Intense Struggle! (Round 7 - The Database)

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

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Technically speaking Gimlak Foecrusher was not dead. The mysterious petrification that had consumed the three worlds did not exactly kill the inhabitants so much as put their bodies into a seemingly everlasting slumber. If something somehow reversed the petrification Gimlak would wake up. He’d be alive and aware just long enough to wonder why his face was in pieces upon the floor.

Though the trail of brutally beheaded statues that she left behind would argue otherwise, it was clear from the way that Aph moved through the mismatched streets that she was bored. Her body was slumped forwards, her arms dangled limp, and behind her her tentacles trailed along the floor as though she could not find the effort to keep them aloft.

This place was no fun. In a world where three worlds were squashed together one might have expected to have three times as many people to murder, but instead all Aph had were lifeless statues, a good number of which were of dumb fantasy stereotypes or improbable aliens. She’d smashed more than a few in an effort to sate the lust for death and destruction, but it just hadn’t been the same. She might as well to be tearing apart cardboard cut-outs for all the satisfaction it was giving her.

For a couple of minutes Aph had allayed the incredible dullness of this world by yelling out for Clara, recounting in graphic detail exactly what she would do to her as soon as she found the priestess. She’d done the same for Aegis, or as Aph had called him ‘gloves guy’, though it had been pretty much an afterthought borne from desperation. It wasn’t till a couple of minutes later that she’d realized Clara and ‘gloves guy’ might not be looking for a fight quite as eagerly as she was and yelling out would only drive them away.

So here she was, bored and miserable, a bit of a let down after the excitement and constant action of Cervaled Fall. She cursed the name of The Fool, and hoped to herself that the Monitor would be here any minute to deliver them to their rightful destination.

Almost without noticing Aph found herself standing in front of a stone tavern. The petrification had caused the sign to become unreadable, but somehow Aph just knew that it read The Poisoned Apple. Somehow in her minds eye she could see the tavern how it once was, before the stone, bustling with dwarves and gnomes and other worthless scum races. Sometimes she just wished they would crawl into a cave somewhere and die. That they would just leave us decent folk alone.

Thoughts that weren’t her own ran through her head. Recently she had got used to this sensation, her entire personality more or less submerged beneath an ocean of strangers’ thoughts, but this felt different. Where before the voices were part of her, by extension her voices, this was something affecting her from the outside. She didn’t like it, but as she floated to the door of the tavern and prised it open, there did not seem to be anything she could do about it.

Stepping into the tavern, she looked around. Everything was, more or less the same it ever was, though her eyes could not help but be drawn to an incongruous television which all the stools were gathered around. Aph scowled at the weird machine and turned towards the bar. Standing behind it was a statue of a female elf with long hair and a scowl upon her face. In her hands a glass being polished with an old rag, her eyes staring off into the distance.

Aph no longer in any real control of her body, recognised this statue as herself. She reached out and ran her fingers along the cold stone. For a moment she was morose, distraught at a bizarre fate she could barely comprehend. Slowly as she looked around the tavern she came to the conclusion that it was all the filthy dwarves’ fault; that excavation beneath the town. Those things were never supposed to be unearthed, but no the dwarves, they couldn’t help themselves. Offer them some shiny piece of machinery and they would bite your hand off. At one point Edgebarrow had been a decent place for decent people, back before those muckdwellers had shown up and ruined everything. They’d meddled with things they didn’t understand and they’d finally messed everything up for everyone.

Angrily Aph floated across the room and grasped the television, filthy dwarven engineering that it was, and threw it to the floor, where it smashed into rubble. She felt a little satisfaction, she’d always wanted to do that.

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

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Erecting a spirit ward wasn't difficult; when you're in a line of work and magical tradition like Clara's, it's one of the first things you learn to do, and one of the most important things you learn to do well and reliably. It was the sort of thing she could do blindfolded and distracted by now; although more exotic or complex ones would take her some time, they never required much headspace or concentration. The one that was taking shape under her careful fingers would take some minutes, but when finished should move with her and guarantee no incorporeal entity should be able to approach her, regardless of its nature or intent. Until then, she was somewhat vulnerable; mostly though, she just had time to think.

It was a luxury not much afforded her since her abduction save for while trekking through a heat-blasted desert or locked in a mana-draining hole, neither of which were truly ideal situations for introspection. Besides, the last round had given her quite a bit more to think about: she had been certain that B was the traitor; every fiber of her being had thrummed with hatred for such a cruel thing that wore the guise of a child, for a mortal that chose to lie with the Grandmasters and sow distrust and death. And then a hail of bullets had reduced that child to an unrecognizable mass of flesh, and she'd seen the betrayal and fear in his eyes as he died and proved himself innocent. Her word had cut down a frightened babe.

She tried to dispel the image of B's fading eyes and the sound of his jawbone clattering against the wall, tried to focus on what could be changed and who could be saved rather than lamenting how thoroughly she had failed and how gravely she had sinned. How could she have been wrong? How could it not have been him?

B and Bae had both been shapeshifters: she'd seen Bae disguise himself as Aegis and that presumably that Cabaret person, as well as his display in the swamp; B on the other hand had turned into a bear and ostensibly that dragon, but had never seemed to change to anything humanoid but himself. If the Monitor's word could be trusted – ha! – then he could only turn into "beasts". What did Clara know about polymorphism? ... Not much at all, and she couldn't even be sure the rules of her universe's magic applied. If what they did was even magic. But if she assumed that Bae could like like anyone while B could only look like any animal, then Bae could have imitated B and blown the dust in Aph's face! ... Except that just before he'd been killed, the real B had claimed to have killed Bae in the swamp. Why would he lie about that?

This kind of thinking went around in circles for some minutes before the nun finally drew some conclusions: either Aph had somehow managed to resist or distort the truth spell, or Bae wasn't the monitor's only agent. Or that rock man had been wrong and Bae had remembered to feign unconsciousness as Aph when the mana-dampeners had approached. Then again, she doubted Bae could imitate magic, which meant that Aph probably was Aph. So! Aegis could potentially be Bae she supposed, and B might have also been a traitor. But was that more likely than Aph being unaffected by the spell? It couldn't have been that she'd resisted it; that was always visible. It would have had to be completely ineffective for some reason.

Clara sighed as she finished her spell. There was simply no way to know, and without any way to know, she couldn't trust anyone. She pulled a cynical face as it occurred to her that if the Monitor had arranged this all to prevent any effective rebellion, he had certainly done a good job.

She paced slowly across the length of the stony room-conglomerate she was in. So what would she do? Try to take out the Monitor herself? How? All the necromancy in the world wouldn't make a fighter of her, and she didn't even know to get to him. She knew she had to do something about this bloody spectacle. She knew her destiny was to make a difference in these Grand Battles, one way or another. It had to be. But destiny provided few answers, and knowing the indeterminate future was little help when one didn't know the present.

Clara sighed again. For all her pondering, she had no answers and no plan. All she had was a heavy conscience and the knowledge that she had to do something. At a loss, and well-aware of how well this had served her before, she grabbed her book and dropped it on the ground, reading the first passage that caught her eye.

He looked upon the approaching armies and knew that his forces could do nothing against them. And his heart wept.

But his wife said to him "Look not upon the armies, but at the legions."

And he shook his head, for even one legion could overtake his city.

But again she spoke. "Then look not upon the legions, but at the cohorts. Look upon them neither, but see only the centuries. See not the centuries, but only the man in front of you and his sword."

And his heart was lightened. "I will look not on the armies but on the men; I will engage not their forces, but their spears."

And though the siege continued for near thirty moons, he emerged victorious, for he was able to divide the tyrant's armies and destroy each, man by man.

Tackle things one at a time. Surprisingly relevant, she mused as she picked the book back up. She still had no notion of what to tackle or how, but at least she had the perspective to see she was overwhelming herself. And then it occurred to her.

Aph.

She had become a monster. If nothing had proven it before, the last round had. She was a callous personification of death and calamity, and she had to be dealt with one way or another. If Clara couldn't restore her to her innocent self, she would have to be killed. She'd attacked unprovoked, and had almost certainly killed many in the prison; she was a danger to every still-living soul on this plane, including herself and Aegis... if he really was Aegis. She would certainly be of no help against the Monitor in her current state. Sister Clara would have to be the one to exorcise her of whatever had caused her sea-change, or destroy her if that was what was required. With a heart weighed on as much by her complicity in B's murder as the monstrous task she had before her, she wove through the statuary and stepped into the street.

It occurred after only a few moments of walking that she had no inkling of where to find the nymph. Fortunately, directions at least were one thing she was good at; a simple divination and she'd be lead straight to her. Fingers wove the spell and syllables shaped it, and...

There was a flash of light and Clara was thrown backwards. The spell had exploded violently, leaving behind a scent of burnt stone and the faintest of screams at the edge of hearing. Nothing but the nun herself seemed to have been affected, but the tips of her fingers were scorched and her nails rendered ragged, to say nothing of the ringing in her ears. Most confusingly, there seemed to have been no reason for it.

On a hunch, Clara muttered a few syllables that an alternate version of herself had used shortly after its creation. Her eyes tingled and the world of spirits made itself seen.

She screamed, an ululating cry of shock and terror that floated over the silent city that only failed to alert Aegis and Aph by dint of the great distance between them, and went on screaming until her lungs were empty. It was some seconds before she had the presence of mind to refill them and stand up.

Surrounding her on every side, pressed against the invisible wall of her ward, were innumerable souls; they blended together in sickening masses of spectral flesh and broke apart again only to intertwine with others, they wept and laughed and chattered and tried to reach for the nun, tried to enter their stone bodies, tried to play out the destinies that had been stolen from them. As much as they were intertwined with each other, they permeated the very spectral fabric of the plane; no-one would have any luck casting divine magic that affected much beyond themselves as long as all the mana in these worlds were tied up in the ghosts that filled it.

Shaken, Clara blinked and deactivated her spell. The faces and fingers and limbs faded away, leaving her with the feeling of being watched on all sides and the intimation of whispering just beyond the edge of her hearing.

With another sigh, she shook her head and trudged along the uniform-yet-patchwork ground, hoping luck or fate or coincidence would take her closer to her target.

Originally posted on MSPA by Aryogaton.

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Rook to c2.

Checkmate.

By then, the outcome of the game was clear, but the crowd erupted into applause and conversation nonetheless. A famed strategist and wizard, to be defeated by a peasant boy of such youth? And look at the honorable man, bearing such warm a smile even after a defeat. From whence does this boy hail? Such talent is worthy of none but the company of the king! Send a hawk at once! Tell him a lad of vast potential has emerged! Tell him to send his scryers, his alchemagi, his scholars, his advisors…

The boy, quiet as he was, simply stood and began to walk home. His challenge to this odd man was just a bout of play, and he had many responsibilities still awaiting completion.

“Lad.”

The boy turned, not wishing to appear rude. The king’s men were generous people, so long as one obeyed proper conduct. As softly as he spoke, the boy could hear the words well over the crowd’s uproar.

“I would like to offer you a little… thought experiment.”

With a slow wave of the magus’ staff, the two found themselves in a valley, on horseback, and clad in armor. A glance behind them revealed to the boy a thousand warriors and archers, young and old, human and otherwise, awaiting directions. Among them was a chariot carrying a crowned figure in clear representation of the noble king.

“From the eastern side of this deceptively serene valley approaches a formidable army. Messengers from towns ransacked by this army have estimated its numbers to be the greater part of five thousand strong and its speed to exceed our own. Our goal and sole objective is to transport the king to the safe and secure walls of Hafenheim, where we can make a defensive stand. Indeed, the shortest path to Hafenheim is west, along this valley. As mentioned before, however, we lack the ability to outrun them. My question to you, lad, is simple: what shall we do?”

There was something missing from the magus’ explanation. It was obvious, maybe too obvious.

“Why don’t we fight?” Aegis said.

The magus blinked, his smile faltering slightly.

“They outnumber us, and in this valley there the outcome of a battle would be measured by strength, not by cunning.”

“So? It’s possible, isn’t it?”

“Y’have to weigh the risks, lad! Escorting the king to safety is our greatest concern, and—”

“Enough with the ‘lad’. My name is Aegis Cupris,” Aegis dismounted his horse, “and I know how to fight. Sure, it’s a risk, but every opportunity not taken is a failure. Put the crown on someone else and put the king in the back line if you have to. Anyone have scrap metal lying around?”

“No, you’re not listening. The best course of action is to split our forces in two, one with a decoy, the other with the real king and our fastest movers. They do not know the size of our forces, so they would not be expecting a greater resistance. The escape army runs to Hafenheim while the decoy moves more slowly, fools the enemy into believing they have defeated us as well as slowing them down enough to let the king escape to safety.”

Aegis turned around and gave the magus a bewildered look. “You’d be willing to let half these people die for no reason?”

“There is a reason: sacrifice. Like in chess, even sacrificing the queen is acceptable if it guarantees the king safety.”

“What? That’s a board game! I don’t even know what you mean! Here, nothing is set in stone until it happens. We set camp here so that we are the most ready when they arrive. And when they do, we fight.”

The magus’ smile finally faded, and with a motion not a fraction as swift as the one he made before, he broke the illusion. Aegis was sitting in front of a grey chessboard once more.

Come back when y'rethink your rash decisions.

Aegis stood and walked towards the exit. Stupid board game.

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

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SpoilerShow

I took a pretty heavy hand with this because A) I am an egotist, B) I figured when it came to kickstarting the battle again it would be better to do too much than to do too little. That said, obviously I have absolutely no position from which to negotiate if any of the people who are, you know, actually in IS wanted me to edit or erase anything.

It was a good three minutes before Aegis recognized the irony. Had he really said “nothing is set in stone?” He took a look around him. The world he’d just been, uh, brought to had been fairly simple, so it stood to reason that that hundred-story insectoid edifice rising out of the earth came from one of the other... destiny... whatevers. The delicacy of the structure’s integrity had clearly suffered a bit from being petrified, so there was a bit of a worrying lean to the whole building, but if he could make it near enough to the top he could get a better view of the whole area, and maybe find...

Well, that was the question. If Clara was Bae and Aph was still Aph, Aegis supposed he was on his own now. If he saw one of them, should he go down there and take a shot at negotiating? Or should he go down there and pick a fight? Or should he just hide up atop the building and hope the females killed each other before he starved to death? He supposed he could figure that out when the time came, but he’d rather be the one in the position to make the choice.

The door to the building had no apparent knob or handle (one would guess that some technology or magic in the door would have caused it to slide open automatically) but with a couple of well-placed punches Aegis was able to create a couple. The lobby, inside, looked... composed somehow, like all the statue-people had been placed for pure aesthetic purposes. The mother was pulling on her daughter’s hand, the exasperation of the one locked in battle against the temper tantrum of the other; the receptionist covered in wires, connected by the arteries in his wrists to the desk and by the base of his spine to the device behind him; he felt as though through this series of still images he could deduce everything there was to know about this world, given enough time. The troll throwing a princess over its shoulder over by the water cooler, he assumed to be incidental.

Aegis, dimly aware of the foreign thoughts flitting through his head, wished he had ever picked up some sort of meditative trick that would shut him out. As it was, they called out for him to finish the things they had started so long ago: he at once felt the urge to figure out these last four clues to today’s cryptic cubeword, was assured that if he were to give Shiel from down the hall a friendly slap on the ass just once she would be too embarrassed or flattered to call him out on it, and was directed to the nearest men’s room if you would be so kind. The booming voice of a mechanical spirit down the hall begged him in a language with two letters for a little help crunching these numbers, error code infinity minus one. Luckily, these outliers were drowned out by a cacophony of simpler thoughts: everyone had to get to work, and work was upstairs.

Aided by the spirits, Aegis figured out what and where the elevators were and that they wouldn’t do him a whole lot of good. The old-fashioned stairwell was a vestigial organ, a steep and claustrophobic vertical tunnel for use only in gravitational emergencies, whatever that entailed (even the spirits weren’t sure) but it was his only way to get upstairs and find Clara and Aph and his cubicle and the hell away from this horribly impolite troll.

There was a man frozen on the staircase, a tear perpetually halfway down his cheek. His spirit was more coy than the others, who, sensing its shyness, fled back to their own bodies for the time being. Aegis, feeling a moment of kinship with the statue and tired as hell from dragging these gauntlets up twenty-three flights of stairs, sat down next to him. The neglected staircase could barely hold the two of them side-by-side, and the moment was oddly intimate.

Aegis knew the drill by now and expected that any moment he would be sharing his mind with this man, but after a few seconds of catching his breath he only felt more alone than ever. At least Sora had Karel to, if not to talk with than at least to be with, but Aegis was all on his own, and how can I hold this information all to myself? He decided to visit Mom in the hospital—no, she had enough on her plate, and she was so innocent and optimistic in spite of everything and shouldn’t have to go through this—no, he needed to talk to Sora, really talk to him, they shouldn’t have parted ways the way they had. They were two of maybe ten people in the world who had any idea what was coming, that didn’t think this was just going to be another day—he needed to talk to Sora. Would they even let him in on the top floor, looking the way he did? Well, if they told him he couldn’t come in he’d come in anyway and if they called security, he had his gauntlets.

The top floor was cold and breezy—because even the air was still here, the rest of the building had retained a comfortable room temperature, but a single open window near the exit to the stairwell had brought a chill in here. The window was large enough for a man to squeeze through and lo, a man in a bronze jumpsuit was frozen halfway through the act of crawling out onto the ledge outside.

Aegis maneuvered past the statue out onto the ledge, being careful not to upset his position. He was quite certain he didn’t want to knock the man back into the office, and he certainly didn’t want to... Aegis looked down below. The three competing skylines were nauseating to look at, like a bad casserole, and the absolute stillness made it worse. Aegis scanned for the slightest sign of movement, and found one.

“Clara!” he shouted. There was no real wind to carry the words away—only a faint afterthought of a wind, as though the elements themselves had spirits (and in one of the other worlds, maybe they did), so they carried straight to their destination, prompting the distant witch (or was it only Bae, pretending to be the witch? did it matter?) to look up at him.

”...Aegis?” came the uncertain reply. ”What are you doing up there?”

Aegis almost told her. He almost told her everything he had seen the night previous, but he knew she’d think he was just possessed by a spirit and none of it would matter anyway. She was better off not knowing. And whether her concern was genuine or not, all that matters was that someone was here with him. Someone was there to bear witness. That made it better somehow.

“Clara, I’m sorry,” he said, taking a step towards the edge.

* * * * *

Well, it would not do to let Aegis go jumping off of buildings; the boy was the only hope for companionship or alliance Clara could hope to find in this battle. Besides, his heart seemed to be in the right place, although it seemed likely that he was currently renting that place out to something restless and, to play on words a bit, possessive.

Unfortunately, Clara had never been very good at talking people down when they had worked themselves up into a state; though most of the people who knew her regarded her as wise and kindly and all that, they were also dimly aware that she was not technically alive and therefore distrusted her capacity for empathy. And when malevolent spirits get involved of course that complicates things even further. Still, she had to give it a go. “Don’t jump,” she commanded, having heard somewhere that in these situations it was best to be firm and unambiguous, “Back off the ledge. When you back down off the ledge, these feelings will pass.” Clara was having difficulties skirting the line between making herself heard and shouting, so she mumbled a quick voice-amplification incantation, well aware of the dangers of attracting Aph’s attention at a moment like this.

Aegis didn’t seem to have any qualms with shouting off the rooftops at the top of his lungs. ”It never passes,” he cried. ”I’ve always felt like this. My heart is frozen.”

”Oh, don’t you worry about that,” urged Clara. “It’s half-likely that we’ll find a way to fix this world, if you don’t kill Aegis here.”

”Don’t talk about me like I’m not here!” shouted Aegis, taking another step towards the edge.

This wasn’t going well. Clara leaned on the arm of a frozen woman who, apparently, had noticed the man on the ledge and was pointing at him when... when whatever happened had happened. She’d been walking towards the building, and in her other hand she held two sandwich bags... hmm. Maybe it was time for a shot in the dark.

“Stay up there just one minute, Aegis! There’s something I need to take care of first.” Clara slipped the silver wedding band off of the woman’s finger and looked on the inside for an inscription. No luck. She’d need to risk another spell, a more intimate one, and risk a pretty high chance of another painful backfire.

”Ma’am, the population of my world alone is nine billion sapients. The average human breath is about half a liter of air... imagine 4.5 gigaliters of inhaled breaths that will never be released.” The poor boy simply was not himself. Clara struck the ring with the tip of her fingernail and began to hum, hoping with her meager vocal talents to harmonize with the ringing sound the ring was making. I need to die, Clara. It’s my destiny.”

The ring began to whisper to Clara. “Yes, well,” do you sora oxford-knott take “What would Karel think of this?”

That shut him up for a few seconds. When Aegis spoke next, it was faintly enough that Clara couldn’t hear. “You’re going to have to speak up!” she called back up to him.

”I asked: What. The fuck! Do you know about Karel!?”

”What? You mean you haven’t seen her down here the whole time? It looks like she was bringing you a spot of luncheon.”

Aegis leaned over the edge—more than made Clara comfortable, especially with those big gauntlets of his weighing him down—and, though unable to see clearly, she imagined him squinting. ”My wife,” he said. ”Let me talk to her. Let me talk to Karel.”

Clara considered this. “Alright,” she said. You come down here—using the stairs, of course—and we’ll work out some way to make that happen. I’m a magician of some ability, er, as you well know, Aegis, and have some experience in these matters. Just don’t do anything rash.” Clara was beginning to wonder if this was really the best use of her time. She felt sorry for the poor ghost—not to mention Aegis, who hadn’t wanted any of this—but knew that she didn’t have the time or resources to help all these spirits on a case-by-case basis.

”Don’t be thick,” said Aegis. ”There’s no such thing as magic.” This was probably about the silliest, stupidest thing Clara had ever heard, but hey, different strokes for different planes of existence. ”Just cut out whatever it is you’re doing that’s keeping my wife out of your mind. I need to talk to her. Please.”

Clara made a dissatisfied clicking noise. There was a line, after all. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t do that, Aegis.”

Aegis knelt down and gripped the ledge with his gauntlets. ”Let me talk to my wife now,” he screamed, ”Or I will throw your friend right off this roof and try to hit you when I land! Do you understand me, hag?”

Clara took a step back from the building and considered her options. They were few. “Oh, dear,” she mumbled to herself, reluctantly gesturing away her spirit ward.

All of a sudden, the world got a whole lot more crowded for Clara Jungfrau.

* * * * *

Aph was learning.

Amongst the visitors to the frozen world, the nymph was becoming the most popular amongst the restless spirits, likely because she experienced things more... intensely than the jaded Aegis or the weathered Clara. Designed body and soul to be a receptor of pure love, inverted into hate and disgust and filtered through the mind of a slightly deranged Gothloli twilight sprite, she became the perfect receptor for dozens of vengeful poltergeists with a bone to pick.

The end result was the same; Aph killed a lot of statues. The difference was what was going on inside her head, where her usual litany of death death death was becoming a little more elaborate. Death, she thought, To the stuck-up asshole in the suit-and-tie that probably cost more than my car. Death! to the dwarf looking at me out of the corner of his eye, like we don’t all know what you’re up to, and death to you, Marla, I wish Aust were still here because he’d love to see this. Empowered by the spirits, by their hate, by the vivid imagination of every murderous fantasy these poor bastards had ever held, Aph found new joy in cutting up these obstensibly-lifeless statues. Death, bitch, you used to love it when I got rough with you; death to the prick in the hovercycle, you think you own the road? Death to everyone in the post office, just on principle. The postal service lasted the nymph a good long while, and she savored the kills; she loved the way her tentacles felt around their throats and she loved the sound they made when they dropped to the floor. For a brief moment she found herself alone. She felt giddy, she felt dizzy, she felt hungover, she felt angelically guilty, she felt everything at once for about fifteen seconds before it all subsided to a comfortable, familiar, dull rage. She didn’t throw up.

Withdrawal symptoms were already kicking in by the time she fled the post office and sought out somewhere with a higher population density. There were two apartment buildings coexisting in the same space, and Aph figured that would have to do; as soon as she opened the door the feelings resumed, dozens of them at once, grudges and itches and secrets and cancers, and she resumed her unholy communion. Death death death, we had a moment there for a minute by the laundry machines but you never called, death to you for considering it acceptable behavior to blast Accidentally In Love at three in the morning and I have a meeting the next day, and death to both of us because I used to love you so damn much before you got involved with those fucking Virtuals, death because it’s easier to possess an evil fairy woman to kill you than it is to make rent this month, death to everyone on this floor because nobody loves me so why the hell should I keep you around? And a very special death to Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Handsome lives-across-the-hall shares-my-tastes-in-music subscribes-to-six-newspapers never-noticed-me will-never-notice-me, I love you, please die. When they were all dead Aph went out a window instead of throwing up and she felt fine.

Outside the window was a statue of something Aph had never seen before or anything like it and it had a lot of heads and she didn’t know where she should start when it came to killing it. It had lion bits and eagle bits and snake bits and goat bits and she assumed the correct word was “chimera” or some variant thereof. Standing frozen before it there was a half-dressed maybe-ten-year-old boy, patting it lightly on the nose.

Aph felt their spirits enter her and the first spirit said I love you and the other spirit said I love you and Aph threw up and passed out.

There was a few seconds of comfortable silence before spacetime suddenly rose from its seat, ran into the bathroom and puked up seven mysterious figures in spacesuits. Without any conscious and sentient organisms around to appreciate the weirdness of the moment, it seemed almost calm.

The shortest figure, his spacesuit stretched to accomodate the shape of a top hat, broke the calm by examining his instruments and exclaiming, “Faith ‘n buggery, Non-Infringers! Our return coordinates’ve been scrambled in transit! Looks like the luck o’ the Irish has finally run out fer us!”

“Maybe not, Iota McTaggart,” said the tallest figure, whose spacesuit’s long arms led to strangely-misshapen gloves. “There’s always hope. Are we clear to take off our helmets?”

“Hang on, Crazyman Dragonarms,” said the four identical figures, in perfect synchronicity. “X. is picking up some unusual spectral activity.” One of the four quadruplets stepped out of line and spoke by himself, gesturing portentiously. “By condensing the spectrons in the air, I should be able to make the disturbance visible.” As he spoke, the hundreds of spirits floating through the air began emitting a faint light in the visible spectrum. Crazyman Dragonarms recoiled.

The last figure stepped forwards and took off his helmet, revealing a clunky metal fascimile of a human head. “Thanks, PAX/Tom,” emanated the static-filled voice from the robot’s large, gaping mouth-opening. “But these souls are no match for XMO, the Robot Who Sucks!” XMO proved the truth of his words with a single mighty inhalation, which sucked all of the nearby ghosts through his mouth-opening into his iron lung. The mouth clamped shut.

“What happened here?” asked PAX/Tom, all of them looking around as though expecting an answer from each other.

“I’ll tell you what happened,” grumbled Crazyman Dragonarms, looking at the chimera, the boy, and Aph lying on the ground. “Someone—or something—has been infringing on the multiverse. And it’s up to us to find out who... or whom.”

Aph coughed and sputtered a bit, giving Iota McTaggart quite the shock. “Well wouldja look at that?” exclaimed the leprechaun. “I’d hazard a guess this one isn’t one of the natives. And here she is unconscious at our feet! Maybe me luck’s gone ‘round the horseshoe yet again!”

PAX/Tom lifted the nymph up, each taking one arm. “When she awakens, we can interrogate her,” they all agreed. “We’ll want to tie her up beforehand.”

“Be careful,” cautioned XMO. “We have no idea what she’s capable of. I’m processing data from all the souls I inhaled, but none of them have any idea what caused this. For all we know, it could be her.”

Nodding sagely as a group, the Non-Infringers took their prisoner and their equipment and walked off towards what looked to be the most populated area within sight, each mentally preparing himself for what was sure to be their greatest adventure yet.

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

---

I'm going to finally be the first one in today, I can just feel it; besides, if Dane's out sick then it's not like anyone else is going to be punctual.

I've got to get to the bus in five minutes if I want to be able to catch Bathtubs of Blood 3.

I need to find Ulg' Urush before he can escape with the princess!

Did I remember to ask Unit 1212 to run the Zilgrax projections for tomorrow's meeting?

Christ, why are there no public restrooms anymore?

Someone has got to do something about all these dwarves.

If I could just get past you, ma'am, please. ________________________ Oh, no, I think that camera was pointed this way.

I really need to see a doctor about this ankle, I think. ________ Why won't this asshole take the hint and go around?

I remember when you could walk these streets without someone glaring at you because you're a gnome. ____What was that noise?

I have to have one of those hot dogs right now.________ Tell that girl you think she's cute. Come on, just do it.
Kill that hivefucker. Show them all they need to go back to their own planet. I think I have time to check my messages...
If the robot's projections are correct, then When did she sayI'mgoing to have get back to school soon.
It's getting harWe need toDoes it really mI can't do
WeTheIcan'SheWhIt
IIWSINBW
I I I I
I I
I
I

I


I've got to stop Sora!

Many things had prepared Clara to handle the sort of moment that had crystallized the instant she had dispelled her ward: being undead gives the mind a clarity of purpose and intensity of focus that can only be bred from the removal of the endless distractions biology dumps on a brain; being a practitioner of spirit magic and a follower of a gentle death-god steeps one in exactly the lore and practice one needs to shepherd disembodied and irrational spirits; her own caring nature and attention to detail left her with a ghostly empathy that few could match.

And despite all that, she was still swarmed on all sides by a mass of uncountable ghosts that wanted nothing more than to act out their last thoughts and wishes through her body, to finally fulfill the destinies that had been ground to a halt by their worlds' collision. Not only was the very air permeated with more minds than molecules across the entirety of the three-worlds-in-one, but many had been attracted to the barrier that had woven its way through their existence, curiously following the one thing that had happened since fate stopped. Between the nature of the round and her own actions, Clara had come face to face with an unfathomable number of unique souls, and she simply couldn't handle it the way she wanted to. With her last vestiges of mental strength, she shoved Karel into the space she usually occupied and made a stand against the onslaught of innocents and villains who could do nothing but try to push past and take over.

Numbly and vaguely, as though through several feet of ice-cold water, she could hear Karel beginning to try to talk her husband down, but the words were just sounds to her now, devoid of meaning or significance. Gradually, they were drowned out by the clamor of unfairly-ended lives swirling around and through her, and Clara could do nothing but hold fast, hoping to leave her possessor enough time to say what needed saying.

The spectral rush of voices screamed louder and louder, the push of nonexistent hands on the body she didn't now have became rougher and more hateful, and under the onslaught of several civilizations' worth of restless not-quite-dead, the world went silent, then dark, then gone. Still doing her best to act as a shield for her own mind and body, Clara lost the last vestiges of what could be considered consciousness.

---

Something that probably wouldn't have called itself Clara if you'd asked – which would have been hard to accomplish in any case – drifted dreamily through a serene nonscape. It wasn't the first time it had died. She had died? Last time, of course, the sweetness of nothing had been a faint blur at the edge of her vision or the back of her being. This time, it was all around her, through her, part of her. She was it as much as she was in it. Something perhaps occurred to the little scrap of thoughtself that this wasn't right, that she knew for a fact the afterlife, that her afterlife, wasn't this way. But she either ignored that or simply didn't think of it in the first place, and she was happy that way. She expanded or moved or thought through the darkness without black for a time without time or even duration. She simply was, forever and never.

Until there was a point where previously there had been nothing but an unmarked expanse. From that point arose the concept of before and after, and more literally arose a thin thread of glowing silver that cast everything that wasn't it into true darkness. It reached for her, despite there not truly being a her to reach for until it began reaching, and as it contacted the self she hadn't had, she gained understanding too. Painful memories of life and death and struggle returned to a formless mass that hadn't even understood the idea of remembering until it had been forced to, and she became Clara again.

A voice she had never truly heard but was instantly recognizable hummed through the delicate strand of existence to her.

"You have done well and fought mightily, Slate Emissary."

It was high praise, considering the situation, but it carried an undercurrent of sadness and – most disturbingly, given the source – powerlessness.

"But as you know, your work is not yet complete."

Of course it wasn't, not while the Monitor walked the worlds, but there was little she could do for now.

"I can aid you but little, Clara Jungfrau. Against those who would keep you, the veil of death has little meaning and less influence. The power that you wield against them must be as much yours as mine, and as much your allies' as yours. Rally those that remain, and unshackle them from the ignorance and fear that has bound them."

But how was she to do that when she didn't even understand everything herself?

"I cannot give you a sword that will slay your masters, nor a standard that will lead the downtrodden to fight at your heel. I can give you only enlightenment, and ask as I always have that you work for the betterment of those who march towards the shroud."

As the strand spoke or thought, it began twisting and expanding; several shapes formed along its length, further convoluting until they took on recognizable features.

"Many have been those who passed beyond the last curtain for reasons that were not theirs, in worlds they could not call home. Some were thrust through despite their best efforts and in spite of their strongest wishes."

A wavering image of B formed in front of Clara, looking terrified but hazy.

"Some took up the black mantle of their own accord, serving their dark masters and their interests as accomplices and traitors among those who should have been their brothers."

A blurred, watery form came into view next to B's unmoving visage; it morphed disturbingly into several others, then settled back into Bae's natural shape.

"Others still were not even truly their own souls, yet they fought valiantly as any could to throw off the yoke of those who would see them sacrificed meaninglessly."

The third and final twisting mass resolved itself into a doppelganger of Clara herself, but this one was much clearer and sharper than the others had been; it felt more real, like actually looking at herself from the outside rather than seeing a cheap illusion.

"Those who are not my children I have limited influence over. Those who would actively fight my careful hand, even less. But from beyond the darkness, I can bring you light. And from a devotee, I can create a great beacon."

B's and Bae's shapes flickered and began expanding and diffusing, merging with the nonexistence and with Clara herself. Memories and facts wrote themselves across her consciousness in a flaming, bloody hand and as promised, understanding wrote itself in their words.

"The greatest weapon in the arsenal even of those who move entire realities to their whims is still deceit and confusion. Look upon their works with clarity, and your victory will reveal itself from the mists of ignorance. Remember what you have learned. Spread it to those who still survive, and save those who can be saved."

'Those who can be saved'. Then there were those who couldn't. It was a harsh truth Clara had strived for some time to ignore, but perhaps the only way to save anyone was to accept that there were those who would always escape the fold and charge for the wolves.

