The Great Belligerency [Round 4: Static]

Originally posted on MSPA by Pharmacy.

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A man on a horse galloped forth. To be honest, it was almost a comical sight: a corpulent man bedecked in luxurious furs, his proportionally short legs clasped tightly on his bow-legged horse. From Balance’s distance, it looked like a shag-pillow on a dachshund. A lesser man would laugh at such a sight. However, Balance was a God and a Judge – also he was not a big fan of visual humor.

“WHO GOES THERE,” the head nestled in furs demanded down to the godly intruder. From the clattering jewelry and the well-oiled face of the horseman, Balance made an easy guess that the demanding questioner was clearly the leader of this village – also he looked kind of like a talking palm-tree from what the god could see.

Balancing! Such an easy task! Yet, such a hard endeavor – and to be honest, Balance was not so sure what he was exactly doing. He was sure all those tasks, barrier-mucking and all that, had that feel of mistake in them. If mistakes add up, the tip of balance would push over – over him, perhaps? After all, equilibrium was a phenomenon that permeated the nature of all things, even himself. At that thought, the entity began to nervously tangle his fingers into the strings of his beloved scales.

Well, there was not much time. Balance let out a scholarly cough. “Well, good sir. I am in a desperate situation, a situation that would affect all of life on this Plateau. Villagers had fell under the cause of Dark Forces and as such, the fate of this world lies in balance, a balance that would need” His red eye trailed up to the leader. “Military enforcements.”

Balance valued brevity. After all, brevity was the soul of wit and Balance was pretty sure that he had a witty soul. Balance also valued formality. Violence could only get you so far, as he learned from his brother. Politeness will get you places. Balance was a bit annoyed when he found an absurdly sharp halberd edging at his throat.

“Desperate, eh?” The leader hissed through his teeth. “That fancy-ass collar says otherwise! In speaking of fancy, the fate-of-the-world-being-in-jeopardy kind of thing seems awfully contrived.” He began to pull at his sparse mustache as he stared down at the god. “Tell me, you got any evidence to back yourself up?”

Suddenly, a swarm of foot soldiers, each as furry as the leader, surrounded Balance with pointy objects of various lengths. Being a God of Balance and everything, Balance pretty much anticipated that - although it was still kind of disconcerting. Immediately, the god began to think up scenarios in his head. Well, he could use his powers again. After all, there are more soldiers than god of balances. On the other hand, fighting against a god is not exactly a fair fight…

Suddenly, the scales rang.

The apparatus in his hands rattled, the weighing plates clanging nosily against the beam. The movement was so strong, so violent that it leapt out of Balance’s hands. The God looked down, a bit perturbed at the convenient interruption, at the scale sprawled at the sand.

Silence permeated the environment as Balance, soldiers, and the leader attempted to figure out what was the symbolism behind such a random event. A significant amount of minutes passed as a dragonfly lazily droned into the village. It was a typical dragonfly, long, winged, and in a beautiful iridescent blue. Of course what happened was not typical.

The bow-legged horse straddled his weighty rider with much gravity. The steed was feeling quite hungry. It has been a while since his master fed him. Immediately, the dull-headed mammal began to look for food, staring at the grass, the shrubs, and finally, the waltzing dragonfly. The stout equine acknowledged the insectoid visitor - with his tongue. In a lightning flick, a thick sticky cord of flesh shot from the horse’s thick lips, caught the dragonfly, and disappeared.

The horse was enormously contented with chewing away at his grisly snack of exoskeletons and chitin. His owner, however, was not. After all, it was not often that you see your mount decide to make a far-ranged snack out of a fly. “What, what is going ON?” the leader demanded, shocked at the cascade of events that led to the demise of the insect.

The soldiers were uneasy at this sight, milling uncomfortably. However, Balance leapt at that chance. This was the perfect place to convince this man to his side - the keystone to the problem that was keeping balance. With a gleam in his eyes, the God of Balance spoke, “That was merely a warning. Soon, there will be more to come.”

“W-what?” The horseman leader shifted uncomfortably on his insectivorous steed. The red-eyed stranger had announced upcoming danger and that sounded…foreboding to say the least. The leader was not exactly sure the nature of the danger and what the hell was going on. However, this danger seemed to spell the worst intentions for the village he lords over.

“Well, the fate of this world lies in balance. If it so slightly tips over, there would be unspeakable things.” Balance thoughtfully looked up at the leader of the village. “Unspeakable things that might happen to your home, your village, perhaps even your family.”

The horseman just sputtered.

“If you want to protect your village, I have just the solution. The solution is simple: to eradicate Girnham and his forces. However, the caveat is you would aid me.” Balance waved his hand across. “Will you aid me in fighting Girnham?”

The decision was unanimous.

***

Meanwhile, near the village, a lush field of grass resided – infested with many wolves, wolves that bleated and huddled like normal sheep. However, it was obvious there were no normal sheep as a lone ram buckled forth and attacked one of the un-wolfish wolves. His prey was finished with a violent bite in the neck and dragged away into the nearby forest, only a trail of blood betraying any evidence of attack.

It is safe to say that things would not improve in this place.

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

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It was harder to track her ward than it should be. Soft just wasn’t built for flying as well as Cole, really. And it didn’t help that a bunch of singing their semaphore songs through the trees so rubbish kept bouncing along in her head like a stream of consciousness gone wrong.

This whole place was going all wrong. Which meant she had failed at preserving it.

Because bug boy never kept on track at all. He was always so difficult. What was she supposed to do with him? But other than that…

…What was she supposed to do with this plateau?

It could be saved. There was absolutely no doubt. If Soft knew anything, it was that the lowest point gave opportunities to reach the best ending. So obviously she could still fix this but and they danced through and through the night prancing away the glancing fright and the marmalade snakes flew to the sky while the murmury moles murmured on by how could she even begin?

Soft looked down. Bug boy was still flying along towards the beacon thing which she still hadn’t quite figured out what it was yet. With what she had at her disposal, maybe it was completely hopeless. Maybe, actually, this was a story of the dangers of progress.

It fit, right?

And the land should then be sillified the solidified silk until the raggazat sat on devastated. Oral tradition had to die again. Always, oral tradition had to die. Why couldn’t art live forever?

“Wow, they gave it to you?”

Soft looked beside her and saw a normal black bird flying nearby.

“I mean, no offense. Just that, y’know, that weapon there is rather very important and I thought those guys were gonna hand it down to some sort of hero figure and, well, you’re not much of one.”

“Crow, right?” Soft smiled. “Good to see you. I’m a fan of your work.”

The crow puffed up. “Ah! Well, that’s very nice of you to say. Y’know, I just got out of this really dreadful situation, just life-threatening, and – “

“Oh, I know. You don’t have to tell me.” Soft glanced upwards. “Seen your brother recently?”

Crow probably would have rubbed the back of his head if he didn’t need both wings to fly. “It’s not very easy to just visit him. He’s always working. Hard worker, him. Doesn’t make for good conversations. And it’s rather hot up where he is. Scorched my feathers black, y’know.”

Soft nodded. “Explanatory stories and all. I think I’m going to go up there, though. Do you want to follow?”

Crow quite visibly didn’t want to. But he said, “Yeah, sure! Why not? I’ve got loads to tell him, and he…well, he probably doesn’t have loads to tell me, really. Not much for him to talk about. But I can talk enough for both of us, I guess, so – woah! Wait up!”

This certainly would be a…bizarre cautionary tale about progress. The narrative was more of a non sequitur. And the ending wouldn’t make any sense at all. But by god, would it be an ending.

Soft flew up towards the sun.

Originally posted on MSPA by Pick Yer Poison.

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In the dead heat of the Eternity Plateu, two armies marched towards each other. One was composed almost entirely of rabble clutching rocks and sticks. Phil led this force, his white armor shining blindingly in the sun. The other boasted more advanced forces, containing horsemen with pikes and swords, but a smaller number of them. Balance spearheaded this side, golden hammer and scale clutched securely in his hands as he sat on top of a borrowed horse.

The two armies sized each other up as they closed the distance, scoping out the competition and picking out targets. Phil's army treaded haphazardly and Balance's marched properly, but both made the same pace, and quickly the two met. Phil's warriors flowed around him, eager to meet Balance's, who felt quite the same way. Pikemen stabbed naked flesh from atop horseback, and were then in turn brought down by heavy rocks colliding with their skulls. Phil lept around the battlefield, brandishing his crude baseball bat, caving heads in and dealing lethal blows as he made his way to Balance, who was matching him kill for kill, balancing out the score as best he could.

Finally, the two met in the middle of all the fighting and squared off, a clearing forming around them as followers dissolved into their own battles, avoiding the two killing machines as best they could.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

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As Cole drew near the beacon, he saw a large mass of figures below. Curious, he flew down closer to investigate, and soon found it to be a battlefield.

Masses of footmen were swarming smaller numbers of horsemen, and Cole could already see quite a few dead bodies. He found himself disgusted by it; had the Executor not described this world as a home to sages and gurus? But there was no wisdom to be found here, only bloodshed.

