Wolf of the Tesseract

Epilogue

Rob's eyelids fluttered and opened. Jackie and Claire stood over him.

Claire weaved her fingers through his wild hair. "There you are," she said warmly; her face was only inches from his. "You've been unconscious for days."

"Where am I?" Rob sat up gingerly and touched his stomach where he'd been impaled. He moved the blanket away and saw the scar tissue that crisscrossed his abdomen like lightning bolts. His exposed skin was overlapped with other scars that he'd gained since he and Claire had departed company a month ago; they cross hatched his naked body, telling the story of his struggles since her escape. "How did I get here?"

"We drove a semi!" Jackie said, true to her bubbly self.

"After the sun returned, we turned around and found you lying next to the sword of the Architect King."

Rob looked around, searching for the ancient blade.

"Don't worry. It's someplace safe."

"With someone safe," Jackie corrected.

Rob looked at Claire inquisitively.

"My father is alive," she said. "He broke out of some kind of Heptobscurantum laboratory a few states away. He's staying with Professor Jecima at the moment."

"So now you tell us what happened in Mullen, Nebraska."

Closing his eyes, Rob remembered every detail. He recounted his final battle with Nitthogr in front of the netherspace portal. "I stared into the face of madness and told Sh'logath to stay comfortable where he was. He's not escaping the void any time soon. Not while I'm alive."

Claire sat down next to Rob. "Do you really think it's over?"

"The Seven might be down," he sighed, "but the Heptobscurantum is probably larger than we could ever know."

Claire nodded. She'd seen that to be true during her month on the run.

"But it will certainly take them a long time to recover. Possibly years or more, I would suspect," he concluded. "If even one of the high ranking Heptobscurantum escaped the destruction, they will eventually re-emerge."

"The Prime will certainly rise from the ashes," Jackie said, she had explained to Claire already how she and Rob had helped the resistance turn the tides against the vyrm before they came to her rescue. "Wulftone certainly seems like a very capable overseer for the reconstruction efforts."

Claire caught the twinkle in her friend's eyes when she said his name. She grinned at her. Leave it to Jackie to fall for a guy from another dimension. The irony of that thought wasn't lost on her. "I'm glad to hear that he escaped. I didn't think anyone could make it out of that place alive!"

She tried to deflect her thoughts away from the inter-dimensional love connections that seemed to revolve around her. "There's also Basilisk, although he doesn't seem to be chomping at the bit to free Sh'logath. And Vivian... Caivev, I mean. She's still out there."

"But I will always be right here to protect you," Rob said, laying a hand gently upon the side of her face, careful not to touch the long line of stitches that ran from chin to cheekbone.

Claire ignored the dull pain and leaned against him. She decided that not thinking about her feelings wouldn't help.

Claire took his hand and intertwined her fingers with his. Her heart fluttered and all her emotions urged her to kiss him. She awkwardly brushed a stray stand of hair from her face, instead, unsure of taking quite so bold a step.

"We should get out of here," she tried to grapple with her heart's impulses. She wanted to be certain that she was not feeling Bithia's emotions—it had to be real: her recent track record with love had made her reluctant in that area. It would take some time to sort through it. "Let's go find my father and the professor. They are going to want to meet you."

She locked eyes with Rob and in that moment knew that the intense love she felt for him was hers and not Bithia's. Bithia loved him deeply, truly. But these new feelings she had for Rob were entirely her own.