She was left staring into her own eyes.

"There is more you must know, and by teaching you I may have done all I ever may to aid you. My child, know that you are loved as much as any frail soul born into the dark world, and that when your time comes and your fight is over, you will be accepted like any. Your success or failure, and your prophesied destiny, do not slate you for disappointment in my eyes. You have accomplished more than most ever could. Remember this."

With the last words vanishing to memories, Clara's image distorted and moved to merge with what she was forced to think of as her body, despite its literal absence. The scraps of thought and memory and notion and fact that she'd been shown by B and Bae retreated to the back of her mind as she was jolted into a past that wasn't hers. A rider in her own mind, or the mind of someone who had only diverged from being her in a very cosmetic sense, she watched and listened and felt as she awoke in a mall, as she met a lich, as she wondered and worried. Beings she'd never seen and places she'd never been passed before her metaphorical eyes, and they all seemed painfully familiar. A man died, a cave came into being; with a jolt, she experienced the most painful deja vu she'd ever known as the underground temple slid into place as the place she'd seen back in Old Salem.

She watched as her double followed through the trap-filled halls and listened as it concocted a plan. And then, with a sensation that no being – living, dead, or otherwise – should have to feel, she was tugged into an out-of-body experience within another within another. The scene blurred past and events with no coherence but immeasurable significance overlaid themselves onto her mind. Explanation, destruction, amusement. Transition, meddlesomeness, duplicity through honesty. Crystallizing time and nonphysical space. A scream and a jerk and the doubled dream ended, and she watched as she was corralled by boxes and fought a man beyond mortality and a god from beyond divinity. She felt unimaginable power well up, and felt as she was crushed like an insect. She died without having ever lived, the ghost of a puppet.

The silver thread returned and her accelerated journey through time that was not hers ended. Metadarkness filled her.

"You must see the stakes that are played with here. Understand the scope of your battle. The strength of your foe."

She did. She was cowed.

"But do not fear, for what you saw was the last stand of a doomed group, stifled by the deceit that ever clouds those who face the Grandmasters. Prepare, shed light, and divine. Gather those you can trust, and your fight will not see the same end your shade's did."

"Go forth, Clara Jungfrau, and save the weak and the strong and yourself. You are blessed; fear no failure."

The strand snapped into a numberless cloud of mercury droplets. They swarmed around her, covered her, and bade her sleep.

---

"Sora, don't jump! Please, please! It can't be worth it!"

Really, it can't. "Shut up, you're not even part of this! It's my destiny!"

"How can you say–"

"Not you, him. He's trying… Look, Karel, I have to. I have to. I can't live with this. None of us can!"

"No, honey, no, it'll all be over eventually. It has to be. Until then, just… remember me, remember our love. Isn't that enough for you?"

Sora clutched his head with Aegis's gauntlets, shouting and pacing terrifyingly close to the edge. "No! No, that just makes it all worse. It's never going to end. I've seen it, I've seen the infinity of nothing. It's all over, and we don't even get to die."

Clara's face wrinkled with another woman's expression. "I don't understand."

"And I can't tell you! Can you imagine what they'd do to me if–"

Aegis was panting by now, eyes wild. He obviously wasn't lucid by this point, which was probably understandable if he'd spent endless ages in a single moment of suicidal torment. Nevertheless, Karel tried to reason with him, tried to save the man she loved.

"Well, if nothing's ever going to change, then surely you can't get in trouble. Right?"

There was a brief silence, which Karel interpreted as a good sign.

"It can't hurt to talk to me. It might help you look at things differently, or at least make me feel a bit better."

He sighed and ran clumsy metal fingers through his hair. He was still on the precipice, but at least he looked like he was calming down a little.

"Okay, look, okay. Okay. Okay." He inhaled again and slowly let the breath out. "So, the company. The one I work for. OmniTec."

Sora's juddering, circular sentences were getting pretty frustrating pretty quickly, but Karel bit her tongue, figuring it was best to let him sort out his hangups on his own time.

"Well it… er, they… We. We were, you know… We were doing… Were doing some, uh, some pantemporal prospecting."

Karel's lips moved silently as she thought. pantempo–…

"Wait, you were using timeline readers?! That's–"

"I know, I know. I know. But that's the job. That's what they told us to do, that's what they payed us for. If I'd refused, they'd just get someone else. Why shouldn't I be the one who gets paid for it, right?"

You could have told someone. The trade commissions take accusations of timeline reading seriously. Karel figured it wasn't productive to say as much, though, and kept her mouth shut.

"So this morning, maybe last night… Something changed. The operators thought it was a glitch. We called the technicians in, and they…" He trailed off for several seconds. "You should have seen their faces, Karel. Seen the way they got confused, got scared, got angry. Everything was fine though, all the instruments working. It was all accurate, not a bug, not an anomaly. Should have seen the way their faces went dead. They just… They left. Shrugged and left. Couple of researchers came, but what could they do?"

Karel's voice floated up, straining to sound normal and calm. "Do for what exactly, sweetheart?"

"Every timeline. Everything. It all just stopped, every quark trapped in one unending moment. Nothing moved, nothing changed. Forever and ever. Crashed the computer when we told it to project to a point when things changed. Everything just paused in one moment for all of infinity. Forever. Forever and ever and ever, Karel! This undying hell of nothing, and it never ends!"

Sora was nearly hysterical now, biting back the urges to cry or scream or shove his own statue from the ledge. Karel spent several tense seconds formulating a reply before speaking.

"But there are people here now. They're changing things! The readers were wrong. You don't know this is forever."

He scoffed. "What can two insane offworlders do against the entire collapse of causality? That one thinks she's some kind of wizard for fuck's sake! They're just stupid and lost and they can't do anything!"

"But they're proof that–"

"No! I'm never going to get this chance again! I'm sorry, Karel. I love you, but I have to do this. I love you."

Sora lifted Aegis's feet and fulfilled his destiny.

Karel started to scream in a borrowed voice and raised Clara's hands helplessly. Her body and brain, without her spirit to guide them, ceded to Karel's panic and desire; her instincts and abilities jumped when asked, without context and memory to guide them. Unthinkingly, fingers wove a spell, bidding the air to congeal and send Aegis sinking through it like jelly. The world pushed against her magic, and Clara automatically pushed back, straining against the saturated mana until something tipped. Instead, something broke.

Everything.

---

The Non-Infringers hadn't even left the little clearing of souls XMO had cleared with his inhalation when Aph started screaming and writhing in her bonds.

"Saints alive, Non-Infringers!" shouted Iota McTaggart. "What could have gotten this little lass in such a frenzy?"

One of PAX/Tom raised an eyebrow, struggling to keep ahold of the nymph. "She doesn't even seem to be conscious. Perhaps Portraitist somehow escaped and followed us?"

"No," grumbled Crazyman Dragonarms pensively. "He couldn't have. Besides, she's not manifesting the ghosts of her psyche, so it couldn't be–"

He stopped as the group became aware of a low rumbling from the horizon. Before any could speak up, the rumble had become a roar had become an indesribable wall of sound slamming into them like the fist of a petty and furious god. All around them, the world seemed to be breaking into pieces and being hastily reassembled by some inexpert hand. What was once featureless grey stone was being replaced with real materials from the worlds that had spawned them.

Just… Wrongly.

With the exception of the spiritless area near the Non-Infringers, the world was being transmuted into a nightmarescape of flesh and bone and wood and glass. The statues of people and animals seemed unaffected, but every inanimate object and senseless plant was being replaced by a duplicate of itself made of conflicting, nonsensical materials. Moreover, where buildings and landscapes had quietly overlapped when their destinies had been frozen, matter suddenly realized its error. Buildings and trees exploded outwards in shards or chunks or nearly-whole scything blocks of masonry, all waveringly morphing as they were replaced with the wrong constituent parts. It was as though whatever had changed the worlds to their erstwhile stony form had forgotten what was what and was just dumping everything back into it in a churning mass of chaotic randomness.

XMO was forced to expel his lungful of souls to blow a huge block of iron and teeth away from the group; the still-faintly-glowing spirits immediately dove into whatever bits of life and limb they could insinuate themselves into, attempting to carve out whatever bodies they could from the liberated matter and continue with their interrupted lives. Judging from the hideous forms that were emerging from the distance, it seemed the souls freed from the robot weren't the only ones with the idea.

Once the cacophony of unfreezing had passed, to be replaced by the stomach-churning sounds of almost-human bodies forming themselves from muscle and sinew and steel, Aph finally stopped screaming. Her eyes slammed open and her tentacles writhed furiously.

"Fuck!"

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

---

It was like an out of body experience, probably because it was an out of body experience. Most of the spirits that had found themselves new vessels would have gone on to live their lives with only the faintest traces of memory of the silent and still years that had passed in between their last waking moments, as though it had all been a crazy dream, they would have done this if not for the circumstances that they found themselves awoken to. Bodies that shouldn’t have been, made of scraps of this and that and of everything in between and a world that was more or less the same. These circumstances would have been difficult to deal with upon their own, as it was they were overshadowed by a sure and certain knowledge which had gripped the spirits before they had managed to take corporeal form. It was kill or be killed.

“Non-Infringers Convene!” XMO cried.

As they were all present such dramatics were not strictly necessary, but it did help snap them out of their own individual reveries. Around them the ghosts fought, although ghost was probably not the best term for what they were now. A slender mass of a flesh, metal and wire leapt and clawed at the tail of a bestial formation that had constructed itself from scales, stone and cement. In the distance there was the noise of what one would normally assume to be gunfire, but considering the situation could potentially be a particularly disfigured ghost attempting to work out how to walk upon a new limb. Those that could screamed; some of them guttural fury, blind rage at their enemy, others called upon the aid of their gods or swore profusely, which was a reasonable reaction given the circumstances. There was the crackle and burn of magic being performed by those that could perform it and an occasional distant crumbling as a building realised that it could not support itself in the manner in which it had been recreated. It was chaos.

“What in the bloody hells is all this?” Iota McTaggart took the words out of everybody’s mouths. Crazyman Dragonarms spun around to face the prisoner.

“What is this?” He demanded with one long and misshapen arm raised towards the nymph. The slightest flames danced around the circular vent upon what someone would begrudgingly describe as the palm of his glove. “Is this your doing? Explain yourself.” He did not let the fact that she seemed just as bewildered by recent events as they were, and perhaps more so, deter him from this line of enquiry.

“I don’t have to answer your questions worm.” Aph snapped, pausing momentarily from her unsuccessful attempts to free herself. “But I think you are missing the big picture here. Those things fighting out there are not your problem. We are your problem.” Her attention was solely focused upon the Non-Infringers now. “We are Aph’Neya. We are your queen, your goddess of destruction. Once we are free we will carve a red swathe through this hideous land until I can find someone to take me back to my precious Monitor.” A pause, Aph narrows her eyes at Dragonarms. “We’ll start with you, but don’t worry we’ll make it quick. I’ll tear out your heart and burn it in front of your eyes. There is simply no time to savour the moment at the moment. So let me free now peon. Let me free or die.”

“Wow you really love the sound of your own voice, don’t you?” Crazyman Dragonarms lowered his arm as the flames died away. He was about to turn away when a bolt of lightning streaked towards him. He quickly dodged out of its path and behind him it hit a patch of a building that appeared to be made out of marshmallow. Within moments he retaliated, releasing a torrent of flame from his left arm. This Aph promptly dodged and within minutes the two were locked into a full-scale magic fight, shouting insults at one another as they did so. The rest of the Non-Infringers watched somewhat nonplussed. This was pretty much par for the course where Crazyman Dragonarms was concerned.

“So much for trying to get any information out of her.” Lamented one of the Paxes.

“Madder’n a box of old hats that’un.” Iota agreed. For a moment there was silence as the Non-Infingers watched their teammate battling their prisoner. Aph might have had a clear advantage in this battle if it wasn’t for the fact that her manoeuvrability was severely limited by the fact that her limbs were tied behind her back with extra strong deadlocked rope. Though on the other hand her attacks were borne from a senseless rage, a desperate desire to inflict pain upon the nearest living being, they were clumsy and easily dodged and while Crazyman Dragonarms could hardly be called a master tactician he was at least able to keep track of how many people he was at any given time. XMO quickly turned his attention to the chaos that surrounded them, where unnerving people shaped lumps of flesh and other things were locked in what seemed to be senseless combat with one another.

“If anyone has any ideas what the hell is going on here please feel free to broach them.” XMO said.

“This is mostly conjecture,” PAX/Tom spoke in unison, “but we think that this world is undergoing a reality collapse.”

“Woah, hold up there.” Iota replied. “Can ye run that past us again a little slower this time?” One member of PAX stepped forwards to explain while the others whispered to one another.

“There was some kind of destabilising event.” Tom explained. “It had to have come from an outside influence, like us or the magic creature except not us or the magic creature because the epicentre of the event was some distance in that direction.” Tom gestured in the direction that they had been heading. “The conflicting realities were somehow in a perfect balance before this event, but now they have shifted and they have realised that they are conflicting again and so everything is going to shit.”

“Yeah I can see that.” Iota said.

“No, it will get worse than this.” Tom continued. “This reality cannot support three different conflicting versions of reality at once. Unless all traces of two of these realities are removed then it will continue to destabilise further and further until it collapses completely and this entire reality ceases to exist.”

“Which, we think, is the reason for the fighting.” One of the other members of PAX piped up. “It’s not mindless chaos; if you look then you can see most of them are only going after those from the other realities. I’d hate to theorise how, but it would seem that they know that their world is doomed unless they can stamp out all traces of the other worlds.”

“Also of note is that we ourselves are not of any of these three realities and are likely to be treated as hostile by all of them, once they actually realise we are here.” A third PAX nervously chipped in.

“Of course this is just conjecture.” Tom said. “We don’t exactly have the equipment to test any of these ideas. We would definitely recommend fleeing this reality the moment that we can stabilise an exit, though we don’t think that it will be that easy.”

SpoilerShow

I actually intended to do more than this but thought that this was a good stopping place. I'm probably going to attempt to post again soonish and I don't think it should be such a massive fucking issue next time so fingers crossed.

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

---

Aph’s mind was chaotic, it was a wild ocean of personalities and voices in the grip of a raging storm and Aph was upon a lifeboat being thrown this way and that way holding on for dear life. But, to be more accurate, she was the storm as well, she was the ocean and everything in it was her. There were some scraps, some vestiges of what was originally her, before this, before D’Neya, and they might still have been fighting to hold on, to attempt to exist rather than to be subsumed by the maddened waters. They would not brute force their way to control of her body, it was too hard and she was too weak; she was too far gone now. Aph could barely claim to bear that name any more, she was no more Aph than she was D’Neya, or any of the numerous other personalities vying for control in the raging waters of her mind. Even Aph, and this time we talk about Aph as the vestiges of herself again, could barely be said to be herself any more. Magic leaks, magic runs and flows and blends and mixes with other magics. Like a splash of ink in a puddle of water and she might have been something else entirely. She didn’t, couldn’t, know. She was too busy fighting for her continued existence.

Aph was not a person any more; a person has consistent thoughts and a rationale that informs their actions. Aph was a consensus, a democracy of psychopaths who could only agree upon hate and death, frustration and anger and at some points sadistic glee. She was inconsistent because she was a constant battle for mental supremacy; a turbulent sea that was growing even more troubled with each second that she remained deadlocked with her latest opponent; a slight man with straw coloured hair and long misshapen arms. His attacks were not posing her much of a problem; on the one hand his plumes of flame were easily deflected by a twilight tentacle, on the other the torrents of icy water were harder to dodge but much less perilous. If it wasn’t for the fact that she was limited in movement, and as such was finding it much harder to aim her magic, this fight might have been very different indeed.

She conjured a glob of necrotic energy and loosed it in Dragonarms’ direction. He dodged, grabbed hold of a streetlamp now made from glass and paper and sand and bone and he swung himself out of the way. The toxic energy landed almost nearly at the spot where Crazyman had just been standing; it bubbled and hissed as it ate away at the sidewalk. As Crazyman Dragonarms spun around, putting his gauntlets together to deliver a devastating molten tsunami, he found Aph to be hurriedly floating down an alleyway. She needed a moment to be able to think (as much as she could think), find a way to free herself and then return to fight on her own terms without impediment and then they would see what was what.

“Hey, you!” Crazyman shouted after the retreating nymph. “Get back here.” Promptly the bulky form of XMO was at his side.

“Come on Crazyman Dragonarms, we’ve got bigger issues to deal with.” XMO’s gaze was fixated up the street where Iota and the Paxes were holding off a group of mostly-wooden basilisks that had taken it upon themselves to attack the group.

“You’re just going to let a criminal go free?” Crazyman Dragonarms asked incredulously.

“We don’t know she’s a criminal.” XMO pointed out.

“But she attacked me!” Crazyman Dragonarms thumped one of his misshapen gauntlets against his chest pridefully. “Are we not Non-Infingers? Do we not not back down when justice must be done no matter how inconvenient it might be for us?” The impact of the speech was lost in the akwardness of the double-negatives, but XMO took the point. His speakers emitted a grating sound that someone had once thought sounded something in the vicinity of a sigh, and he opened his mouth. Aph hadn’t gotten far. The alley she’d opted to flee down had ended in the rubble of where two buildings had intersected and she’d been forced to backtrack upon herself.

XMO sucked, hard. XMO sucked so hard that Aph felt as though something had hooked onto her. Air rushed past her and into the enormous mouth of the vacuum-robot. Anyone else might have just lost their footing, fallen to the floor and maybe been dragged along the pavement for a little while. Aph however, well she started leaking. Dour clouds of muddied mana were pulled loose. They spilled down the street, a veritable dark rainbow of magics streamed out behind her eventually disappearing into the robot’s iron lung.

“Wait!” Crazyman Dragonarms exclaimed. “Hold on! Something weird is happening!”

When XMO ceased suction and clamped his mouth shut, the mana that remained in the street sought the nearest body of mana to return to, which was Aph. She had collapsed face first to the street as her mana had been siphoned away, and there she lay, unconscious again. She looked different, slightly brighter perhaps, and there was a visible loss of the twilight magic that made up her tentacles (not that either of the Non-Infringers who gazed across the scene noticed these details, or would have found them particularly interesting or relevant if they had).

Crazyman Dragonarms scratched at his chin thoughtfully. “What was that?!”

XMO shrugged.

“If you’re bringing her then go on, I’m not hauling her behind us.” XMO said.

“Okay fine.” Crazyman Dragonarms hauled the nymph over his shoulder and turned to follow XMO. “Where are we going anyway? Did you work out what is going on?”

“Yeah.” XMO said. “Reality is about to collapse. We’re headed to the epicentre in the hope that reality is thin enough there to allow us to connect our transponders with home base and get out of here before this entire reality destroys itself.”

There was a pause.

“We should hurry.” Crazyman Dragonarms replied enthusiastically.

-------

Aph’s mind was ordered, well, to an extent. No mind could be perfectly ordered and still be a mind. It was an apartment she lived in. It was a little messy and there were some things hidden away in the back cupboards that she didn’t particuarly want anyone to see, but it was hers. Hers and hers alone… well more or less, there were some stragglers, but they were minor things with as much power over her as she had had over herself some minutes ago. She was a person again, a person in control of her own mind and her own body, though of course she wasn’t exactly the same person who she had been. The decoration of her apartment was one that almost certainly wouldn’t have appealed to her before this all began, if I could extend a metaphor to its very breaking point. She didn’t know who she was now, not yet, but she did know she wasn’t who she had been and when she woke up, she was going to be very grateful about that.

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

---

There was a sort of snapping sensation as the rules that allowed Sora to remain a ghost stopped applying and he stopped falling and became himself again, standing by the window on the verge of a decision. Instinctively he backed away. Contemplating suicide was different when you’d already felt yourself fall in another man’s body. Besides, he had a feeling that the situation was about to become moot. The building was leaning to one side, the stresses of the merge relenting to the renewed presence of entropy.

There was screaming. At that moment there were two pervasive states of mind, and both of them were screaming. The first type of person was the type that had barely processed the freeze to begin with, and had registered the entire process as the sudden teleportation of two foreign worlds into his or her own, and reacted to this by screaming. The second type had been more cognizant of their time as spirits, and had become institutionalized, living free from their bodies and the concerns of mortality. Once more truly alive, like a newborn baby, all they could do was scream. Sora, having been anchored by his experience in Aegis’ body, was a bit better off. He had to get out of the building.

Karel saw her Sora back away from the ledge with some relief, which didn’t last long. The problem with the building’s integrity was beginning to come apparent—more specifically, it was beginning to rise out of the ground. The turtle’s shell was the size of a city block, but not nearly as level, and Karel had to grab on to the woman next to her from support as it flapped its flippers and took flight with the entire building resting on its back.

Karel didn’t think twice about running into the building, dragging the nice lady she’d been possessing behind her. She dropped the sandwich bags. Lunch had been put off for an eternity already, it could wait another couple of hours for her to make sure her husband got out safe.

Aegis, meanwhile, drifted lazily onto the sky-turtle’s back with only the vaguest idea of how he was still alive (something something Clara?) He supposed he owed the witch some gratitude, and maybe an apology for suspecting her of being a shapeshifter in disguise. She’d put her neck on the line for him.

The world (worlds, he supposed) were disappearing below him. There was a deafening moan that Aegis realized was the turtle’s best equivalent of a scream. If it kept up at this pace, the air might get too thin to breathe.

Aegis suddenly felt very small. Both of his opponents were powerful magic users, well-versed (he assumed) in dealing with mind-bending threats to existence itself. He was a guy who was good in a fight. Best he could do would be to hitch his horse to Clara’s wagon.

The problem, of course, was that Clara been pulled right back into the lobby. Aegis had been there while it was frozen, and distinctly remembered an angry, rampaging troll who’d had issues with women. The witch would probably be in need of a guy who was good in a fight right about now.

Treading carefully on the bits of sidewalk displaced by the turtle’s shell, Aegis followed Clara and Karel inside.

PAX/Tom stood in the shadow of the sky-turtle, examining the epicentre. “Not good enough,” they declared in unison. “This spot is no more the source of what’s going on here than a quark on the nose of a cat is the cause of its death,” elaborated one of him.

“Funny, isn’t it?” chuckled Iota. “How the smallest o’ things can cause all this. Makes me proud to be so short.”

“Of course,” said Crazyman Dragonarms. “We need to find the place where the universes merged in the first place. PAX/Tom, any progress on that?”

“None,” said PAX/Tom, shuffling their feet apologetically. “Under lead shielding, likely,” offered one. “With all this data to process, nothing could find it in time,” added another.

“Nothing, is it?” Iota cracked his knuckles and pointed at XMO. “Well, we’re going to need to summon the fifth Non-Infringer, then, aren’t we?”

XMO nodded. “I will bring her here.” The Robot Who Sucks, in contrast to his nature, blew. He exhaled all the souls he’d been keeping up, plus a spare bit of mana that flitted upwards in the general direction of the sky-turtle like a purple balloon buffeted by the wind. He blew until there was nothing left inside him—and then he blew that out, too.

The nothingness hung in the air, creating a very strong impression that the most beautiful woman any of the Non-Infringers had ever seen was definitively not standing before them. “Why is there something instead of nothing?” she did not say.

“Trick question,” said Crazyman Dragonarms, kissing the absence of an outstretched hand. “There is nothing.”

“That’s right,” the nothingness didn’t reply. “So, you have a job for me?”

“Yes,” said XMO. “A job only Skum, the Flawless can perform.”

“We need to figure out what went wrong here,” urged PAX/Tom.

“A few things, by the looks of it,” the Flawless didn’t say, least of all while looking around at her environment. “Nice nymph, by the way. Souvenir for the return trip?”

Dragonarms adjusted the nymph’s position on his shoulder. “More trouble than she’s worth,” he groaned. “But she’s an outsider. She might be useful later. Skum, we need to find the place where reality’s thinnest, or risk getting caught in a reality collapse.”

Skum didn’t smile. “A reality collapse, you say? As in, oblivion? The ultimate triumph of nothingness over somethingness?”

“We’re putting our trust in you to get us out of this,” said XMO sternly. “You’re a Non-Infringer, and that means I don’t expect you to betray that trust, but it also means that if you step out of line you’ll have to answer to me.”

“Betray your trust?” Skum didn’t stifle a laugh, which isn’t to say she laughed, rather that she especially didn’t laugh. “My dear robot, nothing could be further from my mind.”

Skum didn't fail to hold in a giggle. Which isn't to say that she succeeded at holding in a giggle. It is also not to say that she giggled, because she didn't. In fact, she never existed in the first place. It was all very complicated and strangely erotic.

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

---

Somewhere overhead there was something happening.

The disparate clouds of mana expelled thoughtlessly from XMO's iron lung were gravitating towards one another. Tiny slithers that had looked few enough to be almost inconsequential flowed together again. They gained, not mass specifically, but size and something resembling intelligence. Maybe some spare mana was drawn from one of the conflicting realities to account for that what was missing. In truth even if you were amongst that conglomeration of magics it would be impossible to tell.

The dark pink cloud decided it didn't like being a dark pink cloud (this was not a conscious decision (not that the decisions that could be made by this chaotic mana could be called decisions as such) but one made upon an almost fundamental level) and took a more familiar shape; a slender frame, a sylphlike face with pointed ears and hook shaped horns and a cascade of dark pink hair. When ‘Aph’ regained what for want of a better word we will call consciousness, she was hanging in the air above the fractured city. The maddened crowd that was her psyche cried out in alarm as gravity began to exert its influence upon the reformed nymph.

As she plummeted she screamed and let loose a torrent of flames and a couple of useless thunderbolts before eventually finding to her surprise she was able to shoot a gust of wind and slow her descent. That was more or less the only thing that prevented her fall from being outright fatal, as it was she still landed heavily, cracking her head against the pavement and lapsing once more into unconsciousness as the Non-Infringers gathered around her.

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

---

”We’re back!” cried the Lord of Skulls, like he’d been waiting eons to say it. “Now, can either of you tell me what the hells happened?”

Clearly everything had not gone according to plan. LoS’ warlock skeleton legion reconstituted itself in a jumbling heap while, on the other side of the portal (which was no longer a portal, or else everything was a portal now) Commandrix Saga’s homo infantrius soldiers were frantically ripping off their power armor just to feel the air on their own bodies again. The Commandrix looked upon them with scorn, then turned to LoS. “Is it safe to say we caused this?” she asked.

“Bah!” declared the Lord. “Safe to say you caused this! The perfection of my portal spell was carved in my own blood! The gods themselves fortold my ascent into your world! These portents are far more reliable than your much-vaunted ‘computer projections.’”

The Commandrix smirked. “I’m sure your gods are powerful, but even they can’t ensure your success with a margin of error of one-raised-to-the-negative-one-millionth percent. My portal worked as well as anything in the history of my planet has ever worked, ever, and I paid a lot more than three drops of blood to get it that way!”

“Well then,” growled LoS, “Obviously this was Carl’s fault!”

Both of the would-be conquerors glared at Carl on the third side of the portal. Carl shrugged. “I built my portal exactly according to Ms. Saga’s specifications,” he explained to LoS, pointing a finger at the Commandrix. “We had some materials issues, but the fundamental principles apply—“

“Fundamental principles?” demanded Saga, hitting Carl over the head with her helmet. “As in, the fundamental principle of ‘thing from universe goes to other universe?’ Gee, well, Carl, you sure got that figured out. What you forgot to specify was whether or not you’d be teleporting all three universes in the process!”

“And now instead of three universes ripe for conquest,” added LoS, “We have one diminished madhouse that will be impossible to control! And this may merely be the beginning!”

“But he didn’t bring everything along,” reminded Commandrix Saga. “No, he forgot about the t-dimension, which is why the tri-world ended up frozen the way it was. That we’re experiencing time again now suggests a change from outside, and best guess is it’s the temporal-entropic death of the multiverse, so, you know... nice going, Carl.”

“I still don’t think it was—“ Carl was interrupted by a burst of gunfire as one of his mercenaries began firing at LoS’ skeletons from across the cave. “Guys, cut that out,” Carl shouted weakly. Carl had the largest numbers, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, he was understandably less confident about the capability of a handful of machine guns to conquer and subjugate an entire magical realm than the Lord of Skulls was about his undead warlock armada’s ability to lay waste to a society that knew nothing of magic, or Commandrix Saga was about her genetically-enhanced supersoldiers’ qualifications to destroy a primitive fossil-fuel-based Type Zero civilization. To correct for this lack of certainty, he had gone a little overboard with his recruitment drive. Secondly, said recruitment drive was remarkably successful; Carl had bragged to his co-conspirators via crossdimensional radio about how his world was “culturally poised to produce thousands of angry trigger-happy sociopaths with a raging desire to kill goblins and have sex with elves.”

He had not bragged about his training program, because it hadn’t gone over well. About a dozen skeletons made some half-hearted gestures and contained the offending soldier in a Pacifist’s Circle, leaving him to think very hard about what he’d done. “It’s no matter,” sighed LoS after a time. “Blame will not fix our worlds, or our plans. Even if we could undo what we have done, the damage done to our worlds is likely irreparable. Who knows what the surface may look like right now?”

“I do,” volunteered a homo infantrus, running up to the portal. “Commandrix Saga, ma’am,” he greeted awkwardly. “General. Uh... Lord of Skulls, sir. The normal data clouds are down, but some sky-truckers still have their old ham routers running, and they’re running video feeds. Here—“ The super-soldier projected a horrifying scene of chaos and violence onto the wall.

“Yeah, my portal didn’t do that,” insisted Carl meekly. “Almost definitely.”

“There’s more,” said the infantrus. “Some of these sky-truckers are equipped with temporal barometers, for when they’re carrying quantum-sensitive cargo, and they’re all saying the same thing.”

“That this world of incongruities will not last,” volunteered LoS. “The darkness will swallow us all. We have more than an hour, less than two.”

“What he said,” agreed the infantrus.

“That will be all, soldier,” mumbled Commandrix Saga, lost in thought. Then she turned to the other two. “Well, gentlemen, as much as I hate to say it, we’re now in the world-saving business.”

Carl scratched his forehead. “I think this problem defies a technological solution.”

“Though Carl’s idea of a ‘technological solution’ is explosives and electrical tape, I have to agree. Lord of Skulls, I defer to your expertise.”

The Lord of Skulls shook his lavishly-adorned, impressively-bearded head. “My magic can save anything from destruction,” he said. “But only if something else is sacrificed. When everything is threatened, I have nothing with which to bargain.”

There was a long and fruitful silence. During this time, nobody entered the cave and said, “Unless you sacrifice someone from outside all of your universes. An intruder, brought here by a confluence of events beyond all our ken.”

“Unless,” said the Lord of Skulls after the silence had concluded, “We sacrifice someone from outside all of our universes. An intruder, brought here by a confluence of events beyond all our ken.”

“We don’t have anyone like that,” answered Carl. “Do you?”

“I do not,” confessed LoS.

“I do,” nobody said.

“But she does,” accused LoS, pointing at nobody in particular.

“I do?” asked the Commandrix.

“No, I do,” said no one.

“Ah.”

“What?” Carl was confused, and slightly turned on.

“One foreign being won’t do to save three worlds,” said LoS, addressing the nothingness. “We’ll need three, at least.”

“Our prisoner may have companions,” nothing answered. “My associate is working on tracking the energy signature that brought her here, which will enable them to track any others. In exchange for all three of your sacrifices, we will require the use of this spot to enable us to warp back to our own home.”

“Your own home, you say,” smirked the Commander. “So your associates are extrauniversal entities as well.”

“I never said that,” giggled nothing, and she was right—she hadn’t said anything at all, because she didn’t exist. “In any case, my associates represent an organization you don’t want on your bad side. You do this our way, and everyone’s happy.”

“Who are you talking to?” asked Carl.

“No one,” dismissed the Lord of Skulls. “Very well,” he told that no-one. “Bring us our three sacrifices and you may use our portal... although you should know, Carl’s part of it doesn’t work.”

“We don’t need your apparatus, just the space,” was not anybody’s reply. “We could also use your resources. Say, a hundred troops from each of your armies, plus enough aerial vehicles to transport them.”

“That is acceptable,” said the Commandrix. With a flick of the interface on her armor, Saga lit up one hundred soldiers’ helmets. “Everyone I just pinged, you now serve no one. Do not take this to mean that you are relieved from duty.” The soldiers, who were quicker on the uptake than Carl, simply saluted. “Pilots up front. Get to the hangars.”

“You one hundred,” called the Lord of Skulls, waving vaguely at one corner of his army. “You and your dragons work for nobody now. Make me proud.” The skeletons obediently set off towards the dragon cages.

Carl still had no idea what was going on, but felt obliged to follow suit. “You’re all free!” he explained to his army. “Go forth and live your—“

One of his soldiers shot Carl several times in the chest. A cheer went out among his army.

Skum, the Flawless, did not smile at this. The dragon-riding warlock skeletons and the genetically-modified air force would more than suit her needs. An FTLephonic transmission from PAX/TOM informed her that two more outsiders had been spotted in a building atop the back of a giant turtle.

Things were likely to get violent and chaotic. It would be fun for no one.

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

---

It is best, probably, not to contemplate the sky-turtle too closely, nor to think too much about the building even now teetering precariously on its back. The turtle was no more in possession of its rightful form than the hundreds of sapients swarming around and through its new burden, and to attempt to describe or take in the melange of conflicting elements that made up its new body was not simply confusing, but offputting. Looking at it with any critical thought made the eye water and the mind sore, so it was better simply to accept the shape of the turtle and ignore its constituent parts. The same went for the amalgamation of material that only loosely formed the shape of an office building now, and if it was true for the place, it was doubly so for its inhabitants.

Inside, on the ground floor, Clara hadn't even had time to pull herself free of Karel's limestone and amber grip before everything in front of her degenerated into chaos. Leaving aside entirely the structurally-impossible makeup of the room – and the dangerous buckling of those hundred-story walls that continued to spread as impossibility caught up with itself – the humanoid spirits were even within moments of their reincarnation locked into a frantic melee. Screaming with terror and newness and pain and rage, they battled seemingly mindlessly and instinctually. It was a very one-sided war on the turtle's back: only one or a handful of beings had come from the medieval or information-age world; by and large, everyone present was from the most advanced time-space-line. Seemingly, that should have meant the eradication of all other realities in short order; however, that short-sighted assumption neglected to take into account the blunt, bloody facts of a troll in the room.

