A Stand in Time
The first sign of the attack was when the giant trying to climb over Frederik VIII’s Palace tripped the Cure trap they’d rigged against just that chance. It was amazing how much noise grosslings made as they died, presumably in order to bring down more of their hosts upon whatever had killed them, but this time, that was part of the plan.
Amalienborg had been designed and built as a quartet of palaces rather than as a fortification, but in the desperation of Year Zero, its old stones had been reinforced with sandbags and razor-wire to make it one of Copenhagen’s final bastions--a spot where Humanity had stood against the Rash to the bitter end. Neither plague nor grossling had overcome the defenses back then; only starvation had brought the end about.
Now, the bastion that had lain silent for so long again sheltered a rag-tag scrap of humanity against everything the Rash could throw at them--and again, it held. Grosslings trying to infiltrate palace or passage found themselves hopelessly entangled by razor-wire and doused with the Cure, not merely failing, but actively blocking other such attempts.
So it was that the Man in the Black Hat’s dread legions were forced into storming the one open path to their goal; but that meant charging not one but two Sigrun Eides, backed by two sniping Lallis and two Emils with their arsenals.
And yet, while the physical battle raged without, two Reynirs sat within the small, cat-shaped vehicle with their eyes closed and waged war in the Otherworld.
In the world that Reynir walked in his “dreams”, the Man in the Black Hat was exposed for what he was: Darkness Incarnate, a shapeless, formless mass that seemed not simply to block out light, but to actually feast upon it, sucking away every last glimmer into its obscene bulk. This was the foe the two Reynirs faced, but they weren’t quite sure how to overcome it.
The twin battles raged on, but while the grosslings could not overcome the dogged defense without, they were doing much better within. The might of their massed multitudes began to tell, and the two Reynirs found their lights waning, for what could only two do against so many?
Except, they weren’t merely two.
Just as another surge of light-sucking ooze washed against the Reynirs’ bubble of radiance, another Reynir joined them, bearing a cutlass. Then another appeared, the Reynir from Year Three, and another, clutching (of all things) a pair of cymbals.
With each new Reynir came a surge of renewed vigor and vitality. Yet another Reynir appeared, dressed for a raid on Napoleon’s Spanish forces, and the sextet was complete, power surging through them as Darkness was met with Light.
CLASH! went the cymbals, and a burst of Light beyond measure poured into the Darkness, which recoiled in pain and perplexity. CLASH! CLASH! CLASH!
The Darkness was on the wane now, receding reluctantly against the ever-intensifying Light.
CLASH!
Now the six Reynirs surrounded the Man in the Black Hat, who howled in outrage that he should be brought low by such as they. He was literally on his knees now, but still defiant.
CLASH!
*
The mass of dead grosslings had made it difficult to locate the Man in the Black Hat’s body, but only the two Reynirs were confident that he’d died until they finally did. The Western Sigrun insisted on checking the body for certain specific marks even then, just to be sure.
Even amidst such carnage, the twelve of them wolfed down the entire morning batch of local Mikkel’s trademark ‘inedible sludge’, not that that kept any of them from complaining about the sludge. After that, it came time for goodbyes.
Having given their local counterparts the last stirring rod for making the Cure (and Lalli-to-Lalli notes on making more like it), the Westerners went back to where they’d debouched from the Cave of Time.
“So,” Sigrun asked Reynir, “is it ‘home again, home again, jiggity jig’ at last?”
“Well,” Reynir replied, “we really should make one more stop along the way...”
