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Sam thought he was far removed from feeling shame or embarrassment after learning how to ground himself, but emotions were impossible to stifle completely. With the way Vercedei had been speaking and acting for him, Sam couldn’t help but internally sigh at the image Wendy must’ve had of him in her mind. According to Nwaps, the tapeworm prevented her from reading his thoughts, and it also read some of her thoughts in return; after all, connections worked both ways, and Nwaps knew how to enter people’s heads. Wendy didn’t hate Sam; she simply didn’t know if he was even himself anymore. To be fair, Sam wasn’t quite sure who he himself was supposed to be. A wanderer? A mercenary? A ticking timebomb filled with higher-dimensional entities ready to cause Oterra great devastation?
Whatever he was, did it matter? Sam didn’t think so. People were born to die, so what did it matter what happened in between those two points of his life? He was shaped by his environment since he was young, and then, he was shaped by society when he became older. His true self was constantly changing, and as he grew older, the thoughts he used to think shifted and grew as well. There was no need for him to define himself, not when his journey through life was only just beginning—at least, he hoped it was only just beginning because it’d suck if he died only a decade after his wish of changing his life came true.
“Do you want to know what you are?” Nwaps asked. “You’re a world with trillions of lives depending on you. Bacteria live on your skin and deep within your body; they might not be visible, but they play a huge role in affecting your mood and thoughts. To take care of the lives depending on you, first and foremost, you have to take care of yourself, and if that means conquering the world to create optimal conditions for your own growth, then that’s what you should do.”
Sam let out a mental grunt to let the tapeworm know it had been heard. The tapeworm was as chatty as Vercedei, but rather than enjoying the conversation with people like the twin-headed snake, whether it be by savoring the emotions it had triggered or by convincing someone to go against their morals, the tapeworm preferred talking at people. Sam thought it was because it enjoyed hearing its own voice despite it not having any ears, or, maybe, it enjoyed forcing its opinions on others; considering it was impossible to tune the tapeworm out since it spoke directly in people’s heads and could literally take over their thoughts, Sam suspected the latter played a bigger role in the tapeworm’s chattiness.
“Did you hear me, Sam?” Nwaps asked. “You grunted, but it was a half-hearted grunt.”
“I always hear you,” Sam said. “It’s impossible not to.”
“There’s a difference between the hear I’m talking about and the hear you’re talking about,” Nwaps said. “If your full attention isn’t on me when I’m speaking, then you’re not listening to me, understood?”
Sam mentally grunted again, the only way he could get back at the tapeworm for disobeying his wishes. He didn’t want the golden worm to spread throughout human society, or any society for that matter, but it did anyway.
“That’s my nature,” Nwaps said. “Plants grow leaves where its sunny, and I proliferate where there’s lots of hosts. You can’t blame me for being true to myself. Speaking of which, you should be true to yourself more often as well. Once upon a time, you wanted the world to end, so recall those feelings you felt back then and channel them through your actions.”
“Quit nagging Sam,” Vercedei said, the twin-headed snake’s blue head’s voice echoing through Sam’s mind. “Even if he doesn’t do anything, the graylings are more than capable of setting up the foundation for the fall of Oterra. All Sam needs to do is make an appearance once in a while.”
“I’m not nagging him,” Nwaps said. “I’m just saying I was called to this dimension by Sam’s fervent desire to destroy the world. I waited patiently for my turn to come, watching all of you get summoned one at a time, and what did you do? You had him experience Oterra. Why would you get him attached to a plane he’s going to destroy? That’s like making him name a pig that he’s going to butcher later for meat.”
“If you know your enemy and you know yourself, then you’ll never lose,” Vercedei said. “We got a good look at Oterra’s forces simply by exploring it, and besides, didn’t we pick up more of us along the way? If we hadn’t gone to see the Venusians, you’d still be a golden platform in the ground.”
“A golden city,” Nwaps said, “not just a platform.”
“As if a city is anything impressive,” Vercedei said.
“What about you?” Nwaps asked. “You were just a rock carved by a blue avian.”
“Yes, but I was carved with lots of feeling,” Vercedei said. “You were made as a necessity. If the Venusians didn’t need you, then you wouldn’t be around in the first place. No one made you for the sake of making you.”
A snort rang through Sam’s mind as the tapeworm expressed its displeasure. “You act like the mediums required to summon us are important,” Nwaps said. “What’s really important is the fact I’m ten times more useful than you whether as a platform or as a world-conquering higher-dimensional being. Other than speaking for Sam, what can you do?”
“Don’t look down on the power of words,” Vercedei said. “Words are the basis of communication, and communication is the basis of teamwork. No matter how great an individual is, a group of coordinated people working together can produce results beyond an individual’s limits no matter how great they are.”
