The Power of Five Oblivion

poured two glasses of tea, the liquid pale green and steaming hot.
    “Please, help yourself…”
    Matt picked up his glass, holding it between the very tips of his fingers so as not to burn himself. In the dreamworld, nothing had any colour. There was never any temperature or taste. But the tea was different. Matt could smell the fresh, aromatic scent of peppermint. He sipped the tea. It was delicious.
    “I’m afraid things haven’t been going well for you,” the Librarian said.
    “We’ve lost,” Matt said. The words fell heavily from his lips but even as he spoke them he knew that they were true. “The whole world has changed. We jumped forward ten years and it was as if every warning we were ever given had suddenly come true. Global warming. Floods. Famine. Wars. It’s all happened at once.”
    “The Old Ones have been busy.”
    “What can we do to stop them? Can we do anything? When we arrived in Belém, half the city was under water and there were dead bodies floating in the streets. There are slave markets! People are so desperate, they’re selling their own kids. And we’ve heard things are almost as bad in America. Whole countries have been wiped out. It’s like the end of the world. Even if we managed to beat the Old Ones, there’s hardly anything left.”
    “And yet this happened before,” the Librarian reminded him. “The world came very close to the edge when the Old Ones visited it the first time. There were very few survivors left. But thanks to you – the five of you – mankind had a second chance.”
    “Yes. And they blew it again. Like they always do.”
    “There’s still hope.”
    “I’m not so sure.” Matt set his glass down. He had finished his tea and felt better for it. The Librarian leant forward and poured some more. “The five of us are scattered,” he went on. “That was my fault. We were together in Hong Kong and that should have been the end of it, but then everything went wrong and now we’re right back where we started. I don’t know who made me the leader of the Five but they can’t have known what they were doing. When I wake up, I’m going to find myself back in the middle of Brazil! What use is that? There are no phones any more. No TV. All the doors are locked. How am I ever going to reach the others?”
    “I never remember you being so defeatist,” the Librarian remarked.
    “I’ve had enough of it,” Matt said. He was thinking of the Brazilian boy. He suddenly saw the open wound in his stomach, the plastic bags sticky with blood. He hadn’t been able to save him. He hadn’t even learnt his name. “I never asked for any of this. Why does it have to be me?”
    “You can give it up if you want to. That choice is still open to you.”
    The Librarian sounded calm and friendly. Yet Matt still felt the accusation in his voice. He knew that he was being judged, and right now, when it mattered most, he was failing. He forced himself to remember why he had come here. “Why are the doors locked?” he asked.
    “I can tell you that,” the Librarian replied. “It’s actually very simple. The twenty-five doors that carry you and your friends across the world are all interconnected. This means you can go from anywhere to anywhere at any time. However, if you lock one of them, you lock all of them. And that’s exactly what the King of the Old Ones has done. He’s locked the twenty-fifth door.”
    “Where is it?”
    “That’s the problem. It’s in Antarctica … in a place called Oblivion. That is where Chaos has built his fortress and the door is somewhere inside. It’s also where he is gathering his armies. There’s absolutely no doubt that he wants another battle, a final confrontation with you to make up for the last time when you beat him. He also wants revenge for what you did to him in the Nazca Desert. You caused him pain and that is unthinkable … unforgivable. And so he has put down this challenge. Finding you is not so easy. So he’s waiting for you to come to him instead.”
    “In Antarctica!” The very thought of it made Matt’s head spin. It was so far away, a totally hostile environment. How was he even supposed to get there? “If I found this door, could I unlock it?” he asked.
    The Librarian shook his head. “Not really,” he replied. “Well, you could. But it would kill you. There’s an electric charge running through the lock … except it isn’t really electricity. You could say it’s a sort of cosmic force,