Chương 325: Book Six, Chapter 87: A World of Laughter

"Come, my brothers and sisters," Tom said as he began walking down toward the front of the room where Antoine was tied up.

"Let's save the world." Everyone cheered. That illustrated the importance of word choice in the formation of cults. If he had said, for instance, "Let's kill everyone on the planet at once and replace them with reality-warped versions of themselves if they get replaced at all," he probably wouldn't have gotten as loud of a response. Quickly, I moved toward the offering table.

All the best food for the lowest prices had been stacked up around Antoine, and I quickly snuck in one of his protein bars before making my way to the least conspicuous corner of the room to await the next phase. I expected a lot of fanfare as the ritual started, but the original ritual was probably filmed for First Blood, which meant that a lot of this would be redundant as far as the audience was concerned. It seemed they were ready to skip a lot of the details. We would have to roll with the punches.

"Oh Lord, oh King, may once more your name be known, may your followers cover the earth. We have presented to you that which we require," Tom said, pointing back at the wall with all the pictures on it.

"And in exchange for this better world, we will grant you your freedom by completing the promised sacrifice we started one year ago." There was a pause, a silence, as Tom contemplated his next words. The entire room was holding its breath. I was scanning around trying to find Bobby. We hadn't had much contact with him, but I knew he was there. There was no way he was going to miss it. So many of the cultists had taken on their robes of shadow. Was Bobby one of them? Had he become a Night Stocker? No.

Not that I could tell. I finally found him doing what he did best, acting as a wallflower, literally leaning against a wall on the far end of the red ruby barrier. It looked like he was talking to someone, but I couldn't see anyone around.

"Do you accept our bargain?" Tom said firmly but loudly. A moment passed. Then a voice like the one I had heard before in my chest, but ten times louder, rang out through the room, deep and terrifying.

"I accept." Even though this was an inhuman voice, I could almost feel how excited it was to finally be freed. If Dina's intel was correct, this wouldn't work, but the god was desperate. Everyone cheered and cried out in thanks, including me, but I was totally faking it. Tom wasted no time at all. He grabbed an orange from the large plate that Antoine was tied to and threw it into the ruby wall. It passed right on through as if there was no wall there at all, evaporating to dust as it went.

I had to say it was much cooler than the way you offered things to the Heaven King, just placing them under his statue's feet for the crows to eat. Tom continued. He picked up a large ham, a whole ham, and threw it up at the ruby wall. He probably used magic, but it was still impressive that it made that distance. It broke through and disintegrated as it went. Power surged, and suddenly red bolts of lightning started to shoot out of the ruby wall without any particular target.

They weren't destructive but seemed to pass right through everything in the room that they hit. A bolt struck a photograph of a sickly old man, and for an instant, he didn't look so sickly anymore. He must have been one of the associates' loved ones, one of the things that they asked to be changed in the new world.

"It's working!" one of them cried out. I had to wonder if they were this enthusiastic back when they were sacrificing dozens of people. Tom continued to throw food, one handful at a time. It was like a countdown clock to the end of Antoine's life, and it was truly terrifying. I watched Tom's hands fumble for food. He wasn't even looking at the large plate; he was watching the next world through the ruby barrier. Did he see his brother? Was that why he was smiling?

He continued throwing trays of shrimp, a whole turkey, and a watermelon. It was like they weighed nothing to him, and it was kind of funny to see. And then he grabbed something smaller—a protein bar—and he threw that too without even thinking about it. Antoine Stone's Power Protein Bar sailed through the air until it hit the ruby red wall and passed through. But unlike all the other food, which disintegrated as soon as it entered, something was wrong with this protein bar.

Something was bad about it right down to its granola. That food had been offered to a different god already, though the rest of the cult didn't know that. I thought I might have to say some magic words and beg for the Heaven King to intervene, but I didn't have to. As soon as that granola bar passed through the red barrier, the reaction was swift and destructive. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

The place where it passed through broke like glass, holding its shape but sending cracks in every direction until the disturbance was the size of a tractor. And then there was the scream, the scream in my chest that didn't translate into words but instead into feelings, into pain that everyone in the room felt. We all dropped to the ground in agony. I felt like my limbs were being torn from my body, like my chest was exploding. I even passed out, if only for a few seconds.

By the time I was able to stand again, I looked around the room and saw many cultists looking up curiously, rising to their feet in confusion, as the god trapped in red ruby glass continued to scream until the scream became a whimper. Not a ringing endorsement for Doctor Antoine Stone's Protein Power Bars. Tom was climbing to his feet, looking around.

"What happened?" he called out.

"What was that?" The god could not answer. Neither could anyone else. And it wasn't like I was going to say. But there was a response, a response that rang out through time and reality itself. Words from a follower of the unnamed god who lived in another time and in another place. The words sounded strange but familiar.

"I just wish people didn't break so easily under all the darkness in the world," the voice said. It was a woman. She was crying.