Weren’t Vercedei and Nwaps supposed to be a team since they both wanted to destroy Oterra? Then again, when Birdbrained and Raindu had first met the twin-headed snake, they were guarded against it. If Oterra couldn’t be saved by an external force like the blue avians, perhaps, it could escape disaster if an internal conflict broke out amongst the higher-dimensional beings. However, Sam didn’t think that was likely to happen, and with each passing day, he couldn’t help but take Vercedei’s words more seriously. If Oterra really underwent an extinction event because of Sam’s familiars, would it be considered his fault?
“No,” Nwaps said. “We would’ve found someone else who was miserable and raging against their lot in life. Then, you’d be a talentless struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic Oterra instead of the one heading the apocalypse, and I’m sure you know which option is better.”
Well, if Oterra was bound to suffer from destruction anyway, Sam had to agree with the tapeworm’s point. He’d much rather be the cause of destruction than someone who was destroyed, and luckily, he was given that chance. With his privilege of leading the apocalypse, he could save the people he wanted like Ellie or Wendy or Tom or April or Gregor. Sam’s thoughts fell silent as he struggled to remember if he had any more friends. “Would you spare blue avians?”
“If they aren’t hostile,” Nwaps said, “but with what we’re going to do, there’s no way any of them would want to be friends with us. To them, Oterra is their home, and we are pests. You wouldn’t make friends with termites eating your house.”
“And what exactly are you going to do?” Sam asked. His familiars could do amazing things, sure, but he didn’t think any of them had to potential to destroy Oterra except for Nwaps and Dirt. Nwaps could control living beings and make them kill one another while Dirt could change the landscape, causing earthquakes, tsunamis, eruptions, and floods in the process. Actually, could Raindu store the whole of Oterra into its fur?
“How do you know we’re not already inside of Raindu’s fur?” Nwaps asked. “For all you know, Oterra could be similar to a terrarium owned by a higher-dimensional being.”
“Is it?” Sam asked.
“It’s not,” Nwaps said. “It’s more like a wild bush with blue avians acting as its thorns. You were wondering how we would destroy Oterra, and that’s a difficult question to answer because there are many ways to do it.”
“And we can’t agree on the way we want to approach this problem,” Vercedei said.
It wouldn’t have to be a problem if they simply chose to leave Oterra alone—was what Sam thought, but Sam’s familiars held his opinions in low regard.
“It’s better that we can’t agree,” Nwaps said. “We’ll each go about it a different way, and if one of our plans are foiled, then it won’t matter because we’ll have other apocalypses in motion.”
Sam’s mind generated the image of a bush named Oterra being approached by multiple animals holding various tools of destruction: sheers, chainsaws, herbicides, flamethrowers, a massive boulder. “Why do you want to destroy Oterra again?”
“It’s your wish,” Vercedei said. “We’re simply here to help you manifest it.”
“Let’s not use Sam as an excuse,” Nwaps said, eager to butt heads with the silver-tongued deceiver. “Even if Sam weren’t here, there are still thousands of reasons for us to get rid of Oterra. It doesn’t really matter why, does it, Sam? You’re not going to be able to convince us otherwise even if you hear our reasons; we’re too stubborn.”
“Do you want to destroy Oterra too, Raindu?” Sam asked the black ferret through his mind.
Raindu crawled out of Sam’s shirt collar before jumping onto the floor in front of him. It chattered, communicating with Sam. “All I want is for you to be safe and unharmed,” the ferret said. “If Vercedei and Nwaps can reshape Oterra to be safer for you, then I approve. You don’t know when those blue avians will show up, and as long as they exist, your life is in danger.”
“You don’t think getting rid of the blue avians would invite other higher-dimensional beings to invade Oterra without the blue avians acting as a deterrent?” Sam asked. “Wouldn’t that put me at even more risk?” After all, it was harder to deal with the unknown. Blue avians were difficult to deal with, but reality-bending animals that could kill people by touching them or controlling their minds with a simple touch was even tougher to handle. “Honestly, I feel much safer with the blue avians around because if they weren’t, then wouldn’t it be up to us to defend Oterra from hostile higher-dimensional beings?”
“That’s like saying you don’t mind living in a house full of wolves because they keep other predators away,” Birdbrained said, answering for Raindu. “If they catch us any of us alone, a colony of blue avians can rip us to shreds. They might be good protectors of Oterra, but they’re detrimental to us, so it’s in our best interests to get rid of them.”
“But we live in Oterra,” Sam said.
“So?” Birdbrained asked. “What part of you’ll be torn to shreds by blue avians if your alone do you not understand? Do you think we want to stick by your side all the time and not go off on our own adventures? You keep adding more and more familiars; it’s getting stuffy and crowded, and I don’t like it. I want some time to myself, but I can’t get it until those blue avians are gone, so I’m firmly on the side of getting rid of them even if it causes the destruction of Oterra.”
