At Reality's End (Delta Squad Book 7)

Book summary

When the High Council of the Syndicate unleashes the Outsiders, chaos erupts across the Omniverse. Delta Squad faces their greatest threat yet, as these entities wage war against all reality. To survive, the Squad must forge alliances with both allies and foes for a final, desperate stand.

Excerpt from At Reality's End (Delta Squad Book 7)

Chapter 1

The world and everything on it was coming to an end. The face of destruction had revealed itself for the most fleeting of seconds and caused everyone that saw it to despair.

As it stood, everyone was going to die—worse than death—erased. This was a threat that was so far beyond any of them that it dwarfed the concept of good and evil.

The mood aboard the Leviathan was hard to describe. It was a twisted mix of pain, terror, and rage. Too much had just happened, and getting a handle on it all was impossible, even for the large gathering of warriors like this—it wasn’t easy. They were still, underneath it all, human.

All besides the cosmic ones, who had come to their aid at the last minute when the Commander destroyed himself to give the world a fighting chance to exist past today. However, despite the situation, not everyone was ready to throw the past out.

Gemini and Blood Wraith did nothing but glare at one another, each having a special kind of crazy that refused to mix. Somehow in the chaos, Gemini had become the protector of Emily’s cage. He held it in his right hand, his left ever ready to grab a blade and get to work.

The various teams had started to move apart from one another as well. Wyatt was frustrated at the division taking place, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it now.

“You—the Commander died for you. Take off your damn helmet, show me who you are,” Wyatt said, staring at the dragon. It was the only thing he felt he could have control of right now. The Dragon shrugged, reached up, twisted the helmet a little, then took it off.

Black hair, blue eyes, pale skin. “Of course, they made a woman,” Blake said and rolled his eyes.

“I don’t know, I think she looks good,” Dustin replied. Blake looked at him. “Shut up,” he said, and Dustin almost laughed.

“Don’t worry, boys, none of you are my type, we’re practically family, and that’s weird,” she replied. Josh started to lift his weapon in her direction.

“Josh, put it down. We’re not going to kill one another now, or did you forget what you saw?” Wyatt asked, and Josh put his weapon down. “Not today,” he replied.

“Wonderful, we know what she is now, let’s get back to business before everyone starts making their own plans and messing everything up,” Wyatt said and turned his attention back to Bob.

“Hey, cosmic weirdo, start talking,” Wyatt said, and Bob turned his blue eyes towards him. Wyatt didn’t feel afraid—not when the threat they were facing was so intense, there was not enough time for it.

“Story time, right,” Bob remembered the story he was going to tell when Cyranthis stepped forward. “Rookie. Let me explain this. I’m good at explaining things, it’s what I do.” Bob glared at him, Theron and Darius laughed. Erebus stood in the back, doing his best not to laugh, too. “Rookie, me? Well, by all means.” Bob motioned for him to continue.

Cyranthis cleared his throat and narrowed his golden eyes.

“The unleashing of the other cosmic horror guys—even one of them—into the ‘reality’ screwed with the connection to their powers. They have mere sparks compared to what they used to. They can even die,” Cyranthis said and glanced towards Bob, not minding if he died today—right now would be fine with him.

Wyatt knew all that, and he shrugged. “Anyone have any useful information, like how to kill those things, maybe?” Wyatt asked and pointed to where they were moments ago.

Bob and Theron shrugged at the same time. “Best guess, if they take a physical form, you can kill them once they are in it?” Theron said, it was more a question than anything.

“If it bleeds, we can kill it,” Josh replied. “Yeah, that’s the theory,” Bob replied.

“Long story short, we’ll help, but don’t count on them for much. Me, on the other hand? You’re lucky I came back,” Cyranthis pushed back into the conversation, and his eyes glowed for a brief second. “You—why are we lucky? Unless you invented a bigger gun or bullets that kill cosmic entities, I don’t see what use you are,” Dustin said, and Cyranthis shook his head.

“Stop being a little bitch and listen to me for a minute, alright? I crafted your Delta power using the Nexus of reality itself. I was busy back in the day, I had my reasons. Those true weapons—same deal. I don’t have as much of the cosmic blood in me as these guys do, so I had to make my own power. Power you people have used to your own evil ends.” He looked at Mark, Jake, and Max and wasn’t too impressed. They didn’t seem to notice his gaze.

He turned his golden eyes back to the Squad.