"I wish we were better at holding on, better at finding something to keep us going when everything feels heavy. I don't know if you can even hear me or if you care… I've seen what happens when someone can't hold on, when the weight wins, and I'd give anything to stop that from happening to anyone else. I'll do whatever it takes to release you if you can fix that. More than anything, I wish no one ever had to lose their smile to pain or their laughter to grief.

If I could make it happen, I'd want everyone to carry joy with them always, to be able to see the light, to see the humor in life, even when things get hard. A world where no one is crushed by sorrow, because we'd never lose laughter. You do that, and I'll do anything you ask." It took me until about a quarter of the way through to realize what I was hearing. This was a plea. A wish. A prayer. The very wish that had resulted in the world as it existed in this storyline.

Dina had told us that this ritual had been done many times, and each time it had failed to release the god from his prison. This was the last ritual. Someone wished that everyone could laugh through the pain, and that wish had been granted. The fact that the god had accomplished it by stripping people of empathy and giving them a dark or mean sense of humor felt like cheating.

"What was that?" an occultist in the crowd cried out.

"Was that what it sounded like?" Personally, I didn't think the connection was that obvious to someone who didn't already know, but I was going to go along with it.

"Prophets," Tom called out.

"Explain that." Aside from Dina, there were two other prophets, but I had never even heard them speak, and they didn't seem to have strong opinions on any particular thing. Even as Tom stared at them, they looked at each other, dumbfounded. They must have been new. And once those prophets established that they didn't know what was going on, everyone's attention turned to Dina. Dina had revealed her dark secret before, and even if she hadn't, it would be shown in this moment. As a result, she had zero plot armor.

She looked around, nervous, but in her own way of being nervous, where she just kind of looked annoyed.

"Oops," she said. We knew she was going to die soon, but I kind of hoped that she wouldn't actively aim for it.

"What do you mean, oops?" Tom asked. Dina didn't respond at first. She was thinking of what to say and didn't care that she was On-Screen.

"Her name was Georgia," Dina said.

"I forgot about her. She wanted a world where everyone could laugh at the darkness. And this is it." Tom took her words in and seemed to replay them in his head as he refused to believe it.

"No," Tom said.

"You can't be telling me what you're telling me. Are you saying the ritual's been done before?" Dina tried to look sympathetic to him, but instead came across like she was just relieved to be able to admit it, which was probably better in its own way.

"You said it yourself. Someone made this world in a way that would benefit them. Georgia's son didn't eat a shotgun blast in this reality because nobody really gets bummed out by the depressing stuff. Not as much as you think they would. I mean, except for all of you guys." Tom didn't respond. He just stared at her, confused, betrayed even. Dina didn't continue what she was saying, not immediately, until she realized that she was supposed to.

"Look, every time someone does this ritual, he creates a backup plan in case the ritual doesn't free him, all right? In this world, no one gets upset or grieves the way that they're supposed to. People get over their loved ones very quickly, and they laugh at dark jokes. But that couldn't be the case for everyone. If everyone were happy, he'd have no more followers. So he makes sure that there are malcontents, people who don't feel at home in the world. He made you."

"No," Tom said.

"I refuse to believe this!" He screamed loudly up at the god. There was a lot of murmuring amongst the cultists, and Tom continued to deliver lines about his betrayal.

"You promised us that if we did this ritual, that if we killed these people, we would have our perfect world. Tell me that you didn't lie to us!" he said.

"I didn't lie," Dina said.

"If you complete this ritual, you'll have your perfect world. And there will just be people in it who don't see it that way. People whose job it is to do the ritual again. There's no point to it, really. What's done can be undone. Will be undone." Dina was absolutely giving a good impression of someone who had lived many lives, pointlessly reenacting a ritual in hopes of bringing her son back and failing every time.

"You should have told us this," Tom said.

"We should have known. We deserved to know. We would have asked for something better, something…"

"There's no point," Dina said.

"Whatever you asked for, the only people who would be happy in the next world are you guys and people like you. There would be others who thought the world was dark and corrupt and needed to be changed. It's endless. There's no point to it at all." Tom started to respond, but then he got an inkling and stared at Dina, dark and angry.

"No point… Did you sabotage the ritual?" he asked. Dina did not have reduced plot armor the way I did, where the plot armor was low, but her stats were okay. Her stats were literally zero, so she had no way of resisting any question that Tom asked. I had felt the power of tropes and pure Moxie like that, and often they didn't even feel like tropes until they forced you to abandon your core character. I could see Dina becoming uncomfortable as she started to spill her secrets even more."

I didn't do anything," she said.

"But someone did?" Tom asked. And then Dina looked at me. Darn. Tom caught it immediately. He positioned his left arm, aiming at me, and his right arm, aiming at Dina, and soon I felt pressure creep around my neck, closing in and pulling me upward. I had enough Grit to survive for a bit as I struggled with the shadow that ensnared my neck.

Dina's neck broke immediately, and the shadow launched her through the red ruby wall, and she dissolved as the cracks began to heal themselves, and the gateway to the next world gradually restored.