Part 9: Shade City

Finn floated on over towards Jake, the psychic snakeworm sitting atop his blonde locks wriggling uncomfortably at the sight of the bubble of pure darkness leavening in Quasipan's memory-city.

"Whoa! Hey man, fetch all your memories yet? How'd you learn to fly?"

"Never mind, tell you later-you wanna let's get out?" asked Finn.

"Sure, if you want to, let's just butt heads and will ourselves back out into reality."

"Nah," Finn reneged, lazily kicking the air. "I think we should roll up our sleeves and see if we can't destroy that evilness o'er yonder."

"You shameless goody goody."

"Blame your dad for snatching me up from my boom boom. Ha ha."

"Are you two up your Globhole?" shouted the snakeworm. "You already got everything you came for!"

Finn shook his head. "One day you'll understand. Probably during your first act of heroics."

"Pah. You can keep your heroics. Just know this: If you lose to the darkness, you'll be swallowed up into Quasipan's merciless brain without a hope for escape!"

Finn and Jake looked at each other. And giggled.

"How many times have we heard that now?" asked Jake. "Evil masterminds always have a deficiency of imagination. Hopeless situations are cake for us."

"Because we're…"

Their arms locked, hearts as one-

"AWESOOOOME!"

Finn patted the worm condescendingly. "Keep your eyes open and you might learn a thing or two. About LIFE and lifey things."

"Hmph. We'll see. But don't expect any help from THIS end! You flesh-mammals!"

"Well there's a new one," said Jake. "So? Shall we put the cat out to wash?"

Finn grinned irrepressibly. "Hop on my back."

And with giddy confidence, together they shot off into the darkness.

Quasipan's mind-city, its turrets and walls and houses, all gleamed abyssal black, coated as they were with raw malice. Shades of all sizes and shapes flitted across the information-fog, guardian apparitions of ill will and suffering. Whatever nugget of goodness Quasipan came across during his sinister meditation, he crushed, arranging the dust into a tableau of aimless horrors. Anything, anything to repel the heroes—he would even paint life as nothing but hell. He would cough up his own heart and infect it just to become a contagion to be avoided, a pariah to be shunned.

Nobody could peek into his past. He wouldn't allow it. No, better to consign himself to a future as a malevolent god, a pure demon, than to admit his weakness.

Quasipan's cat eyes snapped open.

"ALL IS HORRIBLE, ALL IS DESTITUTE AND CRUEL. BUT NONE MORE SO THAN YOU, FINN THE HUMAN!"

Finn flew overhead with Jake on his shoulders and the worm on his hair. "Man, Quasipan, this is just silly. So emo."

Quasipan drooled with rehearsed hate. "You won't just die, HUMAN. You think I want your pathetic memories? I will devour you like the ant you are, and history will FORGET you. I'll send you and your kind to the oblivion you deserve!"

"Dude, I've literally gone to Hell and back. I'm 12 and I've seen more than you, your godliness."

The midnight shades launched through the air, axes and snouts and wings and meteors roaring.

"You have seen much, but never in your juvenile cluelessness have you absorbed the GRAND PORTRAIT of life! The rotten core of everything!"

"Pay attention, Wormy, I'll show you just how shallow all his bleating is!"

The shadows reared hungry, but Finn sliced them all in two with a single slick motion.

"The crumbly sword!" said Jake.

"It's not crumbly. It's experienced."

Quasipan teleported up to them, upside-down and smiling, with a sword of tempered magic clasped in his own mouth. "Have you heard of the Blade of Radiros, human?"

"Uhhh… No."

"A dwarven blacksmith forged this unbreakable sword using the blood and bones of all the orphans he could. At its sharpest, it rent clean through the ice shelf of the South Pole."

"Oh, is that all?"

"This is not a figment." Quasipan smiled so wide he bore his upside-down fangs. "This is the real Blade of Radiros."

"And?"

"The sword is so sharp the only safe place I could put it was inside my own head. There's nothing you can do to stop a real sword in a psychic space."

"See me tremble?"

"It's not surprising that a being so bereft of intelligence should feel no fear."

"Whatever, guy, bring it. I'm feeling a mite cocky today."

"I'll make you regret not turning tail and fleeing the first chance you got! HUMAN!"

They clashed. Finn yawned. It was over in a second. The Blade of Radiros shattered like china.

"Wh… WHAT!?"

Fear dawned on his face as the cat looked over his shoulder at the boy who bested his trump card so effortlessly. "HOW!?"

"It's not the power of the blade that matters, Quasipan. It's the power of the hilt."

The cat's eyes darted to Finn's hand. There was another hand on his! The dog's!

"Why so shocked? It's simple. Our light was stronger than your darkness."

"Stronger than my darkness!? But… but I know ALLLLL!"

"He's throwing a fit again." Jake rolled his eyes. "Cats."

"Actually, 'stronger' isn't the right word. 'More substantial.' It's easy to lose sight when you think you know everything," replied Finn simply. "When everything's black and white."

Finn snapped his fingers, and the shadows crawling around the mind-city surrendered to color once more.

"This was never the 'grand portrait of life'—this was a gloomy kid's sketch in black crayon."

"And you know that better than anybody else," Jake accused.

Quasipan's fur bristled with fear. They… they were going to humiliate him! They were going to invade his secret memories!

Quasipan's mind-city rumbled like an earthquake as he fell apart. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

"Poor kitty."

"He'll recover. He just needs to be grounded a little," said Jake. "Nice catch on the decision to come here, by the way, we totally destroyed an evil sword."

"That was just icing on the cake, man! All right, let's go."

Huh?

…They were just going to leave? No lording it over him? No cackling and pointing?

"No! Wait!"

"C'mon, man, there's no way you've got any ammo left now," said Jake dismissively.

"No! I…" Quasipan swallowed his pride. "I… want to show you my past."