“You’ve only ever used what you needed. It’s how you barely pulled through most of your battles. But, kids—you never tried to tap into the main power source. Not that you ever needed to. We need to draw it out. If you ever needed all of it, it’s now,” he said to them.

“How are we going to do that?” Wyatt asked and glared at the same time. “Well, look at you. Mister talks too much, never thinks about what he says. How else are you going to do it besides practice?” Cyranthis said with a knowing smile. Nobody liked what the word “practice” meant. It was never a good word.

“Hey, before we start, where’s the Devil?” Blake noticed this one was missing.

“He’s on a special mission—don’t worry about it. Right now, we need to worry about the omnicidal maniacs that are out there intending to find bodies for the rest of their numbers and kill everyone. Start your training now,” Theron said and walked away towards the Zodiac members.

Wyatt felt like this was all going to be a waste of time—the others did as well. There was a sense of frustration among them. “Guys. Listen. I know how you feel, but everything is going to be erased, so get over it,” Cyranthis said.

“Just tired is all,” Dustin replied, saying what all of them were feeling. Cyranthis smiled. “Well, we’re on the verge of getting erased. I’m sure you can suck it up a little longer,” he replied.

Chapter 2

Bob walked to the edge of the Leviathan, Darius followed him. The two still hated one another, but they knew better than to act on it. “Kid, this changes nothing between us,” Bob said.

“That’s obvious. These things you fear—tell me about them. Dad.” Bob could only smile at the reply, straight to the point, he liked it.

“Ah, you are your mother’s kid. Anyway, if you really want to know, it goes something like this. A long time ago, there was only the infinite, living void. It was filled with things you couldn’t understand because they didn’t have a sense of reality, or form, like we do today. You could call them all family.” Bob stopped, struggling to find a way to explain it. Darius was kind of an idiot, and he didn’t want to repeat himself.

Darius seemed to be keeping up so far.

“Personally, I am a fan of chaos, not living voids. Theron and I, we escaped along with Nero’s mother. She was barely able to be convinced and threatened to eat the both of us on multiple occasions. Anyway, the moment we escaped, we used our collective power to create a barrier. This barrier—we called it reality—was something the void couldn’t exist in. Pure poison to them, and us, for a vast number of eternities,” Bob said, looking up to the sky, a little thankful to see the stars were still there.

“It wasn’t until Theron and I got into our fight that caused, well, you know that story. Reality cracked, and neither of us was really paying attention enough to fix it. Theron knocked me out and created his own realm. Mercy was always one of his biggest weaknesses—he should have killed me,” he said, gazing out into the dark.

“The Omniverse. Let me tell you—Theron has one hell of a right hook, because when I woke up, there was all kinds of light and stuff. Not only did this attract me, it attracted them as well. But because reality is toxic to them, due to the damage, a vast amount of the energy had left the Omniverse, they had to form protective shells to explore it—not nearly as nasty as it once was,” Bob explained. Darius looked at him.

“I have questions,” he said, and Bob stopped him. “It was so long ago, the memories are going to be a little fuzzy, just accept it. Some of the story might not make a whole lot of sense,” he said, and Darius shrugged.

“Alright, but could you get to the point? The urge to stick my sword in your heart is rising, after all,” he said, and Bob thought about pushing his kid off the edge of the ship but resisted it. “Sure, I’ll see what I can do,” he replied.

“They threatened everything Theron had worked so hard for. I told him to end his little experiment and end the whole of reality. He wouldn’t have any of it, and to be fair, I kind of grew attached to it at the time. Theron and I, well, we couldn’t let these monsters roam free, so we came up with a plan, and together we made something of a cosmic patch. We aligned the stars to create a seal—the Nexus was to be the binding force, and the life energy of the whole Omniverse as well.”

“We gave the Nexus control points. This planet is the closest to the outside realm. The Outsiders found this place and attempted to destroy it, but we trapped them here. We thought the life forms on the planet would have been a great food source for them and called it a day. Apparently, humanity wasn’t as tasty as we thought it would be. The protectors of this universe, well, they sure were unhappy with the choice and tried to get the humans to war against the monsters. This was a bad idea, and they all became slaves to the Outsider—and food. We kept a close eye on things, but eventually, the dark energies mutated the reptiles on the planet into, almost people,”

“With a few centuries’ time, the two worked together to rebel against the Outsiders, and to our amazement, they managed to drive them back with their own magics. It was that moment we knew that the humans and the snake people were special and could handle their own business,” he said, almost smiling at that.