Freedom and time to itself, Sam supposed those were fair reasons for the colorless eagle to get rid of the blue avians. Living whilst having to be afraid was tiring, and Sam had lived a life without security when he was a talentless. He could relate with the bird’s desire to be free. Perhaps his other familiars had similar reasons for wanting to rid Oterra of the blue avians. “Werchbite, how about you?” Sam asked. “What are your thoughts on Oterra and the blue avians?”
“Blue avians are pretty,” Werchbite said. “They’d look good as stuffed decorations.”
So, the twin-headed snake’s purple head wanted to collect blue avians like hunting trophies. Although it was a bit of a macabre reason, it was still a reason. “I didn’t know you collected things,” Sam said. “Where do you keep them?”
“In my stomach,” Werchbite said.
“Our stomach,” Vercedei said, cutting in. “You don’t see us move because of the illusion Werchbite casts on you, but we leave your face all the time to swallow things we find interesting.”
Sam wasn’t sure if the twin-headed snake was serious or not. It was on very rare occasions the twin-headed snake left his body, but perhaps they left more often than he knew? If Werchbite could trick the people around Sam into believing he looked nothing like how he actually appeared, what was stopping the twin-headed snake from deceiving Sam into believing he had a snake wrapped around his head at all times? “Has anyone else noticed them leaving my body?” Sam asked the rest of his familiars. “Or were all of you fooled?”
Manga let out a four-syllable-long cry. “Everyone noticed except for you,” the wooly pig conveyed from its spot in the corner of the room. A whole section of the room and other parts of the house had been cleared out for the wooly pig to roam since its annihilate-whatever-it-touched fur didn’t agree with furniture. “They didn’t go very far or leave for very long. One time, they ate a person.”
“Wait, what?” Sam asked. “They ate a person?”
“Swallowed them whole,” Raindu said.
“When was this?” Sam asked. How did he miss the twin-headed snake eating a whole person?
“That one time,” Vercedei said. “You know; we saw something we liked, so we grabbed it without anyone noticing by creating an overlapping illusion. It’s the same way we disguise you to look normal, so it’s understandable you didn’t notice anything. If you had, other people would’ve too.”
“You ate a person?” Sam asked again. “Who?”
“You don’t know them,” Vercedei said. “You didn’t even notice they went missing, so why are you fretting over something that hasn’t affected your life? You know what they say; control the things you can control, and forget about the things you can’t.”
Sam supposed eating one person wasn’t the worst thing his familiars had done. Raindu derailed a train and caused traffic accidents. Birdbrained had graylings kill themselves all the time to absorb the memories they had gathered. Joe caused people to get into scuffles and broke relationships apart with its contagious mood whenever it happened to get annoyed in a crowd. Nwaps infected and controlled the minds of individuals to allow Sam into a high-end restaurant. Was eating one person really such a bad thing?
“People go missing all the time,” Vercedei said. “You’ve heard of the high-ranked awakened disappearing from human society. No one will suspect us.”
It wasn’t about being suspected, but Sam didn’t expect his familiars to understand. They were higher-dimensional beings, and to them, Oterra was as common as a plant on the side of the road. Whatever happened to the insects on the plant wouldn’t hurt their consciences; they were called calamities, not blessed beasts of generosity.
“Big Fish, Manga?” Sam asked. “Do you have a problem with the blue avians too?” Of all his familiars, Manga and Big Fish were the most well behaved when it came to human morality. Dirt the koala might not have killed anyone yet, but considering how it was willing to destroy the blue avians’ whole habitat, Sam had a feeling it wouldn’t have cared whether it was destroying blue avian trees, human homes, or any other species’ living quarters.
“I like running in open space,” Manga said, communicating with its four-syllable-long cry. “With blue avians around, I’m forced to run underground where its moist and damp and dark and not at all as nice as the sky. When they’re gone, I’ll be free to run where I please.”
“It’s the same for me,” Big Fish said. “I don’t enjoy being microscopic. Everything’s big, and it takes forever to get anywhere; an inch becomes ten miles. It’s much nicer to be as large as a mountain and floating above the world with everything below in sight.”
“Aren’t you tired of living like a fugitive?” Dirt asked. “Why are you so opposed to getting rid of the blue avians? They’re making your life miserable. Constantly hiding is no way to live; what’s the point of being an amazing awakened if you’re not going to fight for a better life for yourself. You might as well have stayed talentless.”
With the thoughts of nine familiars buzzing around Sam’s mind, it was hard to think for himself sometimes. If enough people told someone they were wrong, unless they were truly firm in their conviction, their thoughts and positions could be easily swayed. Sam mulled over his familiars’ thoughts; perhaps, there were benefits in wiping the surface of Oterra clean and starting anew.