At the monster's feet was the sundered glass carcass of an erstwhile princess; deprived of its prize and commanded by knowledge it didn't understand to destroy the futuristic interlopers, it bellowed and swung and corrupted with its touch, in vengeance as much as in the throes of survival instinct. A delicately articulated insectoid creature splintered and sprayed wood chips across the room as the troll rained hairy fists down across its torso, dying with a keening screech that made pained tears well up in all eyes presently capable of welling. A security droid launched bolts of stunning energy, but the beastly thing shrugged them off and battered the receptionist to death with his reinforcements. Clara shouted to end the madness, pulled as though to drag Karel to safety, but couldn't make herself heard or understood and couldn't steer her charge any more than she could direct a flood.

From a nearby hallway issued forth the serpentine or perhaps centipedoid coils of some unfathomable machine, its clawed limbs rendered more deadly than they'd ever been in its own reality by the caprices of chance reconstruction. It undulated about the lobby, herding the troll into a corner and rallying the sentient masses around it, clicking unintelligibly all the while. It fired several bolts of electricity at its target, although judging from the ones that arced wide or even simply grounded in other humanoids it was possible the electrical assault was entirely unintentional; the troll shouted in pain and the smell of burning hair and fish filled a room already awaft with conflicting odors of lilac and steel and salt. It retaliated by barreling shoulderfirst into the mechanical aggressor, snapping it in two only to have both halves wrap menacingly around its arms.

"K k-k-k-pt k-tpa k kt!" juddered the snakipede.

"Grauwlgh!" thundered the troll.

Sssssnkrak, groaned the machine's mostly-metallic frame.

Fighters and features and Karel and Clara were all pelted with coruscating shrapnel as gears and actuators pinged off the walls. The troll cut a swathe through the still-standing crowd of humans and humanish things, several limp robotic limbs still entangled in its matted coat.

"Enough!" shouted Clara again, this time throwing caution to the wind and winding a shroud of newly-freed mana around herself. She finally slipped free of Karel's unheeding grip and dashed across the floor, hoping to restrain or immobilize the troll. If she'd had the time to think, she'd have followed trains of thought that lead towards "If I have to kill it to save these people, I suppose I'll have to."; if she'd had time to think, she'd have had time to vastly overestimate her ability to deal with a rampaging troll no longer shackled to the limitations of a fleshy body.

She swung her cane, charged as it was with energy and enmeshed with a spell that would paralyze the monster; she let out a little "uff" as a shovellike fist slammed into her torso and catapulted her across the room; she couldn't even cry out as her spine snapped against a granite slab of wall. She sank to the floor, head cradled against her chest in a distressingly unnatural way, wimple sliding to cover her face like a shroud.

It was about this time that Aegis bounded into the room, chest puffed out and gauntlets raised aggressively before he'd even had a chance to take in the scene. As he glanced around, heroic expression wilting to one of shock, Clara's limp form rocketed past his face and collided with a wall with a sickening crunch.

He didn't even stop to see if she was hurt. If she had been, badly enough, it wouldn't matter because the game would move on; instead, he reasoned in that split-second decisions-without-thought way men in battle have, his priority was to make sure that troll didn't do anything worse. Even as he crossed the piecemeal battlefield that the lobby had become, he was swinging a wild haymaker straight towards the troll's face; naturally, it dodged out of the way, but not so much that it avoided the halberd that Aegis's gloves had become. Leaking unnamable ichors, it bellowed again and grabbed the weapon with both hands; before it could swing and batter the man's meaty shell against the same wall that had claimed Clara, the halberd shrank and contracted, becoming near-instantly a wickedly-spiked eveningstar. The troll relinquished its grip, both palms spewing fluids, and kicked viciously at Aegis's knees.

Not really having expecting such singleminded retaliation in the face of such grievous injuries and presumable pain, Aegis went down. Hard. He only just had the presence of mind to roll to the side without even waiting for the troll to swing first, which was all that saved him from a lightning-fast pulverizing strike that landed where his head had been. He probably couldn't have kept up his game of whack-a-cop for much longer – at least, not on the winning side – but it turned out he didn't have to: another spindly creature leapt onto the troll's back and began throttling it, and what was probably once a human under all that tar picked up a chunk of support beam and began enthusiastically bashing the anachronistic monster.

Much like their predecessors, they – and the dozen or so other futuredwellers that piled onto the medieval interloper – had little luck in damaging the behemoth, or indeed surviving past several moments of frantic attacking, but they certainly succeeded in distracting it long enough for Aegis to right himself and avoid a pasty death beneath monstrous troll fists. That probably wasn't much consolation to the beings that themselves were pulverized, and in fact they probably would have been quite disappointed by his survival, but Aegis at least was happy about it. This time wielding a jagged bastard sword, he charged back into the fray, circling around the troll's back and delivering several impressive slashes.

On the last swing, his blade became stuck in troll flesh or bone or who knows what the thing might be made of; he struggled for several critical moments to pull it out before a thought occurred to him. Once it had, he wondered why it never had before. Probably hadn't been all that necessary or legal for policework, but... Still. As the monster whirled around to face its freshest threat, still dismembering a woman that had latched onto it, Aegis gripped the hilt of his blade and concentrated. In seconds, it had morphed into a spear that he pushed deeper into the wound, then a large-headed warhammer that he didn't have to push at all.

The expansion was rather catastrophic, and even with the troll's already impressive physiology augmented by its unnatural construction, it couldn't survive having a large hunk of matter suddenly occupying quite a lot of where its torso ought to be.

The troll collapsed as Aegis was showered with an explosion of what might actually have been less awful than the result of such expansion in a normal living organism. He felt as though he was expected to have some sort of pithy bon mot ready. Well, it was Aegis – he didn't exactly think he needed a "bon mot". He was more of a one-liner man. He didn't have one of those either.

"Fuck."

He wiped something approaching motor oil off his chest, or tried to. All he really did was smear it in a more acceptable manner. When he looked up, he realized that he wasn't exactly getting cheers from the survivors he'd just so heroically rescued from a rampaging troll; in fact, when one of them lunged at him wielding what looked like a self-defense baton, he started to think that maybe it hadn't been such a great idea to rescue them in the first place. Well, that was just fine, wasn't it? Because he didn't have Clara's compunctions, and he did have a big sword, and they didn't have indestructible trollhide. He was just here to save her, and if the locals wanted to make a big, lethal deal out of things, well... He was just the guy good in a fight, wasn't he.

Once there was nothing else trying to kill him or trying to kill her or immediately threatening to set fire to everything around them, he strode back over to the spot she'd landed. She still hadn't... moved, or anything.

"Uh, Clara?"

She shuddered a bit, then slid a bit to one side.

"I think this is going to be a bit difficult."

---

"Well spit in my face and call me a Protestant, Non-Infringers! There's another one of 'er!"

Iota McTaggart's propensity and ability to state the obvious aside, there was indeed another Aph lying at the Non-Infringers' feet. It had fallen like it was just another bit of debris raining from the collapsing skyscrapers that littered the landscape, and indeed it seemed as though it should have shattered like most of them. Still, it laid on the ground peacefully and intactly enough, and made no move to attack as the first nymph had. Then again, this one hadn't had the chance to wake up, so who knew what it would do. PAX/Tom for one – or four – didn't seem to want to have a chance to find out, and the four of him collectively hefted a large chunk of masonry and moved as though to crush her with it.

"Stop!"

The Toms turned in unison, the same expression of exasperation playing across four faces. One of them spoke up. "Why? If she's anything like the other one, she'll be more trouble than she could possibly be worth if we leave her time to wake up."

"Well..." Crazyman Dragonarms waved his dragon arms crazily as he struggled to come up with a decent reason. "She might have intelligence we need! That's why we're keeping the first one, right?"

This time another Tom shook his head. "We don't need the same information twice. And anyway, it's getting less and less important to find out what's going on here and why, and more important to just escape it while we can."

"What an infringing attit–"

"Look, we all know you just want to have another exciting fight with her, Crazyman! And we can't afford to waste time with another one of your stupid honor duels. Literally everything is about to implode and kill literally everything. Including us!"

Dragonarms slumped for a moment, then rallied. "Well, if we can find out why, we can stop it instead of running. And that's much more–"

"No." The Toms shook their heads as one. "There is no reason to keep her alive."

No-one disagreed.

---

"Are you sure about this?"

"Yes." Clara's voice was somewhat muffled, but the fact that she was still talking was a good sign. "Just lay me out, and I can repair the damage."

"What do I need to..."

"Make sure my spine's in place, or close to it. And be gentle! The whole reason I don't want to do this myself is so I don't tear my skin open with a vertebra or something."

It was easier to look at the muck from the swamp and the sand from the desert and the rips and tears from fighting and the burns from her recently backfired spell and wonder why Clara cared at all about something apparently cosmetic than to look at the horrifying angles of her back and neck and wonder how she was caring about anything. Aegis still couldn't stop himself from asking, though.

"How, uh... If your back and neck are, uh... How are you still talking and stuff? I mean, even if you're..." he waved his hands vaguely, trailing off.

The nun would have shrugged if she weren't worried about working bone splinters through her organs.

"Oh, I don't really need my nervous system much, dear. If I really wanted, I could stand up right now. I just suspect my top half might fall off or tear itself to pieces if I do, and that's just dreadfully inconvenient. Besides, it is very helpful if my muscles have bone to push off of."

There was silence for a few moments. "You do know a bit about physiology, right?"

"I went to high school, yeah. Been a while."

"That should be enough. As long as you know generally how a back works, I can take care of the rest."

There were several more moments of silence.

"Whenever you're ready. Aegis?"

This... This wasn't anything like fighting.

Aegis steeled himself and took the woman's shoulder in one massive metal hand and a foot in the other.

"Slow and careful. Don't put too much of my weight on any spot at once."

He started to slide her forward.

"And don't pull my torso too taut."

He lifted a bit more and pulled again.

"And–"

"Clara?"

"Sorry, dear. I'll let you do what you need to."

There were a few complicated seconds with entirely too much lolling on her part for his comfort, but in the end Clara was prone on her back with her arms beside her, and as near as either of them could tell nothing was poking through anything. Perhaps she'd never needed to worry.

"You might want to find something else to pay attention to. This can make some people a bit... Uncomfortable."

Aegis trusted her to know her own business best, and nodded. He slipped out of the lobby, intent on reconnoitering the other rooms and halls on the first floor. That was something he knew how to do too, and if there were going to be more monstrosities made of cardboard and knives, he'd rather know about them before they knew about him. The floor wasn't particularly big, the building having been built more up than out, so his explorations didn't take particularly long. It helped that the doors were working now, or at least better than they had been when they'd been made of solid stone. Some still jammed or refused to open at all, but some didn't, and the ones that did were easier to break through. Aside from a handful of constructs that had seemingly been built into the office itself, which didn't provide much of a challenge, the place was pretty empty. It seemed as though the commotion of the troll fight had drawn everyone nearby to the scene, and Aegis had already dealt with everything there. There were occasional tableaus of broken bodies and broken furniture that suggested the troll hadn't been the only thing from outside the alien world, but the winners of those scuffles hadn't stuck around afterwards.

Without spirits hanging around to whisper intimations about the place or make him relieve his past or theirs or just possess him, there really wasn't much to see or do. He hoped his prowlings had eaten enough time, because he couldn't see how to extend them. He headed back to the main lobby. It'd be nice, he figured, if he didn't have to walk in on her in some kind of cocoon or turning inside-out or whatever, but it'd still be better than staring at a bunch of dead things and computers that didn't work because their circuitboards were made out of cheese. As he approached, the smell of rot and blood assaulted his nose, and his experience as a police officer automatic quickened his pace to a quiet run.

As it happened, he didn't walk in on anything more sinister or disturbing than Clara standing in the middle of the room, bent over the pile of mismatched detritus that could probably be generously termed "corpses". She looked up at him as he entered, gradually calming down and trying to hide his puzzlement at the lack of sources for the smells that had assaulted him moments ago. And were still quite present, in point of fact. Better to not worry about it, he figured.

She smiled wanly at him – although most things Clara did could be described as wanly – and picked her way across the floor, deliberately avoiding disturbing the once-ambulatory piles of detritus that the citizens of the frozen worlds had reincarnated as.

"Ah, you're back, good. Was anything happening nearby?"

Aegis shook his head. The handful of things he'd met didn't really qualify as worth mentioning.

"Nope. Seems like everyone around came here."

Clara looked back over a shoulder at the pileup of broken 'bodies'. Something seemed to be troubling her.

"That's probably good, then. Ah... What happened here, then? I couldn't really see much. You understand, I'm sure."

"Well, I mean, you were fighting that big thing, then it hit you and I came in, then I fought it."

"And the others?"
He shrugged. "It killed most of 'em. They really wanted it dead for some reason and just kept piling on instead of running."

"Most?"

"Yeah, most. The ones that were left just started attacking me right as soon as that thing died. It was probably a good thing it was here if they're all going to be that hostile. I don't know if I could have taken on stuff like that." He waved a hand at the remains of the destroyed robot that had given the troll the most trouble. "Actually, we should probably get out of here, or find somewhere safe nearby or something. They didn't hesitate to try to kill me at all, and you can hear the building collapsing as well as I can."

"Mmm."

It was unwelcome and confusing news to Clara. She'd assumed the battle had just been the result of a feral troll rampaging through the building, but if they citizens had immediately turned on their savior as soon as that threat was gone, was it reasonable to assume that the madness of being trapped for so long in a frozen timeline had turned them all into unthinking, terrified monsters even once they'd regained bodies? But what about–

"Karel!"

"What?"

Clara didn't respond, instead dropping to her knees and picking hurriedly through the corpses.

"What are you looking for?"

"A woman. She didn't attack me, or do anything violent at all."

"Huh. You sure?"

There was comparative quiet for several more moments while Clara continued her body hunt, which ended when she stood up and dusted herself futilely off.

"She's not here. Some of these people broke pretty thoroughly, but I think I'd recognize her composition." Well, I hope so. I only saw it for a few moments. "If you killed everyone that attacked you, and you didn't see anyone else on this floor, then she must not have suffered whatever made the rest of these poor souls violent."

"Oh. Okay."

"Which means there could be more, and they don't stand a chance against the ones that have become feral or hateful or whatever has befallen them."

"Ohhh. Yeah, huh."

Clara briefly considered calling the back the departed to find out what had driven them to such senseless violence, but... They'd spent gods only knew how long trapped between worlds, then their last moments of what could be called life locked in combat and ended by the sword. It was too disrespectful to them. Better to let them have their rest. She lapsed into thought as Aegis crossed his arms and leaned against a nearby wall.

After several moments of silence, he spoke up.

"Hey, Clara?"

She blinked a few times. "Uh, yes?"

"I just wanted... You know, wanted to say thanks."

"Oh. You're welcome." She narrowed her eyes, still pulling herself out of her reverie. "For what?"

"For saving me back there. When that ghost guy jumped me off the ledge."

"Oh. Oh! Right, right." It hadn't even occurred to her that an expression of gratitude might be necessary. "It was no trouble."

Judging from everything that had happened since then, Aegis reasoned, it certainly seemed to have been quite a lot of trouble indeed.

"And, uh, I also wanted to apologize. For thinking you were the spy and everything."

She shrugged and winced a little at the recollection of her own suspicions and their consequences. "Well, I can't blame you for that. And you certainly didn't make a mess of things the way I did when I was wrong."

"I'm not sure what–"

"Oh! Wait, sorry for interrupting, but hang on. I'm glad you reminded me, I need to tell you now in case something happens to me before I get another chance."

"Hmm?"

"I had a little time to... to think this round. And I–" It occurred to Clara that perhaps saying "my god spoke to me while I was trapped in the emptiness of the dark beyond as a million ghosts possessed me at once" wouldn't lend much credence to her statements to a man like Aegis. "I did some magic. I called on the souls of some of the people who died in this horrible game to find out what had really happened. In the swamp, and in the prison. Who the Monitor's spy really was, and what he wanted."

Aegis nodded, eyebrows raised, and let her continue.

"B had been telling the truth, it seems. He killed the shapeshifter in the swamp. The spy hasn't been with us for a number of rounds, but we've still been fighting each other out of suspicion and distrust. We're all we can rely on, and the Monitor made sure we couldn't."

"How do you know?"

"I watched it happen. I relieved it all with them."

"That sounds pretty heavy."

"Hmm. It needed to be done. We had to know who we could trust, and it seems we needn't be distrustful any more."

"You're saying we can trust Aph?"

---

No-one told the Non-Infringers that they'd need to capture at least three outsiders if they wanted to survive. They quickly gleaned from this lack of information that it was in their best interests to save the second nymph rather than destroy her; Crazyman Dragonarms made no effort to hide his pleasure, while PAX/Tom was similarly unwilling to mask his chagrin.

"If we're going to keep her around for whatever Skum wants, then there's not going to be any fighting her, understand?"

Iota McTaggart was already binding the nymph with a length of cord produced by XMO, but Crazyman Dragonarms simply stood with his arms crossed and a smug smile playing across his face. Tying the last one up had already worked so well, after all.

Another of Tom turned to no-one in particular. "What exactly is it we need them for, anyway?"

No-one responded. "We don't need them at all, but another group does. What we need from them is a nice pocket of thin space that's absolutely perfect for your escape."

"We'd be exchanging the lives of these people just to save ourselves?"

Skum didn't shrug, or in fact do anything at all. "You're free not to go through with it. These universes will collapse into... nothing."

PAX/Tom was silent, but Crazyman Dragonarms spoke up. "They'll die like us anyway if we don't. Besides, we don't even know what those other people want them for. What do they want them for, Skum?"

"They didn't say." No-one lied.

"And I'd swear by all the saints that the multiverse would be a much more dangerous place without us in it, eh?"

It was hard to argue that much. It still grated, but it seemed as though capturing the outsiders would be the only way out.

"What do we have to do?"

"You don't have to do anything. No-one's handling this." It wasn't very funny, and no-one laughed. "You all simply need to keep these two safe. There are two more outsiders up on that turtle."

As the Non-Infringers looked up at the skybound turtle and its crumbling cargo, they saw a number of shapes massing around it.

"They won't be there for long."

They returned their attentions to the ground and looked around, but no-one was gone.

Iota McTaggart and XMO moved away from the second nymph, their knotwork complete.

"Cerebral scans are muddled, but indicate that this one may regain consciousness soon," the robot offered. "What would you like to do to reduce her threat level?"

"I handled the other one last time, didn't I? We'll be fine."

"Aye," said Iota McTaggart, folding his hands behind his head. "Fortune favors the bold."

PAX/Tom and XMO were less confident about their ability to corral her indefinitely given how well Crazyman Dragonarms had "handled" the last time, especially if both of them woke up at once, but neither of them had any particularly great ideas for restraining them more thoroughly. Given the short timeframe, building an enclosure certainly wasn't viable. None of them had much experience dealing with magicians anyway; usually something presented itself, and there wasn't a lot of need to nullify the magic. As usual, it seemed as though any problems that needed to be solved were going to be solved head-on rather than prevented, and ultimately solved with the liberal application of fists and justice.

XMO's scans, though rather hindered by Aph's alien and arcane physiology, proved to be accurate shortly after Skum's non-departure. The second nymph struggled weakly in her bonds, eyes fluttering and half-syllables falling from her lips. The Non-Infringers instinctively took up battle positions around her, waiting to see what her first move would be.

As it happened, that first move was to sit bolt upright and screech "Worms! I told you to release me!"

Iota McTaggart raised an eyebrow. "I knew the lasses looked similar, but I never guessed they were the same person."

A quick glance back at the other prone figure confirmed that not only were there two separate nymphs, but the first one they'd captured was still unconscious.

"Perhaps this one was simply captured by another group before she fell from the sky, and is mistaking–"

"Enough chatter! I gave you the chance to release me and die, now die for your impertinence!"

If Aph had lost the ability to tell when she was being nonsensically megalomaniacal when she'd been merged with D'Neya, this half of her certainly hadn't gained it back when it had been split off from the whole. She rocketed up into the air with an undirected gust of wind, catching herself enough to hover awkwardly before she landed again and broke something. With no prelude, she began loosing torrents of fire and thunder at the Non-Infringers; much of it was harmlessly off-target, guided more by anger than skill, and the rest was largely quelled by Crazyman Dragonarms's water blasts, but as this Aph got used to her body and powers, it gradually became more threatening and accurate. This crazy pink woman might prove to be the greatest villain the Non-Infringers had ever faced!

---

"I honestly... I don't know what to think about Aph. Something happened to her to make her what she is now, but I don't know what it is. Or if we can fix it. I think we have to try, but I also think we have to be ready to accept that she may be so far gone that there's nothing of her left."

"Hum. Why?"

Clara looked rather affronted. "We have to fight back against the Monitor eventually, Aegis, and we'll need everyone we can get for that. But more importantly, she's a person! She was a good person too. We have to do everything we can for her, in case that poor person is still inside."

"I guess."

"It's our duty to ensure as few people suffer as a result of this battle as possible! It's basic human kindness! You'd never ask why I saved you when you jumped. It's the same thing."

Clara rather pointedly didn't mention that she hadn't been in control of her body or even aware of the situation at the time, but surely she'd have done the same thing if she had been. Aegis just shrugged again; as far as he was concerned, he'd left all his duty behind when he'd been dragged into this. All he had to do now was get out of it alive. Still, she had kind of a point. It probably was the right thing to do, but... When it came down to it, Aegis would probably pick "pragmatic" over "right".

Something occurred to the nun, and she slapped her forehead in frustration.

"I can't believe I let myself forget. We were just talking about it! I'm such a foolish old woman."

"Hmm?"

She gave the elevator a leery look and headed for the emergency stairs.

"Karel. We have to make sure she's alright."

Of course we did. Still, it was better than being alone in a world of magic and monsters without her experience and expertise. After that last outburst about duty and goodness, Aegis figured it was better just to go along with things rather than try to talk her out of it. Even if that meant climbing an already dangerously damaged building. In the sky. On a turtle.

"I hope she hasn't gone too far."

---

In point of fact, she'd gone up nearly forty-seven stories in the time it had taken for Aegis to fight the troll, Clara to heal herself, and the pair of them to chatter about their situation. She might have been able to go up more, but she'd been forced several times to duck out of sight by the proximity of some of the other things that were inhabiting the tower now. Most of them weren't hostile to her for whatever reason, but seeing what they'd become – and being reminded of what she must have become – was bad enough. Worse was when they came upon something from another world and set upon it. They looked like they could have been people she knew, people she ran into on the street, people she rubbed shoulders with on the tramways, but they fought like madmen or animals. It made her sick.

It was as she was hiding in an alcove, avoiding the gaze of things that shouldn't have been or things that might want to kill her, that she heard the thundering of footsteps descending from above. Most of the people wandering the tower had been mostly content to scour the floors they were on, so she hadn't seen many others on the actual stairwell; she certainly hadn't seen anyone madly tearing around it like whoever was coming down was. She hurriedly ducked out of the stairs, hiding behind a door and peeking between it and the jamb. As whatever it was ran past, she gasped and decided some things were more important than staying hidden, then cried out.

"Sora!"

The man skidded to a halt, nearly falling down a flight before catching his balance on a handrail.

"Karel?"

The pair of them ran into each other's arms, clinging desperately together as though they were the last people in the world. In some senses, perhaps they were.

"What are you doing here?"

"I came to save you. I had to know if you were alright!"

He tried to smile, but it was quickly drowned out by worry and fear. "We have to get out of here. This building won't last much longer."

"What about all the other..." She hesitated for a moment, then finished with "people?"

"If they want to stay in a collapsing building, then that's their deal. We've got to go!"

He pulled on her arm, but she hesitated a moment longer.

"What's that noise?"

Both of them looked up; there was a sound, steadily growing louder, coming from above. It certainly wasn't the sound of a skyscraper falling in on itself. Sora hadn't even consciously payed it any attention when he'd been fleeing, but now that Karel mentioned it...

Karel opened her mouth to speak, but it was drowned out by the sound that was suddenly a cacophony. Moments later, the walls were ripped off into space, and their vision was filled with nothing but white light. Moments after that, there was nothing for both of them.

---

"Why," asked a particularly rugged specimen of H. infantrius whose jaw screamed 'flyboy' even through his ultra-tech armor, "Are we doing this the long way? Scanners show they're on the ground floor."

He watched a group of warlocks magically disassemble another floor and cast aside the remains, watched a group of scout drones confirm the targets were not on this floor, and watched a crew of his men vaporize the skeletons' castoff as well as everything that had been hidden by it.

"Waste'a time."

Of course, no-one had been around to hear his question.

"This ensures that when we do reach them, they have nowhere to flee and nothing to hide behind. Everything is cleaner and safer this way. Why take risks?"

Of course, this wasn't really true. It was certainly accurate, and the pilot accepted the explanation, but it wasn't the truth. The truth was simply that watching the building vanish into nothing, watching its inhabitants vanish into nothing... It was all exhilarating. Even if these universes were to avoid oblivion, who was to say that everything in them had to?

As the infantrius soldier watched another flight of dragons – damned illogical things, there was no reason for a lizard that breathed fire – swoop in and relieve the skeletons with a troupe of fresh warlocks, he had to admit: at least they weren't wasting much time. Barely a few seconds on each floor. Maybe having to work with literal boneheaded wizards wasn't so bad.

---

Clara had taken only a handful of steps up the stairs, Aegis slowly and resignedly following behind, when they heard the noise that had heralded the end for Sora and Karel.

"The hell?"

"I don't... No idea."

"It's coming from above. You really think we ought to keep going up?"

"That's all the more reason to–"

With a flash, the building around them disintegrated. Enough of the stairwell to stop Clara falling and breaking an ankle remained, as did a few partitions and features of the building, but for the most part, it was all gone. More saliently, there were a pair of troop-transport vehicles, a fleet of what were unmistakably futuristic fighter crafts, and innumerable dragons with skeletons on their backs were hovering nearby.

"The fuck?!"

Without warning, armor-clad infantrymen began pouring out of the transporters, rappelling down tensile cables or simply diving towards the turtle and letting their inertial dampeners sort things out.

"Nonlethals only," chirped a little reminder in all their helmets. "This is a subdue and retrieve mission."

Of course, they knew that. But as lasers and magefire bore down on the terrified pair on the remaining stairwell, they also reflected that it was much more interesting if the targets didn't.

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

---

She finally awoke from her nightmare.

The first sounds she heard were the sounds of battle raging around her; the screams of the dying and of those whose bodies had simply been malformed by the haphazard reconstruction of the worlds. The first thing she saw was battle; mismatched monsters desperately fighting for survival. Within moments something had died, a man with patches of brass dotted across pale scaly skin, who had probably been human not so long ago. A splash of whatever passed for blood in these insane incompatible worlds landed not too far from her face and she felt the slightest tickle of a familiar emotion building in the back of her mind; desperately she pushed it down.

She’d dreamed that she was a nymph called Aph and of all the things that she had done; all of the people she had loved and lost and who she had killed, whether in anger or pain or just for the sheer pleasure she would take from it. She knew for a fact that if she so much as closed her eyes it would all rise up to meet her; the faces of the dead and the dying and of what she had done to them. But what was worse than the images of horror that she couldn’t seem to shake was the emotion that she had felt. She’d felt it all, the joy of love and the bitter sting of denial, the all consuming rage that had sublimated sense and of course the rapture of ending the life of another. At some level she knew that she hadn’t just dreamed of Aph, but that she had been her, that all that she had done, equally she had done. What perhaps scared her more than anything else was that she knew she still had the capacity to feel these emotions; emotions so strong that they would consume her whole and burn away the very essence of what she was, leaving her as she had been, a pathetic being acting only on the purest most primal of emotions, all but incapable of reason and thought.

The world into which she had awakened might have been described as hellish or horrifying by another, but to her it was a golden shining opportunity; a once in a lifetime chance to be her own person.

There was a familiar screech from somewhere behind her, followed by a cry of: “Stop this foolishness! Stand still you insignificant insects! Stand still and accept your inevitable doom!” The voice was unmistakably her own, or rather it was Aph’s, though such a distinction was meaningless to anyone who wasn’t her. At first she thought that she had somehow without noticing relapsed into emotion and become Aph once again, it was a full minute before she began to realise that her body was still under her control and that that outburst had never passed her lips.

Which, when she thought about it, was something that left her confused. If Aph was someone else, then she couldn’t be Aph, and while yes she’d just spent a good number of minutes assuring herself of that fact but if she really wasn’t Aph then who was she? A glance at her body confirmed that she was a nymph and an attempt to move her arms confirmed that she was tied in the way she remembered Aph being tied. She might have mused further on her identity but her train of thought was interrupted by the sudden appearance of an irate leprechaun crashing heavily to the ground just in front of her.

“Ugh.” Iota grumbled to himself. “I think the damned thing’s got buggered up.” While the battle still raged on behind them Iota spent a good minute fiddling with an intricate golden pistol, before casually tossing it aside. It was then that he noticed her, or rather that he noticed that she was awake and looking at him. “Well shit.” He scrabbled to his feet and then shouted to the others: “I think we got a problem; this one’s woken up!” She felt the heat as a fireball was thrown just over her prone body. It just missed Iota by a hair’s breadth and he seemed to forget about her lying there in front of him as without so much as flinching he charged back into the fray.

She just lay there; her hands and feet bound together with interdimensional twine. Of course she knew that this bondage was no impediment to her movement; she just didn’t want to move. She didn’t want to exist with the knowledge of the things she had done and maybe if she just lay here long enough that would be the case. But despair was just another emotion to drown in and lose herself once again. Momentarily she gathered up the effort to roll herself onto her other side where she saw the battle being waged against her former self.

The Non-Infringers themselves looked relatively unharmed though the same could not be said for the miscellaneous and mismatched buildings that had bordered this street. A couple, already weakened by the reconstruction of the worlds, had been reduced to rubble. Those that still stood were either ablaze or missing chunks of their structure and looking like they would not be standing much longer; as though a particularly stiff breeze might finish the job Aph had started. The Non-Infringers themselves looked more or less unharmed. Iota was up close, dancing around the nymph with his fists raised before him, just looking for an opportunity to punch her lights out. Crazyman Dragonarms was standing back, his misshapen arm raised threateningly, but only embers emerged from the vent on his palm. He looked exhausted, his hair slick with sweat. XMO was doing his best to try to stem the tide of destruction, but he was fighting a losing battle. As she watched he sucked up the flames from a burning building, but pieces shifted and moments later it was crumbling before him. PAX/Tom were huddled together; whatever they were doing she couldn’t tell from where she lay.

And of course there was Aph. She hovered there, her arms and legs still bound, her hair whipping up around her in the powerful winds of her own rage. Her eyes were filled with fury at the pathetic insects that would not die. But most noticeably about her there was a hole in her chest the size of a fist leaking peals of pale amethyst mana which Aph didn’t even seem to have noticed.

She, the she that is not Aph in this instance, immediately regretted turning to see the fight. She felt revulsion to her core as she looked at her former self, as if a thick black bile was filling the gut she didn’t have, and the fog of rage began to descend upon her. All of her self-hatred, all of the regret and the disgust she felt for her actions had found an outlet; someone else that could be blamed and could be punished. The part of her that wanted to stay in control, that just wanted to be her, was fading away, sublimated by her own hatred. She slowly rose from the floor as lightning began to course through her skin. Aph turned and stared bewilderedly at her double.

“What… are…?” Aph’s usual certainty had faded from her voice, but after a moment she found a more familiar emotion to deal with this development. “Imposter!” she yelled as she summoned up a blast of ice. Not-Aph lashed out with a bolt of lightning, shattering the blast in mid-air, but before she could retaliate Aph was gone. All that was left was amethyst smoke hanging in the air in roughly the same shape as the person it had just been.

“XMO!” The Paxes yelled in unison. Between them they were holding some enormous weapon that looked like it had been constructed of whatever junk they had been able to scavenge at a moment’s notice (which given the state of the worlds made for quite a diverse collection of parts). XMO had at that moment been attempting to use a pile of rubble to support a particularly unsteady looking building; he glanced towards the Toms and to where Aph had been moments before. “Blow her away, so she can’t congeal back together again.” XMO did just that.

The nymph who was decidedly Not-Aph did not react. She stared at the Non-Infringers in something approximating shock. On the one hand that part of her that she had hated was dead, but on the other she had been denied the opportunity to kill it herself. The lightning crackling through her body only got more intense at points sparking off and earthing itself in nearby buildings.

“Any chance of a second blast from that death cannon?” Crazyman Dragonarms yelled back to PAX/Tom.

“Unfortunately, no.” They replied. “It’ll probably need half an hour or so to recharge.”

“Ah well then.” Iota mused. “Round Two ah guess.” But before the words were even out of his mouth the second nymph had collapsed, just as suddenly as the first had been reduced to smoke. “Eh, nevermind.”

It was touch and go for a minute, but ultimately the absence of Aph had allowed her to regain enough of a hold on herself to push down the anger she’d felt at being unable to slay her personally. And with that fury gone her magic ebbed away once again, leaving her lying in an undignified heap.

“Nice work Non-Infringers.” XMO said, apparently satisfied that his impromptu restoration work was Good Enough to offset the damage their battle had caused. “But time is of the essence. We’ll need to hurry if we intend to arrive Just In The Nick Of Time. Iota we’re going to need you to lead the way, assuming that you haven’t exhausted your supernatural supplies of luck,”

“No worries there.” Iota replied with a grin.

“Dragonarms you get the girl,” XMO continued, “and PAX it would probably be a good idea to bring that Miniature Atomic Destablization Cannon with you, just in case.”

Crazyman grumbled to himself as he went to grab the other nymph, but stopped short when he realised she was still conscious. “Hold up, she’s still awake.”

“Give her a clout on the back of the head ought ta sort that out.” Iota suggested. XMO and the Paxes seemed pretty nonplussed.

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.” She muttered, half to herself.

“Or what? You’ll smite me down for disrespecting you?” Crazyman replied half-sarcastically. She said nothing. It wasn’t a question that seemed worth the effort of replying to. “Who are you anyway?” Crazyman asked. He wasn’t really the type of person that anyone would call emotional or intuitive, but he knew that something had changed. There was something almost resembling sadness in her eyes.

“I dunno.” She replied indifferently. Crazyman glanced around to see that the others weren’t waiting for him and picked her up, far more gently than he would have done with Aph.

“I mean, what’s your name?” He asked.