He turned his attention back to the beacon. Perhaps this was a battle to claim it, for one reason or another. A massive aura of darkness that was inspiring the locals to fight over it... that did sound like the sort of problem that irritating Spirit would be concerned with.

He flew past the battlefield, heading for the beacon. Perhaps if he could disable it, this needless fighting would end.

Down below, one of Balance's horsemen looked up and saw a strange figure in the sky. He wondered what it could be.

His horse wondered the same thing. It decided to take a closer look, and suddenly leapt into the air, dropping its rider to the ground unceremoniously.

A few seconds later, Cole found himself plummeting towards the ground with a very heavy horse on his back.

Originally posted on MSPA by Pharmacy.

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Scavengers flocked forth, eager for the feast of rotting on bloodied plains. This description was unfortunately vague as the Eternity was permanently and irreversibly damaged. The altered flux of these plateaus rippled through the surroundings - and the native beings. Crows became corpses. Corpses became crows. It did not matter - the distinction was degenerating into pure nonsense. Yet, heat of the battle was still on

especially between those two.

***

Upon the dredges of the dead, god and mortal faced off - Phil with his technology; Balance with his scales - both ignorant of the flickering transmutations of their environment. Despite the severe difference of their capabilities, the contempt they shot at each other was very, very balanced.

”You.” The God of Balance glowered, his divine frown as steep as his power was godly. Seeing Phil’s full gear was enough to send the metaphysical entity into a simmering rage - especially after that inconvenience at New Shambhala. The God was not quite forgiving of the suited soldier’s antics in the now-destroyed utopia plus - look at what he had done to his side. He was determined to dish out punishment just as harsh as his scriptures claimed.

“Uh, yeah?” Phil on the other hand was slightly disappointed. The mercenary did not feel particularly attached to his peasantfolk underlings, their sad reminders of viscera and organs smudged on the semi-grassy ground. Phil was born (more like trained and technologically tweaked) to fight armies, and these people were not. Phil was more disappointed that among all the things he could fight, it was that goddamned Balance.

“Yes, you.” The San Andreas Fault that was Balance’s brow deepened into the Mariana Trench. How should he count the ways? If this was a mundane court so esteemed by the prosaic mortals, Phil would have so many violations that he would be deemed for life imprisonment. Unfortunately, Phils’ crimes were large - too large for any court. The dichotomy of the futuristic soldier’s offenses and (nonexistent) kindness was too large. The God was determined to balance Phil with punishment -

- and that punishment would be death.

“I suggest you surrender, Girnham,” Balance ambled forth menacingly Phil-wards. “Your cessation would be admirable and be accounted for in scriptures and the restoration of equilibrium.”

Phil was not exactly the type of person to mince words, but he realized despite all the euphemisms layered upon his opponent’s offerings, the God wanted him dead. The military man was not too keen on being dead today. His answer was a very definite “no.”

“And so shall it be,” Balance intoned as he practically disappeared into thin air. Phil readied himself into battle position. Gods were mysterious beings. Phil hated mysterious beings who were especially his opponents. Sneakery merely prolonged battles which served to annoy the soldier to no end. He was even more annoyed when Balance swung a sword at his head.

Clever, Phil grumbled. The mercenary had to give him some points on that - coming up that close - an obvious maneuver to take advantage of his ranged weaponry, but Phil knew that. Moving fluidly, Phil took a step back, blocking the primitive blade with his multiweapon.

An uncomfortable shower of sparks rained on Balance, causing the god to bellow out in agony. Phil highly doubted that was enough to bring down the squirming entity - the soldier needed to change things up a bit. Phil walked to the god, swapping his prototype for a much more appropriate weapon.

Balance violently rubbed his face in an attempt to remove the pain. Phil had caught him off-guard. Phil had hurt him, a judge, an arbiter of balance. The God was not one for anger but he felt an acrimonious hatred for that man.Balance cursed Phil in his head. Blasphemous. That thought was further reinforced by a bat-wielding figure above him.

Balance frowned.

***

Phil swung, feeling the bat making contact with Balance’s godly face. After making sure his swinging arm was still good, Phil looked just so he could see how messed up the deity was. To his satisfaction, there was a significant pool of red on the ground.

- then uncertainty welled in. This was too easy - simply too easy. Phil was always a bit ambivalent on the state of easiness. The soldier shuffled in place. There was something suspicious going on -

- and that suspicion was reinforced by a slam on the side.

“Shit!” Phil swore His precious multiweapon soared through the air and landed unceremoniously on a pile of what-was-probably corpses. Phil would have lamented the loss, but he was too busy avoiding Balance’s sword.

“I suggest you yield.” Balance took a step forward. “Any more resistance will make this even more painful.”

Of course, the man was not going to take any of this (Phil was never one for surrendering - and besides, his life was on a line). Phil dodged. Balance swung. He ducked. He stabbed. The battle deteriorated into a dance of give-and-take, cat-and-mouse. Eventually, Balance’s sword on Phil’s force field. Phil wondered how long his defense would last.

To his dismay, the sword sliced through.

Phil felt the brunt of the the sword on his left shoulder. The force was so strong that the soldier swore he might have gotten bruised. The mercenary fell backwards onto the ground, cursing the god’s cheating. As the HUD focused into view, Phil cursed even more as he saw that visage of Balance sword, in hand, ready to make steak tartare out of him.

Phil looked up at his opponent. The god looked as how a person hit squared in the face with a bat might expect. Balance’s eyes were furious red dots - his face contorted to a snarl. If the soldier were to succinctly sum up the God’s appearance, they would be “deranged” and “psychotic.”

Deranged? Psychotic? Oh no. Balance was totally perfectly fine, he would say. Yes he was totally fine, juuuuuuuuuust fine. A little lovely stream of godly blood dribbled down his lip, clenched so violently by his teeth. Just need to impress mother just needed to end this man’s life oh how mother would be so proud.

“So very proud,” Balance whispered.

“What?!” Phil blurted. He was a bit confused by this random phrase.

“DO NOT INSULT MOTHER,” Balance screeched as he brought the sword down on Phil’s head.

Involuntarily, Phil brought up his arms, waiting for that impending slam. Unbeknownst to the soldier (and the furious god), science was at his side. Newtonian physics decreed that force equals mass times acceleration. Balance tweaked the acceleration portion to slice through the impregnable force field. However, the god’s abilities decreed that equilibrium must be restored. To Phil’s surprise, the sword bent outwards as soon as it hit his arm.

Balance was perturbed.

Phil, however, took full advantage of this pleasant opportunity. He pulled the sword from Balance’s relaxed grasp, tying the flexible blade into knots (plus a couple more - in spite). Confidently tossing the useless sword over his shoulder, Phil faced Balance-wards, making the smuggest smile he could under his helmet. The soldier was prepared to give Balance the beating of his immortal lifetime...he just needed a good enough opening before whaling on the god.

"Nice try, Balance." Phil smirked.

The god merely grumbled in return, but the mercenary did not care.

“But it's never a fair fight if I'm in it."

Balance suddenly found himself being drop-kicked by a space marine.

***

As the battle degenerated into fistcuffs, the peculiarities of the Plateau had, to put lightly, gotten worse. As Balance was a god, his influence on even the most static of universes was profound - his energies involuntarily attempting to balance the wrongs everywhere. Unfortunately for the deity, this proved to make things worse. His personal imbalance intermingled with these rules of these plains resulting in an utterly incomprehensible metaphysical slurry, making further equilibrium impossible.

Cole was not having a good time - especially with a horse trying to play jockey with him. Even with that heavy equine attempting a reversal of roles on him, the man (well, what remained of him inside the swarm) realized that there were problems much bigger than the load on his back.

Animals changed into plants and back. Predator and prey ate each other. Heights shortened and lengthen. Just looking at these rapid transmutations were enough to make the bug-man’s head swim - and to remind him to get to the beacon soon.

Originally posted on MSPA by slipsicle.

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Resoived!

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

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Fingers brushed aside shards of ceramic, sent them tinkling to the hard earth below, revealed more of her face. All that remained of the mask – where had it come from? – was the curved beak and glassy red eyepieces. It covered the upper half of her impassive face, and at the same time she felt this was exactly as it should be, that it had once been an entire headpiece and had been savaged by shotgun fire and that she'd never had a mask to begin with, what was this. She stood, eyes still closed, and a village's worth of lungs exhaled a reverently wordless paean to her. She finally looked at the world around her, and something in her snapped; she threatened to collapse again, but a dozen hands caught her and steadied her.

"Amala," one said, "you must take care. You have been weakened by your time in the Dark Beyond."

Who was Amala what was the dark beyond why was this man touching her speaking to her she should kill him kill them all She smiled gently. "Yes." No! "It has been too many moons since I have stepped in the soil of my domain." Not since I burned it, not since I destroyed it, stop looking at me, stop talking to me, see you all, see you burn too "I have lost much without my land, without my people. But I have returned to you."

