Adriana stared at that last page, failing to mentally resolve the imagry of Rue fading into the sunset like a hero of the Old West.
Rudimentary shapes and swirling maelstroms of formless wroth assaulted her sensibilities, for in her mind, a much different scene shimmered. Rue, standing triumphant with the gift from foolish Meander, blocks the god's escape, binding him to wander a path crooked and ceaseless, like the river which bore his name. Adriana tried to stop the unsettling slide-show, but somehow, though she typed with the alacrity of a melting glacier, she'd been consumed.
"I shall destroy you!" Rue yells. "Your treachery is at an end!" The rabbit still knew nothing of his past—and such knowledge would only have increased his penchant for vengeance.
The gods—the wise ones—cowered where they stood. Only then was the destructive potential of their gift made obvious. Somewhere, they knew Loki laughed and laughed.
The Age of Gods was at an end. Rue closed his eyes and shattered reality, forming a void immeasurable and magnetic, confounding with trickery and intoxicating with hidden pleasures only mirages dared boast. If Rue would lose himself forevermore in fantasy while his body decayed and traipsed across all creation: so too, would the engineers of his torture know retribution.
He spun their prison of delight and left them to rot, still unsatisfied because his most sought revenge was toothless; his long sundered memory provided no hint at why he longed to destroy the pantheon—every deity past, present, and future.
Adriana convulsed, her eyes spun halfway backwards in their sockets, showing only whites at the curtain that captured her unseeing attention. Terrible! Make it stop!
But Rue had not yet begun. Now he finally understood: Kyle was the boy. Adriana was the girl. Everything he'd thought rendered lost to time washed through him, full of renewal and light.
In his triumph, Rue became sloppy. All at once, Adriana was free from his spell, and she glanced around her father's study: a stranger in unfamiliar surroundings. She remembered Kyle: the new kid. She knew her first blush, realizing he was attractive, mysterious, and oddly confident considering his tenuous social position.
She remembered the night she met him at Craig's Hill. Then the next day at lunch when he clumsily interrupted her single-minded love of Dr. Z's assignment. Then the next day when he skipped lunch. It slowly dawned on her that she held a manuscript she'd typed at least two times previously.
She dropped it and backed away, horrified.
Obvious. So obvious! She'd typed it all out, several times, but each story was different enough to avoid triggering her deeper skepticism. It kept her occupied; mindless. She panicked and left the final page stuck in the typewriter, bolting for her room to find perhaps one stable realm where she'd be safe.
She saw Rue nibbling a piece of lettuce in his cage, oblivious to her thrumming heart and terrified eyes. "Rue!" she gasped. "Oh my little rabbit..." Rabbit. The rabbit, he won't let me...
Adriana stopped, staring at the cage as if it held Cerberus or a slithering mass of flagellating tendrils, whipping through the thin bars and trailing foul mucous. ... go where I will go. She sank to her knees and dry-heaved.
For those few moments, Adriana knew the truth. Why she could never remember being outside past 10pm. Why nobody dared enter her home. Why she'd completed the same assignment at least twice. Why such knowledge couldn't save her.
"Please," she begged, "stop this." She didn't know who she addressed, only that he could hear her. And it was a he, because it guarded her jealously, she knew. All those boys who moved into town and ended up dead or simply gone as their family hastily abandoned Tammond Dale. All those days she spent alone at lunch, saddened by the fear behind the eyes of her classmates. I am cursed!
By the time she realized all this, the clock struck ten long, distended peals. Already, the magic deadened her senses, spun through her resolve. "No," she managed to whimper before collapsing on her bedroom floor, curled into a fetal position yet smiling in bliss as the dreams took hold. And it lives in my home!
Rue laughed, then. Loki had indeed betrayed him; had no intention of fulfilling his side of the bargain. The wily god merely waited for Erebos to die of age, and claimed success—content allowing Rue to amble through eternity for his own sick entertainment. When he thought upon his capture of every god large and small—even Loki in his arrogance—Rue knew true bliss. "I am the Ubergod!" he roared in defiance.
Only one task remained: dispose of Kyle. Once he'd fulfilled the technical obligation of his servitude, he'd be free to rule—or obliterate—the universe at his whim!
For a being who had lost everything: his love, his kingdom, his sanity, his soul... the universe couldn't possibly suffer enough. A trifling handful of days, and then even Hell with its teeming masses of writhing damned, would cower in his presence.
That night, both Rue and Adriana slept peaceful and fulfilling dreams.