Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 57184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 191(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 191(@300wpm)
Those pieces don’t make sense. Like random events from different stories.
Now Rool is saying that the First People have stories about steel temples and mechanical dragons.
Buildings. Planes. I cover my mouth and gasp. My knees go weak. I stumble back.
“My queen? What is the matter?” Rool says.
Fuck. What if these stories are so old they became distorted over time? What if that hole was just a doorway? One from River Wall Manor.
I feel like I’m going to be sick, because if what I’m thinking is true…
“Get the men ready,” I tell Rool. “We’re returning to the palace.”
“Yes, my queen.”
I turn and walk back to Alwar, who’s arguing with Gabrio about something.
I want to tell them. I need to tell someone.
The First People aren’t the first. They’re the last. And this place is what’s left over of my home.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I hold back on saying anything to Alwar. Because now, more than ever, I have to not freak the fuck out or make a mistake.
Shit. Shit. Shit, I think to myself as we begin the march back to the palace in the same formation as before. All along, I’ve been thinking about either protecting the wall or shutting down the doorways.
But if I’m right about things, then it’s much more complicated than that. My world is the past, and Monsterland is the future!
They’re the same damned world!
How can this be? Like I’ve been saying all along, the wall is always under threat of attack. That’s why I want to close the doorways permanently.
But say I fail, and the monsters eventually take the wall. Once that happens, ravenous monsters will pour into my world. Logically, humans will fight back. And it’s not out of the question that humans will trash my world in the process. Nuclear bombs are the only weapon we have to take out billions of knife-wielding trolls.
After the invasion, what’s left over is this place. Monsterland—thousands of years in the future, where I’m standing right now.
But am I right?
Are these worlds really the same place, just at different times?
My mind spins, trying to fit it all together.
Alwar said that thousands of years ago in Monsterland, there were fires in the sky, and everything burned to the ground. Even the ocean was turned into a tarry pit of sludge. Today, beyond the War People’s wall is a wasteland, the remnants of the worst of the destruction. The land is “so toxic” that nothing can survive there.
Fires couldn’t cause all that, but radiation could.
So what if his story is really about the destruction of my world after we’re invaded by monsters?
Add to that how I’m being told humans were here in Monsterland first. They could be the survivors after a massive monster invasion.
Maybe some of those survivors even grew fifty feet tall! More signs of radiation? Other humans could have evolved into nocturnal creatures, half-wolf creatures, or even demonic-looking things. Mutations.
And what about the Fliers? Giant birds with a horrible disease that leaves their skin flaky, putrid, and scaly.
Everything I’ve described could be the result of fallout. Radiation that happened thousands of years ago. Maybe tens of thousands. Not even the monsters seem to know when these events took place since it’s based on folklore.
Here’s another fact I overlooked: No way did my ancestors from thousands of years ago have the resources and know-how to build the War People’s giant stone fortress to enclose those doorways, yet that’s what Alwar said. He said the events that led to the wall happened well before his great-grandfather’s time, thousands of years ago. He meant thousands of years ago for him and for me, assuming we are from different worlds, but living at the same time. But the part about humans initiating construction only makes sense if those humans were from my time. Back home, people are constructing high-rises, building giant tankers, making satellites.
I start to play out all the pieces in my mind like a story to see if it hunts.
In the near future, here in Monsterland, the wall falls, and there’s an invasion of the human world. Monsters pour in.
People will be taken off guard the moment they see that devils, shifters, trolls, and vampires are real. People will fight and try to survive. Maybe a monster is captured and tells them where the monsters are coming from. Maybe they just figure it out on their own using satellites.
According to folklore, humans first use fires to block the doorways, but more doorways keep popping up. The monsters keep coming in. So maybe we try bombs or explosives to collapse the doorways. No go. Our weapons don’t work.
What would humans do next?
We would send the smartest people we’ve got and the best builders in the world and construct a giant fortress around the doorways. Lock the monsters inside a vault. But maybe we can’t build fast enough, and more monsters are pouring in.