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The Worlds' End is an inn, or "free house", located at the end of all worlds. Travelers are welcome to stay as long as they wish. It is customary for guests to share stories to pass the time. The Inn appears in the titular collection.

History[]

The Worlds' End Inn is a strange place, a "free house" that exists as a nexus across realities, and rather than having a fixed location, it can appear anywhere at various points in space-time. The Inn is one of four inns where travelers between realms shelter during "reality storms", which occur after momentous events. Anyone near the Inn's visited location often find it when these supernatural snowstorms manifest. The Inn itself seems to be isolated from all time, allowing its patrons within to interact with others from different realms and places without being affected by paradoxes.

At the beginning of the collection, Brant Tucker and co-worker Charlene Mooney are involved in an auto accident on their way to Chicago during a sudden snowstorm. With Charlene hurt, Brant is directed to the Worlds' End by a hedgehog. As they recuperate, Brant and Charlene are invited to stories narrated by a different person during a storytelling session at the inn. Soon, Brant comes to understand the nature of Worlds' End, at one point witnessing the inn patrons watch a funeral procession cross the sky. Thereafter, Brant returns alone to his own world, while Charlene remains at the Worlds' End as an assistant to its landlady.

Trivia[]

  • The Words' End, as the introduction notes, functions as an anthology device for storytelling through its patrons, similar to the device used in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. This gives each story a distinct style, both in the telling and in the illustration, with the collection drawn together by short sequences between stories set at the inn itself.
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