The Witcher: Part XXII
Twenty-two
Previously, on The Witcher:
Atop the Tower of Xixi, Team Witcher find themselves trapped.
And they keep running into one number:
Twenty-two
What is happening?
Iorverth suddenly lurched back, as if hit by a titanium torpedo. He tumbled to the floor.
"Iorverth!" cried Lady Feudalism.
And then Iorverth sat up, blinked, and rose to his feet.
"Why, hello," he said in a different accent to his normal Viziman.
"What?" said Lady Feudalism, confused about the sudden change in Iorverth.
"Is this some Tihoverr trick?" said Geralt.
"Not at all, my dear fellow, not at all," replied Iorverth. He chuckled.
"You're not Iorverth," said Lady Feudalism.
"Of course I'm not your travelling companion Iorverth," said Iorverth, who was now clearly not Iorverth.
"Then who are you and why have you possessed Iorverth's body?" asked Geralt.
"All in good time, my friend," said not-Iorverth. "Allow me to properly make your acquaintance," he said extending Iorverth's hand.
"I am twenty-two."
"Twenty-two years old?" asked Geralt.
"No, I AM twenty-two. The number," replied not-Iorverth.
"I'm not following," said Geralt.
"I believe to be rather straightforward," said not-Iorverth. "Most numbers are just numbers. They sit still and silent between the number before them and the number after."
"But I - I am a sentient number. Your colleague's body is serving as a temporary host for me."
"Get out of his body!" said Lady Feudalism.
"But I have waited so long for you, Witcher. It would be a waste of this opportunity if we didn't sit and chat for a bit, wouldn't it?" said twenty-two, smiling.
"What do you want to chat about?" asked Geralt.
"I want to know what your ambition is," said twenty-two. "What your purpose is for existing."
"My job is to go retrieve the Sword of Death," said Geralt. "Now you tell me what you're doing here."
"I've been following you and your companions around for quite a while now," said twenty-two. "Since the dragon cave, I believe."
"I existed in the form of a repeated meme. A number, repeated over and over again. I'm surprised you didn't notice my constant presence."
"What do you want with me?" asked Geralt.
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves, eh?" said twenty-two. "Because now I will share with you my own ambition. IIt is the same as yours: world domination."
"But Geralt will dominate the world in the name of righteousness," said Lady Feudalism.
"You believe yourselves to be more righteous than I?" said twenty-two. "Good and evil are outdated concepts. Especially seeing as they cannot achieve the same level of sentience as a mere number such as myself.
"It is my personal belief, my friends, that he who has the strongest intellect shall be the rightful owner of the world. Why, look out the windows to see examples of my handiwork."
Geralt looked out a window to see the gathered armies of the four empires: North, South, East, and West.
"I manipulated them into fighting for this tower. A war without end. That way technological progression would advance creating a variety of new weapons."
"Weapons which I will use in my unification of Rivia."
"You're a monster," said Geralt.
"I am just a number," said twenty-two.
"So, why have you brought us here?" asked Geralt.
"Simply put, I need your powers Geralt," replied twenty-two. "I would have possessed you first, but magick minds are so hard to infiltrate. As you can see, I have already taken the bodies of your colleagues."
Ciri and Lady Feudalism lay unconscious.
"Now, I only need to take your body. And then the unification of the world will be inevitable."
And with that, twenty-two drew Iorverth's sword. Geralt drew Smite.
"There is no escape," said twenty-two. "These walls were reinforced by Dumbledore himself when he tried to seal me away. He didn't realise that mere walls were not sufficient to keep me locked away."
"You are going down," said Geralt. And then Geralt and twenty-two clashed.
While Geralt was fighting Iorverth's body, he heard Lady Feudalism's voice from behind him.
"I have control of all of your colleagues," she said.
"I have control of the old woman as well," said twenty-two through Ciri.
"It is only a matter of time before you submit," said twenty-two through the three voices simultaneously (it sounded quite creepy).
Geralt kept slicing and blocking the constant attacks from Iorverth's body. And then Lady Feudalism attacked with magic from behind. And Ciri reached into her bag and detonated a few capsules of mustard gas.
Geralt coughed as he fought off the onslaught from three sides.
"You can't win, Geralt," said twenty-two with three voices. He was being slowly beaten back into the corner. "It is only a matter of time before your mind... breaks..."
Geralt magicked some of the wooden disks on the floor to make them fly into Iorverth's neck.
And Iorverth fell down, knocked out.
The mustard gas slowly got more thick.
Ciri grabbed Iorverth's sword, and advanced towards Geralt.
Lady Feudalism advanced also, her long brown hair streaming behind her and her brown eyes piercing into Geralt's soul.
Geralt realised that he couldn't win. And then he became one with twenty-two.
Geralt had been defeated by a number, a mere concept, the abstractest of abstract nouns.
But Geralt nevertheless fought back against the psychic onslaught.
"You have already lost, my friend," said twenty-two. It was with Geralt's voice, except with the posh accent he was using with Iorverth's voice.
And then Geralt had an idea.
"You'll never escape my mind," said Geralt.
"Why not?" asked twenty-two, again speaking with Geralt's voice.
"Because there's a catch," said Geralt. "Catch-22."
"To escape my mind, you must be strong enough to take control, and you must also try to escape my mind."
"But if you have enough power to take control, you don't try to escape because taking control of my body was your goal in the first place."
"So therefore you either don't have enough power to take control or you don't attempt to escape."
"And therefore regardless of how powerful you are, you cannot escape my mind."
"You are trapped here forever."
Twenty-two, itself a concept, spun itself around and around the logical paradox Geralt had created. It drew itself out of the bodies of all of those it had possessed, winding around and around a small space in Geralt's mind.
Until it was so small that Geralt could no longer notice it was there.
Lady Feudalism and Ciri and Iorverth slowly got up.
"What happened? Where's..." mumbled Lady Feudalism.
"Where's what?" asked Geralt.
"The number between twenty-one and twenty-three," said Lady Feudalism.
"Gone," said Geralt. "I imprisoned it inside a logical paradox inside my mind."
"I can't remember what that number was now," said Iorverth.
"Eighteen, ninteen, twenty, twenty-one... I don't know what comes next."
"That's because that number is gone now."
And because the number was gone, Dumbledore's magickal reinforcements had disappeared.
So he pushed open the door, and Team Witcher departed the Tower of Xixi, heading off on their next exciting adventure.
Severus Hitler looked out onto the horizon. He saw a flying carpet.
"There they are," he said to his comrades. "I think it's about time those fools faced us, don't you think?"
Communist O'Lenin and Christian Grey nodded and smiled.
TO BE CONTINUED
IN
THE WITCHER: PART XXIII
HEROES OF NEWELL