One of the ancients that held her arm opened his mouth to speak. "What has happened to you in the time since–"

She shook her head, still smiling, and put an ungloved finger to his lips. "There will be time, later. Time for the stories that have gone untold since Crow's attack, time to repair the blight we left behind us. But before that time can come, there is a time for strife."

She took several shuddering steps, and those around her backed away to give her space. She gestured with both hands, spreading them in a wide circle in front of and behind her, turning again to face her congregation, the Children's children.

"You see, when I returned, thinking the time for hiding had passed, thinking of those I had to forget, I did not come alone." Insects, worms, pathetic mounds of flesh and fear, clinging to me, reaching for me, using and fearing and loving me. "I was not the only one who yearned for my home, for all that I had lost when I fled. And those who found the trail I left, they remembered what they had forced themselves to forget, and they followed me. We must find them." Find them, kill them, slaughter them and the one who let them follow me, who brought me here. "They would forget what we learned at the point of Crow's sword and return to the old ways. We must remind them. Teach them the peace you have so long enjoyed." The peace of death. "The peace of reason and contentment."

The plants that had once again begun growing under her feet continued spreading as she spoke, and she turned to the horizon and they sprang up under her gaze as well. It was... Hard for her to think. Somewhere in the darkness, there were voices. Uncountable, unceasing voices. The more she tried to hear them, though, the more they fled and dodged and whispered. There was also a louder one, sinister and upfront and grappling for her attention and control, but it was weak and easily ignored. In front of all of them were the voices of her followers, the simple folk of the Plateau that had hopelessly waited for her return for endless days and nights as time stagnated and crystallized around her. It didn't occur to wonder why she had no voice even in her own mental soundstage, so she simply continued staring at the horizon, eyes scanning farther than they should have been able to see.

"Already, in the time it took me to awaken from the dream the Dark Beyond trapped me in, they have begun fighting. They have truly learned nothing, or discarded their knowledge. We must teach them." Cease them!

She began to walk wabblingly to a battle only she could see and a smear on the sky that all could. Plants crawled up in her wake, spreading out and revitalizing a land that had long been waiting for her attentions. Or some like it, in any case. She would see that this pointless battle ended, one way or another.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

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As Cole drew nearer to the beacon, the environment became stranger and stranger. Grass grew into trees in the space of seconds, and the trees then started to walk around and loudly demanding an end to war. A pool of water emerged seemingly out of nowhere, and a moose jumped out, did an impressive backflip, and then dove back in. On its second jump, a shark swooped down and devoured it, then flew off.

None of this made Cole feel any more comfortable with the fact that the horse on his back had changed into a gigantic rhinoceros beetle about eight minutes ago. Now, thanks to Anansi's curse, it would be stuck to his back for a good while, and if anything it seemed to be heavier than it had been as a horse. In order to move at all, Cole had been forced to spend nearly seven minutes changing his entire body structure to mimic an ant's so he could carry more weight, and he was still struggling to advance.

At his best guess, it would still take him an hour to reach the beacon. How much of the Eternity Plateau's intelligence would be wasted on this pathetic war by the time he arrived? And how many more ridiculous sights would he be subjected to along the way?

As if in response to Cole's unspoken question, a molehill suddenly sprang up to his left and began spewing lava. A hummingbird croaked and hopped its way over, stuck its beak in the newly-formed lava pool, and began drinking.

Cole groaned, partly due to how stupid it all was, and partly due to the beetle on his back. He tried to push his body to move faster, not wanting to be around if the volcano decided to grow up suddenly. He only succeeded in making himself even more exhausted. Five minutes later, he collapsed from the exertion.

And he had barely moved at all. The village around the beacon seemed no closer, the miniature volcano seemed no further away, and the tortoise speeding past him was just adding insult to injury.

If the damned horse had just stayed a horse, at least it might have chosen to pull itself off of him on its own. But a paralyzed rhinoceros beetle was another matter. Now Cole was stuck, exhausted, and nearly helpless if the changing environment decided to send a mountain-sized anteater towards him. He felt as though he was sinking into the ground.

And then he realized that it wasn't simply a feeling. The ground below him had changed to quicksand.

He almost wished he had the energy to struggle, to speed up his demise. But no, he was powerless. He could do nothing more than sit and wait for the ground to consume him while a pointless battle raged on in the distance, or hope for some savior to come to his aid. Considering that the most likely candidate was that damnable Spirit, he was genuinely unsure which fate would be worse.

Then, before his eyes, an enormous beanstalk sprang up from the ground beneath the city, lifting it and the beacon high into the sky. His goal had grown even further away.

Was the beacon doing this? Was it sending obstacles his way, and then, just when he seemed broken, it twisted the knife in a little harder just to make sure? Was it actively tormenting him?

Was it toying with him, like some cruel god?

The thought filled Cole with rage and determination. He would brook no further humiliation from any god.

Despite the beetle on his back, despite the quicksand, despite the sheer distance, he would find some way to that beacon.

But how? He was barely mobile as it was, and the quicksand gave him little margin for error. He had tried to copy the gigantic beetle, in hopes that it would be more suited to carrying itself, but he found himself somehow unable. None of the Earthly insects he had acquired seemed to fit the task, and the two he had found in New Shambhala gave him no further ideas.

And then he realized there was one insect unaccounted for. One that he had found on neither Earth nor on New Shambhala, and aside from the enormous beetle.

If the changes he was witnessing were spreading through the Plateau, then the bee that had flown into him some time earlier might have been affected. Granted, Cole had no idea if any new abilities it had acquired would help him, but he could see no other options.

He focused on the bee. As he copied it, he could sense that there was, indeed, something unusual about it. Something unrecognizable, unlike any other insect Cole had encountered.

Unfortunately, in copying the bee, Cole found himself losing strength. He could no longer maintain full ant-powers. He had little option but to try the new power, and hope. Hope that somehow, it would bring him to the village.

And then he vanished.

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

---

Soft really didn’t know what was going on anymore.

Between the now useless narration of the story and Crow’s nearly soporific babbling, it was rather impossible to, really. It was the first time she felt entirely disoriented, almost to the point of blindness. The frogs sang and the grass flew and Soft’s head ached.

“You know, we’ll see that big ol’ tree soon. Ever see it? It’s really nice to look at. Really big,” Crow said. “Sometimes I wonder where it came from, right? Maybe there’s an even bigger tree, the Grandpapa of Universe Trees. Or something. Makes sense, right? But then there’d have to be another tree and another tree…”

She liked him. She really did. She couldn’t not like a trickster hero figure. But he certainly was very bad at not talking.

The sky grew darker around them and the shadow of the giant tree loomed above. Shapes dropped from its branches – nuts, leaves, sometimes whole twigs. They fell slowly, gently, until they rested in their places on the floor of the universe.

Below them was the world. It was nestled securely where it sat and, given a few million years, might have grown into another tree. At least she guessed it worked that way, she wasn’t actually sure. And she wasn’t getting any good answers.

Soft rubbed her tired face. Crow talked nervously as they got closer to the sun and the sword in her hand seemed to vibrate with heat. She drifted close to the flaming sphere and Crow reluctantly trailed behind, his words cutting short. Moving upwards, they finally caught sight of the Vulture.

His powerful wings beat against the Nothing, making a circular path above the many worlds. His eyes stared forward, tired and steadfast. His talons were scorched to the bone. He barely acknowledged his visitors.

“Hey bro,” Crow said much too easily while Soft looked Vulture up and down. Or rather, up and up and up and down. He was much bigger than she had expected, though she supposed a vulture would have to be rather big for a vulture in order to carry a burning world. It helped, though, that the world was small for a world. “Found a frie – well, I guess I wouldn’t consider you a friend just yet, right? I mean we just met. Acquaintance probably’d be more accurate, right? Well, you got the sword and all, so a bit more important than an acquaintance.”

Vulture managed a nod and a grunt.

“Yeah, yeah, good to see you, looks like you’re holding up alright. Right. I just came to – actually I don’t know why I came. I was following you, right? Why’d you want to come up here again?”

Soft blinked away the headache. It seemed less severe. “Vulture, it’s nice to meet you. I came to tell you that I’m relieving you from your duty.”

Vulture managed a grunt and a questioning glance.

Crow managed much more. “Oh? So you’re taking care of the sun business from here, then? Not sure how you could carry it, though, but I guess you’ve figured it out or something. That’s nice, that’s nice to know. I’m sure Vulture thinks the same, right? Not really speaking for him personally, but I’m sure he, you know, appreciates this news.”

“…What…will you…do…with it…?” Vulture asked between gasps.

Soft found it hard to answer. So she didn’t. “I will take up the responsibility.”

Vulture’s eyes flickered from the path ahead of him to Soft, then back forward.

“…No.”

“Man, you’re crazy! You’ve been doing this for eons and when someone comes along and offers to do it for you, you turn it down?” Crow blurted.

“If you let go, then things don’t have to be complicated,” Soft said, trying to control her voice, trying not to sound hysterical.

Vulture managed a cough. “…No.”

The god-killing sword sliced through Vulture’s legs like butter. The large bird fell alongside the sun in shock, wings frozen and body like lead. There were no cries from him. There were plenty from Crow.

