It Begins Where it Ends and Ends Where it Begins (Part 1)...

The Never Ending Quest - Episode 16434

"We need to talk," a strange man in a odd leather coat says softly, looking angrily over at Chaos.

(Author's Note: Before we go any further, that last song was....of course, a tune from the group called Metallica. Just a needed thing to be said here).

Slith knows somehow that these beings before are NOT speaking Common, Draconian, English (or American if you come from Rifts Earth)...but something else. Something that only a small trickle....the bare essence of what they were saying....was trickling into the Sivak's mind.

"Not that words will do," the other strangely clad....person?......says, "The Beast, one of your cronies, that guarded the Tower had been in on the Plot.....and by Pancaking Krynn space with those of this Sector which you call the Prime Material Planes....."

Somehow, Slith and those still conscious and watching know that "pancaking" means that the walls of reality, if destroyed, would cause something akin to the floor of a room in a tall building collapsing. The contents of the affected room would crash down into the room below it, and in this case would cause that floor to collapse into the room below it. And so on and so on. But these "rooms" were actually realities....

It wasn't something that Slith wanted to experience at all!

"He expired before we could get to the bottom of things.....the best lead to FINALLY explain just why things are happening with the Dark Tower," the pale man sighs, "But he did mention you. We came calling to see you, 'Chaos'."

The Turtle had been the thing that had done It in.....

Rule 179 sighs, wishing he could have taken back that mistake.....

Cowabunga, Agent 179 sent to him, also filled with a regret for lost opportunites.

The last part is dripping with mockery....as if this Greater God of Krynn Space is a joke. Slith hisses a small, frightened hiss as something like a wave of.....power......rolls off of the strangers before him. Indeed, somehow Slith knows that these strangers.....somehow.....are more worthy to be called a deity than Chaos....or those others of the Krynn pantheon! But..... they are not gods?

Slith blinks in confusion weakly, still crumpled where he lay.

"You're with Ao?" Chaos whispers weakly to the leather clad stranger, confused, point at the other.....stranger.

Chaos then freezes in his tracks as the strangers step closer.....the face (if that is what you could call it) frozen in a rictus of horror.....and pain. It seems to last both a microsecond (Slith wonders where he learned that term for such a small unit of time) and for a billion years. When done, the being known as Chaos crumbles in on himself and vanishs without even a trace. Slith knows that......the creature was dead. Dead? No. More like "offline" for recycling?!

These strangers weren't anything he wanted to deal with but the Sivak was too weak to move!

What was left in the "deity's" place was an odd pile of pages stapled together. It appeared to be a manuscript of some type printed on green paper. Slith read the title on it (it was printed in a language he could somehow read). It was called The Gunslinger by somebody named Stephen King.

"So it begins where it ends and ends where it begins," Slith hears one of the strangers say behind him (the one with twin "revolvers" on his hips).

Roland knew that he was witnessing the very beginning of this fracas. The point where those within the Dark Tower, the Rules and Agents, suddenly found out why things there were going haywire. This was before the time of their Champions.....

Boy did he have questions for them when he got to the Dark Tower, finally.....

Slith gets the feeling that the stranger knows more about this situation than he does. That and that somehow these....beings are not aware of the people behind him. How he knows this he doesn't know. He just knows that he knows.

Roland could have sympathized.

With an odd look, the one known as Rule 179 looks over to his Chaos counterpart and then picks up the odd manuscript....and reads it aloud.

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." he read simply aloud.

The long shot? Agent 179 sends to his order counterpart, blinking.

The stranger then seems to open up his senses to more quickly absorb this....clue? Other books (odd books who's cover were made of a thick papery substance it looked to Slith's eyes). The Rule reads then quickly as well and then suddenly staggers....as it dawns upon him what was contained within.

"The answer was in front of our noses.....in the clients hands and we never....." he gags, aghast.

Agent 179 looks a bit sick....and extremely embarrassed as well.

"Uh, sir? Sirs, what's going on?" Slith calls weakly over to the stranger before good sense stops him.

The strangers turn and look at him, seeming to finally deign to not his existence. Annoyed looks quickly are replaced with ashamed looks.

"Think we need to reexamine things," Rule 179 says to his counterpart, knowing that this manuscript will shake things up back at the Home Office, "And our order in things....."

"Simply put....we are trying to find out why things are going wrong....and prevent the end of all things in all material realities," Agent 179 begins simply, "Chaos was one of a small group bent on the destruction of all....."

Slith's eyes bug at that.

The Celstrials might have said more, but then.....

"The Higher Up(s)......" Rule 179 whispers, a tone of reverence....and fear in his voice.

Slith has a second to begin to wonder just what could scare these king of beings when.....he gets his answer! Slith, when he looks back and tries to remember it's not clear at all. All he does remember is great happiness....and a sense of care for him and others. He can't remember how many beings....Gods or Goddess?.....one?......Many?...... Whatever the case, he's not sure, but he looks back on it fondly. Perhaps it's a conceit of his Draconian nature, but the face he tries to put on the "Higher Up(s)" (can't remember if it was singular or plural) is......a perfect version of a Draconian. Later, he finds out that others saw and put a face that was of their race. Odd, but then that's a characteristic of many intelligent races to see themselves in other.....larger things than themselves.....like their deities.

But what he does remember with perfect clarity is awakening with an seductive, wonderful, and powerful feeling of the wind beneath his mighty wings as he and the others find themselves circling their convoy. He shouts in surprise as he sees himself and the others of his regiment in the form of various metallic dragons! Dragons that their eggs had been produced from, really.

Their equipment and weaponry had melded withing their new bodies, Slith sensed.

Out of sorts, they all land, and find themselves shifting back into their old Draconian forms (albeit with scales that now shine like they'd been polished within an inch of their lives). They turn to find the strangers looking back at them.

Kang and Slith look at each other, and somehow they and the other Draconians knew that answers perhaps lay with these others.

And boy do the Draconians want answers!

  1. "What the Hell was that?" Kang asks in a wavering voice.

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7/6/2001 5:01:30 PM

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