Meditations on Apocalypse

The Never Ending Quest - Episode 45046

They stood at the top of a vast mountain range, gazing down upon countless rolling plains stretching in every direction. The fresh, crisp air of the heights was cold, and bracing.

"Sensei..." Lerf pleaded. "I am tired and hungry and freezing. Must we continue training all afternoon?"

"Lerf..." said the Man, whose name was Sensei. "Do you know... that when Dark Force appears in the skies above a planet, nightmares detach from it and drop down to earth."

"So? I can beat them! If I get a good meal first I can defeat anyone." Lerf hinted.

"Not physical nightmares, Lerf. Those come last. Creatures thousands of miles in length and diameter. Abyssal worms millions of light-years long, which dwell in the space between dimensions. Dark Force feeds on horror and suffering, as surely as your kind feeds on swampmelons and the hyberiontrestlebush. It will not take a world until it has feasted on pain, until it is gorged and bloated to bursting with dark psychic energy. The nightmares slither in darkness and consume the minds of men. Unborn babies eat their mothers from the inside out. Houses turn upon their owners and cattle turn their masters into livestock."

"That sucks." Lerf said, though deep inside he could only think of how hungry he was.

"On one world I saw, all people with the A+ bloodtype were inexplicably beaten, raped, driven into feedlots and then slaughtered and consumed by their former friends and neighbors. There was no mercy, no reason, not even any way for them to have known without a blood test. Then, O negative came next. Blood type by blood type the population annihilated itself. Once only two blood types remained, they held a war that left the planet a wasteland, and then a horde of giant insects came down and consumed what was left. And compared to what Dark Force has done on other planets, that was a merciful form of destruction."

"Wow." Lerf said. Sensei's words were getting more and more disturbing.

"You wanna know something else, Lerf?" Sensei said quietly. "Dark Force doesn't eat flesh like mortals do. It's an entity that has no place in this world - I have no idea how it was even created. But tell me - if it's food was pain and suffering, what would it gain from killing anything?"

"Nothing, I guess." Lerf said. A horrible idea was dawning on him. "It would want to prolong the pain and suffering as long as possible, so it could have more food."

"95% of the Gigaverse belongs to Dark Force now." Sensei was saying, his voice a whisper. "That's a number of inhabited worlds so huge the numerical string would have enough zeroes to go around this planet enough times to cover it completely, and not once, but googols of times. Billions of beings on each world... do the math. And all of them still alive, Lerf."

"What?! How?!"

"Dark Force's primary physical manifestation is a sort of ectoplasmic web stretching all around a planet, trapping the souls it kills in an eternal nightmare of horror and pain. Once there, these souls have no way to escape, nothing to do but suffer torment beyond comprehension and give Dark Force more energy. How else do you think Dark Force managed to conquer so much of reality so fast? It's an incredibly efficient system, really. If nightmares can be called efficient."

Lerf found that he was trembling a little. "How... how can God allow this to go on?"

Sensei shrugged. "I'm a warrior, not a thelogist, Lerf. We continue the training. Swooping Eagle Stance!"

Lerf obeyed, but something was bothering him. "Sensei... if what you say is true, then... how can we fight something like that with martial arts?"

  1. "Blood will tell, boy." Sensei grinned. "Blood will tell."

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Ryu

9/26/2004 2:39:39 AM

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