“You – you psycho!” he roared, flinging himself towards her in a frenzy. Soft backed away quickly, watching the sun fall out of the corner of her eyes.

“Stay back,” she said, raising the sword defensively. “I only sliced his legs, he’s – “

“Oh, only cut his legs off,” Crow snarled, steadily growing larger, it seemed. He scratched her face. “Of course that’s alright! He didn’t do anything wrong!” A nip at her side. A harsh pull at her braids.

“Stop,” she said, but she had already beheaded him instinctively. Before the end of that word, the body had already fallen out of view and she was by herself and the sun continued its descent.

This was wrong. This was absolutely, irredeemably wrong.

This was a failure. She was a failure.

She looked down, hoping that at least Vulture was still alive. But it didn’t seem to be so.

She was a psychopath.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

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Miles away from the battlefield, within Balance's barrier, the elders of the Eternity Plateau were growing restless.

Though the barrier now kept them from influencing the Plateau, they still held a strong connection to it. They could feel the blood being spilled needlessly, feel nature as it was twisted into a mockery of itself, feel the forbidden knowledge Carl was spreading.

And then they felt the sun as it began to fall. They fell into meditation once more, and began consulting each others' minds.

We cannot wait any longer, said the First Elder to his kinsmen. We must escape this barrier somehow, or our home will be destroyed.

But how? every Elder replied at once. We have tried to break the barrier, both physically and spiritually. Nothing has worked. Our influence on the Plateau is gone. We cannot work to undo the damage.

There is one chance, the First Elder replied. I have just sensed the barrier weakening, but only slightly. In this state, if we all concentrate on the same place, we may be able to create a path to it. But only one of us will be able to pass through, for all the rest will be needed to maintain the path.

There was a moment's silence.

We will do this, the Elders agreed. We know where the path must lead.

And so they focused, and slowly an image within the mindscape came into focus. A village on the top of a beanstalk. The home of their enemies. The source of the barrier.

The First Elder stepped towards it, and his spirit disappeared.

And then, in the physical world, his body collapsed to the floor.

***

Cole would have blinked if he had eyelids. The beacon was just a few feet in front of him. He had simply appeared in the village.

If he had known about that power earlier, perhaps he wouldn't have this stupid horse-beetle on his back. Unfortunately, the short distance to the beacon was still too much with it weighing him down, not that he had the slightest idea what to do when he reached it.

And then he heard the low groan nearby. He turned his head and saw a woman lying on the ground, a strange machine embedded in her back. It was glowing in the same dark color as the beacon.

That suggested an obvious link. Cole grew one of his forelegs into a claw and smashed the machine. The woman rubbed her head and slowly lifted herself to her knees.

"That's better!" she said cheerily. "Maybe now I can get back to my soaps. I'm just dying to know if Anthony's cheating on Leona!"

"What," Cole said, dumbfoundedly.

"Could you be a dear and help the others while I try to tune in three universes to the northwest? I'm pretty sure they'll be airing the right episode about now."

Cole sighed, and did his best to point to the gigantic beetle on his back with his new claw.

"What's the matter? I mean, you're the bug guy. Can't you take care of it?"

"No," he grumbled. "It's stuck, and I can't even draw any powers from it. Possibly because it used to be a horse."

The woman stared at it.

"I don't know if I want to touch that."

"Then get a big stick or something!"

"But where am I going to get a stick... Oh, right, the spears. We never got much use out of them because hunting wasn't that exciting, but they should be over in the museum still..."

She ran off, leaving Cole to sit there helplessly.

***

Three villages away, Chief Anthony came home in shock, as he found his dear Leona in the arms of Mark the Medicine Man.

"How dare you, Leona!" he screamed. "How could you do this to me?"

"You're one to talk, Anthony!' she shouted. "Just how long have you been spending time with Shamaness Eileen? And did you really think I wouldn't find out about it?" She glared and pointed at his head. "Why, you've got her lipstick on your headdress right now!"

"But it... That was for a mystical blessing!"

"Oh, my. Is that what you call it with her? Am I not good enough for you any more, Anthony?"

"Well, not if you're going to be a worthless harlot!"

Mark just awkwardly cowered in a corner as the argument escalated. He was fairly certain that he had only come over ten minutes ago to ensure the spirits were watching over Leona properly, despite also recalling that they had been doing this for weeks behind Anthony's back. He also couldn't recall anyone in the village having names ten minutes ago.

***

It was about ten minutes later when the woman returned carrying a sharpened stick.

"Sorry about that, my mind wandered. You really should take a look at the museum sometime." She plunged the stick into the beetle, and carefully pushed it off.

Cole changed his body shape back to humanoid and stood up, for the first time in nearly an hour.

"Thank you," he said angrily, wandering over to the next fallen villager, a bearded man. Cole crushed the machine with his claw, and the man slowly got to his feet.

"Ah, much better!" the man said with a smile. "May Zulonas smile upon you! And upon us all, indeed!"

More nonsense, Cole thought to himself. Is the entire village like this?

"Oh! Wait, you're the one who doesn't like gods, aren't you? I must apologize. I simply find them so interesting. But Zulonas is my favorite! Why, just last week, he issued a divine edict declaring blue to be the color of evil, after his entire church had spent three years convincing the people to wear blue! I wonder how that holy war is shaping up. I should take a look."

And then the man simply had a blank expression on his face. Cole looked over to the woman he had helped before; her face was likewise blank. No doubt she was discovering that Anthony had cheated on Leona with his stepsister or some such nonsense.

Cole was beginning to have doubts about freeing these villagers, but on the other hand, the beacon certainly looked smaller, and the sky was definitely brighter. If he was to earn that weapon, he had little choice. He sighed, and crushed the next machine, only to be greeted by a lecture on farming techniques.

***

"Come on, guys, I'm sure we can work this out," Carl said. "I get it, some people don't like baseball. That doesn't mean you have to burn me at the stake!"

"You may take it up with the Great Zulonas when you are brought before him for judgement," said the High Priest. "For too long has the Plateau lived in ignorance of His teachings. You will be an example to the other heretics."

"What if I made a game called Zulonasball? I bet he'd love that! It would be all about extolling His glory!" Carl was getting desperate.

"Zulonas has no time for petty games, heathen. It is clearly too late for you. All we can do is pray that your fate serves as a warning to others, so that they may learn to accept Zulonas' love."

"Yeah, his love, like telling you to burn me at the stake!"

The High Priest glared.

"The Fifth Book of Zulonas, Fourteenth Edict: 'Thou shalt not be a smartass about Me.' You have only secured a worse fate for yourself. Loyal followers! Take this man to the temple for the Final Judgement!"

Two tribesmen walked over to the pole and lifted it, Carl still tied to it. They began dragging him to a hut that was slightly larger than the other huts.

Then, suddenly, it was a lot larger, and less a hut than a cathedral made from sticks and straw. The High Priest and his men didn't seem to notice the change as they dragged Carl in. The tribemen untied him and held his hands to the floor, and the High Priest pulled out an uncomfortably large knife and advanced on the heretic.

"Zulonas will show your soul no mercy, you pitiful man."

***

The First Elder was upset. He had been suppressing the beacon since his arrival, but now the filthy unknown was causing worse problems.

It was true that freeing the villagers would remove the beacon, and the barrier around the Elders' village. But that would come at a great cost - the forbidden knowledge these people held would flood through the Plateau without the Elders keeping it in check.

With great reluctance, he stopped suppressing the beacon, and instead focused his mental energy into manifesting himself so the physical world could see him. Once his body was less than entirely transparent, he floated in front of Cole, just as the former biologist was about to free his seventh villager.

"Stop this at once!" he shouted.

"Not you again," Cole sighed, crushing the machine. "You called me 'unknown' as if it were the worst thing in the world, asked me to help you despite that, and then couldn't even be bothered to tell me which way was east. And now that I'm actually in the place you asked me to go, with no help from you I might add, you're telling me not to fix things. Well, I've had enough of you. I've been promised a sword for taking care of this 'gathering darkness', and I won't let you stop me."

"Do you even realize the damage you are causing? You will fill this world with unknown!"

Cole sighed, and disabled his hearing. The First Elder continued his ramblings, but Cole simply ignored them and continued freeing villagers. He felt somewhat foolish when he realized he could have turned his hearing off sooner; it would have spared him the nonsensical babblings of the villagers.

And then when Cole had freed about half of them, he was startled to see another spirit floating towards him, this one with a much younger face. Curious, Cole turned his hearing back on; he regretted it the moment he heard the elder shouting more nonsense, but the newcomer had already started talking.

"Hey, have you seen Jean-Phillipe around?" the newcomer asked, looking annoyed more than angry. "Bearded guy. Talks about gods a lot. If you see him, tell him Carl's got a few words for him."

"And then once the unknown has consumed us... You! This is your fault! How dare you appear on this plane of existence!"

"Aw, geez, one of the killjoys," Carl sighed. "You just don't appreciate progress, do you? I mean, I don't either when it means getting stabbed in the heart with ceremonial knives, but I know that's not all of it."

