YP – B1: Finale – Chapter 37

238 Days Until Deliverance and The Uncertain End (part 3)

Zeydar looked over his drugs calculating his time. He had enough time to go up into the dream world and come back down. He had enough time to erase the pressure on his mind and the pressure of the world on his body. He had enough time to ignore how much horror had happened in the last few hours.

The reports had come in at dawn, when the broadcast was first shown on the EverDanger steam. Evester Igialistal, dirty, ragged, older, tired, and ferocious, had declared himself alive after being missing for months. He had declared himself alive. Had declared that he had all of the Yasloughve Projects final predictions and then had recited the attacks. He had recited every major Aralax attack for the next three months. He had told the world that he was alive and there was a way to save it.

To save it. 

It was dying as much as the Superiors tried to pretend it was not. They were at risk of extinction no matter how much the Council tried to ignore it. The world was going to be destroyed and Zeydar? Zeydar couldn’t care. He didn’t care. He had no right to care. He had no right to do anything about it. After all, he’d killed millions of people with his own hands.

That was why he needed the Sweet Dreams as the video played on repeat listing every attack and every event from three months. He wanted to hear Evester’s voice above most other things. If anyone could save the world, Zeydar believed Evester could. EverDanger would save them. And despite the morbidity of the words, Zeydar felt at ease. 

He’d never gotten that autograph and maybe now he never would.

What was he going to do to save the world, Zeydar wondered. Why was he on the Lowerlands? Would he be caught? Where was he headed next? What would he do then?

The Superior council had decided not to respond to the statements, instead opting to have MAY react. MAY always reacted badly. In truth Zeydar wanted MAY gone, as it had been MAY that had shut down the Yasloughve Project. MAY was the reason that everything always fell apart in their world. In some ways they were responsible for the tragedy that even he had created. Without the project billions had died, with it? Perhaps they could have been saved.

Yet he wondered. Would the Yasloughve Project have been able to predict him? Had it done so and no one had known until it was too late? 

Zeydar picked out what he wanted, placed the remainder of the Sweet Dreams away, and decided enough was enough. The suffering was enough and it was time to go back to the happy days of Arcadia. He could forget it all. He wanted to forget it all.

He had to forget it all.

Fire. Tears. Running. Horror. Screams. 

No. He had to forget it all and think of home. Of when magic was simple. When skies were still blue. Before the Catastrophe.

The Sweet Dreams began. 

At first Zeydar was drifting in water, letting his senses interact with the water, and letting the magic consume him.

“Zeydar.” Tyler called to him. “You aren’t supposed to be swimming right now.”

“I don’t want to go to class.” Zeydar began to tread water. “I don’t learn anything.”

“Hardly the point of class. It’s for discipline.”

“I can learn more in the water myself.”

“No one can learn more in the water themselves. Now come. You have class.”

Zeydar knew better than to say no to Tyler. Tyler held Zeydar’s entire life in his palm. Tyler was the only one in the world that controlled Zeydar, at least for now. Zeydar would be a Superior one day. Then no one would be able to tell him what to do.

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