“I don’t have one.” She said. She couldn’t bear going by the name of the thing she hated the most and picking a new name was impossible; everything in her life was tied back to Aph, anything she chose would remind her of her, would link her to her forever.

They walked for a second in silence before Crazyman made a suggestion. “What about Pink?” He asked. “Pink’s a nice name.”

“That’s a terrible name.” She replied.

Crazyman scowled for a second, it didn’t seem all that terrible a name from where he stood. “How about Cerise?” He tried again.

There was a pause that could potentially have been described as thoughtful.

"Okay." Cerise conceded.

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

---

”This doesn’t feel right,” remarked Crazyman Dragonarms, finishing the knot.

“It’s tight,” agreed Cerise, who didn’t understand why they were bothering tying her up anyway.

”Shut up,” Dragonarms snapped, with a gruffness that leaned precariously towards affection. “All I’m saying is, this ‘Lord of Skulls’ guy doesn’t seem like the type we want to make our friend.”

No one pointed out the sobering truth: “Well, without him and the commandrix, we don’t have the event nexus. Without the event nexus, you’re all stuck here.”

“Sacrificing three individuals for the fate of three worlds is, mathematically, the moral action!” said XMO. “The circumstances are, indeed, regrettable, but the most effective solutions allow room for regret!”

“While of course we agree with my companion the Robot Who Sucks,” offered a member of PAX/TOM, “There is a reason why the Non-Infringers squad is constructed of two purely rational, unfeeling entities and two emotionally compromised mavericks. A more holistic analysis of this course of action may be in order. Iota, can you confirm your colleague’s sentiment that ‘this doesn’t feel right?’”

The leprechaun opened his mouth to speak when a dragon flew in to the portal chamber. Two skeletons tossed the limp bodies of Aegis and Clara to the ground next to the chair in which Cerise was tied.

“We can talk around them, I think,” said no one. “No ears.”

Iota sighed. “I confirm the blasted sentiment,” he confessed. “Necromancer type gives me the willies. Plus, we’ve gotten terribly... infringe-y, haven’t we?”

“’Infringent,’” corrected XMO. “Or ‘infrung,’ depending on dialect.”

Cerise surveyed the two unconscious figures on the ground. “I think you’re doing the right thing,” she offered.

Dragonarms snorted. “I didn’t give you a name just so you could give it away at the first opportunity, Cerise. Grow yourself a will to live.”

Cerise grew contemplative.

“In any case, there’s no need for us to see this through,” said a PAX/TOM. “We should try to get in contact with base sooner rather than later. I think we have little enough reality here that we can punch through to the Tangent.”

“Very well,” said XMO. “Yogic transdimensional bellows deploy.” XMO began to hyperventilate, his massive robot lungs tearing at the fabric of the tri-universe at the seams. PAX/TOM set their equipment up in front of XMO—big chrome antenna-laden monstrosities dotted with multicolored buttons—while Iota crossed his fingers. Something began to beep, as though from a distance.

“I feel like we’re still not finished here,” said Dragonarms. “Cerise, you still haven’t told us how you wound up here.”

”The pursuit of knowledge, being the highest of all goals, is forced to bow to the low,” dismissed a spare PAX/TOM. “Our survival takes precedence. Cerise, you may relay your story if you feel so inclined.”

Cerise sighed and shrugged. ”We, um... There’s someone... something called the Monitor. He’s really powerful. He took eight people and has been making u—making them fight in what I think have all been different worlds. I don’t know why.”

Crazyman Dragonarms and Iota exchanged a glance. “The three of you are all from different universes, then?” asked Dragonarms.

”I think so,” nodded Cerise. ”Her magic works different from what I know. And D’Neya...” The nymph shuddered against her restraints. ”There was someone else involved, too. I think there are more than one of these battles.”

Iota nodded. ”’T may be so,” he said. “We’ve heard... rumors. Yer story is the first confirmation we’ve heard that these things are truly goin’ on.”

“Which makes it all the more imperative that we conduct this data to the Tangent. Mr. Dragonarms, if you please.” A PAX/TOM separate from the one who was speaking held out a long, thick steel cable for Crazyman to clamp his namesake hands down on. Once the dragons bit, a spark shot out, and the transponders whirred to life, marking the iterations of its S.O.S. beacon with a rhythmic beeping.

The air around XMO began to swirl, resolving itself into a holographic image from the Non-Infringers “home base.” Cerise contemplated the cables tying her to her chair. Most of Aph’s chains had been self-forged, and she had borne them happily. Was she any different?

A young woman’s giant head resolved itself around the Non-Infringers. “Comms here,” she asked. “What’s your situation?”

“Non-Infringer squad in dire need o’ extraction,” explained Iota McTaggart. “An’ I’m afraid this is one o’ those ‘ask questions in the debrief’ situations, there bein’ a transuniversal fission event imminent an’ all.”

“Roger. Please stand by.” The giant head in the air looked over at something offscreen for a few seconds. Cerise heard several more beeps. “Your request has been processed and approved,” confirmed Comms, turning back to the Non-Infringers. “Extraction in five seconds.”

The Non-Infringers huddled around the transponders. Iota nodded at Cerise. “We can’t promise we can do anything to help ye, but we’ll look into yer ‘battle’ situation,” he swore before vanishing into a singularity. Where the Non-Infringers had been, nothing remained.

Less than two minutes later, a beak-toothed and yellow-nosed human dressed in robes of fur and bone entered the chamber, escorted by an honor guard of skeletons. Cerise, feeling a sudden need to avoid confrontation, pretended to be asleep. “Ah, good,” he cackled. “The sacrifices have arrived.”

“And the other party has already taken what they needed and departed,” added an intricately armored woman, her eyes glued to a screen on her forearm. “While you do your thing, I’m going to see if I can’t figure out how they escaped. It’s possible we’ve fallen into the trap of thinking too small. Why conquer three universes when you can conquer a billion?”

The Lord of Skulls’ skeletons began to arrange candles and incense around the three prisoners. The necromancer turned to Clara and scrutinized her closely. “Hang on,” he said. “We’ve been swindled! This one’s already dead!”

“Medic,” called the Commandrix, snapping her fingers absently.

An infantrius ran over to Clara and took out a small black device, touching it to her skin. “She’s dead alright,” the soldier confirmed. “That said:”

He slapped Clara. The nun awoke, sputtering. ”Why, I never—“

”Not traditionally dead, I’ll admit,” the medic pointed out helpfully.

”What do you people want from us? I swear, it’s one thing and then another.”

”Undead,” sneered the Lord of Skulls. “If anyone should have seen that coming, it’s me.”

“That’s not sufficient for you?” asked the Commandrix.

“Not by a long shot. I require a sacrifice of three lives. Three beating hearts, not just six flapping gums.”

”A ritual sacrifice, is it?” Clara rolled her eyes. ”Well, there you go. It won’t work. So let us go and find some other lives to toy with.”

Commandrix Saga examined Clara. “Well, she’s well-preserved,” she remarked. “We should be able to fix her up for you.”

”You should be able to what now?” demanded Clara.

”We set her up, you knock her down. Beating heart, breathing lungs, the works. Give us five minutes in the medical tent.”

Clara began to panic. ”You will do no such thing!”

”It’ll need to be a true reanimation, mind,” warned the Lord of Skulls. “No cursed half-lives, no touch of the grave, no vampirism. I need warm flesh.”

“Only the best medical science has to offer,” confirmed the Commandrix. “The only problem might be that this sort of procedure has only ever been performed on cadavers that are, you know, properly dead. But that’s easily sorted out, I imagine.”

”Everyone keep your hands off me!” shouted the necropolitan. ”I won’t have you killing me only to bring me to life only to kill me again! I’ve done all the dying I intend to do for the time being!”

Her shouting brought Aegis to consciousness in time to watch helplessly from his chair as the homo infantrius dragged Clara kicking and screaming into the depths of their forces. Aegis made no attempt to be subtle. He twisted his gloves into something unwieldy enough to snap the cables around his wrists (a particularly ornamental hammer) and then got a little overexcited and ended up breaking the entire chair. “CLARA!” he shouted as he rose, as though that would do anything.

The Lord of Skulls turned to view his third and (to his gaze) least impressive captive. “Hmmph,” he said. “Those gloves will look good on my mantle once I’m back home.” He drew a sword possessed of a property that could only be described by saying the words “cold” and “dark” at the same time and then throwing in the word “smoldering” for good measure afterwards. “Now, boy,” continued the sorcerer, “I’ll forgive that outburst if you sit back down quietly and wait for your turn to die.” When Aegis did not comply with this directive, he snorted and added, “If it helps, you’ll be saving the world.”

Aegis was silent for a moment. How would any of this save the world? Then he understood. “Oh, you mean this world?” he asked. He looked around for a moment. “Yeah, that doesn’t help.”

He turned one of his gloves into a whirling flail and whipped it at the Lord of Skulls’ knee. The colddark sword swung down to intercept, and upon touching the sword, the flail simply flopped to the ground, losing all its energy. “An impressive artifice,” said the Lord of Skulls, signaling for his skeletons to stand back. “But you haven’t so much of an ounce of magic in your body, and I’m the most powerful wizard in seven generations. This is not going to end well for you.”

Cerise kept her eyes closed.

The first lightning bolt—a black and gangly thing, like a very confused stick insect falling out of the ceiling—glanced off of Aegis’ shield and dispersed into the walls. The second one caught him in the shoulder, the dark energy sending him into spasms, but he remained standing.

The necromancer then summoned a wall of black fire around the young man’s feet, forcing him to step back. Aegis fashioned one glove into a bow and another into an arrow, backing up as the flames dogged his steps.

A steel bow with a steel bowstring is not the most efficient delivery device for steel arrows, but Aegis had had a good amount of practice with it. The arrow shot through the flames into the Lord of Skulls’ side, breaking the sorcerer’s concentration enough to dispel the flames. “Get him!” shouted the necromancer to his skeletons, who, fearing for their master’s safety, obliged readily. Aegis ran, refashioning his remaining glove into a longsword, as the skeletons’ crude spells rained all around him, battering him with hail and spiderwebs and grabbing disembodied hands.

He considered killing the dragon first, then using its body for cover, but he needed chaos if he wanted the slightest chance of surviving, and the beast could serve him better in that area if it were alive. He jumped on its upper jaw, covering one of its eyes with each hand, clamping its mouth shut with his legs. The monster growled and thrashed about, shattering a few skeletons and buying Aegis a bit of time.

Cerise opened her eyes. She sat and half-interestedly watched as the wounded Lord of Skulls tore the arrow out of his body and tossed it to the ground, where it turned back into a gauntlet. The necromancer then waved a hand over his wound, depositing a cluster of anti-maggots who diligently began to repair the flesh, binding the wound with silk and pus. Once he caught his breath, he turned towards Aegis and the dragon and began to chant.

Aegis quickly lost all sense of direction as the dragon whipped its neck around, but when he thought he felt it rear up on its hindlegs, he dismounted, falling glove-first onto its back. He then turned his glove into a serrated pick and drove it into the dragon’s wing, causing it to involuntarily flap and drive itself around in circles. The skeletons kept their distance warily, throwing spears.

Cerise’s bindings fell to the floor.

For a moment the nymph thought this had been the result of some unconscious piece of magic on her own part, some secret deep-held desire to escape; then a voice didn’t whisper in her ear, “It doesn’t seem fair that you should miss the party, Cerise.” The voice was neither mocking nor sympathetic. “Now, go help your friend.”

A torrent of magical energy was swirling around the Lord of Skulls, growing with every syllable he fed it. Aegis was too caught up wrangling the dragon to notice the danger. Cerise simply stared at the nothing before her, which stared back with piercing eyes, constantly judging. The nymph wondered if this was what it was like to have a mother.

Skum, the Flawless, didn’t sigh dejectedly, nor did she bodily pull Cerise out of her chair, stuff a dagger into the nymph’s hand, or toss her at the Lord of Skulls. One might conclude therefore that Cerise was acting entirely upon her own design when she lashed out instinctively, driving the dagger into the Lord of Skulls’ back.

The half-uttered spell backfired, obliterating the necromancer’s head and searing Cerise’s hair. The nymph dropped to the floor as the Lord of Skulls fell on top of her, protecting her from the brunt of the blast.

There was a sense of exhalation, like Death was unlacing a particularly uncomfortable corset. The skeletons, deprived of their master, dropped to the floor. Aegis ran up to the dragon’s neck and hacked its head off with four or five swings of his greatsword.

Cerise stood awkwardly by as the young warrior dropped off the dragon and moved to pick up his other gauntlet. He nodded in her direction. “Did you do that?”

“Yes,” <font color="red">said Cerise, feeling that ‘No’ would be slightly more dishonest.

Aegis put on the gauntlet. “So are you, like... okay now?” he asked her.

Cerise had to consider this question only briefly. “No,” she concluded. </font> “Why? Are you?”

Aegis shrugged. “I guess not.” He glanced over to where Clara had gone. “I need to go save Clara. Are you going to help?”

“No.” Cerise looked down on the Lord of Skulls’ corpse.

“Alright, well,” said Aegis, jogging off hands-first with his usual determined, apelike gait. “You try and work things out.”

Cerise turned to nobody. “Why did you do that?” she asked.

Nobody smirked. “I didn’t,” she didn’t say.

”You’re stuck here with us, now, aren’t you? You can’t get back to your home base.”

Nobody shook her head. “On the contrary, Cerise,” she didn’t explain. “I’m already not there.”

* * * * *

The Tangent was mostly beige. Brightly-colored lines of paint signaled the roots to the bridge, to the teleportation zone, to the interstitial escape pods, to the barracks, and the uniforms were similarly garish, with miniskirts and shiny belts and glittering badges with an outer-space motif. One’s eye was drawn, however, to the beigeness of the place at large, an endless expanse of decorative vacuum separating the few splashes of color.

This aspect of the Tangent’s interior mirrored its outside, for the grand snowflake-shaped pandimensional spacetime station that was the Non-Infringers’ home base was locked in the Multiversal Interstice, touching upon each of a million realities in exactly one point. If there were any windows in the Tangent they would look out into a nothingness so profoundly nothing that it lacked even a definite color—it would be just as beige was it would be black, or maybe the yellow-red strobe of closed eyes. And still it would not be empty. Profound nothingnesses caressed the hull of the Tangent, some deliberately watching and waiting, others simply drawn unconsciously to the presence of such an exotic thing as Something.

Skum had never been one of these extremophiles, or if she was, she wouldn’t admit it. Her nothingness was not a property of physics but something more existential, like a held breath, like an old widower waking up in his bed to find himself alone. Some had theorized she had been created in the thoughts of children whose mothers had left the room, a manifestation of the profound absence brought on by their lack of object permanence. Others said she was created by a secret cabal of advertisers, a tangible lack that was the basis of all want, a bogeywoman that could only be dispelled by endless consumption. Others had pointed out, smugly and unhelpfully, that she wasn’t anything at all.

Owing to the dangers of allowing a non-extant being, of interstitial origin or otherwise, aboard the Tangent, Skum was obliged to wear a cohesion suit while on base. The suit was of her own design, and eschewed the normal spangly-red-or-blue dress code in favor of a sleek full-body black outline of womanly form.

If she had to exist, she was going to make damn sure people noticed her.

The woman in black walked along the blue painted line in the beige spacetime station.

“Where have you been?” asked Crazyman Dragonarms when Skum entered the debriefing room.

“Nowhere,” shot Skum, her voice a bit more articulate through the constraints of the suit but still ringing with a certain hollowness that shut down all potential rebuke.

“Just have a seat,” said the only other female in the room, an austere bebuzzcutted human redhead, her uniform decked all up and down the right side with badges, awards and other signs of rank. This was Admiral Fair-Use, commanding officer aboard the Tangent and leader of the Non-Infringers. If she answered to anybody, she kept quiet about it. “Skum, you can confirm everything they’re telling me? You caught a transuniversal battle in mid-stream?”

Skum nodded. “Overseen by something that calls itself ‘the Monitor.’ Dropped three souls into a potential reality-collapse site just to see what happened.”

Fair-Use pressed a finger to a spot right above one eyebrow. “Is this Monitor a player?”

“Not o’ any game we know,” remarked Iota.

The admiral nodded. “We’ll watch those universes closely. Once this bout ends we should be able to track the teleportation signature and hopefully get a drop on this guy.”

“If the universes are still there at the time,” pointed out Skum. “Last I saw, attempts to head off the reality-collapse situation had... gone south.”

“Was that deliberate, do you think?” asked Crazyman Dragonarms. “The second we catch wind of these matches, the crime scene is on the verge of imploding. Can we send in another squad in time to stop it?”

“I’m not sending any more of my people into that deathtrap,” asserted Fair-Use. “In fact, retreat the Tangent from the collapse site. We’ve lost this battle.”

“Bless the ‘oly causal matrix we all got home when we did!” affirmed Iota.

“So what’s our next move?” asked Dragonarms. “Scour the entire multiverse for missing person reports?”

“What about missing universe reports?” asked one of PAX/TOM. “Whoever’s running these things clearly aren’t being subtle about it. They’ve probably just left a signature so big we need to pull back a little to see it.”

“PAX/TOM, you work with Quantitative Analysis to try and draw some patterns,” commanded Fair-Use. “The rest of you, try to work out a way to defeat something who can harness the energy required to host one of these things.”

“No foe can stand against the might of a Non-Infringers squad!” droned XMO. “However, there are certain allies we may be able to bring in to ensure our victory.”

“There’s also the question of ‘why,’” pointed out Dragonarms. “What does ‘the Monitor’ get out of forcing a bunch of curiosities to fight each other? Is he just bored?”

“He could have had any number of reasons for wanting to send a team into the frozen tri-universe,” answered Skum. “The battle could just be a cover.”

“On t’other hand, boredom is a pow’rful motivator,” added Iota. “Anyone with the power needed t’ pull this sort o’ thing off is a child with too big a toy chest.”

“If the Monitor is some sort of divinity,” said Crazyarms, “It could be playing a game out on a metaphorical level. In that case, you need to think about who it’s playing against.”

The table went silent. Iota wheezed. “Well, I’m bushed,” he said. “If ye don’t mind, Admiral, I plan t’ find meself an Ireland an’ sleep off the slings an’ arrows.”

Fair-Use nodded. “Everyone get some rest. You’ve earned it. But you’re back here tomorrow at dawn-standard minus fifteen. Tomorrow we’re at war.”

The Non-Infringers departed—Crazyman Dragonarms to his trophy room, PAX/TOM to their bunkbeds, XMO to go find a recharge outlet, and Iota to the green fields of any one of a hundred thousand Irelands. Skum headed off, too, though where she goes when nobody’s looking, nobody is certain.

Admiral Fair-Use retreated to her own quarters. Battle plans leapt through her mind like sheep, lulling her to sleep.

* * * * *

Clara liked things to be neat, if possible. Obviously she was used to handling a little bit of gooey stuff, if the circumstances required it, but her preferred state was one in which everything was in its place and the dust kept to the corners where it wouldn’t offend anyone.

Commandrix Saga’s medical tent was not neat; it was clinical. The air was thick with sanitizing agents and every surface shone a sharp white that promised to burn any inconvenient microorganism away upon context. There were a lot of transparent blue bags full of transparent blue substances and the sharp metal things only showed themselves in flashes, under tarps or passing by on hovering trolleys. This wasn’t a place of order so much as it was a potential mess, a honeypot to attract blood and death.

Clara, despite her warm relationship with death, was horrified by the place. There was something horribly unnatural about it. Could they truly restore her to life? True life? What kind of horrid civilization could wield that sort of power? The idea was abhorrent to Clara. Her undeath was her connection to her God as well as the source of her continued existence. It was, in short, her way of keeping things neat.

The soldiers lay Clara down on a table. “So,” said a doctor, standing over her. “We need to terminate her... vestige state... without damaging the corpse so much as to hinder the reanimation process. Correct?”

“Correct,” confirmed the Commandrix.

“No heartbeat, no respiration, most vital organs are dormant, neural activity is faint, but there,” said a nurse, reading off a glowing clipboard.

The doctor turned to the Commandrix. “She responded to a stun charge before, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Well, then, disrupting the nervous patterns is the way to go. Someone get me a neuroelectrical interface with all the safeties turned off.”

“Roger,” said the nurse.

“You’ve brought us quite the case here, Commandrix,” said the doctor. “I have to admit I’m a little excited. Someone stop her chanting!”

Before Clara could get the incantation out, an orderly tossed a crude gag inside her mouth. The nun screamed through the gag, losing her patience with these people utterly. They were graverobbers and defilers; their vain pursuit of rational answers to spiritual problems was an affront to every deity in the cosmos. Clara tried not to think about the desecration of her corpse by their medicine. She had heard Aegis shouting for her. He would come.

Everyone lost a second or two.

When the universe came back online, it was showing some signs of wear and tear. The colors were bleeding together, and the lines were blurred. The general trinity nature of this place was beginning to take its toll. “Shit,” cursed the Commandrix. “We need to work fast.”

“Here’s the NEI,” said the nurse, returning with the buzzing device that would kill Clara. A slight box of metal and wiring on wheels, it was everything Clara despised—its numerology was all zeros and decimals, and the instruction manual tucked into its base was thirty pages of pale blue ink on pale yellow paper. The handful of switches and dials that operated it were labeled by angular white engravings, and Clara looked at it and tried not to think, They’re going to turn my brain off with this thing. It was a graceless oblivion, devoid of meaning, the sort for which Schleier apologizes.

In barged Aegis, as promised. He didn’t look good. Parts of him were still twitching from stun charges, and most of the rest of him was covered in blood, either his or others’. Even his weapon seemed somewhat beaten up, bits of its current blood-spattered halberd shape crawling mischievously up its owners hand as though confused or underfed.

“Keep your hands off her,” he wheezed.

“Gloves, actually,” pointed out a doctor, pointing to the layer of sinister-looking rubber covering his hands. “That man is a potential contaminant. Get him out of here.”

“Done,” said the Commandrix. She and her infantrius soldiers rushed Aegis from all sides, weapons set to Cripple. Aegis charged. The doctor held Clara’s head still. Out of the corner of her eye she watched a man’s head fly across the room and damage some sensitive equipment. The doctor hooked a cable to her ear.

Reality blinked again, for what felt like longer this time.

The Commandrix returned to the universe to find that everything in it was rather worse off, except for Aegis and Clara. Her armor was melting. Everyone else was dead—most from Aegis’ whirling halberd, one from a brain aneurysm.

She raised her sidearm and fired. The charge left her gun, wound itself into a sphere, and hung inert in the air.

Aegis turned his weapon into a morningstar and brought it down upon her head. In this instance, reality conformed more or less to the expectations of what the Commandrix expected would happen, given a morningstar and her head. The sphere of energy changed colors several times and then vanished.

Clara felt a weight on her chest as the doctor dropped dead on the table, a very heavy crossbow bolt having pierced his eye. Aegis tossed the body aside and the bolt reintegrated itself into his glove. He then went about untying Clara, supporting his weight on his elbows. The nun couldn’t tell if his legs were broken or if the floor was just turning to jelly or something. Either way, there was cause to worry.

Clara ripped out her gag and sat up on the table, surveying the mess around her. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like up on the surface. “Clara,” said Aegis. “If the world dies while we’re in it, we all die.”

”I know,” said Clara.

“And I’m dying anyway.”

Clara opened her mouth to make some argument against Aegis’ proposed course of action, but could come up with nothing. The boy’s nobility rendered her silent.

The table began to float.

Aegis, breathing heavily through a cracked lung, placed one glove to each of his temples. “Thanks for helping me through this,” he said. “And you were right about Aph. I think we might be able to trust her now.”

The gloves turned into swords. Clara felt something like a tug on her collar.

About forty seconds later, three universes were rent asunder. Matter ceased to be matter, and energy ceased to be energy. Graphed a certain way, the data of what happened in the three formerly-frozen worlds could have been rendered to look like an implosion, though that wasn’t entirely accurate.

Far away, four men who were one man took measurements, attempting to interpose numbers between themselves and the atrocity.

In the absence of three universes, the exotic nothingnesses began to swirl into being, squealing silently. A new branch of Interstice bloomed like a budding flower.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

"Well, that was less informative than I had hoped," the Fool said thoughtfully, staring at the non-implosion. Clara and "Cerise" could only watch helplessly at the destruction of three worlds.

"But I wouldn't say I didn't learn anything, and I don't just mean what happens when the delicately perfect balance holding three worlds together is disrupted. Or what a tri-universal non-implosion looks like. Fascinating things, but ultimately of little relevance. No, I learned some useful information, and I have you two to thank for that."

He stepped forward suddenly, coming uncomfortably close to the two frozen finalists.

"Well, I should say 'you three', but poor Aegis didn't make it out. Tragic, really, but I suppose you're used to that sort of thing by now. After all, you've had five rounds to adjust to the idea, yes? And speaking of that, I'm sure you both know what happens next."

The Fool stepped back, and a chair materialized behind him. He sat down in it lazily.

"Yes, it's the final round. And as thanks for your help - indirect and filled with collateral damage as it may have been - I'm going to give you a special one."

He snapped his fingers. The Fool's realm dissolved and Clara and Cerise found themselves in a metallic room, standing in front of a large viewscreen.

"What is the meaning of this?"

The Monitor's robotic face popped up on the viewscreen. And even though he was hardly designed to have an expressive face, it was clear enough that he was furious.

And the Fool took his tantrum in stride.

"Consider this your payment, ladies!" he declared triumphantly. "In exchange for your role in uncovering the mysteries of the Frozen Destinies, I've given you a chance to uncover the mysteries of the Monitor!"

"WHAT?!?"

"Yes, this is the Database, the high-tech tower where the Monitor stores all his most valuable knowledge. In here you can find data about yourselves, your own worlds, the other contestants and their worlds, and much more! Why, there might even be a file or two on me!"

"Your interference will not go unpunished, Fool!"

"Oh, thanks for reminding me. Yes, the Monitor doesn't appreciate anyone else being in here, so it's not as if you can just walk in and read any file you want. This place has all sorts of security precautions. And the more important the data, the better guarded it will be, I'm sure."

"This joke of yours has gone on far too long. I will transport the combatants to a proper final arena."

Bright beams of light appeared around Clara and Cerise, and then... nothing happened.

"I'm afraid I can't have you doing that. This is my reward to the lovely ladies, so only I can take them out of here. Unless they find some way out on their own, of course; who knows, you might just have some information on that!"

"Do not think this is over, Fool--"

The Monitor's voice cut out as the Fool walked over to a large wire and snapped it with his scepter."

"I think that's about it. Good luck, both of you!" He waved his hand and the two vanished, sent somewhere in the depths of the Database.

A moment later, the screen turned back on.

"You played your part well," the Monitor said. "They believe that their very presence here is in defiance of me, and so they are significantly more likely to trust the information I provide."

"I have to say, I'm surprised," the Fool replied with a smile. "I made it look like you can't control your own battle, and the strangest part is, you owe me a favor for it!"

"Reputation is overrated. Given a choice, I would prefer to be underestimated."

"I suppose I can relate to that," the Fool said, chuckling. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have another stop to make before I return to my own battle."

"You have plans for further interference, do you?"

"Not with battles. At least, not so directly."

***

"Who are you?" Admiral Fair-Use shouted, reaching for her stun pistol.

Or rather, she tried to shout it as she tried to reach for her stun pistol, but the muscles she would have needed to do either found themselves unable to move.

"There's no need for violence," the Fool said calmly, sitting down at the main data terminal. "I just need to correct a few details in your report on the Frozen Destinies. It doesn't mention my involvement at all, you see." He tapped a few buttons, then stood up. "There! And as a little holiday bonus, I threw in a list of universes you may want to look at in your investigation." His eyes lit up. "Oh! While I'm here, why don't I write up a report on this incident and save you some trouble."

He went back to the console and read back his report.

"An extradimensional entity identifying himself both as 'Arnold Fogge' and 'The Fool' breached the Tangent's security and began altering files. Admiral Fair-Use was unable to stop him, as he mysteriously paralyzed her body, while still allowing her to hear every word he said. Strangely, this Fool's alterations to the files only served to make them more accurate, particularly on matters pertaining to himself. He claims a connection to the 'Frozen Destinies' incident, and also to the series of 'Grand Battles' we are currently investigating. His motives in revealing this information to us are known only to himself."

He stood up and smiled.

"All right, that's a long enough break. Back to work for you, now!"

He vanished, leaving the Admiral to wonder just what she'd gotten herself into.

SpoilerShow

Welcome to the Database! This is a high-tech area where the Monitor keeps important data, and of course, it's very well protected. The exact details are up to you, of course; how the data is stored, what sort of defenses there are, and even if there's anyone else here.

To clarify: The Monitor actually wants your characters to gather information from here, though he doesn't want them to realize that's his goal. Use this fact as you will, and of course, you're free to have the Monitor's plans go awry somehow. Confronting him is also an option - his control room is somewhere nearby.

Congratulations to both of you for coming this far; I've enjoyed your posts greatly, and look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

---

The Monitor turned the little bauble over and over in his steely claws, seemingly paying it no attention; his gaze was fixed on the banks and banks of screens in front of him, each of which displayed a contestant or a relevant view, or a hapless passerby, or line after line of vital statistics. The twinkling talisman bathed his mechanical digits in tones of blue and gold, but he ignored it and focused, as ever, on gathering data from his battles and others’. His stare didn’t waver even as someone came into being behind him, making it appear that he had coincidentally begun talking to himself, believing himself to be alone.

“Even among the theoretically infinite universes I can observe and interact with, very few exist that contain objects like this one. Even my most sophisticated instruments capable of measuring the intangible or spiritual have difficulty determining the nature and mechanisms of the being housed within it, including experimental ones developed for that purpose or similar ones. It is still, like very few things within all realities, an enigma.”

“I don’t believe you would mention that out of politeness or interest.”

“No.” And that seemed to be all. His visitor was forced to move the conversation forward.

“Why did you save it?”

“As I said, it is a rarity. While the data I was able to gather from observing it within the second Intense Struggle was valuable, it would have been a waste to simply forget it after its bearer died. Things and events that do not come often shouldn’t be idly discarded when there is data that can be gathered from them. Given the nature of the worlds these spirits exist in, I cannot test them directly without significantly skewing the data in the process. This one presents a valuable opportunity.”

He finally turned to his visitor. “But that is enough about that. What do you want from me?”

The Executrix’s expression remained as blank as his. “What makes you think I want anything?”

“I know how your handler, and by extension you, view me and my activities. If you are bothering to contact me at all, it means you need something you cannot provide yourself. Don’t insult me by playing this game.”

“I don’t believe that he and I are as similar as you claim.”

“And I don’t believe you are in a position to accurately judge.” He turned back to his collection of screens. “Tell me what you want.”

Instead, she slowly walked towards his seat, desultorily examining the scenes and data the computers displayed.

“Though taking custodianship of a battle of my own has decreased my ability to observe others with the scrutiny I have and would like to, I still believe I am better-informed about the events of the third series than most. With the possible exception of the Fool, who remains as inscrutable as ever, the grandmasters of that season are largely too shortsighted or at least too involved to really see what’s going on the way someone outside them can. I believe that puts you and I in a similar position.”

If he had been a more organic being, the Monitor might have scoffed. “I disagree.”

“I meant in regards to the perspective we have on those battles. One that most grandmasters lack.”

“My capacity to gather data and intelligence far outstrips your own." There was no malice or condescension in the Monitor’s words; as far as he was concerned, it was a simple statement of fact. “As does my capacity to analyze and utilize it.”

The Executrix kept her face carefully blank and her voice carefully level. “Then you’ve been following the Spectacular Exhibition?”

“Of course.”

“And you would agree with me that the most salient recent event was the Counsellor temporarily giving stewardship of the battle over to Professor?”

“Yes.” He pulled up a heavily-annotated text file. “I have compiled a collection of likely outcomes based on what’s taken place since then, but it’s simply a side project. I have little stake in the events of the third season.”

“How efficient. I’d expect nothing less. And you think no-one but us realizes what’s to come?”

“For the moment. The Counsellor will of course remain unaware of just about anything until it’s on top of her, and while the Tormentor may be perceptive enough to put the clues together, he is likely too narcissistic to have bothered keeping a close enough watch on her battle to realize. The Fool may well know, but is unlikely to act on that knowledge in any capacity, especially following certain events in the Glorious Championship.” He spared a nearly imperceptible glance for a stack of recently returned video games. “I suspect he may tire of being the only competent being among his peers, and enjoy allowing them to see the consequences of their lackadaisical attitudes.”

“It’s good to hear someone else came to the same conclusions I did, at least.”

“I’m sure it is. Now, if that will be all–”

“We won’t be the only ones to have come to them for long.”

The Monitor gave a little synthesized sigh. “No. Before anything can really come to a head, what is about to happen will become extremely clear to anyone paying any amount of attention. The Prestidigitator will fear the implications such an event would hold for himself and his battle, especially given his choice of contestants and decision to allow his subordinates to run what they have. The Composer will likely take things as a personal affront and is one of the most likely grandmasters to intercede. I additionally suspect she may have designs on the third season and use this as an excuse to further her aims and the Charlatan’s. And, of course, your master and his idiosyncratic sense of traditionalism would believe something like this should never be allowed to happen, despite having worked towards something similar himself in the past.”

“While I disagree.”

“Mmm. As interesting a fact as that is and as far as it will go towards completing your personality profile, I still fail to see what any of this has to do with me. Or indeed why you are here.”

“I think events should be allowed to play out as they will. Without interference from other grandmasters, without scrambling to sweep the mess under the rug afterwards. Without any proprietary usurpation on the part of the already-empowered.”

“At this point, nothing is guaranteed to happen. There are only my projections and your suppositions.”

“And you don’t trust your projections?”

“I trust only that they are probable. Even the most likely scenario is just that: likely. The combined chance of all other events exceeds its likelihood, in fact.”

“All I want is to give it the opportunity to resolve or fizzle on its own. I’m not proposing anyone nudge the events in the battle any given way. Quite the opposite.”

“I dislike interfering with other grandmasters’ petty schemes and their operation of their own events. I have no reason to owe you anything, and none in particular to respect you. You have, in fact, wasted a considerable amount of my time, if not a considerable amount of my processors’. What reasoning do you have that would make me want to do anything for you, puppet?”