"Do you even realize what you have done?" the Elder screamed. "You need to pass to the other side! The world is too unstable right now, it certainly does not need your interference on this plane!"

"Hey, chill, man," Carl said. "It's all good. I'm not planning to stick around, I just want to see an actual championship game before I pass on."

And the moment after he spoke the words, walls rose up around the village.

***

A sun large enough to illuminate an entire infinite plain must be infinite in size; otherwise there would be points where its light would take more time to reach than the plain had been in existence. As such, if the sun were to plummet towards the plain below, it would make no sense to declare a particular point as the "center" of its fall.

However, if the sun suddenly becomes finite, and then grows smaller and smaller, this designation makes more sense.

In this case, the center of the sun's fall was the newly-existant baseball stadium at the top of a beanstalk. And as it drew closer, it shrank, and shrank.

It shrank until it was too small to hold the Spirit, Crow, and dead Vulture held within it, so it simply spat them out unceremoniously just before it landed on the pitcher's mound.

Cole, now wearing a baseball cap and a shirt with the number 47 on it that fit awkwardly over his insects, stared at Soft as she picked herself up, and she stared at him in return.

"What did you go and do now?" they asked each other simultaneously.

SpoilerShow

In case it's not clear: Cole has gone and released villagers who had knowledge of other universes. Now those villagers are messing with the Plateau, mostly unintentionally, and causing random villages to develop culturally and technologically.

How this affects the war is up to those of you participating in it. Or you can join in on the game of Sunball that's about to start.

Originally posted on MSPA by Pharmacy.

---

The mountain of fluctuating corpses, the background terrain, creatures swarming all over - the sheer sight of this terrifying beauty was something to record into historical documents and/or cut-rate fantasy novella catering to the gothic masses. This was the perfect place to have a majestic showdown, well would be majestic if the close-contact combat did not practically ruin the atmosphere.

“Let me go, you heathen.” Balance growled. It was pretty amazing he could talk given the state of his face. The divine entity always thought himself to be omnipotent, capable of anything a lowly creature can and cannot do. However, through a humiliating entanglement of limbs, Balance realized he was not as godly as he would like to be, especially since he apparently had the constitution of an asthmatic carrot. Why was it so difficult. He found it difficult to wriggle out of the marine’s augmented grip. Why. Balance hated it. He hated it so much.

<font color="#006600">“No you let me go firs--AUGH.” Phil suddenly found his retort interrupted by a heavy smack on the head. Phil was incensed at this attack, like many other things on his hate-list. “Fuck yo--.”

“Argh,” Balance gagged on the blood welling in his throat. He swore the blow on his chest was probably the most painful thing he’d felt in his entire metaphysical existence. In distressed retaliation, he desperately clawed at Phil’s helmet, leaving irritating scratches on the opponent’s visor.

“Watch it,” the soldier snarled as he yanked the offending limb off his face. “It costs a fortune to completely fix t-” The god did not even let him finish as he gave his side a kick.

“Ugh,” Balance found a kick to his face.

“Nagh,”

“Arg.”

“Shi-”

Any possible conversation disintegrated into growls of pain (mostly from Balance) and volleys of attacks (mostly from Phil). The scuffle was blinding and the two sides were unrelentless but while the god had the power to fight, Phil had the experience. Eventually, the mercenary gained the proverbial upper hand and pretty soon, he founded himself straddled on top of the bloodied god, beating the everloving shit out of him. Phil was surprised at this fortuitous turn of events, considering Balance would be a bit more difficult, considering he was a bona-fide god. In fact, the bloodied Balance was not resisting his blows at all. The god was defenseless, weak. A sudden thought hit Phil, unchallenging.

“S-stop it,” Balance protested, managing to spit out those words along with a good portion of his vital fluids despite the onslaught. “Stop it.”

You know what, Phil decided. Screw this. A battle with a god was supposed to be dramatic and with flair, something with unpredictable difficulty. This was supposed to be a test of skills. Phil had fought a god, but it was nothing like anything he’d expected.. It was weak. One-sided. Disappointing. The mercenary felt huffily indignant over this battle that had been robbed of all energy and challenge. What a fight! What a dumbfounded fight! Balance was not worth his time and energy. Phil left the despondent and damaged god to his own devices as he trudged over to his multiweapon.

“I could never get anything right,” Balance murmured. His voice was disconsolate and his stature unhappy. It was downright miraculous he could still talk despite the state of his shredded lips.

“Yeah, whatever,” Phil grumbled as he judged the state of his complicated gun. It seemed to be in perfect condition, unlike his visor.

“I always mess up my job,” Balance gloomily pressed his bruised chin on his palms. His tone was less like a bleak judge and more like a dissatisfied co-worker – or a depressed teenager. “Balancing the pantheon? Killed my own brother. Balancing the universe? Inadvertently murdering half of the population. And how could I be so stupid, balancing the plateau, when it had been already balanced to begin with? I am the worst God of Balance ever.”

“You can’t do jack!” Phil called. He could not get over how incredibly shitty the battle was.

“I just wanted to do my job correctly.” Balance buried his face into his palms. “I just wanted to belong...”

There was no clever retort, no snappy comeback. Phil did not even reply. His intent was focused on something glowing in the distance…something familiar and somewhat unusual in the form of the sticks, mud, and stone smashed together purposefully. The mercenary could describe it as some sort of rudimentary temple or chapel and if he felt more sarcastically sophisticated, he would describe it as some tabernacle or ziggurat. However, it was not like the bygone things he saw in museums and incredibly boring textbooks. It was more streamlined than the typical clunky baroque, more freshly built than incredibly desolate...it was modern. Oh wait, it was modern.

“What. The fuck,” Phil made his feelings clear. Sure, it was made from the native materials of this realm. Sure, it had all the ancient motif, insignias so familiar among the indigenous primitives in those few villages. Sure, it probably was from Eternity Plateau. However, it did not change the fact that fucking baseball stadium (not to mention, glowing) was pretty out of place in these ancient regions.

“How did they build it so fucking fast?” Phil demanded in exasperation.

“I...don’t know,” Balance was just as befuddled. For the first time in his life, his omnipotence did not give him all the facts..

“Is this your doing?”

“It probably is,” Balance’s bleary red eyes lit up. Everything he had done since the beginning of this battle was a mistake after mistake. His next possible plan could be just another disaster, perhaps a fiasco on the same scale as what he had carelessly done to the Eternity Plateau. There was a sports-themed amphitheater in the time where the concept of cooperation was a barely invented thing. This was a mistake. This was not right. This was not balanced.

As a god of his namesake, he needed to fix this.

“I need to fix this,” Balance croaked. Picking up his iconic hammer and scales, the deity made a beeline stadium-wards, trudging over indiscernible corpses and indifferent scavengers in the process.

“What.” Phil could only stand in shock as the god left. What? How could he leave him? Girnaham fancied himself a generous man - Balance could improve over time. He could be a more interesting opponent. He could be a more difficult and fun person to attempt to steamroll the hell out. The space mercenary was not exactly the type to enjoy baseball, considering even in the distant future, the innings were still long and the players too slow. However, Phil was bored - and he still had a bone to pick with Balance.

Sports are a type of battle, right?</font>

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

---

Nothing was happening as it should.

Again.

She didn’t need this, she didn’t need to fail again, it was the opposite of what she needed.

She especially didn’t need to see him right now. He was a Project that needed finishing and now she was starting to realize that she probably didn’t have the ability to finish him. She wanted to be alone, she wanted to figure out Everything, she wanted to be certain again. So when Cole started his interrogation in earnest, she just said, “I don’t know” and tried not to sound like a little girl. She shoved the sword in his hands, which startled him immensely, and scowled her way to the dugout. The coach, who hadn’t been there before, stood up to tell her something, but she easily pushed him to the ground. After that, none of the other players stopped her from walking through the door that led to the locker room.

Cole, on his part, stared at the god-killing weapon in his hands for a long while, still unsure why she had just simply handed it over, and entertained the idea of following the little Spirit and testing it out. But he realized that he really wasn’t sure he was mentally prepared to kill something that looked like a child. He also realized that the coach was now shouting at him.

“What’re you doing just standing ‘round? The game’s ‘bout to start! Put that thing down and pick up a mitt!”

“No,” said Cole, happy that he could at least be angry with somebody. “I don’t really care about any of this.”

“Well you better start caring, kid, if we want to win the championships – “

“This is ridiculous.” He managed to tear the shirt off easily and started for the gates of the stadium, ignoring any shouting behind him, until the gates ceased to exist, unable to stand up to the combination of bored/pissed off space mercenary and the will of a god.

The umpire, surprisingly, didn’t run away and instead took up the responsibility of asking what the hell these guys thought they were doing, then was shot in the face for his troubles.

“I have come to tear down what should not exist,” proclaimed Balance, still sniffling slightly.

“No, we’re here to play a goddamn game of baseball,” Phil shot back, “’cause we still gotta finish this and you’re shit as a fighter.”

