Quoted By:
"I don't peddle in false hopes, Charlotte. Humanity was flawed from its birth; no amount of devotion can erase that. The most we can do is strive for perfection—" You open your mouth. He holds up a finger. "—<span class="mu-i">strive</span> for it, which is more important than the obtaining, and happier. We are a support group. We support one another in our best efforts. Perhaps the Great Wyrm will recognize this when it awakens itself, and we will be rewarded. If not, we will be in the same place as everybody else. It's nothing, overall, to worry yourself over."
The chamber is eerie, isn't it? Long and dark and depopulated, with a monster on the other end, and you facing an all-too-placid man with a beltful of knives. "The same place as everybody else," you say. "You mean dead."
"Presumably."
"You're saying that the Wyrm is going to wake up and kill everything, definitely, because you said 'when' and not 'if.' Except maybe it won't kill you guys, because you're... self-improving."
"You're a smart cookie," Henry says, a touch amusedly. "That's right. That'd be the end of the world."
Great. Great! "Uh-huh. Uh-huh uh-huh. And you know this—"
"We know this, kiddo, because the world <span class="mu-i">has</span> ended. It's over. The Flood?" Henry mimics a sploosh. "That was it. The big one. Gods dead, everybody go home."
Is he pulling your leg? "But we're—"
"Still here? Yes. And the Wyrm isn't. I'm led to believe there was some miscalculations. A few too many on the lifeboats, if you will. And the water doctored-up. And a key little piece went missing in the scuffle, sank— and now the world's still here, isn't it? A shadow of itself, but here, two centuries in the making. Eternity for us. For the Worldbearer—" He snaps his fingers. "—an eyeblink. The rest is still coming, Charlotte."
"...The rest of the end of the world?"
"That's it. The Wyrm is— It used to be dead asleep. Unreachable. Now It's tossing and turning and trapped under a thousand miles of dirt. It can't do much from down there except leak visions up to us. But it <span class="mu-i">will</span> break out, any day of any week, and then it's curtains. It's as simple as that."
You cross your arms. "You don't sound very upset about this."
"Should I? The die was cast hundreds of years ago, Charlotte. The old gods are killed, and the Wyrm is coming, and you and I?" He spreads his hands. "We have no power in this. Nobody does. The people who brought this about, perhaps foolishly, are long-dead, and even they would have no power in it. We will prepare for the end, and if the end doesn't come, our children will prepare for it—" A pause. "—speaking metaphorically, I suppose. But it <span class="mu-i">will</span> come."
"So it could be in a <span class="mu-i">thousand</span> years, and—"
"In a vacuum, sure. But between you and I, though, the rumbles— they point to soon. I would stake my reputation on it being within the year."
(3/4)