“I don’t.” She made a great pretense of bending over to examine one of his ubiquitous screens; as she did, the lower half of her face unwound like a cluster of spent, flesh-colored springs before knitting itself back together in a stunning facsimile of the Monitor’s visage. His own voice purred back to him: “Things and events that do not come often shouldn’t be idly discarded when there is data that can be gathered from them.”

There was a brief pause as she once again became what could tentatively be called herself. "Think of what could be learned about the nature of battles, about the events that take place, about the grandmasters themselves. Think of the data you could mine from everything that follows. From how it happens. From… All-Stars. When else will an opportunity like this arise?”

Nothing the Executrix had said since she’d arrived hadn’t already occurred to the Monitor. In truth, he’d been sorely tempted for some time to subtly ensure that the information he had didn’t become widely known until it was too late to be useful. Ultimately he’d decided that trying to hide something so important from the entirety of the grandmasterly milieu wouldn’t be worth it, no matter how much he stood to gain. Too risky, too likely to cause backlash, too distracting from his own goals. Hearing it from another mouth made the idea seem all the more tempting, though.

“And your policy of noninterference hasn’t translated into much peace for you, has it?” she said, pointing to a screen displaying two of his contestants struggling to survive on a setting not of his own choosing. “Have you had any luck tracing the interference in your second battle?”

“Your attempts to manipulate me are patently transparent.”

“Because I see no reason to hide them. We want the same thing, Monitor.”

“Then why should I be the one to provide it?”

The Executrix smiled softly. “Ah! I don’t propose that you should be. I’m not asking for a favor, I’m asking for your cooperation.”

That sent a number of his subroutines ticking away, projecting and processing. The idea of spreading the job of concealment among two parties… Still, there was no need to be silent while he calculated.

“Do not deceive yourself into believing you are on the same level as your newly-attained peers. You are a proxy, not a being of power.”

“I don’t fancy myself one any more than you think I am.”

“Then what could I possibly stand to gain from your cooperation?”

“I will handle the Composer.”

“… And how do you propose to do that?”

“Perhaps you should consult my personality profile.”

Well, he hadn’t really expected an answer anyway. “The Composer is hardly the only being with a stake in ensuring things don’t go the way you would like to see them go.”

“She is the most likely to interfere, and mostly likely to be problematic to stop. The others should pose no challenge to stay to someone with access with resources like yours.”

Distraction, misdirection, perhaps a favor or two called in… Interstice only knew how much the Cultivator owed him, for a start. More even than the promise to neutralize one of the most unpredictable and proactive threats, the possibility of having a scapegoat should anything go awry made the notion of cooperation very attractive. Why hesitate to interfere when there could be no consequences for failure? There was certainly no love lost between himself and anyone who might be inconvenienced by the Executrix's meddling. Perhaps if...

"I've laid everything on the table," she said, interrupting a few trains of thought and making him realize he had been tellingly quiet for some seconds. "You know more than I do, and I believe you would know if I was deceiving you or hiding anything. If you still have no wish to cooperate, then I will leave, and we will never speak of this, or likely at speak at all, again."

The Monitor still didn't respond. "But if you can see the benefits of a joint venture, then we should begin, before things move too far to influence."

Several more timeless seconds passed before the Executrix began to turn away. "I see."

The Monitor had hoped to have more time to consider his options, but he had to admit, time would be of the essence if anything were to happen. If he hesitated, it was imperceptible.

"I will cooperate."

She smiled and turned back to join him at his control center. "I thought you might."

"Do not mistake this for an interest in whatever agenda you have or an overture towards a larger-scale alliance."

"Of course not."

"Good. I will begin leveraging what influence I have immediately. I suggest you do the same."

Instead, she lingered over a shoulder, idly scanning a few of the displays. After a long enough pause that the robotic grandmaster was about to shoo her off, she drummed her fingers on his desk before asking the first question she didn't already know the answer to since she'd arrived, and in fact for a very long time. "What will you do if the viridioflorian dies this round?"

"Do? Why would I do anything? I will move the round along and continue gathering the data I started the battle to gather." He looked at her again, expressionless gaze failing to communicate a thing. "You claim to have an awareness of your scope and limits; don't do me the discredit of assuming I have no such awareness. While the foolish and overambitious stocked their battles with gods and scientists specializing in the fields most likely to topple their captors and the greatest wizards the multiverse could produce, I learned from their mistakes. I even learned from the ones that have yet to resolve themselves but make their path clear to even the most cursory examination."

As a silent rosebush shouted its megalomaniacal social darwinism to a stadium full of victims, he continued. "Reudic may die here. The survivors may rally around his defeat and cooperate to bring the fight to me now that there is no-one in the group hindering them. They may raise Lillian's death as a banner to unite under, painting me as a monster that needs slaying as much for my crimes as for their freedom. They may even tap into the laughable Network and its puerile plots of supremacy and deicide."

He turned back to his monitors. "And I have contingency plans for each of those eventualities. But ultimately, I don't even need those. I have nothing to gain by posturing for other immortals, and I have no insecurity to mask behind the selection of unbeatable warriors. I chose my combatants specifically to ensure that none of them would ever be able to threaten me in any way, Executrix. There is no conceivable situation wherein any of my selections could come to harm me. And if there were, I'd have a dozen ways of dealing with that threat, because I think ahead. I predict where none of my peers bother. Before your meddling with the Composer can come to fruition, two of my first batch of subjects will be in this very structure, poring over my history and capabilities and still I will be fine, likely without my direct intervention."

"I will do nothing. I need to do nothing because I arranged events before they began to ensure my safety."

The Executrix did not think perhaps there will time to correct that soon, because you never knew who was listening, but it was still a consideration.

"Now, I have an appointment with the Fool. He will arrive shortly, and I would prefer you were already engaged elsewhere before he does."

"The… Fool? Why?"

The Monitor did not smile, because it was not a function he was equipped with, but there was still an identifiable aura of smugness.

"As I said, you overestimate your capacity to gather intelligence. I have work to do, as do you. Please leave."

She did. There were more pressing concerns to deal with than him.

---

Archival Sorting and Filing Unit Seventeen received a parcel. This was not unusual in any way, and in fact not receiving one when it had or in the next few seconds would have been cause for investigation. It didn't bother to investigate the package's contents; it had never done so in its entire existence, and there was no reason for it to start now. Nothing indicated that this delivery would be anything but routine; no deliver had ever been anything but routine. A flash of laser light licked over the box's sides, downloading coordinates from barcodes, and the little robot sped off. It clicked along tracks and rails it had clicked along hundreds of times before, activating a familiar pattern of switchboards and careening around corners that had never toppled it and never would. Brakes clamped down at its destination and pneumatic stilts propelled it up and up; it slotted its delivery into a waiting emptiness and spared no time in collapsing back to its tracks and speeding off again. It did not go back the way it came: it was more efficient for the archival units to have designated entry and exit tracks to avoid deliveries interfering with each other. If it had retraced its steps, it probably would have survived.

ASFU-17 was a robot of limited sentience and questionable sapience. While it had scores of routines and protocols it had never had the opportunity to execute, concepts of hope and curiosity about them were completely alien to it; it was among the least advanced models within the Database, endowed only with enough processing power to make very basic decisions in emergency situations and coordinate input from its sensors. It did not have an identity. It did not feel, and whether it could be said to think was a matter more of definition than fact. It probably would have comforted Clara to know any of that as her cane collided with its chassis and again on its sensor array. Magically-hardened wood and steel crushed the little trolley's CPU in only a few strikes, well before it could make a judgement about the nature of whatever was obstructing it and inform the central archival computer. It was just a thing. It would have discovered her as it rounded the next row of shelves, so she'd had to get the drop on it. There were security precautions, she'd been told, and she couldn't allow them to stand between her and– stand in front of her. Aegis had died to save her. Her destiny was at hand. She couldn't throw away the sacrifices that had been made, for her and by her and as she stood by, by allowing herself to be stopped by some… construct.

Her eyes were carefully and delicately cold as she surveyed the dented wreckage in front of her. It had no markings to indicate its function, nor a manifest of what the cargo it was clearly designed to carry had been. It didn't matter. Not only were questions like that irrelevant, but Clara had already spent some minutes cracking open the identical boxes that lined the seemingly endless shelves that surrounded her. None of them had been marked in any way she could read, nor had of their receptacles; it was clear that wherever this place was, it wasn't designed with humans – or any form of organic life – in mind. Every box had contained neatly-stacked piles of plastic cylinders, which themselves contained meter after meter of magnetic tape. There was no hint of what data might be stored on them, nor any indication that a tool to read them was anywhere nearby. There was just a rigid sea of angles and aluminum and inscrutability stretching in every direction, populated with who knew how many other roving robots. There wasn't even anything to find in the shelves if they were all just full of useless tape.

As Clara continued in the arbitrary direction she'd been walking for some time, she let herself dwell a bit on that; it was certainly easier than confronting the enormity of what lay in front of her or her cluelessness about how to accomplish it or Aegis's expression as he'd lobotomized himself for her sake. Easier especially than considering what had happened to the worlds she'd left and the people who had lived there or her hand in the events on them. Instead, she wondered about the Database: what she'd seen in the room with Aph and the Fool, and in fact every tiny scrap of experience she had with the Monitor, had seemed to her like incredibly high technology, certainly far beyond anything that had been accomplished in her own world. Even the robot she'd clobbered had been cutting-edge, if not ultra-tech. Yet, here she was, surrounded on all sides by a form of data storage that had been outdated even in her own time, if not actually archaic. It was strangely incongruous. It was also disheartening: as hesitant as she was to accept the smallest gift from a grandmaster, it seemed that she'd been placed here specifically to have the opportunity to learn about the Monitor. It was information she desperately needed if she was going to have any hope of doing anything but dying again or, worse, succumbing to blood sport and obeying her captors. And, yet, there was no way for her to use any of it, or even obtain it to begin with. No way yet, at least.

She continued through what couldn't be called a maze because of its perfectly gridlike layout; she'd reach something eventually, and in the meantime there were things to wonder about and tracks and robots and thoughts to avoid. Mysteries to unravel with no evidence or context, and a stark monolithic construct of guilt and shame and fear to ignore. Divinations to find excuses not to cast, inevitabilities to delay. Shelves upon shelves upon shelves and enough rope to hang herself a trillion times over. She'd find something. Schleier would steer her, His divine worry and intimations of powerlessness forgotten. There would be something. Something. Something.

She couldn't have known the robot's nature, and she couldn't have known that the level she was currently on was nothing more than backups of backups of backups, stored on physical media to protect them from the theoretical possibility of virus or electrical attacks on the Database. She couldn't have known that some sectors of the archive would have yielded not tape but laserdiscs or punchcards or genetically modified E. coli cultures. She couldn't have known that above her, galaxies of knowledge spread out and awaited her discovery, all more accessible if more heavily guarded, than this sub-basement of failsafes and shrine to pragmatic paranoia. She couldn't have known any of it, but it might have cheered her up a bit.

It probably would not.

---

Behind her, close enough that the click of her cane and shoes hadn't yet faded but far enough both mentally and physically that Clara could never know, the disabled ASFU failed to arrive back at its docking station. A computer sent a query bouncing wirelessly through the empty halls of the archive levels, but received no response. Again it queried, but again it went unanswered; a third and final ping should have followed shortly, and if it too was ignored then a security squad would have been dispatched to investigate. Instead, an unseen hand on a faraway console stroked a few keys, adding several thousand cycles between the second and third checks, ensuring Clara would be long gone before any search occurred. There was no sense letting anything regrettable happen too quickly.

Cerise was unravelling. Despite the gestures towards a new identity, she was not a person so much as an idea; a shield Aph was using to insulate herself from the monstrous things she had done. Even at her best Cerise was unstable; perpetually moments away from succumbing to the uncontrollable waves of anger and despair that threatened to engulf her, but now that identity had been compromised. The artifice of Cerise had been built entirely upon the idea that she was a different person because she would not kill others, and now...

Well, she wasn't exactly sure where she stood now. She had killed The Lord of Skulls. Yes, technically speaking she was the one who had stabbed him in the back, but she'd been forced to do it. The fact that nobody had forced her to do it was the only sticking point in this otherwise credible defense. The truth was that the lack of clarity regarding the responsibility she held was the only thing keeping her from backsliding into the Aph she used to be. The more she thought about it, the more she felt her new identity crumbling and so in desperation she sought for something, anything, to distract her from her sins, or lack thereof.

Luckily there was plenty to distract her from her introspection; around her were rows and rows of huge black cylinders around which sleek and elegantly designed machinery rhythmically clicked and clacked as they performed some intricate task. Cerise wasted no time, she stepped up to the nearest set up and leaned in as close as she dared. She watched as the mechanical arms chipped and sliced away at the enormous cylinder, leaving grooves and bumps in some elaborate pattern, and at one point had to duck beneath one of the more lively arms of the machine. After a minute of examination, as her interest in the machines began to wane, the machines came to a shuddering stop and the mechanical arms retracted into the machine base. Very aware of the sudden silence Cerise looked nervously around to confirm that every machine had halted.

As the cylinder before her was lifted from its machine base, she took a nervous step backwards. It hung there for a moment before being whisked to who-knows-where by a track built into the ceiling. Cerise might have for a moment been contemplative about where they were going and what purpose they might serve but a cylinder from a nearby machine gently, but firmly, nudged her out of the way and as she turned made her aware of just how many cylinders were headed her way. She tried to dodge out of their way, but it was after being knocked again by another, more faster moving, cylinder that she opted to hit the ground and stay there until the danger had passed. It was all surprisingly soundless; the only indication that the process was still ongoing the whoosh of air as each cylinder passed overhead.

Cerise crawled to relative safety between two of the inactive machines, where the cylinders did not seem to be passing through, and waited for the movement to end. She supposed this was just part of some enormous assembly line, (though she wasn't sure which fragment of her shattered psyche the knowledge of such industry had come from) and given that this place was supposedly some vast repository for information she further supposed that the cylinders were some means of data storage. She frowned; she certainly hadn't been able to learn anything from the one she'd examined.

After a minute of activity the cylinders began to slow and then stopped. They were dropped into place and the carving of grooves and marks began anew. Cerise couldn't tell if they were simply copies of the cylinders she had seen before or if new information was being recorded onto each and every one; the patterns were too small, too intricate. She wondered what information they held and idly, how much data could be contained on such an object, but without any means of interpretation her interest soon began to wane. Eventually she concluded the only course of action available to her was to follow the path of the cylinders and she did so.

Cerise wouldn't have been able to tell you how long had passed before the second set of cylinders were complete; there was little to denote the passage of time and, for that matter, little to indicate that her journey down the assembly hall was actually getting her anywhere. As the obelisks were lifted into the air for the second time Cerise took shelter; half-sitting half-crouching between two machine bases. She watched the blurred shapes of the obelisks as they whizzed past and wondered what it was that she would do exactly when she reached wherever it was that she was going.

As they began to slow Cerise spotted something; a figure hidden beneath a heavy brown cloak, clinging onto the side of one of the cylinders. It was visible for just a moment, looking squarely in Cerise's direction (she met its gaze but nothing was visible beneath the hood but shadows), before it dropped with a thud to the ground. The cylinder it had rode in on, if one could spare it a glance at this point, was left cracked and slowly crumbling as it was carried away. The figure itself remained kneeling as the cylinders slowed and came to a stop. Cerise's first reaction was panic. She had no idea who or what this figure was or what they might want, but maybe any interaction threatened her precarious grip upon herself. She'd liked it better when it was just her and an endless corridor of black cylinders; things had been easier back then.

The machines roared back to life once again and Cerise and the cloaked figure both got to their feet. Cerise braced to flee back along the assembly line at the first sign of trouble. The figure took a step forward and she drifted back slightly.

"Aphrodite?" The figure's voice was familiar, his tone cautious; as though he's dipping a toe into a murky ocean, uncertain of the response he will receive. Cerise remembered his voice; even with half of her mind torn from her, and the rest of it muddied and mixed up by innumerable contradictory memories, she could never forget the man who brought her to life. The man who she had loved and hated so strongly, who had taken her for granted, who she had hacked to bloody pieces and cried as she did so.

"Xan." she tried to say, but it was lost in the rising tide of emotion; hate, fear and anger, love, guilt and regret. It was all too much. She'd held on for as long as she could, but she was a teacup trying to contain an ocean. Her skin crackled with energy; Aph smiled.

The air crackled with electricity. Aph's skin pulsed with it; she was all but consumed by it. It arced to the nearby machinery, leaving any of the whirling arms that got too close to her nothing but a charred and twisted mess and the huge black cylinders half melted. Aph cackled and slowly glided towards her former lover Xan, leaving the floor behind her blackened by her presence. Effortlessly she raised an arm towards the machine closest to him and electricity shot through the air, consuming it. When it abated a moment later there was nothing left but scrap and melted wax.

"Long time no see Xan." Aph sneered. "As you can see I'm doing quite well for myself, and well I must admit you're not doing too bad considering the last time I saw you you were in pieces. Literally."

Xan said nothing. In fact he had barely reacted to Cerise's backslide into Aph at all. He was not cowering, attempting to back away, looking for a way out or even bracing himself to fight back. He was just watching attentively. Aph didn't seem to notice.

"It's a shame really." Aph mused. "To think of all the time you must have spent putting yourself back together and how far you must have come just to end up once again dead at my feet." She snickered. "I never realized you were such a masochist, Xan."

"Just get on with it." Xanthor said.

"What did you say?!" Aph bellowed as the electricity that had ebbed slightly during her taunting now came back in full force.

"If you were fighting an opponent who really wished you dead and had the capability to make you so, time spent spitting insults would be time for them to regain the initiative, to prepare a particularly devastating attack, to launch an offensive themselves." Xanthor explained. "You could be dead twice over by now. Come on, hit me with your best shot."

"You pitiful creature!" Aph screamed. "How dare you tell me what to do!" Furiously she shot forth a bolt of lightning towards Xan, but before it could strike him he was gone, out of the way faster than any normal human had any business being. Aph stared for a second and then tried to demand a pathetic weak miserable human being like him could possibly have done that but she couldn't quite find the right words and all that came out was a scream of frustration as she launched another burst of electricity. Moving impossibly fast Xan strode out of the way almost effortlessly. Aph didn't waste any more time, she launched attack after attack getting more angry and more powerful with each bolt that failed to make contact.

"You're weak." Xan said, when she seemed to be faltering. "You're defective. A failure."

Aph's skin burst into flame, her entire body consumed in fire and began again with renewed vigour, uselessly shooting bursts of fire. Within minutes the entire assembly hall seemed to be burning. The air was thick with smoke and there was barely a machine or a cylinder that was not unbroken or on fire.

"I believe that is enough." Xan said, as a green light shone from under his hood.

"Silence worm!" Aph shrieked, "I'll say when it is enough and it won't be enough till you are nothing but ash!" but within moments of making that boast she found her powers ebbing away, and felt herself getting weak. Xan was suddenly by her side to catch her when she collapsed. He felt wrong, some errant part of Aph's mind observed. He felt too rigid. "You!" she hissed weakly. "What did you do to me?"

"Rest." Xan instructed. There was a whirring around them as the cylinders still left were lifted from their bases. Xanthor slung Aph uncomfortably over his shoulder and climbed onto the side of the nearest and still mostly in one piece cylinder. Aph thrashed against his grip but eventually she could stay conscious no longer.

The entirety of the Database was wired with cameras; the Monitor not only wanted to ensure that no unwanted interlopers ever intruded into his sanctum without his knowledge, but to be able to do spot-checks on any aspect of his filing and storage systems at any time. There was not a hallway or storeroom or nook or cranny anywhere within his domain that was not watched constantly by at least three unthinking glassy eyes, and the already-redundancy-riddled system had been backed up twice over to ensure not a breath was taken during his final round that he wasn't aware of. That all meant that any other entity that managed to infiltrate his surveillance systems would have perfectly accurate views of everywhere within the Database as well, but it was of course ridiculous to assume any other entity than a grandmaster would be able to and more ridiculous still to believe any grandmaster capable of hijacking his data feeds would be subtle enough to avoid drawing his ire.

Such a hypothetical watcher (or the Monitor himself, as he surely was) would have been able to watch Clara keep on in her aimless but determined walk towards nothing in particular. They could have spent quite some time seeing nothing but her striding along, alone with her thoughts, going straight in one arbitrary direction except on those times she had to duck out of sight or grapple with another ASFU. It would not have been very interesting, since there was nothing to see and nothing to do but ensure the sorting droids she left in her wake didn't alert security too soon (and it really was rather disappointing that she hadn't given any thought to the consequences of her actions, or made any effort to prevent herself being discovered beyond attacking the incidental carriers). Eventually, she would reach a wall, which was really what she'd been expecting all along, turn right, and follow that wall until it became a corner. If she hugged enough walls, she seemed to be thinking, she'd eventually find a door, or a map, or something.

She did eventually find something, but it wasn't any kind of something she'd have wanted to find. Looming in front of her was the hub of the Filing Units' duties, an enormous sorting engine tended by dozens of robots; many of them flew, many more were on tracks like the ones she'd seen, and unless she was mistaken, the entire construct itself was a thankfully-probably-immobile robot. The whole mechanized hive buzzed and churned with activity, drones constantly coming and going, sorting and taking, returning and labeling. Clara seemed to sigh and looked to be considering whether to turn back around and follow the walls all the way back to where she'd started and then in the opposite direction, but stopped when she noticed something. On the far side of the hub, barely visible, was a human-sized door. She spent several seconds contemplating whether it was worth taking the risk and trying to sneak towards the door or whether it would be wiser to spend the extra time to follow the track of the enormous room all the way around.

No-one watching would have been able to tell what made the decision for her, but she came to one eventually. She slipped back into the grid of shelves and storage and began creeping her way around the busiest areas. It took a not-insignificant amount of time (although certainly much less than the alternative would have taken), but she eventually skirted the borders of the most active section of the warehouse. There were fewer near-misses than she would have expected there to be, as though someone had been directing the robots around and past her. Regardless of how and why, she eventually came to the door she'd spotted, thanked her stars and her god that it opened when a button was pushed, and scuttled hurriedly out of the smothering openness of the colossal room filled with tape.

She stopped short once she actually began to take in the new place she'd discovered; if the sorting engine she'd passed had been busy, then this room was some kind of artificial pandemonium. Things came and went endlessly and at great speeds, on tracks and on vehicles and on foot and on far too many feet. A rainbow of subtly-differently-colored lines spread out before her, leading down hallways and through doors and often straight up the walls and into hatches in the ceiling. The whole place had the air of a crowded subway station, except that the commuters were themselves often the trains and their cargo. Fortunately, nothing paid her any attention, and possibly nothing was even capable of noticing her; the perfectly-ordered chaos formed a bubble of noise and confusion around her, but made no move to interfere. A number of the non-track-bound robots even actively sidestepped or rolled around her, not sparing her a second glance or slowing for a moment. It was a relief, but… She had no more idea now of where to go and what to seek or even how to find out either than she had had at the start of the round. If she'd still had any undisheartened heart left, it would have been very disheartening.

The nun carefully picked her way across the floor of the robotic thoroughfare (although she needn't have bothered being careful), crestfallen and confused. There was no signage or information anywhere, no indication of what anything was or where anything was going. Or perhaps there was and she simply couldn't perceive or understand it, being organic and not strictly speaking supposed to ever have made her way here. Regardless of the nature of the lack of information, it was a seemingly impassable barrier; even her magic would avail her little, given that no amount of divination would be able to decipher what wasn't there or tell her where to go if she didn't know where that was. She just kept shuffling aimlessly until something caught her eye.

Among all of the alien and confusing hubbub and not-designed-for-humans architecture, the elevator stood out as a strange beacon of normalcy. It would be hard to explain why that particular pair of double doors had drawn her attention, but once it had, its function and nature were clear and obvious. Or perhaps they were so arcane and counterintuitive that it only looked like an elevator to her, and it'd actually be an incinerator or matter reclaimer or horrible portal to any number of terrible things. There was only one way to find out, and she quickened her pace towards the first real (if minor) goal she'd had since Aegis h– since this round had started.

There were two buttons to the side of the doors; they weren't marked, but they really didn't need to be. Once pressed, there was a whirring followed by a pneumatic hiss as the elevator opened and proved itself to be, in fact, an elevator. It was spartan and steel, more like a cargo elevator or dumbwaiter than passenger transport, but it looked serviceable enough. It looked designed for humans, or hominids at least, and that was promising. Maybe it could take her somewhere that she could actually understand or affect. She was almost excited until she turned around.

Covering the entire wall she had come in through were literally hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of identical buttons. None were numbered. None were marked. Many were too high for her to reach even with her cane. There was also some sort of port by the doors that suggested anything wanting to use the elevator would have to interface with it before it would take them anywhere. Another brief glimmer of hope, another dead end. Why would the Fool have gone to the trouble of subverting the Monitor's plans and dropping her into his inner sanctum… somewhere she could do or learn nothing? It made no sense. Then again, neither did multidimensional kidnapping and sapient pit-fights. Many things didn't make sense.

Someone trying to lead Clara without her knowledge would have run up against a bit of a sticking point as she stood idly in the elevator, drumming her fingers on her cane: it was ideal that she thought any decisions she made were her own and based on knowledge she had, and she was unlikely to respond well to direct intervention or contact (although that was out of the question anyway). How to send her where she needed to be (or where someone else needed her to be, perhaps) without her catching on to any interference? It wasn't as though a directory could just fall out of the ceiling without arousing her suspicions.

Still, the nice thing about people of faith, and especially ones who occasionally actually heard from the objects of their worship, was that on the whole they were pretty happy to chalk up synchronicity and convenience to divine intervention or guidance or dutifully-bestowed luck. Perhaps things could simply be nudged along and she'd go with the flow. It certainly seemed to be her default state so far.

Clara was pondering what sort of augury she could perform that might give her any indication of what the most favorable button to press would be (and running up against a brick wall with every avenue she pursued) when the doors whooshed open and deposited what could probably be best called a wheeled android into the elevator with her. She yelped and jumped backwards, raising the cane in case it became aggressive, but it paid her as little mind as any of the others she'd forded her way through had. Within instants of its arrival, it had punched one of the countless buttons; the elevator sprang into action immediately, and Clara collapsed as it sped upwards with a speed associated more with coil guns or maglev trains than cables and stair-alternatives. Perhaps not designed for humans after all, then.

The trip was unsurprisingly short, and the robot left before she'd even picked herself up. Shaking her head and dusting herself down (more for the gesture of the thing than to smooth or clean the grime-and-gore-encrusted remnants of her habit), she pressed the only button with an obvious function; the doors slid open once again and she peeked out into whatever new hell she'd been deposited into.

Surprisingly, it was silent and empty. Even the robot that had brought her here had vanished, likely into one of the innumerable doors that lined this unremarkable, hospital-like hallway. It was certainly more hospitable than anywhere she'd been in the Database so far, which wasn't saying much. She stepped out, figuring here was as good as anywhere to start looking for something helpful. The elevator whirred off behind her with a finality that was entirely due to her imagination. Doors stretched in both directions and on both sides of the corridor. Seeing nothing better to do, she walked towards one of the closest ones and went in.

Being undead made a person pretty hard to shock. The living reanimation process alone was pretty horrific, to say nothing of everything they had to see in the sort of life that lead up to it. Worshiping a death-god and acting as a spiritual barrier against all things that would pervert the souls of the living made a person pretty hard to shock, too. Even simply being very old had a tendency to immure someone against too much surprise (if it didn't sensitize them to it). Of course, all of Clara's experience and context had been of a much more eldritch nature than the technological horror that presented itself to her. Given that, it was rather impressive that the only outward reaction she had was a slight grimace and a general tightening of the features and knuckles.

The room was small and semicircular. Arranged along the curved wall were eight large glass cylinders, each with a terminal in front of it; inside each floated a single person, suspended in a greenish-grey fluid. And the word was person, not corpse; Clara knew that much with an intuitive certainty that wasn't worth questioning, but also knew that the line at this point was so fine and close that the distinction was almost meaningless. Each one was emaciated to the point of skeletal, intubated and wired, unconscious and with a pulse measured in minutes per beat rather than the reverse. She turned and left. The next room was the same. As was the next. And the next three. By the second, it had become clear that this was going to be on the order and scale of the magnetic tape storage she'd arrived in, but a morbid and masochistic kind of hope compelled her to check and recheck and become certain.

She was. She simply didn't know how to react to it.

It was ignorant of course to assume that someone or something like the Monitor would work on a small, manageable scale. She'd had this thought before, followed it to what seemed like a logical conclusion, become angry and despaired at the knowledge that her situation was likely not unique and at the supposition that the cruelty of her tormentor couldn't stop at simply forcing good people to fight. But this, this cold and clinical demonstration of those facts… This living graveyard, this testament to the disposability of life in the grandmaster's calculating eyes, this thing-that-was-beyond-even-abomination… There was no reaction, no space left in her for fear or anger or determination. These people had lives, had stories, had families and embarrassing habits. And now they were just barely-sustained husks, denied their just afterlives or even the mercy of oblivion. There was no way for Clara to know how many there were here. From what she'd seen, from the scale she could guess at in this place, there could be civilizations' or planets' worth of people trapped here. And to what end? Nothing could justify this, but what could even explain it?

For a time, curiosity overcame swift and lethal justice. Experimentally, and hoping against hope she wouldn't make things any worse, she crossed the floor and tapped one of the two buttons on the nearest terminal to her. Unsurprisingly, the fluid began to drain; perhaps more surprisingly, the woman in the tank opened her eyes as it finished disappearing. Clara hadn't really expected the body to have enough left in it to ever become aware of the world around it again, much less stare intently at her.

"Hello?" she ventured.

There was no response, but the woman continued to watch impassively. Her eyes followed Clara as she leaned left and right, so it seemed she was cognizant. Or at least present in some capacity. Clara tried again.

"Who are you?"

The woman's eyes closed for a moment; they opened again as she began speaking, occasionally flicking upwards as though she were trying to retrieve an elusive memory or detail.

"Memory storage unit number 348-04719-205, designate GB-S2-PF-1."

Clara felt she should have been aghast, but this was just one more atrocity in a line of so many that she'd lost count. It was just mildly depressing. Shackling them to unending but unchanging mortality was bad enough, but erasing their identity? Using them as, what, some sort of data storage? Disgusting.

"Who were you before you became… that?"

"I have always been memory storage unit number 348-04719-205, designate GB-S2-PF-1."

It was hard to take that at face value, given that she'd probably have had her own memories wiped if she was just a biological storage unit. Clara wasn't even sure whether it was more twisted to abduct living people or to create lives specifically to be subjugated; no amount of theology or ethics she'd been taught had really ever quantified suffering in a way that let her compare the two. Either way, it didn't matter. She would give these people the release they deserved.

…

She might as well honor their memory by using what they knew to help destroy their tormentor, though.

"What do you do?"

"My purpose is to remember facts and information relating to the sixth battle in the second series of Grand Battles, known to the grandmasters as the Phenomenal Fracas."

That suggested a greater level of organization – and probably a larger scale – than Clara had hoped would be the case. It was shockingly relevant, though. For all she'd known, this person could have been filled with knowledge about plants on a world that didn't exist anymore, or literary trivia from the thirtieth century. It was certainly fortuitous. Or at least a nugget of not-as-terrible in the morass of evil and horror she'd been drowning in.

"Tell me about the Phenomenal Fracas, then."

"What would you like me to remember?"

"Uh, let's see… Who runs that battle?"

"The Phenomenal Fracas was created by the class theta apotheotic quasi-divinity known as the Prestidigitator. He delegates many of the tasks of its administration to his group of gentlemen, all apotheotic quasi-divinities of varying class, all drawing power and vitality from the same source as the Prestidigitator; they are known as First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh or Victoria. The contestants were originally selected and ultimately rejected as potential participants in a Grand Battle by the Monitor, although the Monitor had no other influence on or hand in the Phenomenal Fracas."

Simultaneously helpful and mystifying. "What's a class theta apotheotic quasi-divinity?"

"I don't remember that."

Hmm. Perhaps less helpful than she thought, then. Still, might as well press forward.

"What is the Prestidigitator capable of?"

"Green-level reality restructuring. Orange-level temporal restructuring. Grade 78 necromancy. Grade 59 spacial manipulation. Grade 42 extraspacial manipulation. Class–"

This went on for quite some time, none of it being especially elucidating. The woman might as well have said "A lot"; it would have gotten the same message across in much less time. Eventually Clara told her to stop.

"What do any of those classes or levels or grades mean?"

"I don't remember that."

"No, of course you don't. Who is in the Phenomenal Fracas, then? Please give me a short personality or history summary of each."

Clara wondered as the memory-bank complied why she was bothering. How would any of this be helpful without context? Why bother learning about the victims trapped in another battle when most of them – well, half, she concluded as the woman listed off four names that were currently deceased – were probably dead, and all of them were well beyond her reach? It was just upsetting, and didn't really get her any closer to… Well, to any of her goals.

As the room went quiet again, she resolved to quit wasting her time, and prolonging the spiritual suffering of these poor people. She raised her cane once again, sighing internally as she swung it towards the glass.

She nearly lost her grip as it rebounded; something had to give in the battle between her enchanted weapon, her necromantic strength, and whatever science or magic had made the glass or whatever it was so impenetrable. Judging from the snapping noise and the lack of so much as a chip on the tank, it was probably her wrist. The woman watched the attempt on her life idly, not so much as blinking at the impact.

If it was going to have to be the hard way, then that was how it would be. Clara rubbed her wrist, setting bone and tissue knitting itself back into place without thinking about it much as she pondered how best to save these people. It was probably more efficient to do it this way, anyway; smashing each case individually could take her hours. Conceivably even years, depending on how many there were. Magically killing them felt a little evil, if only because it meant using some rather distasteful spells she'd always tried to avoid (and hadn't had to try hard, honestly, since murder and torture don't come up as an abbess's duties very often); she just had to remind herself that it was for the best. It was a kindness. It didn't really taint your soul any more than wielding a gun or shooting a fireball did. That was all superstition. If anyone would know, it'd be her.

She hummed quietly as she thought. Probably the best and most merciful way of going about this was to tangle the lifelines of all the people she could reach, then stop the heart of one of them and let the rest follow suit and WOW that sounded a lot like genocide. No wonder why some people still don't like necromancy. It'd be pretty easy to take that sort of thing out of context, or just do horrible things with it. Not that you couldn't do something worse just by causing a tidal wave or famine, but still… Distasteful. There was no sense spending too long musing, though, so Clara began the preparations for her spell.