Balance looked down, simultaneously depressed, determined, and confused. “Finish what?”

Cole didn’t bother listening anymore because he had made an instant U-turn back to the dugout, walking in the manner of a person who hoped not to be noticed until it was too late.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

As it turned out, it was rather difficult to escape notice when you were a hideous creature covered in insects, a fact that Cole had almost forgotten. Of course, in general when he was noticed, he was greeted by screams of terror, not screams of "COLE! COLE!" from hundreds - perhaps thousands? - of spectators. Some of them even held up signs saying "ARAN'S OUR MAN" or "BUGGING OUT".

On the whole, Cole would have preferred the screams of terror.

The crowd's enthusiasm was not the only oddity with the scene. Cole soon discovered that his "47" shirt had inexplicably reappeared on his body, and the god-killing sword was now a wooden bat, which might or might not be effective against gods.

A crow flew over and perched on his shoulder. After receiving a mild shock, it flew off and instead opted to simply fly beside his head.

"Pardon me. I've had a glance over this field, and you seem to be the sanest person here," Crow said. "Do you think you could tell me what's going on? I took a little trip to the sun, and it seems everything's gone topsy-turvy while I was gone."

"You're a talking crow and you've been to the sun," Cole repeated.

"Well, it's not as if it's hard! You just have to fly up... oh, I see. You think I'm one of the topsy-turvy things. Well, that's rather presumptuous of you! No, I'm Crow, one of the local deities, and..."

Cole grabbed the bird in his fist.

"I'm not fond of gods," he snarled.

"Oh? What a shame," Crow said, doing his best to come off as unshaken while being electrically shocked. "Then I suppose I won't bother telling you how to use that god-killing weapon properly."

Cole released his grip on the bird.

"You mean this baseball bat?"

"It changes shape, you ninny. Normally 'sdone with the user's will and all that, but I think whatever's going on down here is getting in the way. Well, either that or you really like baseball."

"I don't," Cole grumbled.

"Didn't think so. Outfit aside, you don't strike me as the type. Anyhow, best I can figure, the balance of nature is all out of whack, and unless you fix it, you've got a god-killing baseball bat. 'Cept it won't be as simple as whacking them with it."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, sure, a bat works like a club, but it's primarily for playin' ball. And that means, you're not killing any gods with it unless you're playing the game at the time. That's just how the magic works."

Cole glanced at the field, where the two coaches were talking to Balance and Phil.

"Wonderful," he sighed. Resignedly, he made his way to the dugout and waited for the game to begin.

***

"Good day, sports fans!" Carl's voice shouted from the announcer's booth. "The championship game between the Plateau Eternals and the Multiverse Outsiders is about to begin!"

"This unknown game of yours will destroy us all!" the Elder shouted. "You have no idea what you have wrought!"

"Please ignore my co-commentator, everyone. Unless he actually talks about the game, of course. And now, the first inning!"

It didn't take long for Cole to decide that this whole mess would be more tolerable without his hearing. He stepped up to the pitcher's mound and picked up the sun with his glove.

It took him about a minute to come to terms with the fact that he had just picked up the sun. Then he hurled it at the tribesman holding the bat.

The batter swung, and hit it! The sun went flying towards Phil in right field, at a great height.

And then the field changed into a swamp. The batter slogged through it towards first base, while Phil shot the sun down. It fell back to the field, right over the first baseman, who grabbed it and tapped the batter out just as he'd finished slogging through, giving him a nasty sunburn in the process.

Cole was not intimately familiar with the rules of baseball, but he was fairly certain it wasn't supposed to go like this.

The next batter stepped up. Cole decided not to even bother throwing in any particular way; if the game was going to continue in this fashion, what was the point? At this rate, the field would do more to determine the winner.

The second batter swung, hitting the ball easily. He began to slog through the swamp...

And then, suddenly, he was on a motorcycle and the field was a road. He drove through first base, and second, then at third a helicopter in the outfield fired on his bike. Quickly, he leapt off and rushed for home.

"That is one meaningless point for the Eternals," the Elder grumbled. "Carrying us all one step closer to oblivion."

"I have to say, I've never seen a game quite like this," Carl added. "This is going to be a championship to remember, folks!"

Out in right field, Phil wondered whose idea it was to let Cole pitch, anyways. Two hits in two throws? What kind of amateur was he?

It didn't seem to stop the fans from cheering for him, though.

***

Outside, the battlefield had grown more chaotic. The mounted cavalry now had tanks and dinosaurs; the footmen now carried machine guns, rocket launchers, and longbows.

Then, in the space of a moment, the battle was once more horsemen against spearmen. The villagers took no notice of this; they simply kept fighting as before.

But one fighter was unaffected by the shift. She found it baffling. What could have caused such a sudden change, unnoticed by the natives? Would her agents in the army still obey her?

She had but a few minutes to ponder the problem before a horse charged at her, and then a few seconds more before it was a rhinoceros instead.

***

Cole had already given up making sense of the game by the time the pitcher's mound became home plate and home plate became a pitcher's mound. He didn't know much about baseball, but he was fairly sure the teams weren't supposed to switch positions until one team had sent all their batters; and he also didn't think the switch entailed having the bases loaded.

Balance now stood on the pitcher's mound, glaring at Cole.

"The score is imbalanced," he said suddenly, throwing the sun at Cole.

Cole made a halfhearted attempt to swing. Unsurprisingly, it didn't strike the sun; but it did strike Cole in the face and knocked him to the ground.

"That's a hit!" Phil shouted, running ahead. He started running towards second, leaping a crocodile pit along the way.

His teammates on second and third weren't so lucky; the man on second was carried away by a pterodactyl, while the man third was gunned down by the catcher just a few inches from the plate.

Phil ran past regardless, shooting the catcher along the way. He also dragged his teammate's corpse to home with him.

"Two points for the Outsiders!" Carl shouted. "This game is really heating up."

Balance simply glared. The score was unbalanced once again.

***

It didn't make sense. Why had the battle reverted to normal, then changed again? And why did no one else seem to notice?

She glared at the now-prone rhinoceros, as if she expected it to have answers to her unspoken questions.

"The score changed," it said suddenly. "They change with the world."

Oh, and it talked, too... wait.

Was it answering her questions?

"Yes," it said.

What is the "score"?

"2-1 right now," it replied.

That wasn't what she meant.

It said nothing.

Can it only answer questions?

"Yes."

She did not like the general shape this conversation was taking.

Originally posted on MSPA by Pharmacy.

---

Balance frowned.

He was rather despondent at this state of things - granted every debacle of the Eternity Plateau was entirely his fault and every reminder of that (which is practically everything in this damned place) peevishly sends him down the spiral of depressing self-inflections - I am a terrible god I deserve no such role whiney mcwhine whine whine. As one can see, the topics of thought were suprisingly limited for an entity with a nigh-omnipotent mind.

Now he is on the stupid field with a stupid game and there was some stupid bug man across the field, glaring daggers at him. The Cole fellow's intentions for the bat was more focused on him than the ball. In fact, he was pretty sure Cole wanted to kill him and that. That was not a reassuring thought at all.

<font color="#006600">"Hey, won't you hurry up?"

Oh great, why did this "Carl" man decided thought placing Phil and Cole together was such a good idea. Oh you guys totally have a rivalry, the announcer smiled as he winked more than necessarily. We should totally place you on two different teams. It'll be great for television. How the fuck do they have television in this period of time. Oh right, Eternity broke. Or something like that. Balance did not even know anymore.

"HEY, Buttlance. YO!"

Balanced glowered at Phil. Phil the space marine. Phil the man with the bat. Phil the opponent who beated the shit out of him. It was no surprise that the god of equilibrium greatly disliked the man's cocky presence.

"Gonna start?" The mercenary called yet again.

At this stage, Balance's disdain for the surly man has transcended beyond benign neutrality. He could not explain what state of mind he was in, what emotion he was feeling but it was definitely not the usual nihilism he was used to as Balance had felt this intense desire to bean Phil into his bone-headed face. It was very much unlike what he is - or what he presented, but honestly - why should he care at this state of time?

Balance glowered at the ball in his palms. A lowly mortal who looked at this object would go blind - after all, it was the sun - the star, the ball of fusing hydrogen, the source of energy for this plane of existence. There was something oddly poetic about toying with the life force of the entire Plateau - too bad it was squandered in this silly game. Oh well, what he could do. Nothing was in his control at all.

So, he threw the ball.</font>

---

Bat aganist ball, pitcher aganist player, a high-velocity crack echoed across the arena as Phil made a rather impressive violation of astrophysics aganist the pitching sun. The reaction from the audience was ecstatic. Riffraff and rabblerousers screamed, cheered, and did all manners of hooting and noisemaking as Phil began to sprint towards first base.

"Hello and welcome back to Eternity Plateau First And Last Baseball Championships" Carl cheerfully announced with his anachronistic existing microphone. "Where every moment is like the end of the world as we know it!"

"Well, that's just great," the Elderly co-commentator groused.

