behind from a time when they used to dwell within this part of the alternate universe. They were real people, in a sense, and their memories extended only as far as Eidan and Farrah’s death, but they were trapped here in this world as his own creations following the same rules and guidelines that Zuri and the Atlasian gods and everybody else in the realm of Ecual had to follow. The real Gal was emaciated and standing dumbfounded at the edge of the tunnel ruin. Meanwhile, the real Everest was waking someplace in reality after having been trapped in Mona’s mind for twenty-four years.

            The impressions of Everest and Gal came up to Mona with questioning eyes. Mona proceeded to ignore them, his gaze fixated on the deceased Farrah Khalil who laid beside her mutilated beloved.

            “Mona, what the hell is going on?” the fatter Gal asked.

            “Don’t disregard us,” Everest demanded in his usual condescending tone. “We broke our backs trying to wake you! How dare you disrespect us like this!”