Clifford’s path was littered with broken glass, toppled trees, and splintered wood-boards. He could only figure that a massive amount of fighting had taken place here. (He would’ve been right in that assumption, but it was also the same amount of damage that had once been done when a bakery had exploded as a result of too much yeast having been added to a simple muffin.) Clifford could hear muffled gunfire up ahead, probably no more than five blocks from where he stood.
Jaime Conner was long gone, possibly, Clifford thought sadly, already killed in the melee awaiting him. Clifford really couldn’t afford such thoughts. His destiny was sitting in the top of that pyramid. Each step closer somehow revealed more in his mind, letting him know exactly what he had to do and how he had to get it done. He dropped his bundle and guitar. They were no longer any use to him. Well, maybe some use. He took them and hid them in an alley beside the house of Shakespeare.
As he walked back around the corner he heard a sound much like a scream. He looked up just in time to see a body fly over the rooftop and crash into the fountain. Clifford ran toward the man, only to realize that there wasn’t much man left when he got there. The body was shattered and broken, the blood quickly overtaking the water.
“Oh my...” was all Clifford could gasp.
Then the body twitched and lifted a hand. Clifford leaned in close; he could tell the person was whispering.
“What?” Clifford said, “Tell your last and ease your passing.”
“Fight... fight the cats.” Then the person was gone. Clifford looked up to see if another body was coming his way, but the sky was clear.
He turned his back on the fountain and started walking once more, this time with a little more purpose than before. He was thinking about all those that had gone before him, and somehow, deep within his mind, he realized that everyone he had ever known was paving the path of destiny for him. No matter how little of long of a time they’d been in his life, each person was just another signpost toward Historia and this moment.
He stepped out to the middle of the street and began the final push to the statue-topped pyramid. As he walked determinedly toward it, a massive explosion rocked the top of the pyramid and the statue toppled forward. As it smashed into the side of the pyramid the cannon-arm went off and a long blast of fire shot forward. Clifford, even in his own mind, didn’t care to guess the number of dead from that.
Glancing back only once, Clifford could still see that arm of the broken person laying on the rim of the fountain. It occurred to him that the person he had spoken to as they lay broken and dying in the fountain could very well be Jaime Conner.
Fight the cats. It echoed with each muffled gunblast. Fight the cats. Clifford’s mind leapt back to the farm of Pepperidge, where he’d seen a cat army fighting against the warriors from the King’s Valley. But that seemed like so long ago. How long? Possibly years, but he was sure it was no more than a week or two at best. Then again, Jaime Conner had told him that Nostalgia was now a ghost town, so Clifford had given up on grasping reality.
Clifford slowly rounded a corner (there was no straight path to the pyramid, he had to follow the streets as best he could), crouching down, and entered the fray. Along both ends of a narrow street were embattlements, and Clifford could see the tops of the soldiers heads. He knelt down and crawled along the side, staying under cover as much as he could. The gunfire continued, each percussive blast ringing in his ears, and he suddenly wished he was back home in Nostalgia.
But he couldn’t go back. Not after all he’d come through. No. The pyramid was his to reach, or die in the trying. And he had to fight the cats.
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