"What? It's true. Anyway," Carl continued. "We are now at the Faraday's Constant Inning and the stakes are looking pretty high! Right now, the scores are an edgy three to two with the Plateau Eternals leading the Multiverse Outsiders!"

"Wait, wasn't this supposed to be Third Inning?" the Elder interrupted. "And the Outsiders are leading?"

"Well, the scoreboard says otherwise," Carl shrugged.

There was this look of astonishment splayed on the Elder's face as he checked the scores yet again. After about a few minutes, he just grumbled and sunk into his chair even further. He knew things were simply beyond how he could comprehend and he was simply too old for this shit.

Meanwhile, Carl simply ignored the Elder, for he had some commentary to do - sports commentary. "Right now Phil Girnham had just made a rather impressive serve and now gunning towards first base!"

<font color="#006600">The din only grew louder as Phil deftly tapped the first base while tripping the defending man the same. He managed to pirouette to the second base just before the first baseman spontaneously exploded and sent the mercenary on a wonderful trip to the sky - not unlike physics of certain video games.

"Looks like things has been going up for Mr. Girnham over there!" And the audience chuckled at this statement as though it was humorous.

Before Phil managed to reach terminal velocity, he caught on a majestic pegasus's mane and broke onto its back - and broke its back too from the impact. After doing several torturous (and show-offy) air-tumbles despite the scream of agony from the equine, the armored man shot his steed at point-blank and somehow landed on home plate with a grace of a ballerina. All this happened in a span of negative three seconds - nigh impossible for the opposing side to tap Girnham out.

"Wow, did you just see that?" The voice of the announcer was oddly dissonant with the gasps at the falling horse blood. "I didn't see it at all! Which is amazing because the Outsiders just got another point on their side! Now if the next player can serve as well, the Outsiders might have a chance for - "

Suddenly, an oddly colored thunderbolt struck all the players of the Multiversal Outsiders. Phil and Cole were oddly unscathed (and oddly confused too) by this sudden atmospheric phenomenon, but the same could not be the same for other members of the team. After all, they were completely gone.

"Huh, looks like they ran out of members," Carl observed the obvious, "Looks like it is time for the teams to switch!"

"But there is one more player left," the Elder pointed a wrinkly finger at Cole. "And he has not went on the field yet."

"Well, rules are rules," Carl shrugged. "Anyway. TEAM SWITCH!"

The Elder merely gave some utterances of indiscernible contempt. Rules? What rules? These nebulous judgements, these capricious aphorisms. How could you call them rules if they change so forlornly like the wind? His gnarled hands gripped the plastic railings of his chairs as his back slid further down the polyester cushion as he sank deep into his pessimistic thoughts.

Might as well be no rules at all.</font>

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

---

In a world where time and distance and reality had no interest in behaving contiguously to one another, it's probably immaterial at best and nonsensical at worst to describe the journey Amala's devotees and their newly returned goddess took. It could have been endless or lasted only moments, but the end result was the same: a small, huddled group of terrified but hopeful mystics crowding behind Ur and staring up at an impossibly-huge beanstalk and the neo-primitive baseball stadium it supported. More salient, but harder to look at, was the real reason they had trudged so far: the battle that still raged at the beanstalk's feet, a bloodbath of proportions hitherto inconceivable to the staid inhabitants of the eternity plateau, one that shifted constantly between conflicting scenarios as Balance's broken influence rained down on the world.

There was no break in the fighting as Ur and her followers arrived, nor any quarter given as she and they loudly called for parley. Even when she struck the ground, causing vines and trunks to burst forth from cracked soil and entangle the warriors, they simply hacked at their restraints and returned to their violence. It was possible the beings locked in mortal combat were no longer the people they once were, or even people at all, having been reduced by the splintering continuity that had so long sustained them to mindless thralls of the bloody impulses Phil and Balance had introduced to them. Or perhaps they simply couldn't fathom stopping the battle until one side or the other had been obliterated, couldn't bear to face the undone reality of their homes and focused singlemindedly on a single simple task that had been set in front of them. Again, it didn't matter. The end result was the same, and the bodies continued to pile up at the feet of the colossal monument to everything that had plagued the plateau since the contestants had arrived.

In truth, it could not be said that none of the warring tribesmen had noticed Ur's intended interventions; one woman, already worried that her carefully-laid plans had been reduced to immateriality, had seen what none other seemed to have. It was, for her, the last sign she needed. The village she had carefully infiltrated and bent to her will was no longer a viable tool. They couldn't even be persuaded to see what was right in front of their faces, and they were useless to her. Carefully avoiding drawing notice from the green apparition trying to tear the armies apart – although she needn't have bothered – she crept away. It seemed that more and more of her theoretical rivals were gathering near the stadium, so the best place to be would be far away when they inevitably destroyed each other. She crept behind an outcropping of gargantuan plant life, blurred, and was gone.

As Ur watched her children so singlemindedly destroying one another, her heart broke. A part of her, something that felt old, and dark, a part of her she could never remember having before her time in exile from the plateau, rejoiced to see their bloodshed and urged her to add to the carnage, but it was easily ignored and shoved out of sight. If she focused, it was as though it wasn't there at all. She pushed it down and reached out again to the fighters, tears welling up behind her eyepieces. They rebuffed her again, destroying her bonds as quickly as she created them. Something made her feel as though there was more she could be doing, that she had more power than this, but... She knew her domain was only over the plants that grew from the earth. Right? No amount of curling vines could restrain this raw, bloody passion.

Behind her, the village that had taken her for their matron huddled even closer together. As much as they rejoiced to have her back, it terrified them to see her so powerless to save their fellow man. She could feel their fear, their disappointment, their worry. It bored into her like a drill, made it harder to ignore the part of her that wanted to burn the entire plateau. No, she wouldn't...

"No!"

She shrieked denial, eventually devolving into wordless shouts of anger and grief. She waded into the morass of rapidly-dwindling warriors, tearing them apart with her hands and throwing them clear of the melee, but it simply wasn't enough. They'd charge back in and begin hacking each other apart again, and for every one she pulled free of the fray three more would have died in the time it took. There was nothing she could do, it seemed, but... She wouldn't let this happen! She wouldn't let her return be for nothing, wouldn't have her presence and the presence of those that had followed her be the thing that finally destroyed the home she had loved so much.

She just... She needed some kind of grand gesture, something that would finally draw their attention from the fighting. Something she could manage with her powers that wouldn't simply be torn to pieces in seconds.

She glared up at the stadium. It was a symbol of everything that had tainted her ancestral home. Perhaps it was even the literal source of all the troubles, or housed whatever the source was. She could certainly feel the waves of unbalanced balance washing out from it, could see the way it changed the world by its presence. But what... could...

And then her eyes trailed downwards. The sunball stadium was surely too high, too large, too well-protected.

But it was balanced on top of an enormous plant.

The thought occurred to her and she immediately recoiled. But think of all the people that could fit in a building that size! That probably were in there! That were probably contributing to the destruction of the plateau. That were reveling as they looked down here and saw the other villages tearing each other apart.

Well... She couldn't be certain that... And the destruction of the stadium would certainly draw the attention of the survivors down here. There was no way they could keep fighting as the stalk collapsed and the stadium fell. Even if nothing else, they'd have to flee, and she could stop their violence once they were broken up.

Without consciously realizing that she'd been having a conversation with herself, Ur made decision. The stadium was the cause of everything going wrong, the cause of the fighting. She had to destroy it. It was her duty as the steward of this world's life. And as it crumbled, she'd take the surviving warriors to herself and show them how they'd been corrupted.

Serenely, she gestured to her followers to stay were they were and hovered through the battlefield. Fighters unconsciously avoided her, formed a bubble around her as she approached the stalk. It was all so obvious. Why hadn't she simply done this sooner?

Two minds as one, she rested her face and hands against the green pillar of plant matter. She exhaled gently, took a step back, and thrust her fist deep into the vine. It withered instantly, browning and blackening and beginning to crumble and rot with a terrifying goraning. As she'd hoped, the sounds of battle began to die around her and horrified faces turned towards the dying stalk.

"You see?" She bellowed. "This is what your violence has wrought! Flee your folly, or die beneath it!"

---

Far above, too high to hear the sounds of fighting men or dying plants, the sensation of the stadium wobbling was easily written off as just another effect of whatever was causing reality to warp so much.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

The oddities of the stadium extended to time itself. From an outside perspective, about fifteen minutes had passed between the stadium's emergence and Ur withering the beanstalk beneath it. Inside the stadium, however, it had been three hours, and when the shaking began, the audience and players had already experienced several similar tremors. Nobody found it odd after the earthquake, the dinosaurs, and the tornado; if anything, it seemed rather mild.
"I can't believe we're not winning yet!" Phil grumbled to Cole in the dugout. "We just can't hold onto the lead."
"What does it matter?" Cole grumbled. "This game is utter nonsense."
"So how come you're still playing?" Phil asked. "You've been here as long as I have."
"Because, as best as I can tell, I need to hit Balance with the ball when I'm at bat."
Phil just stared at him.
"Oh, is that what you've been trying to do? Geez, that explains how they got another five points so fast." Then he smirked. "Seriously, though, if you wanted to take a shot at Balance, you should have just told me. Here, I'm about to pitch again, let me give him a few lumps for you."
And before Cole could give a response, the coach ordered them both out onto the field. Phil stepped up to the pitcher's mound, and Cole walked halfheartedly over to center field.