Almost as soon as her chanting began and her awareness began to spread ethereal outwards, she choked on a syllable and snapped back into herself. These people had no souls. They never had had any. They weren't people any more than a computer or a golem or a frog were. They just happened to be made of meat, meat stretched over a human skeleton but containing no humanity. They weren't the atrocity she thought they were. They were…

An opportunity.

Without souls to free or personhood to respect or morals or qualms or histories or anything but conveniently-assembled raw materials housing information she could use if she could sort through it, they represented perhaps the best possibility she'd had since the beginning of this battle to do something big enough to affect her captor. To learn something big enough to become dangerous enough that she'd be a real threat. To have a big enough shield that she could protect her companions – or just Aph, at this point – and perhaps even herself. She'd long since decided that her fate had been to stop the Monitor, perhaps all the battles, but she'd simply assumed she'd die in the process. Maybe now she wouldn't have to. Maybe now she could show him what happened when he toyed with people and treated them like ants. Maybe it had all started when she entertained darker thoughts and darker magic than she usually allowed herself, but she had a plan now. A plan and the tools she'd need to set it in motion.

Most of them, at least. The other thing she'd noticed as she'd prepared her abortive casting was that there were no spirits in this place. At all. Not a ghost, not an elemental, not a flimsy ephemeral construct of concept and thought. Nothing lived here, and nothing unlived or antilived here either. It was effectively a bubble of metaphysically-anesthetized nothing, shod in metal and with infinite data but no meaning. That was going to make things difficult, because what she had in mind would need at least one other cognizant soul to stay at the helm of what she was already thinking of as her lieutenant. But maybe there was a way around that… She'd already dipped her toes into the blacker realms of her art, had already planned actions that would disgust anyone without the context to appreciate them. Why not give into it completely? It wasn't as though any of it were blasphemous. Just… Distasteful. More worryingly, untidy.

But she was six lives too late to give in to hesitation now, too late not to take advantage of everything she had. There was no-one left to judge but her final arbiter, and she may well have been beyond His reach now too. She would do this, and she would win, and whether it was right would be spelled out in the blood she shed, but not before it was. She'd have to do this, and mean it.

She unshouldered her holy book and flipped to the final chapters. Her god's words were just those, a guide on how to live and how to die and what came before and after; they were no grimoire, no recipe for damnation or holy fire, just the words of a loving and benevolent deity as He'd transcribed them for His followers. They were just words, but they were the words of a divine being, the words of something inextricably linked to death and endings. They had the echoes of His power, and in the mouth of His champion, they rang almost as though Schleier had said them Himself.

Clara's sermon began, and within seconds the glass that separated her from the tools of her victory had crumbled to dust. Even the dust itself vanished before it hit the floor, banished beyond the veil by an entropy so profound as to go beyond mere physics. The electricity that coursed through this place ran sluggish in its tracks; the sickly florescent lighting grew dim as the gas within lost its will and its energy; the nun's own autonomous functions guttered and failed, her habits and will no longer enough to sustain them. By the third passage, she could feel that her message had spread to every room near her, and by the seventh, she was confident the gloom had pervaded farther than she'd ever be able to reach on foot. One by one, then by the dozen then score then hundred, facsimile lives were snuffed out more by the weight of her recitation than the failure of their systems. The book snapped shut, but the air couldn't even muster a thud to mark it.

She was going to have to move fast, now, before nervous tissue damage set in. The bodies would be fine for days, but they weren't her chief concern. She reached out to the woman-now-corpse in front of her, belaboredly drawing breath only to hiss it out in a series of clipped, guttural syllables. Clara placed her hand under the woman's chin, tilting her face upwards and cradling her skull delicately until her fingers began to sink through flesh and bone. Her arm rose, bringing the brain with it, a glistening mound that crowned through limp hair as though illusory. It trailed tendrils of nerve and vessel behind it, giving the impression that Clara had extracted a very macabre jellyfish from the woman's body, and as the majority of its tentacles pulled free of the flesh, Clara gritted her teeth and concentrated. This part was going to hurt, or – probably – worse.

It would be romantic to think that the air filled with the sound of wet silk sadly ripping, or perhaps a disembodied shriek, or unearthly noise impossible to describe with mere sound and words, but the fact of the matter was that even if such things weren't still being suppressed by the aura of finality and stillness Clara had invoked, the room would still have been silent. A tearing soul made no noise, and its owner didn't have the breath to whimper as it split apart.

Aph drifted in and out of consciousness; too weak to move and aware only of whiteness and of snatches of a distant mechanical voice.

"...His skin is mostly covered by loose clothing, but where it's visible it's been tanned and roughened from exposure. A brown, wide collared duster coat hides most of his body and a wide brimmed hat obscures his head..."

She dimly knew she had lost herself again. She didn't think she'd killed anyone this time but it served to illustrate just how fragile her grip upon herself was. She was truly pathetic.

"...She stood out to the gods as the only one in her world to not grow tainted by seduction and wrath as her life progressed; instead, she was like a beacon of sincerity among the world filled with vile hate..."

Cerise decided she would never move again. Her grip was too fragile; she couldn't trust herself enough to hope live any kind of life. She would just lie here and wait to die.

"...Education's pretty improved in the distant, future, you know? Not, like, everyone's smart enough not to watch reality TV, but everyone's too smart to be in reality TV. So rather than doing what we do in the present and just script everything out, the studios tend to just go ahead and fix reality until reality reflects what people want to watch..."

She'd probably die eventually. While starvation or dehydration were not issues for a being made from magical energy, she was certain that sooner or later some kind of disaster would find her. Maybe in the form of one of the Monitor's machines or maybe Clara would do it. If not that then she would die eventually; it might take several thousand years but sooner or later her mana would completely destabilise and she'd be nothing more than molecules floating in the air, blissfully thoughtless.

"...She speaks in half-riddles and non-sequiturs, becoming very angry over seemingly-"

The voice stopped abruptly and she heard some disgruntled muttering coming from what she vaguely perceived as the same direction. It was too faint to make out what was being said but Aph recognized Xan's voice, and wondered if perhaps he could be convinced to come over here and finish the job. She tried to speak but nothing came out and then she slipped into unconsciousness once again.

When she drifted back Xan stood over her, but close up it was clear to see that this wasn't Xan. Beneath the plain brown robes was a rusted and battered metal body in a roughly humanoid shape. Given where she was it was an obvious conclusion to come to that this was one of the Monitor's robots, but it didn't feel right. Given the intricate machinery she had seen she struggled to imagine this rusted heap of junk being formed on the same production line (or on any production line).

"I am very disappointed in you." The machine said, its imitation of Xanthor's voice was shockingly accurate. "You've accumulated a reasonable amount of power, but power is cheap now and it means nothing without discipline."

There was a pause, clearly the part of the conversation where Cerise was supposed to speak, perhaps to argue back that it was none of its business or that it didn't know what it was talking about. Cerise said nothing. It was right. She didn't know why it cared but it was right. It would see how much of a failure she was and leave her alone to die.

The machine examined her passively, and she could almost hear the whirring of gears as it abruptly changed tacks. It cleared its throat, or rather lacking a throat made the appropriate noise and gesture most likely as an attempt to project a facade of humanity. "Good, you're awake. As I'm sure you can tell, I'm not Xan. You can call me..." It hesitated. "...Proxy. And I'm sorry about before, about letting you believe I was Xan. It was in my programming I didn't have any choice, but it's over now and there's no reason we can't work together."

There was another long pause that Cerise declined to fill.

"Maybe I left the dampener on too low?" The machine 'Proxy' muttered to itself. It made some kind of an adjustment to itself and Cerise felt a pressure she hadn't even noticed until then lift slightly. But as that mental pressure lifted she felt less certain, less stable. She felt her mind starting to cloud as though she was losing her grip on herself once again.

"Stop!" Cerise attempted to marshall herself but it was like trying to gather up fog in her arms. She pushed herself into a sitting position and glared at Proxy. "What did you just do?"

"Ah yeah." Proxy showed her its right forearm; it was dotted with lights, buttons and dials all of which looked newer than its main body as though they had been added on at some later point. "It's a mana dampener. I believe there was something similar in place in Cervaled Fall, the um, prison round. This one's more precise, enough that it can suppress the bulk of your abilities without leaving you unconscious." It paused. "Sorry about that as well."

"Oh would you shut up?" Aph snapped irritably. After a moment of hesitant silence Cerise continued in a much more measured voice. "Would you mind setting it back? The dampener thing I mean."

"Of course." The machine adjusted a dial or two causing the lights on its arm to flicker amber but its gaze never left the nymph.

After a moment the mental pressure pushed down upon her, forcing the traces of Aph that had been loosed to subside. She felt weaker, as though the life itself had been drained from her, but her mind was clearer and she was glad. For once in her life she felt like she was her own person; not governed by arbitrary love or hatred or drowned within the myriad conflicting impulses contained within her mana. Minutes ago she'd been ready to die because she could not control herself, and yet without the control she felt now she knew she'd never be able to keep that resolve. Immediately she knew her options; either she'd get one of these dampeners for herself or she'd die, and quickly; ideally at the next opportunity she got. It was the only way to be sure. If this 'Proxy' left her then she'd slip back to how she was and she just knew there would be no coming back.

Proxy had been watching her intently for a couple of minutes before it took any further action. It cleared its throat in that unnecessary way again and began: "Hello? Are you still there? I didn't dial it too far back did I?"

"No you're fine." said Cerise. She looked around the small room that she supposed Proxy must have brought her to. It was roughly circular with the outline of a door on the far wall and in the centre a large mechanical apparatus cradling one of the large black cylinders she'd recently seen being manufactured. A large brass trumpet curled out of the apparatus dimly reminding her of a gramophone (though once again she couldn't place from where she knew of such a device). "Could you give me a hand?" she asked and raised her arm up to the robot. It took a long moment for Proxy to respond, and then when it did its grip was so tight that Cerise wished she hadn't asked.

"So have you given any thought to us working together?" Proxy asked, once she was on her feet again.

Cerise hadn't but she did so now. Some part of her insisted caution; she had no idea of what this machine's goals might be, or its identity beyond that of a probably fake name. It was concerning that it seemed to know so much about her history. But on the other hand it had the one thing she needed so she wasn't really in any position to say no. Still she didn't want to sound too desperate: "Maybe if I had some idea what we might be doing?"

"I'm sorry I just assumed." Proxy said apologetically. "I'm looking to kill the Monitor." Cerise's heart fell, and it must have shown on her face prompting Proxy to continue: "I thought you'd be looking to do the same after everything he's put you through?"

"I don't do that." Cerise turned away from Proxy, as though the grey wall to her right was doing something absolutely fascinating that she couldn't take her eyes off.

"You don't do that?" Proxy repeated flatly. "I've seen you do that. I watched as you cut a bloody swathe through Cervaled Fall."

"That wasn't me. That was Aph." Cerise mumbled. "She killed people but I'm not her any more. I'm different. I won't do it." There was a long silence. Cerise might have liked to believe that perhaps Proxy was re-evaluating its goal and discovering murder to be every bit as unappealing as she found it. She doubted this was the case but either way it was impossible to tell. Its face was blank save for a speaker grille, a single camera positioned roughly in the centre and patches of rust and burnt metal here and there.

"So, what is your endgame here?" Proxy asked eventually. "If you're not prepared to fight back either against Clara or against the Monitor then you're essentially sitting back and waiting to die. Am I right?" Cerise nodded dumbly. "Wrong. Clara isn't coming for you. She'll go after the Monitor and on her own she'll most likely lose. She'll die and you'll still be alive and miserable and even more guilty because now it's your fault that she died because you could have done something and you didn't." It was like a knife twisting in Cerise's gut. She swallowed mutely but Proxy wasn't done. "And it doesn't end there. Do you think that when the Monitor's done pitting you two against one another it's over? No, most likely he goes out into the multiverse again and finds eight more people to make battle to the death. That's another eight deaths that you could have prevented and that's not even taking into consideration the inevitable collateral damage." Proxy grabbed Cerise by the shoulders and forced her to look at its face. "And he'll keep on doing it again and again. Do you have any idea of the number of people you are killing right now?"

"Okay fine." Cerise broke free from the robot's grip and floated over to the other side of the room. "Fine I'll do whatever you want, but I want a mana dampener."

"That shouldn't be a problem." Proxy replied coolly. It glanced appraisingly around the room and continued: "We should be okay in here. There's not a lot of room, but it's soundproofed so we shouldn't attract any attention."

"What exactly-" Cerise started.

"Preparation." Proxy interrupted. "When we fought you were all over the place. If you can reign in the impulse to monologue and actually think about what you're doing during battle then we might just have a shot at this thing." The machine once again began to mess with its dampener arm.

"Hey now wait. Hold up-" But it was too late; the pressure that had been holding her in check was suddenly gone completely. The pent up power fizzed through her body sending sparks skittering across her skin as it did so. It was intoxicating and Cerise was gone; like a glass of water poured into the ocean. "That Cerise, what a bore." Aph laughed. "And you..." With a manic grin plastered on her face she hovered closer to Proxy who remained perfectly motionless, its eye fixed upon her. "You should have just said you wanted to kill the Monitor. Maybe we could have had a little fun together." In a moment her expression changed and she was shooting forth an arc of electricity scorching the spot where Proxy was, until a moment ago, standing from floor to ceiling. "But no!" Aph continued seemingly unfazed. "You wanted to quash me, control me. You wanted to throw your lot in with that pale shadow of my true self. Who do you think you are that you get to tell me what to do, who to be? You're nothing but an insect. Now stand still while I-" Her rant was cut short by a heavy blow to her back, sending her flying across the room and into the enormous gramophone trumpet, which snapped from the machine it was a part of and lodged itself in the far wall.

"Control yourself Aph." Proxy instructed. "Don't give your enemy the chance to retaliate. Anticipate his movements and keep moving yourself. And your magic is not a gun, it can do so much more than point and shoot."

As expected Aph cycled through her elements and made no more use of them than to try to blast the spot where Proxy was standing. She snarled and derided its instruction whenever it gave it and recounted the many ways she would make it suffer before she finally mercifully ended its life. When Aph had finally become too incoherent for words Proxy re-enabled the mana dampener. Aph fell away and Cerise was all that was left. Amongst the now scrap metal that had been the gramophone-resembling machine and the melted remains of the huge black cylinder she wept. The robot stood impartially off to the side and simply waited for her to finish.

"We do not have time for this." Proxy said eventually. "Get back on your feet and we will begin again."

"No!" Cerise spun on the spot to face the impassive machine. "Please no more. I can't be her. Isn't there another way?"

"When you become 'her' do you black out and only wake up when she is gone?" Proxy asked.

Cerise looked down at the scorched ground. "no" she mumbled, barely audibly.

"I thought as much." Proxy said. "When your power is uncapped you are overwhelmed but still present, still part of 'her'. You can take control and we will do this until you do take control."

"no please no more i can't do it i can't do it please just let me die already i'm of no use to you" Cerise's pleas tumbled out in one desperate run on sentence. "What about Clara. Go see Clara you can probably help her. Together you could take down the Monitor almost definitely please just don't make me be aph again."

Proxy studied the nymph in silence. She was simply too weak. She would never muster the strength necessary to take control of herself, and it knew it. Putting on a more sympathetic tone of voice it said: "You know, there might just be another way." Cerise looked up at the machine with a strange mixture of fear and hope in her eyes, but said nothing. It took a seat next to her and with the press of a button a pair of wires uncoiled from its other arm. Cerise's eyes widened in momentary surprise. "I'm just full of surprises." Proxy joked. "You never know what's up my sleeve." Cerise half chuckled.

"So what is this then?" she asked.

"I believe it's called a mana-writer." Proxy said. "I borrowed the technology from a world where mana has very similar properties to yours. It lets you wipe clean the data stored within mana. It's normally a precision tool but I'm thinking with a bit of perseverance we might be able to erase enough of those other personalities that you won't have any problems staying in control any more. That'd be nice right?" Cerise gave an exhausted nod.

"Is it going to hurt."

"My dear you won't feel a thing."

Proxy took the silvery sharp wires in its rusted hand and pressed them into the soft flesh of Cerise's temple.

"Liar." she said, with a half-smile. Proxy didn't respond, it was at that moment finally realizing the sheer volume of conflicting personalities and desires stored within her mana. "Am I supposed to feel any different?" she asked after a minute or so had passed.

"Just relax." Proxy said. "It'll all be over in a minute."

Cerise did relax. The wires were uncomfortable but not painful and she finally had some hope for the future. If this was to work she wouldn't even need a mana dampener. She and Clara would beat the Monitor and then... who knows what then. The world would be her oyster. Yes she'd done some pretty terrible borderline unforgivable things when she'd been Aph but that was behind her. She was going to do one very good thing, save a number of people she probably couldn't even fathom, and maybe it would balance out. Maybe she would get her happy ending after all. There was only one thing that was bothering her.

"You know," she said, "your voice sounds really familiar but I just can't place it."

"Don't worry about it." said Proxy.

"No." Cerise insisted, with a sudden air of panic. "You said it was Xan, but I... I don't remember him. I remember remembering him but... why can't I remember?"

"It's alright." said Proxy soothingly. "Just let it go."

Cerise stared at Proxy incomprehendingly. "Who are you?" she demanded. "Where is this? What's going on?" She tried to pull back but Proxy grabbed her by the wrists and held her firmly. "Hey let go of me!" She thrashed in the robot's grip but it was useless. Her memories were melting away, already there was nothing left of her life before the battle; of Xan or her time spent on the streets, of where that sword came from. She remembered the introductions, seeing the indistinct visage of the Monitor for the first time and falling stupidly in love and then that was gone as well. Scattershot pieces of her life were missing with no rhyme nor reason. She dimly recalled a dragon, but not the how or the way, and floating down the corridor of an abandoned facility tied to an uncomfortable old chair and a fashionable red and yellow scarf that she had lost somewhere along the way. Her memories flickered out one by one. Her mostly miserable existence under the name Cerise is extinguished in moments. She remembers a massacre and so much hatred now quelled permanently. She forgets the faces of the people she's killed and the names of her competitors, all but one. "Clara!" she calls for help from her love, but it does not come. In the end all she remembers is one moment in a swamp, down on one knee before the woman of her dreams.

"Clara." she whispers.

And then that too is gone and there is nothing left.

She awoke on a stiff mattress, in a dusty disused room. Hazy violet light filtered in through half closed blinds, not so much illuminating the room as draping it with a feeling of dim unease. Groggily she pushed herself up to a sitting position and looked around the room. The furniture was all old dark wood, sturdily built and now wreathed in dust and cobwebs. It was a small room, just enough space for a wardrobe, a desk and chair, a dresser table with fold out mirror (shattered) and the bed with its bare mattress upon which she was sat.

“Hello?” she called.

A long moment of silence, and then when she'd been expecting no response a faint crackling and a voice: “Greetings, my beloved daughter.”

She awoke in a large glass chamber, which itself was in an enormous industrial looking room. Seven other glass chambers, each of which contained a being, were arranged in a circle to face a shadowed figure sat amongst complex looking machinery.

“Greetings. I am known as the Monitor,” the figure said simply. “I have brought you here for a simple purpose: to battle each other to the death. I am very interested in the data such a battle will produce.”

She was a humanoid being made from a pale pink and slightly shimmering substance known as mana. She was, what was known in her world as, a nymph; a magical construct conjured by elaborate ritual. The purpose of nymphs, usually, is to spread love and she was no exception.  Her life before now had been a barren existence, devoid of friends or companions. Her conjurer had died in the expending of energy required to create her and she’d found herself without a place or purpose in the world. But even so she still resented being snatched out of it by the figure before her, a being who dispassionately discussed how they were to kill one another for his… not amusement, rather for his intellectual curiosity. It was rare for a nymph to feel hate but here it was sparked already, and she glared at him even as he introduced her competition.

“Participant number 8: an unnamed nymph. She may not look like much at the moment, but her potential for power is enormous. Underestimate her at your peril.”

"That should be sufficient information on your competition. Now, I will send you to the first arena. Once one of you has fallen in battle, the rest shall be retrieved and I shall send you to the next round. This will continue until only one of you is victorious."

The Monitor hit a button on a console before him, and each of the glass chambers filled with blinding bright light. As the light faded the nymph found herself somewhere else entirely; a wrecked conference room. There was a wide oval shaped table, a little battered and covered with dust and rubble from the ceiling buckling overhead, in the centre of the room. Around it were scattered upturned chairs and corpses, all of which were dressed in uniforms of varying faded colours, though mostly stained a deep bloody red.

“This base was the site of a large-scale battle.” The nymph jumped in surprise at the sound of the Monitor’s voice once again. It sounded right next to her no matter where she was. It was creepily intrusive, though admittedly a minor issue compared to everything else. “There were no survivors, on either side. However, the commander of this base had it filled with lethal traps, many of which are still active. You will have to contend with the traps as well as your competitors, or perhaps find a way to use them to your advantage.”

It was unsettling, at first, to hear Ghost speak. She would later notice the speakers wired into every room in the manor (she presumed they were in every room but lacked the time or inclination to check each individually). It was through these and through the borrowed voices of others that Ghost would answer her many questions.

“Where am I?” She'd asked.

“This is my manor. You may consider it your home for the time being.”

----

“Who am I?”

“Your name is Aph.” But the name had felt uncomfortable and wrong.

----

“Where are you?”

“I'm nearby my darling daughter. I have a condition that means I cannot see you in person but rest assured I am always nearby and I love you very much.”

----

“Why am I here?”

On the second day, still in her settling in period, she stood on the porch of the house and looked out over the garden, rendered intraversable with weeds. All sickly greens and deep purples, with occasional flourishes; bright petals of an arresting midnight blue or a cloying gamboge. Off to one side, the only part of the garden still not completely consumed by the untamed plantlife, was the very top of a rickety old gazebo. Beyond the fence that demarcated the edge of Ghost's manor were lavender hills and more isolated manors. Later she would ask who those manors belonged to and Ghost would tell her that they were the only two people in this entire world, and that the manors were all theirs.

“You are a very special person.” Ghost's stolen voices buzzed out of a nearby speaker even out here. “Out in the world there is a very bad man called The Monitor, and you are the only one who can stop him from hurting more people.”

The nymph found herself paying little attention to the Monitor’s summary of their battleground, instead she picked herself up and idly floated over to the corpses that littered the room, moving from one to the next curiously examining them. Mostly they looked as though they’d died from gunshot wounds, a couple were broken and bruised in a way that suggested bludgeoning by something very heavy and one in a violet uniform had lost an entire arm somehow. Their stump had been hastily wrapped in scraps of material though it didn’t look like it had helped any. The nymph looked at their faces, though the decay made it difficult to tell she thought they might have been young, men and women both. She felt a sadness for their deaths and a curiosity for who they were, what this place was, why they had had their lives stolen from them.

But such pondering had to be cut short; as she heard the sound of distant commotion, raised voices and crashes of movement. She remembered herself, her situation, and with only the smallest hesitation she followed the sounds. They led her out of a doorway now missing its doors and down a couple of rubble-strewn grey corridors until she found a heavily barricaded door with a broken window looking out into a courtyard.

Through the shattered window she could see a battle playing out; she recognized them, other ‘participants’ as The Monitor had described them. Flames billowed around the one called Trickster, slender and spry he made a simple gesture and the flames swirled through the air like ribbons arcing towards Aegis Culpris on the other side of the courtyard. Aegis braced to take the hit, raising one hand before him as his gauntlet opened out into a shield just in time to take the blow with a loud sizzle, the force of the blow pushing Aegis back in the dirt. By his side his other gauntlet reformed, taking the shape of a primitive speargun. He raised the gauntlet, paused for just a moment to take aim and

“Stop!” the nymph cried out desperately. “Stop this!” Aegis’ shot went wide, embedding itself in the rotten plaster of the courtyard wall. Both Aegis’ and Trickster’s attention was directed her way for the moment and quickly she forced her way through the shattered window (utilizing the malleability of her form to squeeze her way through the tight space). “Why are you fighting?” she scolded. “Are we all really going to fight and kill one another just because some awful machine told us to?”

Aegis nodded. “I’ve no desire-” but was promptly cut off by Trickster bursting into maniacal laughter; his flames burned brighter in a halo around him with each renewed peal of laughter.

“You fool!” He exclaimed finally. “That’s the kind of simpleminded thinking that will-” All of a sudden there was a slate grey man right next to him, halfway through winding up for a punch, and before Trickster could even react, Larus’ fist, now composed of solid stone slammed into the side of Trickster’s face. Trickster’s fires dimmed and then went out as he flew back and skidded to a stop in the dirt.

The nymph winced and took a step back as Larus’ fist hit home. She eyed Larus suspiciously. He stared down at the unconscious Trickster, cracking his knuckles as they shifted back into grey flesh. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m not looking to pick any fights; I just know a lost cause when I see one.”

“Well…” The nymph hesitated “That was probably for the best but I do still want to at least try to talk some sense into him. If we get all eight of us working together against The Monitor we’re sure to succeed.” The nymph nodded to herself.

Aegis chuckled as he strode up towards them, his gauntlets returning to their normal form. “I like your optimism… um what should I call you?”

“Oh!” The nymph exclaimed. “I’ve never had a name before. People usually just call me ‘You There’ or ‘Nymph’ if they want something.”

“That’s a lot of pressure then.” Aegis laughed again. “I don’t know if I’m up to the task. Any suggestions?” Here he turned to Larus.

Larus just rolled his eyes. “We should restrain this one at least.” He turned back to look at Trickster’s unconscious body only to find it missing. “Damnit!” he muttered, glancing around him.

The courtyard was simply an empty plot of land free of any elaborate ornamentation and in the process of being reclaimed by nature. In the far corner from where the door through which the nymph had squeezed was a mound of decomposing bodies. Just past that was a wide set of double doors hanging open, and on the left side (towards where Aegis had been standing) there was a metal door freshly knocked off its hinges allowing entrance to the dark corridors beyond. But the wall on Trickster’s side was mostly intact, except for a partially crumbled section too small for a person to fit through. If Trickster had left the courtyard they should have seen him, he should have had to go through at least one of their eyelines.

Aegis’ gauntlets shifted into sickles, though he made no move to use them yet, his eyes darted back and forth scanning the overgrowth for any signs of Trickster. The nymph tensed similarly, a few dim pulses of magical energy running up and down her pale pink skin borne by instinct more than any conscious decision. Larus simply sighed. “He’s not here.” He said. “He was full on laughing and cackling and calling us fools. If he was still here we’d know about it, he wouldn’t be able to contain himself.”

Aegis stood tense for another minute or so before finally begrudgingly relaxing, letting his gauntlets shift back into their original form. “a few other tricks up his sleeve.” He muttered the Monitor’s description of Trickster back to himself. “We should leave, go look for the others before that psycho finds them.”

The nymph nodded her agreement. “With any luck the others will be willing to work together, and then maybe Trickster will see that he doesn’t have to fight us.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Larus said dismissively. “You two should go and do that. I can mist through that gap,” here he indicated the crumbled wall behind where Trickster had fell, “I’ll head through and see if he might have gone this way.”

“I…” the nymph hesitated. “I don’t think that we should split up. This place seems dangerous I just don’t like the idea of us each going off on our own.” Larus gave her a withering look. “I’m pretty flexible,” she added “I could probably fit through there.”

“Or I could just knock a hole through.” Aegis offered, slamming his metal gauntlets together with a heavy clunk.

“No offence meant, but I work better on my own.” Larus said, as he strode through the overgrowth to the partially collapsed wall, his body gradually shifting into a mist as he did so. Aegis and the nymph watched as Larus’ mist form slipped through the gap and for a moment afterward. There were no immediate screams, or other sounds of danger and so Aegis and the nymph turned to one another.

Aegis gestured over his shoulder toward the hanging open double doors on the far side of the courtyard. “Where I started from was nothing but dead ends. That way’s probably our best bet.”

“Yeah.” The nymph agreed, somewhat deflated. “We should do that.”

“Hey how about Kallos?” Aegis asked as they started towards the doors.

“As a name?” the nymph asked. Aegis nodded.  “I don’t know, it sounds a little cruel.”

“Hmmm I suppose it does lose something in translation.” He admitted. “I’ll keep thinking.” The nymph looked across at him and smiled a little as they stepped back inside the base proper.

7.00 AM – Wake up time

Wake up time used to be a problem. Either she'd ignore Ghost's attempts to wake her and snooze the morning away (unacceptable) or Ghost would go more forceful (obnoxiously loud alarms, a splash of ice cold water, sometimes teleporting her directly into the training room) and she'd be irate for the rest of the day and not complete her training properly (extremely unacceptable).

Now Ghost would wake her up with a specially recorded message from Sister Clara and it would, without fail, raise her spirits, sending her to her morning exercise with a spring in her step.

7.05 to 7.30 AM – Morning Exercise

It varied from day to day. Her favourite was running laps of the mansion, seeing what new rooms there were today. Her other favourite was lifting weights as it didn't make as much noise as running or using any of the heavy exercise equipment, and so Ghost would read her chapter of whatever she was reading at the time. Currently she was obsessed with a book about sci-fi necromancers called Grey Rose of Seven.

7.30 to 8.15 AM –  Morning hygiene and Breakfast

Ghost said that eating was only necessary once or twice a week due to the way her body worked, but that it's nice to have breakfast and so they did every day. Ghost would read out the crossword puzzle clues for them to complete together. She was really good on Grandmasters, but struggled on most other topics.

8.15 to 8.20 AM – Say Good Morning To Her Friends

On her way to her practices she would always make time to pop into the gallery and say “Good Morning” to her favourite portraits. Sister Clara and D'Neya were mainstays just on the basis that she might get to meet them one day. Other often visited portraits included Princess Peppi and Jen and Bennie, oh and Fiorella of course, can't forget Holly or Trisha or... well too many to mention each individually.

This habit had been gently discouraged by Ghost who when questioned said that they didn't want her to raise her expectations too high and end up disappointed. Not that this discouragement stopped her from visiting. Today she stopped by Karen and Eureka and confided in them her latest theories on Grey Rose of Seven.

8.20 AM to 12.00 PM – Weapon Practice

Without a partner to spar with much of weapon practice was practicing form. It was the dullest part of her day, occasionally brightened when Ghost provided a new type of weapon for her to learn, or unearthed a new set of exercises to help refine her technique.

12.00 to 12.30 PM - Lunch

Lunch was even less necessary than breakfast, but it provided a nice period of relaxation. This was often her best opportunity to ask Ghost any questions that had been brewing over the last day.

“Why do Grandmasters keep doing Battles? What are they for?”

“Posturing mostly. Showing off that they are capable enough to host a battle of their own.” Ghost replied. “Though they'd say something like entertainment or data collection or oops I started a battle by accident.”

She'd nodded and continued eating her sandwich. It didn't taste very good but after she'd gone to the trouble of picking the fruit and making the jam herself she didn't want to waste it. Next time she'd opt for one of the trees that wasn't billowing smoke as she harvested from it.

12.30 to 12.45 PM – Walk To Magic Practice

Her magic was big enough that it posed a very real risk to the stability of the manor, and so magic practice was always held at the next manor over, she called it Magic Manor for obvious reasons.

12.45 to 3.45 PM – Magic Practice

Ghost would sometimes set up targets throughout Magic Manor and her goal was to locate them and take them out. Some days were all about practicing the different types of magic or controlling the size and shape of her spell. Sometimes she was encouraged to do the biggest spell she could, just to see the scale of it and to find the limits of her own power. No matter how much damage she caused, she noticed that it would always be fixed up good as new by the next day's Magic Practice.

3.45 to 4.00 PM – Walk Home

The path between manors didn't have the speakers that Ghost used to speak through, so it would always be the loneliest part of the day. Despite this she still felt their presence close by and that was a great comfort.

4.00 to 4.05 PM – Say Hello To Her Friends (Again)

“Jess! Jess! We practiced acid magic today.” She was bursting with excitement. “I think you'd be so proud of me. I got all the targets and dissolved a big hole in the floor and found a new basement room with all kinds of weird gizmos.”

4.05 to 6.00 PM – Specialized Training

Specialized Training was like an ongoing series of little skills that Ghost wanted to teach her. They would pretty much do hacking/interfacing with complicated technology once a week and while she was getting the basics it was clear she was never going to be especially talented in this field. Ghost said that that was okay.

Today was Immobilization Resistance Training. Essentially the worst kind of training. Ghost would freeze her in place, like how a Grandmaster might in a battle, and then it was her task to unfreeze herself. This was another once a week training and so far she hadn't managed it even once, even just a little tiny bit. Ghost said it was important though so she persisted in her efforts.

6.00 to 6.30 PM – Dinner

She liked to try new things. She'd often ask Ghost to get her the ingredients for a meal that one of her friends might have had. Today she'd asked for something the sad girl with no name might have had and it was a bland semi-nutritious mush. She hated it.

6.30 to 11.00 PM – Free Time

Ghost said it was as important to have rest time as it was to have training time, and so her evenings were hers to do with as she pleased. Some days she would sit in the library and read. Some days she would sit in the gallery and draw in her sketchbook, pictures of all her friends and her laughing and training together. Some days she'd sit on the porch and just watch the brilliant violet sunset. Some days she'd just continue to explore the mansion. Despite all of her time here she continued to find new rooms, new secret nooks and crannies and little treasures hidden within and she held out hope of maybe one day finding Ghost's secret bedroom, or maybe the room where they operated all the speakers from.

Today she explored outside. She'd been chipping away at the garden whenever she had the energy and inclination and it had really paid off. It had gone from wall of plantlife that if you walked into there was no guarantee you'd ever emerge, to just regular overgrown garden. Uncovering a path into the gazebo had been good. There had been an old tea set in there and for a couple of days she had become a connoisseur of all kinds of interesting teas.

Today she found a den of a big orange and white cat(?) amongst a particularly dense section of foliage. They were pretty timid at first but then she went and got them a selection of tasty snacks and they ventured out of their den to try them. She brought the cat (squirming and uncooperative) inside and asked Ghost to help her look up how to take care of enormous orange cat.

Ghost told her that this was a Fox and asked her to consider if she had time in her schedule to take care of a high maintenance pet. Despite initial resistance (they're so cute and fluffy) she was forced to admit that it just wasn't practical and let Fox return to their den.

Begrudgingly she continued her exploration and was rewarded with a hatch leading to a basement games room that she hadn't known was there before. It was neat but most of these games were for two or more people.

