Epilogue

GAME'S END

David felt pain exploding inside his head, in fact his whole body. Parts of him, characters that lived within him, were being murdered one by one. He tried to cry out but couldn't. His cheekbones felt as if they had been crushed like eggshells.

Tyrone's blood-soaked corpse lay wide-eyed and mangled on the living room carpet, growing cold.

Melanie kept screaming down at the map.

Scott appeared broken, as if he had not the slightest idea what to do and couldn't understand how it had happened this way.

David forced his eyes open through a red haze of pain.

With a crackling sound, the Allspirit streamed up out of the painted wooden map like some specter rising from a fire. The gray form spilled out of the hexagons, growing larger and larger until it towered to the ceiling.

David scrambled backward. Melanie gaped at it. Scott closed his eyes and shook his head.

The Allspirit surveyed them with its cavernous hood. The air sizzled with its buildup of power. "Your Game is over now," it said. The words echoed around the walls of the house. The wind outside seemed to have stopped. "I will take Gamearth away from you. We want nothing more to do with the Outside."

"And we want nothing more to do with you!" David shouted. His words snapped in his swollen throat.

Beneath the Allspirit, the map shimmered. The spidery black hexagon lines flowed like molten oil.

The Allspirit drew back, engulfing the map in its translucent form. The hexagons of Gamearth splintered and expanded, flying apart like pieces in a puzzle. Brilliant points of light spun like a galaxy around the form of the Allspirit. Even the tiny broken pieces by the fireplace lifted up and swirled into the cluster.

The Allspirit grew taller. "I leave only what is yours," it said, then vanished with an audible pop. A few remaining bright hexagons flashed once, then winked out.

Only the Sitnaltan weapon remained behind, canted on the carpet, as its timer ticked the last two seconds to detonation.

――――

"Well, Overlord Migan, this is most enjoyable. Shall we let the weapon detonate?"

Comtar Durat stared down at the maps spread before him, the detailed sketches of the characters' houses, the careful drawing of the living room. Next to them rested crystalline chits showing statistics for the characters David, Melanie, and Scott; the chit for Tyrone had been removed from play.

Overlord Migan picked up the dice scattered on the playing surface. "I think we should roll for it."

He tossed the dice.

――――

― END ―

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