11.00 to 11.30 PM – Evening Hygiene and Bed Time

Every night before she got back into bed she would mark another day on her calendar and work out how many days were left. 590 was a huge number. Practically unimaginable for someone who had only existed for just over six weeks. On the one hand it couldn't come soon enough, but on the other she worried that even this impossible length of time was not going to be enough.

The mood was dour as Sister Clara and the nymph trudged their way through the swamp, which could only be partially attributed to the foul mist that pervaded this place. It was unspoken amongst the pair that their change in locale meant that one of their number was dead, and likely meant that another one of their number had killed them. They moved hand in hand through the waist deep stagnant water, the golden enchantments that Clara had cast on them both provided a little illumination as a side benefit, just enough to see the silhouettes of obstacles, such as trees, before they bumped into them.

“Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself?” The nymph asked. Sister Clara hesitated pausing in her movement for just a moment as she turned to look back at the nymph. Her expression was one of earnest curiosity.

“I don’t think this is a good time, dear.” She said keeping her voice low without actually whispering.

“I could tell you about myself but there’s not a lot to tell.” The nymph said. “Nymphs are normally created for something but not me. My creator was dead before I was even fully formed.” The nymph trailed off as Sister Clara squeezed her hand and calmly waited for her to finish.

“I’m sorry dear,” she said gently, “I’d like to hear your story but at the moment I need to keep my full attention. The others haven’t had the benefit of my filter enchantments; they could be very dangerous to us and themselves at this point, which isn’t to mention any creatures that might be native to this place.” The nymph nodded her understanding and mumbled an apology and then in silence the two of them continued on through the mist.

Whether the sounds of their surroundings were dulled by the toxic mist hanging over them like a rotten veil, or whether there were simply no sounds to hear was unclear. All was silent except for the steady sloshing of water as they kept moving in the arbitrary direction they had chosen. The nymph wondered about their immediate course of action. Obviously the Monitor was scared. Maybe not specifically by her and her determination to unite the combatants of his game together against him, but he was scared, she was sure of it. That's why he'd sent them to this swamp, a place where the very air itself could turn them against each other.

The pair continued to wade through the swamp, Sister Clara was tense and attentive for sounds and movement glimpsed through the fog, while the nymph was lost in her own thoughts. Her eyes lingering on the indistinct shape of Sister Clara ahead of her, and especially her hand grasped firmly in her own. It was of course just a precaution against getting seperated, but it was still an act of kindness, and even a little piece of intimacy could mean a lot to someone who had spent most of their life alone.

It would be too much to say that the nymph loved Sister Clara just yet, far too soon for her to kneel before her and ask for her hand in marriage. But yet, the nymph couldn't help but feel a sensation that felt like her heart pounding, even if she didn't technically have a heart so to speak. As they walked together she tried to compose something, be it a comment or a question or an expression of gratitude or whatever, something to indicate that for whatever reason this quiet walk in this gloomy swamp had been the best moment in her life so far.

Sister Clara froze in place and glanced back to the nymph. “Did you hear that?”

“What? Hear what?” The nymph asked in a panic. “I didn't say anything.” she blurted, worried that she had accidentally been thinking out loud. Sister Clara gestured for silence and in the long moment that followed the nymph felt her heart (metaphorical) pounding, but remained as quiet as she was able.

And then there was something, a voice, very faintly crying out. Immediately Sister Clara was rushing off in that direction, pulling the near negligible weight of the nymph behind her.

547 Days To Go

Today after breakfast weapon practice was delayed and Ghost directed her to the basement games room she hadn't returned to since the day she found it. Standing inside was a battered robot in a motheaten deep purple suit.

“Wow! Are you real?” She immediately ran up to them and ran her hands along the worn fabric of their suit. “You're really here.” she said somewhat awed.

“It is a pleasure to meet you.” Their voice buzzed through a little grille at the nape of their neck.

She was running through all of the robots she knew of trying to work out who this was and coming up blank. “Who are you?” she asked.

“My name is... Proxy.” They replied.

“Oh, you're someone new!” She said. “Nice to meet you Proxy. I'm.” Long hesitation. “Ghost what's my name again?”

“Aph.”

“No that's not it.” She shook her head. “Well, I'll come up with something. It's my next Big Project. In the meantime can Proxy and I learn how to play these games?”

“Of course my dear one.” Ghost replied. “Weapon practice is cancelled for today. Lunch and this afternoon's activities will continue as normal though.”

That day she learned how to play pool and snooker and billiards and then got rather sick of the pool table games and then learned how to play darts and dominos and then they uncovered an entire cupboard full of board games she hadn't even known about beforehand. As they finished up for the morning and headed off to lunch she spontaneously ran up to Proxy and hugged them close. Their chassis was cold and in some places a little pointy through the fabric of the jacket, but they closed their arms around her and hugged her back and it was a great day.

“There is an impostor among us.” Larus stated simply. He looked around the ruined office at the others who had convened together in this sandblasted building.

B had righted one of the toppled office chairs and now perched sullenly upon it, giving the impression that he didn't really want to be here. Sister Clara was stood by the window, or rather the gaping hole where there had once been window, and she had a look of weariness and concern on her face. The nymph was close to Sister Clara, but she was looking out across the desert, scanning the ruins for any trace of movement, looking out for the one person who was still unaccounted for in this new location.

“Well, maybe not among us five.” Larus corrected himself and as if on cue Aegis re-entered the room.

“All's clear on this floor at least.” Aegis confirmed as he took a spot leaning against one of the walls. There was a loud creaking from the building itself, and Aegis seemed to reconsider, removing himself from that spot and taking a seat on an old wooden desk littered with papers. “I think the lower floors are all caved in. Upper floors... well I wouldn't risk it. If the spy is up for it maybe they'll get themselves killed and save us a job.”

“The shapeshifter could probably just turn into a bird and fly up there easily.” B said moodily.

“The way it has been behaving so far I think it would rather be amongst our ranks sowing uncertainty between us than watching from without.” Larus observed.

“So you do think it is one of us?” B asked snippily. Larus opened his mouth to speak, but just shrugged.

“We need to think this through.” Sister Clara approached a large white panel half covered with almost faded writings. “It does us no good to just make baseless accusations. That's exactly what it wanted when it revealed itself to us.” Using a pen from a tray beneath the panel she began to write their names upon the board, in a bright cheery green.

Sister Clara Jungfrau
Aegis
Larus
B

She hesitated and glanced over at the nymph, it felt a little impersonal to just write 'nymph' down, but this really wasn't an opportune moment to try to give her a name.

Nymph
Trickster
D'Neya

“I'm missing someone.” Clara said thoughtfully.

“Oh, um, what was their name. With the mask.” Aegis said. “It was a fancy name. Sounded like some kind of hat.” The group fell silent for a moment before Larus piped up.

“Oh right, Cabaret.” He said. “Has anyone actually seen them since this damned thing started?” There was a general shaking of heads as Sister Clara added their name to the board and Aegis offered:

”Once, right near the start. He turned and sprinted off at the sight of me.”

Cabaret?

“If we've moved two 'round's that means two of us have died.” As she says it Sister Clara notices the nymph, still staring out over the desert, shudder at the words. “In the facility we saw Trickster get stabbed either by Larus or by the spy in the form of Larus.” Larus frowns but resists the temptation to interrupt as Clara carefully strikes through Trickster's name on the whiteboard. “Did anybody see what happened in the swamp?”

“Do we even know for certain that someone did die?” B asked. “The shadow guy said that we only move from one place to another when it happens but he is trying to mess with us. It might be just another move to make us more paranoid.”

“I suppose it's not impossible, but we shouldn't leap to conclusions.” Clara said carefully. “In the swamp, Aegis and I were together at the end.” Aegis nodded his confirmation. Sister Clara looked around the room, waiting for someone else to offer their location at that time before finally prompting: “Larus?”

“The damned thing knocked me unconscious and then I woke up in this desert.” Larus replied frustratedly. “And yeah I know how hugely suspicious that it it is that it only knocked me out instead of killing me, and that has to be exactly what it wanted.”

“Everything's kind of a blur for me.” B piped up. “That fog really got into my system. I don't know what happened.” There was an expectant pause and the group looked over at the nymph, cognizant that she had been quiet this whole time.

Sister Clara walked over and laid her hand on the nymph's shoulder. The nymph rested her head against Sister Clara's hand and sighed. “I hate this.” she said. “I hate the way this doubt is turning us against each other, making us suspect each other. I don't want to harbour this distrust towards any of you.”

“I know, dear.” Sister Clara said softly. “I wish we didn't have to do this too, but until we've worked this out there's no way we'll all be able to stand together against the Monitor.”

“I was with D'Neya.” The nymph said with a sigh. “I found her huddled among the roots of one of those big swamp trees. I think the spy must have attacked her at some point, she was scared out of her mind. She's just a girl, you know. She's so young.” She turned and glanced over at B for a moment. “Nothing about what the Monitor has done is okay... but to do it to children...”

“I understand, dear.” Sister Clara said. “And I promise that once this spy situation is resolved, we'll all be doing everything we can to stop him.” The nymph murmured her agreement and turned her head to look at everyone.

“I'll just take a walk around the edge of the building and see if I can't spot D'Neya anywhere.” The nymph said, dropping from the ledge down to the sand not far below.

“It's probably not-” Sister Clara stopped herself. “Don't stray too far.”

“I'll keep her company.” Larus said, pulling himself away from the spot where he'd been slumped against the wall. “You don't trust me anyway so there's not much I can add to this conversation.”

As the group started to argue with one another again, the nymph breathed another sigh and walked away.

520 Days To Go

Things hadn't changed too much now that Proxy was part of the household. The most notable thing was that now she had a sparring partner for weapons practice, which had turned what was an arduous slog into a fun back and forth. Proxy themselves wasn't the most competent fighter to begin with but every day both of them were getting better with faster reflexes and cleaner swings.

She wasn't allowed to bring them to magic practice. Ghost said that Proxy was too fragile, impossible to replace. But that was okay because sometimes she'd see Fox following her, but not too close, and that always put a smile on her face.

It was free time and today she was having tea and cake in the gazebo. Tea had made a major comeback lately. She'd been learning how to bake and her cakes were mostly okay but accompanying them with a cup of tea was like the secret ingredient that made them even better. Proxy was with sitting with her even though they could not sample either the tea or the cake.

“Its sweet and crumbly and a little sticky and the texture's not one hundred percent consistent but I did my best.” She said, attempting to share the experience using language alone. “And the tea,” she took a sip. “It's like there's a little bitter, but the way I like it there's a nice balance of sweet as well. And it's the best when it's nice and hot so when you swallow it you can feel the heat inside you.”

Proxy didn't respond. They were like this sometimes. Outside of training sessions or scheduled activities they kind of shut down, only really operating on a surface level. It made her a little sad. She sipped more of her tea and thought about the future.

“Proxy, will you be with me when I fight the Monitor?”

“In a sense.” They said easily, suddenly more animated. “But before we discuss that it's important that I see your combat skills in action.” There was a shik as a blade emerged from their right arm. For a half a second it was almost funny to see this beat up robot (no offence Proxy) suddenly spring to life with a razor sharp shining sword emerging from a rusted lump of an arm. Then they slashed at her and she almost fell backwards out of her chair attempting to scramble out of the way.

“Proxy what are you doing?” Now on her feet, she paced back, putting some space between her and her friend.

“We're running low on time and I cannot proceed until I establish your level of competence. Defend yourself.”

“Stop it Proxy. We're not doing weapon practice. I don't have anything to defend myself with.”

“You are a weapon. Defend yourself.”

She bumped into the edge of the gazebo, no more space to back away and Proxy seemed to have no intention to hold back. They stepped forwards. She raised her arm before her instinctually and with desperate split second concentration conjured a shield of electric energy strapped to her wrist. The blow struck with a shower of sparks. She gritted her teeth as her makeshift electric barrier struggled to withstand the weight of the blow, and then the blade skidded aside safely. With the blade knocked aside, there was a moment an opportunity for a counter attack, but she hesitated. She didn't want to hurt Proxy. How could this be happening?

“Proxy stop it!” She cried out.

“Unit Proxy cease evaluation mode.” It was only at Ghost's command that Proxy stopped their attack. Their blade, now with a blackened tip, slid back into their arm and they took a seat on the nearest chair as though nothing had just happened.

“What was that?” She asked. “What just happened?”

“I'm so sorry my precious daughter.”

“Yes, but what happened though?” She cautiously stepped past Proxy, took one of the chairs and walked with it over to the other side of the gazebo, as far as she could from Proxy, before sitting down and resting her shaking legs.

“A little malfunction I'm afraid.” Ghost replied. “That programming is for a very specific situation that you don't need to worry about. It was never supposed to trigger for you, here at your home.”

“I don't understand.” She said.

“Its okay my dear.” Ghost said. “When you've calmed down and feel up to it could you help bring Proxy to my workshop, and then we can talk about it in more detail.”

She took a few minutes to recover. She picked off the shattered ceramics from her half finished slice of battenberg and finished it off, as it seemed a shame to let it go to waste. And then without a word she helped Proxy up and guided them back toward the house.

The skies were full of flame and the people surrounding them were either crossing themselves in fear, screaming or calling for the immediate execution of the witches responsible.  At the very least it meant nobody was paying attention as a hooded figure and 'Betty Parris' hurried hand-in-hand through the throng and into the nearest barn.

The nymph pulled the doors shut behind them. Everything had fallen apart so quickly. It might have been possible to maintain this masquerade and hide their true identities from the townsfolk here, if not for the existence of the spy. If you were a shapeshifter it must have been remarkably easy to pin a crime on each of your opponents and then sit back and watch the sparks fly.

The nymph, finally having caught her breath, turned to see 'Betty' standing back warily, a pitchfork raised in her direction. She pulled back her hood, to reveal herself, but of course she only succeeded in revealing the freckled face of Madeleine Williams.

“D'Neya.” she said softly. “It's me, um, the nymph.”

D'Neya lowered the pitchfork just a little. “I'll need a demonstration.” She asked.

“I found you in the swamp.” she said. “You'd been attacked by something. You were terrified. You lashed out at me with your black tentacle thingies. Caught me on the wrist. It healed up okay but it really stung.”

As the nymph spoke, D'Neya lowered her pitchfork and cast it aside. “I wasn't that scared, I'll have you know.”

“It's okay to be scared.” The nymph confided. “I've been scared in one form or another since the moment that this battle began.”

“I never said there was anything wrong with it, just that I wasn't, and I'm not.” D'Neya said dismissively. “After all I'm prepared to defend myself if I need to. You've seen that firsthand.” She thought for a moment. “Probably better equipped to defend myself than you are.”

“That's fine.” The nymph snaps, taking an uncomfortable seat upon a haybale. “I don't want to fight. I've never wanted to fight.” D'Neya took a seat next to her.

“Lets imagine that all this business with the spy gets resolved.” D'Neya said. “What happens then?”

“Then we all unite together and bring down The Monitor.” The nymph replied readily.

“How are you bringing down The Monitor exactly. Are you going to write him a strongly worded letter?” D'Neya asked. “Just ask politely and hope that he deigns to let us all go?” The nymph didn't have a response. For a minute or two they sat in silence listening to the cries of the puritan mob outside. They were baying for Madeline's head on a platter. The nymph shivered, though not from the cold.

After a while D'Neya spoke up again: “Nobody's taken the time to name you yet?”

“Everything's been pretty hectic.” The nymph replied. “Its not exactly top of anyone's priority list.”

“What about...” D'Neya thought for a moment. “How does Titania strike you?” The nymph considered it for a long moment. “It's a royal name, from one of the Queens of the Faeries. I think it would rather suit you.”

“You think I'm a faerie?” Titania(?) asked.

“Something like that.” D'Neya said. “Maybe not quite a faerie. Maybe you were a pixie or something.” The nymph was ready to argue, but then she glanced over at D'Neya and saw the smirk upon her face.

“Well, whatever. I don't think Titania suits me though.” The nymph said. “It's too grand. I'd feel like I should be hosting balls and bestowing favours.”

“Maybe once this is over you could do those things.” D'Neya said. “I am a princess you know. I could teach you how to hold court.”

“That could be nice.” The nymph said wistfully.

“That settles it then, from now on I'm calling you Titania.” D'Neya grinned.

“Well in that case I'm calling you -” The nymph's retort was interrupted by a heavy knock on the barn door. The nymph quickly leapt to her feet. She hadn't locked the door. She wasn't certain you could lock a barn door and she hadn't even tried.

Before she could get to the doors, they opened slightly revealing a well built man in a leather apron. The nymph froze as his eyes fixated on her for a long moment, before flickering over to D'Neya who was trying not to be noticed as she slipped away into the back of the barn.

“Get back or I'll use my witchy magic on you!” The nymph said. “I can do all kinds of witchy things and you're not going to like them.”

“Nymph?” The man asked, “Is that you, dear?”

The nymph breathed a sigh of relief. “Sister Clara, I'm so glad you're here.” The nymph took her by the hand, pulled her into the barn and straight into a hug. Sister Clara gave her vague murmurs of reassurance before extricating herself from the nymph's embrace and closing and barring the barn door.

“I was worried about you too, dear.” Sister Clara said. “After you went off with Larus and then the round changed I was convinced that he'd been the spy. That he'd done something awful to you.”

The nymph shook her head fiercely. “There was this giant underground plant monster. It almost got me, but Larus shoved me out of the way and...” She trailed off sadly. Sister Clara embraced her again.

“There there, dear.” She said. “It's okay. Everything's going to be okay.”

“Titania, step back from her.” D'Neya commanded. The nymph turned to look at her, to see the pitchfork back in her hands, raised and ready.

“It's okay.” The nymph said soothingly. “It's Sister Clara.” Clara held her position, hugging the nymph close.

“It's just me, dear.” Sister Clara said. “Though I understand the need for suspicion at this point in time. What can I say to set your mind at rest?”

“You can tell me how we met back in the ruined military base.” D'Neya prompted, pitchwork unswayed. Sister Clara seemed to concentrate for a long moment. “Really struggling to remember huh?”

“Well at my age memory can be a little tricky, dear.” Clara smiled. “You came up to me looking all lost and forlorn and then we found the nymph together.”

D'Neya cried out with effort and speared forward with the pitchfork, stabbing it into Clara's stomach with surprising force. There was no blood. Clara didn't even scream. Around the wound her body began to lose shape and drip away in great oozing droplets revealing the dirty cerulean liquid that comprised the spy's body.

“Close but not quite.” D'Neya sneered.

The nymph screamed as the spy's true gelatinous form revealed itself, and she was still grasped tightly in its arms. She raked and scratched at the ooze that bound her without making any real impact.

“You pair of pests!” It seethed.

“You couldn't just play the game, harbour some suspicions, let some distrust grow within you. Cursed saccharine wretches!” The nymph's skin was beginning to burn under the spy's touch.

“Hey moron! Get your dirty slimy hands off my maid!” The spy turned its head to look back at D'Neya and immediately was speared through with a spear of shadowy energy with an awful loud squelch. D'Neya was standing, the laces of her black dress pulled taut in her hands and an enormous black shape still spilling out of her exposed back. Three spindly legs already formed, not counting the one currently speared through the spy, and the beginnings of an enormous abdomen. Even in the large and mostly empty space of the barn D'Neya was looking a little cramped, yet still more legs emerged from her back.

The spy's ooze had become substantially more fluid since D'Neya impaled them, and the nymph spent the next minute or so, whilst D'Neya impressively revealed her full shadow tarantula form, scraping away the lingering remnants of its body.

When she was done she stepped away from the spy, now mostly a puddle, and up at D'Neya, now raised from the ground by her many shadow legs. She gasped for breath and finally said: “Your maid?”

“If you don't like maid we can talk about your position in my court once we've escaped from this battle, right Titania?”

The nymph made an indecisive gesture with her hand, all the while eyeing with wonder the nearest of D'Neya's enormous shadow tarantula legs. Hesitantly she reached out and touched it. It was softer than you'd anticipate. You could almost describe it as fluffy but she didn't think D'Neya would appreciate that description.

She was this close to giving in to the temptation to throw her arms around the leg and bury her face in it, when a faint plink and the sound of something rolling along the hard wood floor pulled her attention back to more pressing matters. Coming to a stop on the floor next to the spy's body was some sort of brass orb decorated in twisted runes and smeared with dark blue ooze. Bright white light pulsed from within and she could have sworn she heard the faint gurgle of the spy's damaged body trying to chuckle.

D'Neya slammed a shadow leg down onto the orb at the exact moment it exploded, expelling merciless white light throughout the barn-



...burning light...



...distant ringing all around her...



The nymph found herself crumpled on the floor, her entire body experiencing a prickling, tingling pins and needles feeling. With a tremendous effort she was able to push herself up, to see D'Neya collapsed in full giant tarantula mode. Her whole body was shaking and her shadow legs were unravelling and leaking clouds of viscous black energy.

The nymph's legs not quite working yet, she crawled over to D'Neya, took her hand and held it tightly clasped in both of hers. It was a struggle to speak but she managed to say: “D'Neya...”

At the sound of her name, D'Neya's eyes seemed to focus enough to see the nymph. She managed a single word before her body gave out, the twilight energy that it contained forcibly dissipated. Her last words an instruction delivered firmly despite her condition: “Win.”

317 Days To Go

Proxy had been gone for a few days after that while Ghost fixed up their programming to ensure they could accidentally be put into what they called evaluation mode.

Ghost had explained that Proxy wasn't a person in the same way that, say, Countess was a person. They'd been programmed so that they had a contingency for almost any possible outcome within a very specific set of situations. In Ghost's words Proxy was closer to an enormous checklist than a sentient being.

It had changed how she percieved them. Of course it had. To know that they were a shell of predicted statements and responses. It didn't change how it felt to be hugged by them, or the joy of playing a game of golf together.

(After clearing out the back gardens she'd turned one of the lawns into a golf course. Which is to say a single hole surrounded by various model buildings (found in a basement storeroom) because she'd decided minigolf was more fun than real golf.)

She loved Ghost but these were things that they could not do together and so she tried to allow herself to love Proxy a little bit as well still.

Today was a special day. She was halfway through her training. Ghost had asked her what she wanted to do for the occasion a couple of days before, but she only made her decision today during morning exercise. Fifteen minutes later she was pouring herself a bowl of cereal (This week's cereal was Ourobor-o's; the box featured a cartoon ouroborite grinning widely in a fez and bowtie and the slogan: “The only cereal that could devour you!”) and she announced: “I've decided what I want for my halfway day.”

“Anything for you my special girl.”

“I want to see you in person.” She asked, nervously. “Now I know you have your condition, but surely there has to be something we can do to mitigate it, right? It doesn't have to be for long. If its some sort of allergy we could be out in the gazebo or something.”

There was a long pause, a much longer pause than it usually took before Ghost replied to something. “I can't do that.” Ghost said eventually. “You are the one person I wish I didn't have to hide from.”

Another long pause. She sat with her gaze cast down and her Ourobor-o's uneaten and quickly getting unpleasantly soggy. “Perhaps I could at least hear your voice? For once you could speak to me as yourself and not through some stupid filter?”

“I'm sorry. It is the one thing I cannot do for you.”

“Of course.” She said. “No, it makes perfect sense. I dedicate my entire life so far to doing everything you want, training every day to get strong enough to fight a man I've never met. You never asked me what I want. I just wake up one day and that's my life, chosen for me ahead of time. But the one time I want something it's too much, it's impossible.” She stood up, noisily shoving her chair back under the table and turned to leave the kitchen. “Training is cancelled for today. Bother me even once and I'll start breaking your most precious objects, starting with Proxy.”

She returned to her room, slammed the door and proceeded to spend the rest of the day doing nothing and getting increasingly upset about it. She tried to sleep (not working), she tried to reread Black Thorn of Seven (her favourite in the Of Seven series) (also not working), she tried to sit and form convincing arguments why it would be completely fine for Ghost to be in the same room as her for just like a couple of minutes (complete non-starter).

Eventually, as the clock chimed for Free Time, she, lacking any desire to do anything else and debilitated by the guilt of having missed a whole day of training, forced herself out to the training room to half-heartedly practice her form until she was too tired to continue.

The gates to the Class 3 (Violent and Dangerous) prison yard opened, and through them walked a strange group.

At its head an expressionless green statue of a man who moved with a certain clockwork stiffness. Behind him was Aegis speaking animatedly with another man, slimmer in build than Aegis but of a similar skin tone. And finally trailing behind them a teenage girl in a black dress with white as paper skin and vibrantly purple hair. She was glancing around, her solid black eyes flitting across all of the prisoners chained in place across the yard. Flanking the group were six robotic guards, three on each side like a guard of honour.

“Hey! Is there any way I can apply for a pleasant little walkabout?” It was the same guy who'd been trying to coax the nymph into helping him break out. The group largely paid no attention as they passed him on the way to the nymph's cell, though the purple haired girl's gaze lingered and her frown deepened. Ignored, the prisoner, Mike or something, called profanities after the group and redoubled his efforts to somehow miraculously burst free of his restraints.

“It is pleasant to see you again Aph.” The green statue man said as he drew close to the cell. Then he turned and instructed the nearest of the guard robots to open the door to the nymph's cell.

“I think you have me confused with someone else.” The nymph said. “Though I wouldn't say no to getting out of this cell and finding my other friends. Hi Aegis.” Aegis waved a heavy gauntleted arm.

“Aegis here and Sister Clara who is currently located in a cell shared with the lich Konka Rar on the level below this are all that remain of your friends, Aph.” The statue man spoke with precision. “I do not usually like to explain myself until every participant of this battle is present, but we're well ahead of schedule this loop and so I can spare a moment before we have to be moving.”

“What about B? What happened to B?” The nymph asked, unable to keep the grief from her voice.

“I can only provide you answers about this round.” The nymph stepped out of the cell, carefully so as not to touch those electrified bars and looked past the statue man to Aegis. He shrugged apologetically.

“I can't say for sure, but the last time I saw him alive was the desert.” He said, his exhaustion obvious in his voice. “All this intrigue has been a little too much for me. I'm long due an obvious target and a fair fight.” He forced a small smile and after a moment the nymph returned it. “Ah, but I'm being rude. Let me introduce my old pal Aeon. Known him all my life, and who would've believed it he also gets dragged into one of these things.”

“Nice to meet you.” Aeon gave the nymph a little salute with one hand. “Now we're back together there's very little Aegis and I can't handle. We'll probably be taking down this Monitor asshole together in no time.”

“Hi, I'm Amethyst.” The girl with purple hair introduced herself. “I'm not life long pals with either of these guys but I want to help. I can't stand seeing the way these battles treat people.” With that she takes another long look around the prison yard.

“It's nice to meet you both.” The nymph said. “I'm um,” for a moment she considers calling herself Titania for a split second but the extra weight of D'Neya's death only makes it feel less appropriate a name, “I don't really have a name.”

“You're Aph, I'm Kracht.” The statue man replied quickly. “And if we're done with the niceties of introductions I would suggest we move. This loop has been rather fortuitous so far but we must not become complacent.”

The nymph drew back from the statue man, folding her arms and pursing her lips irately. “Stop calling me that, that's not my name, and if you want me to go anywhere with you you'll have to explain yourself.”

Kracht made a noise that was like frowning. “Oh, we must be in an accelerated Cerise timeline. They don't come around very often. If you come with me I can get you something to help you push down those violent impulses and remain in control.”

The nymph looked back over at Aegis. “Do you have any idea what the hell this guy is talking about?” Aegis shrugged.

“He wouldn't even tell us his name before we got here.” Aegis said.

“Yeah, just asked us,” Aeon glanced at the robot honour guard standing around them, “rather forcefully, to come and help find Aegis' friends and kill Bae.”

“Bae?” The nymph asked.

“Bae is the agent of the Monitor.” Kracht interrupted, a distinct tone of irritation seeping into his voice. “The spy.”

“But D'Neya killed him.” The nymph insisted. “It cost her her life but she did it.”

“Almost but not quite.” Kracht said. “Bae is currently being held in the medical wing on the next level down. It is important to bear in mind that this is a time sensitive round. Right now in the Class 0 cells a dead goddess, amongst others, is fundamentally undermining the structural integrity of this prison. We have two hours maximum before the tipping point is reached and everyone still in this facility dies. To ensure that the Intense Struggle reaches an optimum outcome Cerise, Aegis and Clara must escape and Bae must die.”

Numerous questions and comments jostled for attention within the nymph, but she found herself saying: “My name isn't Cerise, either.”

Kracht grimaced. “Not Aph” the nymph shook her head, “nor Cerise?” and again. “Concerning... Okay fine. This is noteworthy enough, I will accede to listen to your circumstances on the way to the lower level.”

Kracht turned on the ball of his foot and without waiting for confirmation started back towards the cell block gates, the guard robots turning and moving in more or less unison. Aeon, Aegis and the nymph all moved to head in this direction. Aeon and Aegis were idly bickering; Aeon lacking his tool really wanted to borrow one of Aegis' gauntlets, but Aegis was adamant that he wouldn't be able to use them effectively. It was an argument that had clearly been ongoing since they had got out of their cells. The nymph mused as to why her name or lack thereof was so important to Kracht. Nobody was really paying attention to Amethyst as she stopped short in front of Kracht.

“So you have the freedom of this entire prison and your intention is to rescue just these specific three people and leave everyone else to die?” She demanded. “Tell me if I've misread the situation somehow.”

“I'm operating on a much larger scale than you can realize.” Kracht said. “This is necessary to ensure that an unbiased contestant wins this battle, which is necessary to limit unnecessary variables when it comes to All Stars.”

“And that's important enough that you'll let all these people die?” She gestured around her to the prisoners bound in heavy electrosteel restraints to immobile slabs and to those trapped in electrified cells, ending the gesture with an outstretched palm reaching towards Kracht.

“Yes.” He said simply.

The nymph had no understanding of how Amethyst's magic was controlled through an armband that had been confiscated from her. She didn't know the intense calculations that were required to bend the laws of physics for her own ends and how the armband automated this difficult process making it an almost vital component for Amethyst to cast any spell. As such she was not as impressed as she really ought to have been when, without a word she completed the script she'd been manually running through for the last few minutes and in doing so unleashed a hyper blast from her palm. The laser lanced through Kracht's chest, right through where his heart would have been if he'd had one. Chunks of chartreuse ore shot out behind him, scattering among the thin dirt of the faux prison yard.

In the next moment Amethyst was on one knee, her forehead beading with perspiration, her breath ragged. Kracht had stumbled back a couple of paces but managed to keep his footing. Amethyst's spell had blasted a hole right through him, but Kracht wasn't dependant on trivial things like internal organs. Without any further comment he said: “Kill her.”

And then all hell broke loose.

269 Days To Go

It was an incredible to see a place so bright, so clean and shining and new. She was stood at the doorway to an enormous ballroom decorated in gold and white with the occasional splash of crimson. Nothing was broken or rusted or half rotted away. Which was to say nothing of the people. The sheer number of people, dressed in their finest suits and gowns. Standing here at the threshold was almost enough to give her a panic attack.

It was going to be okay. She had Proxy beside her. This wasn't an anticipated scenario so their responses were rather limited, essentially just able to follow her instructions and make some small talk. Still their presence beside her was comforting.

She wished she was better dressed. Ghost had offered her a beautiful midnight black gown with matching elbow length gloves of some thin and delicate material. She'd declined, she'd wanted a suit. When Ghost said they would reschedule the trip so they could acquire an appropriately immaculate suit for her, she'd almost thrown a fit. She'd been promised a trip out for her birthday and after the fiasco that had been her halfway day she was going to have it. So she was wearing one of Proxy's backup suits, equally worn and frayed in certain spots, a nice rich purple. Ghost had described it as byzantium.

To top off the outfits they were both wearing masquerade style masks, after all this was The Ivory Masque. Proxy's matched their outfit, while she was wearing the midnight black one with gold flourishes that would have looked great if she'd been wearing the complete outfit.

The instructions from Ghost:
1. Leave the moment that the actual contestants arrive. You are not ready for a live battle scenario just yet.
2. If you see an opportunity to grab any masks without attracting attention, do so.
3. Have fun, love you.

She took a deep breath and stepped into the ballroom. Her attire garnered a couple of critical glances but only for a moment and then they were back to their private conversations. Part of her had kind of half-expected that her presence would make everyone stop and they'd all stare at her judgementally or laugh her out of the building or something.

Another part of her had half-expected, no quarter-expected or even less, that they would look at her and recognize her and invite her into their conversation. As time had passed she'd visited the gallery less and less, but she did still visit from time to time, and now here they were all of her friends standing before her in the flesh. She knew it was stupid to have hoped that they would know her like she knew them but some small part of her had hoped that.

With Proxy by her side she made her way through the throngs. Here and there she had to restrain herself from shouting out because oh my god there's Anna in a beautiful black dress with golden stars and crescent moons, only slightly spoiled by the stains of spilled silver ichor, and she's talking to Vera who is wearing an equally exquisite glittery red dress with a slit up to the thigh for mobility, and ooh there's her razorwhip sheathed at her hip. She would love to go over there and pick up some pointers, but she held fast. She was here with a clear objective.

It was Proxy who spotted her, politely coughing to draw her attention. Off in one corner of the room was a woman in an understated grey dress and matching mask/nun's habit combination (Sister Clara of course). She was stood in a group with a scrawny teenager in an ill-fitting suit and a woolen cap that looked distinctly out of place (it took her a moment to identify Keagan), though the most immediately eye-catching was the enormous decaying cactus owl thing with a full sized coffin strapped to its back glowing ominously red(she had no idea what this thing was supposed to be). She made a beeline towards the small group.

“Aph?” Clara asked. “There's something different about you.”

She shook her head firmly. “My name isn't Aph, it's Enyo.” She had taken the name from the protagonist of Black Thorn of Seven. Enyo of Seven was the dedicated, after a fashion, bodyguard of the beautiful necromancer Ascension Heptades. After a moment of thought she added, “And this is my friend Proxy.”

“No matter what name you're going by it is so good to see you, dear.” Sister Clara said with a smile. “This is Keagan,” he gave a small wave, “and this is... well I never caught their name.”

She glanced at Keagan who shrugged. ”Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Mm, well the thing is they seem to be suffering from prolonged exposure to a fully manifested death omen, I could probably offer some assistance with disentangling the two of them. A-Enyo, you'd be able to help me, right?”

“Of course.” And so they did. Enyo, Proxy and Keagan all working together managed to hold down the enormous cactus creature while Sister Clara disentangled the death omen's influence. It took five minutes of terrified quacking that drew quite a bit of attention from the crowd, but was just offputting enough that nobody hurried over to assist. After that the huge coffin fell away from the cactus owl with an audible pop. Proxy hauled the coffin outside, while Keagan went to get fresh drinks for the group and Enyo and Sister Clara found themselves alone (save for the cactus owl who hadn't said a single word so far and didn't seem to be about to start now).

“I've been thinking about this moment for so long,” Enyo admitted, “and I never thought about what I'd actually do when it got here.”

“It's okay, dear.” Sister Clara said, not quite understanding but still sympathetic to the changes she saw in the nymph. And it was okay. They drank a glass or two of non-alcoholic ichor together, they explored the palace, took a tour of the ritual room, before returning to the ballroom and dancing a slow dance together. It was wonderful and over much too fast.

Eventually she had to run, the sounds of raised voices and objects smashing indicated that whatever battle this was, its contestants had arrived. It was with a sadness that she said goodbye, for now, to Clara and returned home with Proxy and an angry death spirit in a coffin in tow. It was the best, and only, birthday she had ever had.

The nymph ducked beneath the black and red tape upon which was printed the phrase

SACRILEGIOUS ZONE: IMMINENT SPIRITUAL HAZARD.

Despite the clear and intense terror that this warning promised the reality was that beyond the tape lay... just more boxes.

One open box contained a stack of frayed and crumpled prayer sheets, which had at some point tipped and spilled into the walkway. Another contained a small heap of folded robes, mostly ultramarine in colour or at the very least using it as an accent, and all of them too bulky for human bodies. There were paintings, beautifully rendered, that showed a recurring iconography involving robots, a half mechanical person, a man in a red suit and inevitably an explosion. The nymph leafed through a couple before getting bored.

She held little interest in the religious politics of this world, but it was a distraction from the fact that another one of her friends was dead. Not her fault this time, or at least not as directly her fault. If she hadn't spent so long arguing with that bastard Kracht... She brushes the thought away. It probably wouldn't have made that much of a difference.

The nymph continued deeper into the profane warehouse eventually noticing a small box borderline encased in the Sacrilege Tape. Curiousity getting the better of her she picked it up and shook it a little. She felt as the weight of a single object, maybe the size of a sports ball, though a touch heavier, as it bounced from side to side, and then surprisingly started complaining.

“Stop that wretched h-heathen.” The voice was harsh and electronic, crackling as it stuttered. The nymph cried out, dropped the box (eliciting further cries of discomfort) and took several strides backwards. “It isn't e-enough that you depose me, have my life's w-work declared blasphemy, and reduce me to this... to have the n-n-nerve to come and poke at me like I'm some h-human sideshow attraction. The cruelties of your f-false god have certainly rubbed off his congregation...”

The nymph listened for a minute as the thing in the box complained about its circumstances, never quite reaching anything approaching a conclusion. She knew that the right thing to do here would be to free the whatever it was from the box. It was the kinder thing to do and furthermore if it was opposed to the doctrine of the Monitor as strongly as it said it was definitely an ally. But part of her wanted to slip away and pretend she'd never found it. She was exhausted, physically yes but emotionally too. After the deaths of so many of her friends she just wanted to find a corner she could crawl into and not think any more.

From behind her a clearing of a throat.

The nymph turned around. Standing there, with a crackling electric baton outstretched was Sister Clara. Or alternately something that looked like Sister Clara. She had an expression on her face that looked as harrowed as the nymph felt. “Tell me that's really you.” She said.

The nymph thought for a moment. “When we first met you said it was a shame I hadn't ever been given a name... and you asked what I would like to be called. It's a small thing  and I didn't have an answer for you, but nobody had ever bothered to ask me that before.”

“Oh you poor thing.” Sister Clara laid down her baton on a nearby pile of techno-rosaries and opened her arms to pull the nymph into a tight embrace, but she took a step backwards. It took all of her effort to not just brush past this safety measure, and only the thought of what had happened to D'Neya stopped her.

“You too.” she said.

“In the swamp,” As she recalled the memory Sister Clara reached up and brushed back her veil, “you gripped my hand so tightly. As if you'd never been touched before. I wanted to gather you up in my arms then and there and hold you and tell you it was going to be okay.”

The nymph could feel tears beginning to form, she struggled to form the words to confirm Clara was who she said she was, and so simply nodded, and immediately Clara was by her side, her arms wrapped around her.

“I'm here now.” she said. “We're going to get through this together.”

The nymph shook her head as tears began to fall. “But its just us now. Assuming we can kill Bae at this point then its just you and me versus the Monitor, and for all the good my help will do you it might as well just be you.” Sister Clara held her tighter and shushed her soothingly, but the nymph refused to be soothed, and more and more of her anxieties spilled out. “I'm worthless. I don't even know why I'm here in this fight. I'm less valuable in a fight than either of the literal children that were selected. I-I'm just dead weight.” Her deluge of words dissolved into incomprehensible sobbing.

“Breathe.” Sister Clara said. “Please dear, just take some deep breaths. I don't think you are worthless. It doesn't matter whether or not you're a skilled fighter or a powerful mage or whatever. You're worth something to me no matter what.” They stood locked in each others embrace for several minutes, the nymph slowly regaining her composure, until a distorted electronic cough nearby snapped them back to reality.

“I'm sorry about eavesdropping on your t-tender moment.” The voice in the box said. “But I happened to overhear you're looking to fight the M-Monitor,” The voice, despite, presumably lacking the physical equipment to do so, spat the word as if it had personally offended him, “and I think maybe I could be of some assistance.”

99 Days To Go

The sour mood in the manor had improved after her visit to The Ivory Masque. She redoubled her efforts in training and the place felt a little less empty with the addition of the coffin bound death omen Lanmò. At first they made a couple of attempts to subjugate Proxy's body for their own, but each time Enyo patiently disentangled them in the same way she had seen Sister Clara do, and eventually they seemed to get the message.

Lanmò didn't seem to want to kill or murder like she had assumed at the beginning. They were content to do very little only wishing attention when something died. Enyo attended more funerals for spiders and mice and other insects than generally would have been considered reasonable, but that, along with a little papercraft coffin once every couple of days, seemed to keep Lanmò happy.

Subsequently it was Lanmò's insistence that had brought Enyo out of the house and off into the far unkempt corners of the garden where she found poor Fox's body. That had been a really bad day. She had wept in her room for the rest of the evening and not even felt guilty for missing her training.

The next morning she'd awoken to scratching at her door and opened it up to find Fox revived and playful and harbouring a faint red aura. After some careful scrutiny to ensure that Lanmò wasn't using Fox as a puppet or doing anything otherwise insidious Enyo had been overjoyed that Fox was back, and on top of that they were more bold and affectionate than ever.

Her timetable had changed a little over the months. After the disaster that was Halfway Day Ghost had added an extra optional session in between Dinner and Free Time called Emotional Openness. It was a daily opportunity for her to vent her frustrations and be heard. Ghost hadn't quite promised to accommodate her requests but they did at least seem to try.

Weapons Practice had spilled out of its individual slot and become an ever present threat, after Proxy had attacked her while she was eating lunch one day. She had complained to Ghost that Proxy was malfunctioning again and been informed that this was an intentional test of her reflexes. Since then it had become a semi-regular occurrence, and every time Enyo would complain about it later that day in Emotional Openness. Ghost would apologize but reassert the necessity of it and thus the cycle would begin anew.

Magic Practice was still much the same, but now with the addition of live targets; shambling corpses that Lanmò seemed to have an unlimited supply of. They weren't the most threatening or difficult to dispatch opponents but they were a step up from the cardboard targets she had been working with previously.

For the last couple of weeks Ghost had been mentioning that there was a new and exciting kind of Specialized Training in the works and today they announced it was finally ready. It was currently lunch time. Enyo had decided that two crème eggs were an appropriate replacement for lunch. Fox was up on the dining table happily gobbling up a packet full of ham that was supposed to be for Enyo's sandwiches. Proxy was eyeing them carefully.

“Is there a problem with foxes eating ham?” Enyo asked, confident that even if there would normally be a problem it didn't matter Fox because was a special fox who could eat whatever they wanted.

“I'm obviously not an expert but I think it's okay in moderation and try not to leave out so much food they become dependant on you.”

Enyo gave Fox a gentle scritch on their head and they rubbed against her playfully. “Too late for that.” she said with a grin.

“My beloved daughter, today Magic Practice is cancelled, and we'll be beginning your new Specialized Training when you are finished with your... 'lunch'.”

“Exciting.” said Enyo. “Do I get to know it is in advance or is this another one of your fun surprises?” It turned out it was another one of their fun surprises. As soon as she said “Okay I'm ready.” something hummed to life in Proxy's right arm and suddenly everything was going black.

----

She awoke in a sterile metal room lit only by a projection flickering on the wall before her. She was sat upon an uncomfortable metal folding chair. As she returned to consciousness she watched the events playing out before her. It was black and white footage of someone that looked a lot like her alongside Sister Clara in bare concrete corridors fighting against a horde of walking corpses. Occasionally the perspective changed and someone else was depicted in some similar concrete hallway. She watched for a minute as the recording showed her B, Aegis, D'Neya, Larus, Trickster, Cabaret.

Blindsided by... well... everything. It took Enyo a moment to realize where she was/what was happening. Ghost had talked about The Database before. It was where The Monitor lived and it would be the place where she would kill him. This couldn't be the real thing, but the imitation was impressive.

Okay, so if she was in The Database then there would be someone else in here with her. One of the people from the cameras, except not Cabaret because they were the fake. She really hoped she didn't have to deal with the fake as well. First priority would be finding them and coordinating their efforts. Enyo stood up and noticed as a scrap of paper fell to the floor. Quickly she bent down and grabbed it. It said, in very precise writing: 'Trickster. Tapestry Repository. You can't miss him.'

“Trickster? Really?” She sighed and scrunched up the paper and tossing it off into the corner. “Fine.” She headed for the door, carefully opening to check the corridor before leaving and then set off in search of the Tapestry Repository.

----

Sometime later Enyo was standing in the Monitor's private vault. Face to face with the machine she existed to kill. And she couldn't move. Fucking Immobilization Resistance Training. It was still once a week and she still wasn't making any progress.

”It is impressive that you got this far ███, not in line with my predictions at all. But this is where it ends. It is considered in bad taste to kill your own contestant directly, but something something think of the data. I'll come up with some kind of justification later, if and when I'm challenged on my actions.”

Enyo barely listened to his monologue, desperately trying to find the strength inside herself that Ghost said existed, that would allow her to break these bonds. It was useless. The Monitor, finally done with his speech was picking up a gun.

”Anyway enough procrastinating. Time to crown Trickster the winner of the Intense Struggle. Goodbye ███.”

Without any further hesitation he pointed and shot. Everything faded to black and the words YOU DIED appeared before her, huge and red and condemnatory.

“What the fuck.” she murmured to herself as the world flickered off and then she felt someone removing a helmet she hadn't known she was wearing. As the helmet slid off she found herself in a bedroom she hadn't seen before with a bookshelf full of video games and a top of the line games console emitting a soft orange glow. Proxy helped her out of the VR controlsuit that she had been fitted with.

“How are you feeling my dear daughter?”

“I'm... okay.” she said. “Feeling a little bit frustrated that despite all my efforts in the end I failed because of...”

“Immobilization is a powerful tool in a Grandmaster's toolkit. I believe that with perhaps two sessions a week we can overcome it.”

Enyo groaned at the prospect of more Immobilization Resistance Training, but given the circumstances didn't complain.

Once she was out of the controlsuit, she flopped herself down on the bed and Proxy hurried off to get her a glass of Doctor Lorrden (the soda's full name was Doctor Lorrden's Funtime Beverage Potion and it tasty like sugary rat poison but she'd kind of grown to like it).

“Let's talk more about the simulation. How do you think you did. Walk through it from beginning to end.”

”I was a lot sloppier at the start than I would have liked.” Enyo admitted. “I took longer to work out what was going on, and then I got so lost when I was looking for the Tapestry Repository.” She pushed herself up and sat on the edge of the bed. “Like I know redundancy is this guy's whole thing but the sheer amount of floppy discs. I thought I was never leaving the Floppy Repository. I was getting ready to build a little floppy disc house and settle down there.”

“My data may not map 100% to the real physical space of the Database, but if we make it a Specialization Training from now on there are ways to navigate there that you can learn.” Ghost said. “What about Trickster?”

”Lost cause.” She said. “He was just screaming about his sister – does he even have a sister? She's not in the gallery is she? - and setting tapestries on fire if they looked at him funny.” She shimmied over to the bookcase of video games and started leafing through as she talked. “Seemed like more trouble than it was worth to try to get him on side.”

“You left without trying. Even Trickster could have been a valuable ally, if you had actually tried to get his assistance.” Ghost said. “At no point did you consider the Mana Repositories?”

Enyo had pulled loose a game box featuring a garish orange lizard in an equally garish hawaiian shirt, she examined it with brief curiosity before pushing it back. “Well a) you've always told me that given my abilities the Mana Repositories will be the most heavily guarded location in the entire Database and b) the way I was going I was just lucky I ever managed to leave Floppy Disc Hell.”

“The power you could acquire is so substantial that it is more than worth the risk.” Ghost observed. “You performed well against the guard robots.”

”Yeah, but wouldn't The Monitor just put those mana dampener thingies on them?” Proxy returned with an ice cold glass of Doctor Lorrden and Enyo sipped it gratefully.

“Don't worry about that.” Ghost said unhelpfully. “Was there anything you wished to ask me?”

Enyo was examining another game, a simple white box with a beautiful, if difficult to parse, logo. The box proclaimed loudly that it was a critically acclaimed MMO with quite an extensive free trial. Enyo slid it away, and turned away from the bookcase of games entirely. Those things would eat up all her Free Time if she let them. It took her a second to process what she'd been asked whereupon she responded simply: “The gun?”

“The data I have on the Database is limited, the Monitor even less so. He probably wouldn't use a gun in reality. I'm still refining the simulation.”

“Oh huh yeah.” Enyo said, remembering something that had slipped her mind earlier. “How did you get that footage of me and Sister Clara. That's not something that ever happened.”

“Don't worry about it my dear one.” Ghost replied, and would not be baited into further discussion.

The robot called Proxy refused to discuss further the details of their offer out in the middle of a busy wax cylinder data transposition line, and so begrudgingly the nymph followed them into a small playback room. It was a small circular room with a podium like device at its centre from which emerged a brass trumpet. A single metal folding chair was set up in front of the machine, otherwise the room was completely absent of any concessions to the idea that someone might actually desire to use it for its intended function.

Proxy punched a code into the plinth machine and then made a gesture towards the seat that indicated for the nymph to sit.

“I'm okay thanks.” She said. She watched in silence as Proxy folded the chair back up and laid it against the wall at the edge of the room. “So about Aph?”

“Ideally you wouldn't have to know about her at all.” Proxy said. “Some of this information will be quite upsetting.”

“Well, if you didn't want to talk about her you shouldn't have brought her up.” The nymph said. “Who is she?”

“She is a version of you.” Proxy said. “Given different circumstances she is what you would have become.”

“And you need me to become her now?” The nymph asked.

“Fuck no.” Proxy replied quickly. “Yes Aph is powerful, she's a living thaumaturgical calamity. The more power she absorbs the more she loses herself as a person. And it's like a snowball effect; exponential growth in power but exponential deterioration of everything else. Alas to really grasp what Aph is a demonstration is necessary.” As Proxy spoke a faint rumbling grew louder and closer until a portion of the wall opened up revealing a track upon which an enormous wax cylinder was moving towards them.

“This seems like an awful way of storing information.” The nymph observed.

“Backups and redundancies.” Proxy said. “If there's one thing the Monitor is afraid of it is losing his precious data. Works out for us though. As you say this is one of the worst ways of storing information; huge and unwieldy, requires a bespoke device to read, difficult to search even if you know exactly what you are looking for, and impossible to access remotely. Even the Monitor doesn't have infinite resources, so low priority repositories like this one go unguarded.”

As they spoke automated extendable arms lifted the heavy wax cylinder, slotted it into the plinth at the centre of the room and retracted. Finally the opening in the wall closed back up, the seams only just about visible now the nymph knew where they were.

“This is data gathered from quantum probes anchored in alternate versions of this battle.” Proxy was carefully turning a dial and the brass trumpet was repositioning itself along the height of the cylinder, and slowly the cylinder began to rotate.

“Aph engulfed in Trickster's superheated blue flame shows no sign of injury or acknowledgement of physical pain. Emotional status: openly weeping and screaming. Positioned to pin Trickster into a corner (Violet Dormitory C, southwestern corner), given emotional state likely unintentional. Trickster displays acute emotional indications of fear.”

The nymph listened speechlessly as the events were recounted by a flat emotionless voice, the incongruity between the clinical tone and its subject matter only serving to make it feel even more abstract and alien.

“Transcript  begins: Aph: 'If you really loved me you would never have hidden your true self from me like this. You never loved me! This was all fun for you, right, to toy with an innocent girl's heart?' Trickster: 'I'm sorry babe. I just... I think if we both step back and take a breath we'll see that this wasn't such a big deal and we'll be laughing about it tomorrow.' Aph: 'Not a big deal? I'm at my lowest point and to you that's not a big deal?' Trickster : 'No no I'm sorry. That's not what I meant. I meant'.”

“Here Aph leaps for Trickster and tears him apart. Her touch is white hot and his body rips easily. Wounds are scorched as they are made. She digs out his heart and it incinerates in her hands. Aph continues to tear at Trickster's corpse for a full minute after his death. When her rage subsides, in the seconds before the round ends officially, she shows no signs of remorse, or even recognition of what she has done.”

“That was me?” The nymph's voice quivered with horror. “I could never become that.”

“Maybe there's no clear path where you as you are now could become exactly the version of Aph you just heard,” Proxy agreed, “but that isn't to say that you could never do anything like that.”

The nymph just shook her head in disbelief. “No, I'm not like that.” she repeated. “That's not me.”

“Maybe you're right.” Proxy said. “The Aph as depicted here was formed in a way that predisposed her to violence. It is my estimation that you do not share that trait. Let me play for you a scenario where Aph becomes overwhelmed by foreign mana.”

“You don't have to-” The nymph protested. “I think I get the idea.” But the robot was already tuning the dial, and the cylinder was beginning to turn again.

“Observations on confrontation between combatants Aph, Clara Jungfrau, D'Neya, several replicas (including Konka Rar (fled), Murdoch Miles (deceased; dissolved into mana and absorbed),  The Sunset (deceased; power core shattered, briefly reanimated), Iris (deceased; head vaporized, heart eaten),  Lutherion Maw (deceased; decapitated) and Thane (deceased; extreme skeleton expansion)), and numerous Cervaled Falls A-rated security robots.”

“Aph demonstrates seemingly limitless mana reserves, ability to learn and mimic enemy spells from observation and mana samples. Her ability to diffuse enemy spells and absorb the component mana, previously a function of her mana absorption unit (now broken), has evidently been naturalized. Can manifest various forms of energy as weapons but possesses tendency to attack wildly; big swings with obvious tells. Increasingly unstable, her emotions vary wildly from one moment to the next, violence seems to be a self-justifying action.”

“D'Neya continues to attempt to use others as pawns (see replicas Iris and Murdoch Miles). Attempted to flee the confrontation towards isolation cell B5 (records as to the occupant of the room rendered unreadable, likely Eon's influence), victim of coilgun blast to the abdomen. Left to bleed out. Likely Aph would have devoured her mana if not subsequently incapacitated. No transcript available.”

“Clara mostly reactive in this scenario. Gravitates towards a supportive position, using her abilities to heal and augment her allies. Almost competent physical fighter when pushed to it. Had Aph off-balance through intimidation alone, but failed to press the advantage. Psionically immobilized by replica Thane.”

“Transcript begins: Aph: 'You said that you'd marry me. You said that we could be together.' Clara: 'Lets not be hasty, love. We can talk about this.' Aph: 'Fuck you, you old hag! I don't want to talk. I want to feel the unlife draining from your ancient heart. I want to snap every one of your bones individually and then make you feel it as I knit them all back together.' Clara: 'Aph... I know you're in there Aph, and I'm sorry I didn't know how to let you down gently. I never meant to hurt you.' Aph: 'Blah blah blah blah blah. I've had enough of listening to your snivelling. I've had enough of you trying to worm your way into my good graces. It's pathetic! You're pathetic! Just a weak old woman who doesn't even know how to die properly.'”

“I've heard more than enough can we please stop it here.” The nymph has been pacing restlessly, her arms held close to her as though trying to shield herself from this knowledge.

“Here Aph manifests a blade of ice and stabs Clara wildly, continuing to do so long after the point of death. Replica Thane: 'It's over. She's dead. We really need to go.' Aph induces sudden catastrophic bone growth within replica Thane, then continues to stab and call Clara's corpse pathetic until she is pacified with a mana dampener by a security robot under the control of replica Kracht.”

“You've made your point.” The nymph slumps down against the wall, “Aph is bad. I am bad. I get it.”

“That wasn't the point of my demonstration at all.” Proxy said. “I wanted you to understand that Aph is strong, and that you have the potential to be as strong as her.”

“I don't want to be that.” The nymph snapped. “It should be obvious. How could anyone play that recording and think it would be aspirational?”

“And I don't want you to be that either.” Proxy said. “There's three things you need to stand a chance against the Monitor. Number one is a reason to fight. It sounds simple but Aph never had it. She had plenty of excuses to fight but never a reason. What about you?”

The nymph thought about the road that had led her here. All her best intentions to unite together spoiled time and again. She thought about B, a boy she'd never even really gotten an opportunity to know, lying dead in a swamp. She thought about Aegis  fighting for a lost cause because it was the right thing to do. She thought about Larus and D'Neya each of them taking a blow for her and dying because of it. Even Trickster didn't deserve what had happened to him.

She thought of Bae, a creature created by the Monitor, that knew nothing but his exacting standards and punishment if he failed to meet them. Of the remorse in his voice as he lay dying on the cathedral steps.

And she thought of Clara, somewhere in this cold and inhuman place, and of the small kindnesses she had shown her in this ordeal. For a fleeting moment she allowed herself a thought of what if they won, what if they got to leave together and have a life together outside of here, in whatever form that might take. But it was too much to try to imagine and it made her heart ache. Instead she said: “All I have in this world are reasons to kill that bastard. What else do I need?”

“Item number two is sheer power.” Proxy had no face upon which to smile, but a hint of a smirk was audible in their voice. “Hence my demonstrations.”

“I still don't quite buy that I can become that.” The nymph said uncertainly, “But for the sake of argument what's the final thing?”

“Discipline.” Proxy replied. “A lifetime of rigorous practice in the use of your unique abilities.”

“Well...” The nymph said with a sigh. “It was a nice idea while it lasted. We'd be lucky to get a couple of hours of practice in before the Monitor finds us and forces an end to this thing one way or another.”

Proxy wordlessly retrieved the folding chair, set it up next to the nymph's slumped form and took a seat. “I've been fitted with a device called a mana-writer. It's a device that can edit the data contained in mana. In you.” The nymph eyed them suspiciously. “Don't worry I don't want to erase the memories of your beloved friends. What would be the use of teaching you how to fight if you no longer had a reason to? What I suggest is that we replace that empty lonely year or so before you were brought here.”

“With what exactly?”

0 Days To Go

“Good morning, dear.” The voice of Sister Clara crackled through the speakers. “Today is your last day of training. Do your best and remember I believe in you.”

Enyo rose with a mix of anticipation and dread. It had seemed like such a long time. An impossibly long time. But that's the irritating thing about time. No matter how long it seems it will pass eventually. Tomorrow it would be time to kill the Monitor, and about a week ago Ghost had confirmed that Sister Clara would be her teammate. Her heart raced just thinking about it.

So she got up and ran laps of the mansion to keep herself from fixating. Proxy jumped out at her by the library, she barely missed a beat as she dodged the lunge, swept their legs with her own and then enfulfed their legs in a puddle of sticky black ooze to stop them from chasing after her.

For breakfast she made a big greasy fry up and shared it with Fox. Afterwards she made sure to swing by the gallery and visit some of her favourite portraits. She hadn't done so in a while and she'd feel really weird leaving without saying goodbye, even though she knew it was kind of silly.

Everything was pretty normal. In Weapons Practice recently she'd been favouring a scythe primarily for how cool it was to fight with a scythe. Today she went back to basics and refreshed herself on various types of swords.

Lunch was chicken sandwiches (split once again with Fox) and then made the trip out to Magic Manor for the last time. Proxy carried Lanmò's coffin on their back, and Fox tagged along behind the group. Even amongst the four of them together Enyo was quiet. Everyone knew what today was. It felt as though there was very little left to say.

Magic Practice began fairly routine. Lanmò spat out a bunch of zombies, who then stalked Enyo through the mansion, getting picked off one at a time. Precision lightning bolts, necrotic explosions, holy blasts. Enyo ran through all her go-to spells and then some of the more unusual ones. Things took a turn as she was heading back outside and Proxy attacked her once again.

Proxy had evidently been waiting on a first floor balcony and as she stepped outside he leapt, swinging their blade in a downward arc. Enyo hurriedly conjured a pair of blades, one fire, one ice and crossed them before her, catching Proxy's attack before it could land. As Proxy themselves landed they both held in place, pushing against each other in a battle of strength.

It was not an ideal situation to be in for Enyo. Actual physical strength was one of her weak areas. She'd suggested physical training to Ghost but they were pretty sure that a body made of magic didn't build muscle in the same way as a human body. Fortunately for Enyo her magic was not a pair of swords but something broader. She could just about manage to maintain their forms and say release a force blast to force Proxy back, or freeze the ground beneath them to make them lose their footing, or something.

But in the moment of thought before she reacted she found herself overwhelmed by necrotic energy, corrupting her and withering away her strength. A glance to the side, to Lanmò's coffin, propped up against a nearby wall glowing brightly red through the cracks.

“Not you too.” She gasped for air, her magic feeling further away, her physical strength seeming to ebb. She doubted that either of the pair would actually kill her, but damn not a great look for her last day.

Then, as she was struggling just to stay awake she felt as though she could... it was difficult to put into words. It was like she was stood in the path of a rushing river and complaining about being wet, and there was like a simple motion she could make, almost a twist of her mind, where she stepped out of the river onto the bank. She made that metaphorical motion and all the necrotic energy that had been so close to overwhelming her was just cascading around her, not actually touching her in any way that mattered.

With a thought she commandeered the vines that were overgrowing the manor and wrapped them tightly around Proxy instead, holding them tight against the wall. Then she took a step back, out of Proxy's reach, and walked over to Lanmò. “Cut that out you.” she said, and to their credit they did.

“Incredible work my precious girl.” Ghost congratulated her, and she grinned happily all the way home.

Today's, the final, Specialized Training was supposed to be more Database Training. Over the last few weeks she'd gotten better and better at navigating that space, using what tools she could find there and working with whomever was assigned to her for that day to with regularity reach The Monitor and then get immobilized and killed. It had started off really exciting. The opportunity to spend time with a simulated Clara, or D'Neya and yes sometimes she enjoyed the company of the others. But with each failure it was more and more disheartening.

When she got back to the main house the many voices of Ghost came over the speakers. “We're going to switch to Immobilization Resistance.”

“That's fine.” Enyo said. “I guess in the end both of them come down to the same thing.”

It was out of habit more than necessity that Immobilization Resistance Training took place in the Training Room. Enyo took her familiar seat on the long wooden bench, getting as comfortable as she could before she could be frozen in place for two hours. “Okay I'm ready. Immo-” And then she was frozen.

Time passed slowly in this fashion, and unfortunately it allowed her mind to creep back to the impending realness of her situation and the unresolved anxiety she had towards it. The actual reality of it, fighting The Monitor, meeting Sister Clara for real, that was scary, but also exciting at the same time. It's what she'd been building up to for so long. Forever really or at least for as much of ever as she'd ever known. The thought of what she would do afterwards crept into her head and it was almost laughable. Yeah, what will I do after I defeat a nearly all-powerful machine who could squish me like a bug? There's the real concern.

Time crawled onwards with no progress, until eventually, the door opened and in walked Proxy. Their blade was already drawn, that purpose to their step that they only really got when they were in evaluation mode.

'Fuck.'

'Fuck fuck fuck.'

'I need to move right the fuck now.'

Enyo could not voice her alarm. She couldn't move even an inch and Proxy was marching inexorably towards her. They stopped in front of her, looked her dead in the eyes (not true exactly, the closest they ever came to have eyes was when she used to draw a face on their faceplate, but she hadn't done that in a long time), they drew back their sword and -

Suddenly, in that moment of panic, she felt it again. The same feeling she'd had in Magic Practice. The feeling of being able to step sideways. She tried to make the metaphorical motion again, but it was harder, as if her body didn't want to move that way. She had to do this. She no longer had any choice but success.

Enyo reached out a hand and caught the blade mid-thrust. Though less 'catch the blade' exactly and more 'get impaled through the hand'. It really hurt. It really fucking hurt. It was only the immobilization that was stopping her from screaming. Obviously this wouldn't have been her number one choice on how to defuse this situation but even with the knowledge of how to resist that immobility, she hadn't been able to move much, and doing as much as she had had left her spent.

Ghost gave her another five minutes to see if she'd rally and throw off the immobilization completely, during which time Proxy stood there, blade still embedded in her hand with seemingly no inclination to pull away. Eventually, after what felt like forever Enyo could move again.

“Fucking ouch.” she said. “You're all lucky my mouth was immobilized or there would have been one last lump sum in the swear jar, and it would have been substantial.”

“Congratulations my most precious daughter.”

“I could have done better.” Enyo muttered. “Proxy could you get me the first aid kit?” They walked over to a nearby cupboard and opened it up. “And I don't think I'm strong enough to move more than just a limb during immobilization. What I did wasn't much but let me tell you I am spent.”

“You will have enough strength when the time comes.” Ghost replied.

“The Mana Repositories I know.” Enyo said, and then she smiled, finally accepting the reality of what she'd just done.

After Proxy cleaned and bandaged her hand they called training early for the day and went downstairs to have dinner. Proxy made her favourite (ham and pineapple pizza – a meal inititally served to her as something Jolene might have eaten). She ate in contented silence, with Fox nuzzling up next to her legs and Proxy and Lanmò nearby. It was always going to be weird to her that she had her meals with so many people who didn't eat. Though maybe it wasn't always going to be weird like that. Things would be changing soon...

After dinner it was Emotional Openness (optional), but after the day that she'd had, and the day she was worried about having tomorrow, she was too tense to share.

“I don't know if it falls under the remit of Emotional Openness but I have been wondering why it's 634 days? I mean. I know that I fight The Monitor tomorrow and that's why but... how do you know that? What is it about tomorrow that means it has to be then and that we can't put it back another week or so. Just give me a little longer to get a better handle on breaking immobilization?”

“It's complicated. You'll understand tomorrow.” Ghost said.

“You're always like this.” Enyo complained. “There are always mysterious reasons for everything that I'm not allowed to know anything about.” She sighed. “Whatever, if I'll know tomorrow then I guess I'll know tomorrow.” She got up and turned to leave with an air of resignation. “I'm going to my room. Goodnight and thank you all for everything.”

That night Enyo read Golden Blossom of Seven. This was like the eleventh book in the Of Seven series. She was pretty sure by this point Ghost had had to switch the dimension from which they were sourcing these books in order to keep up with her demand, else had started writing them themselves. She didn't make it all the way through though. It was a really big book, too much to make it through in a single sitting even if she might not have a tomorrow.

She crossed off the final day on her calendar and went to sleep.

Username:
Name: Enyo
Gender: Female
Race: Nymph

Nymphs are not naturally occurring creatures. They are created via magic rituals and composed entirely of mana itself. In certain magical circles in the city of Atrim it is commonly believed that all nymphs are created with to love whomever they meet with a fleeting but intense passion. It is certainly true that sometimes nymphs can be created like this, but sometimes they can just be people.

Colour: #952495
Weapon: Enyo has formal training with a whole range of weaponry.
Abilities: Enyo has been studying magic her whole lifetime (634 days). She's not yet encountered a kind of magic she can't replicate. A particular favourite of hers is to channel a type of elemental energy into forming a solid weapon. She has the still developing ability to, through some sort of thaumaturgical displacement, simply become temporarily immune to magic. It is very energy intensive.

Additionally she has a lot of foreknowledge about Grand Battles, the contestants within and including data about The Monitor and The Database. Some of this data may be inaccurate or out of date due to The Ghost's limited access to the subjects in question.

Description:

SpoilerShow

Enyo is humanoid with pale pink skin. She has two hook shaped horns and shoulder length pink-white hair. She has bright magenta eyes and elfin pointed ears. She's of average height for an adult human. She floats slightly off the ground.

Enyo is, in a casual setting, somewhat scattered and prone to flights of fancy, when it comes down to it she's willing to put every ounce of her effort into whatever it is she puts her mind to. She already has a very strong affection for Sister Clara, and a number of other battlers (mostly girls), and a particular distaste towards all Grandmasters, particularly The Monitor.

Background: Enyo was a real nymph conjured and trained in the realm of the reclusive Grandmaster The Ghost. Her memories now occupy the body of Aph, alongside a fake set of memories of the battle to this point authored by The Ghost via their robot Proxy.

Enyo remembers being raised by Ghost, trained and taught everything she needs to know to stand a chance against The Monitor. In the battle she remembers a struggle against The Monitor's agent; Bae. A merciless shapeshifter who killed her friends one by one, until she and Clara were able to defeat it. She remembers meeting Proxy and having her memories altered, but does not understand the full extent to which those memories have been altered.

Enyo awoke sitting in an uncomfortable metal folding chair, in front of an enormous black wax cylinder. It was a familiar feeling. Just as she'd practiced time and time again. Proxy wasn't here, which was sort of weird. As Enyo she hadn't expected them to be here. They were never here in Database Practice, but as the nymph, well they had been right here just moments ago.

She stood up, her feet strangely unsteady on the metal ground beneath her. A slip of paper fell to the ground and she instinctively reached down and grabbed it. It read, in Proxy's tidy handwriting: 'Sister Clara. Clone Memory Repository.'

Enyo smiled. This was really happening. Without any further hesitation she hurried to the door and down the corridor beyond.