Somewhere in the last few innings, the role of pitcher had moved from Cole to Phil without any warning. Not that it bothered either of them; Cole didn't care in the slightest what position he played, and Phil was unimpressed with Cole's pitching record. It hadn't changed the score much on the whole, though.
Balance was up to bat. Phil looked at the sunball in his hand, and then looked at the batter.
Then he smiled. Time to have a little fun. He had pretty good aim, after all.
Balance readied himself. Phil threw the ball. Balance swung...
"STEE-RIKE ONE!"
He'd missed, but that was the least of his concerns - the score was balanced, after all.
No, the greater concern was where Phil had thrown the ball, which was also an intense flaming ball of gas. He screamed in pain and fell to the ground.
Phil laughed. That had been fun, plus it had been a strike...
But apparently that didn't matter, as one of Balance's teammates ran over, wearing football gear. He picked up the sun and hurled it over Phil's head. It sailed through the goalposts which Phil was certain hadn't been there a second ago.
"Touchdown!" Carl shouted.
From the outfield, Cole just stared at Balance, writhing on the ground in pain.

****

"This game really doesn't make any sense, you know," Crow commented as he dug his head into Soft's bucket of popcorn. "I mean, I don't know much about baseball, but I don't think you score touchdowns in it."
"Mmm," Soft muttered.
"I can't even keep track of what inning it is, if they're still calling them that. Weren't there something like three seventh innings?"
"Four," Soft answered absentmindedly.
"Four. And yet we haven't had even one fifth inning! I don't know how anyone can follow this game."
"Me neither," Soft murmured.
"Well, I mean, the score hasn't changed all of a sudden," Crow continued, chewing on a few more kernels. "Always one point at a time, when one of the teams does something. I think the teams switched scores once, but that's the only weird thing I've seen with it."
"Mmm."
"Funny thing, though. Whenever one team gets ahead, the other gets a point real fast."
"Oh?" Soft asked halfheartedly.
At that moment, Phil threw another ball. This time, Balance hit it, and then slowly walked to first base.
"Watch, bet it's gonna happen again now."
Phil quickly rushed off the mound, stepped in front of Balance, and stuck out his foot. Balance tumbled to the ground, and the scoreboard went from 10-9 to 10-10.
"Told you," Crow said, grabbing another mouthful of popcorn. "And I'm not even sure how they just scored. He just tripped the guy, after all."
"Interesting," Soft mumbled.
"You feelin' all right?" Crow asked. "I just realized you haven't said much. I know I can be a talkative fellow and all, maybe I just like to hear the sound of my own voice, but..."
"The story," Soft replied blankly. "I don't understand it at all."
"What?"
"There's a game. There's a war. Nature is out of balance. Which is the story? Who's the hero? Who's the villain? What's the message of it all?"
"I dunno," Crow said. He would have shrugged if not for the fact that it was hard to do that with wings. "Gotta say, though, I don't much care for this Girnham fellow. I mean, that last throw, downright unsportsmanlike."
"Yeah," Soft said. She sounded a little more thoughtful than before.
Crow looked back at the field.
"And that! Tripping Balance wasn't enough for him, looks like."
Soft stared at Phil, who had stepped on Balance's prone back and was doing some sort of victory dance.
"Now that's just in poor taste all around," Crow grumbled, before shoving his face into the popcorn again. "He's not even a good dancer!"
"You're right," Soft said. She stood up suddenly, dropping the bucket of popcorn to the floor.
"Hey! A little warning would be nice!" Crow shouted. He flew up, now covered in popcorn. "Do you have any idea how hard it'll be to get this butter out of my feathers?
"I understand the story now," Soft said. She sounded determined "Phil Girnham needs to learn that cheaters never prosper."
Crow was skeptical that this was actually the main story, but the look on the Spirit's face told him not to argue the point.
Besides which, this sounded much more interesting than trying to make sense of the game.
"You might be on to something there," he agreed. "Any way I can help?"

***

"Amala, Amala, Mother Amala, we beg your forgiveness."

Ur looked over the assembled tribesmen with disapproval.

"It should not have come to this," she lectured. "What did you even have to fight for? There is plenty of land for all here."

"Forgive us. The other gods, they told us to fight... we were afraid to disobey... we were weak and foolish, Mother Amala. We deserve your wrath."

"Tell me of these other gods," she commanded.

And so they told her. Half had joined the side of the faceless god of the crescent moon, another half had joined with the god of the scales and the hammer. These two gods opposed each other, and so their followers had been driven to fight.

Ur frowned. She had thought this war was the work of other returning Children of the Tree, but these gods were not them. They were not gods of the Plateau. Yet as they were described to her, they sounded familiar.

But she could not recall them from the Plateau. If she knew them, then she must have met them sometime during her exile; her memories of that time were hazy.
When she returned, had these gods followed here? If so, then she bore some responsibility for this disaster.
She would have to make amends, and to do that, she would make these interloping gods face divine justice.

"Where are these gods now?" she asked. "I must deal with them."

There were murmurs from the crowd. Most of the tribesmen reluctantly admitted that they had lost track of their own gods in the midst of the fighting.

"And you would have them escape, then?" Ur scolded. "Let them run free to begin a new meaningless war?"

The tribesmen hung their heads, ashamed. Finally, one younger warrior spoke up.

"Mother Amala, I saw the faceless god carry the other one to the fortress in the sky," he said awkwardly, pointing at the stadium. "He flew on a stream of flames."

Ur nodded. She looked at the now-withering beanstalk holding up the stadium. It would fall soon. But not soon enough, she told herself. The wicked ones must be punished - and how many others? - how many others who have aided them in their conquering ways?

"Then we must bring down the pillar now," Ur said. "The longer the wicked fortress remains aloft, the better the chance they will escape its fall."

She walked over to a wounded horse, and touched it. Slowly, it rose to its feet.

Ur pointed to the beanstalk.

"Destroy it," she commanded.

The horse obediently charged. Blessed by the goddess, it ran more swiftly than it ever had before. It charged directly through the weakened base of the pillar, tunneling through to the other side. Then it turned, ran through the withered beanstalk again in a different direction, before rushing back to Ur's side. She petted its nose affectionately; it had done its job well.

The pillar had held steady before, but now it was toppling rapidly to the ground. Ur could see where it would land.

"Ready yourselves," she told her followers, as she lifted herself onto the blessed steed. "Should the evil gods survive the fall of their fortress, we will not allow them to escape unpunished."

***

"It's thirty-five to thirty-five, and there's only one inning left to go!" Carl shouted. "It's anybody's game now, and I have to say, I'm trembling with excitement!"
At that moment, the stadium shook violently, far worse than it had before.
"Whoa, and I guess I'm not the only one!" Carl said with a laugh. "Even the stadium can't wait to find out who the winner is!"
"This is no time for laughter!" the Elder shouted. "That shaking is our impending destruction! Your unknown game has brought this upon us!"
"Ha ha! That Elder, right? Always a laugh riot. And now back to the game! Girnham's pitching again, and Balance is up to bat."
"Your ignorance disgusts me."
"Oh, hush. Anyways, the rivalry between these two has been intense! Obviously, they had a grudge of some kind going into the game, but it started to really heat up when Girnham threw that flaming sunball right at Balance's family jewels!"
"I am going to spend the last moments of my existence listening to your babble," the Elder sighed. "This is how our world ends."
"Oh, quit whining. Your world was so boring, it could do with some changes."
"It is your world as well!"
"Don't remind me. Anyways! Some other highlights of the Girnham-Balance rivalry include the redth inning, when Phil hid a beehive on one of the bases and threw a rock at it when Balance got near; and the squidth inning, when he shoved Balance right under that mudslide."
"Those are not numbers at all!"
"Hush, you. Anyways, it's the Omega Inning, which means that one way or another, it all ends here!"
"And it will likely end our world with it."
"We've gone into Sudden Death, which means that the game ends as soon as one team gets a point. The score's been close all game, but that changes now!"

Cole sighed. Wonderful. If the game ended before he could kill Balance, would that mean he had lost his chance? Would he be stuck with a god-killing baseball bat forever?
He'd attempted to hand Phil the god-killing bat between innings, more than once, but his "teammate" had been lost in a world of his own for some time now and completely ignored him. He seemed to be taking more joy in punishing Balance than in actually winning the game.
He watched largely indifferently as Phil walked towards the mound. All he needed to do was stop anyone from scoring, and he would have one last chance to make his kill... although given that the points seemed to be awarded almost at random, that was hardly a trivial matter.
Then he felt a tap on his shoulder, followed by a whispered "Ow!" as whoever was interrupting him received a mild bioelectric shock.
He turned around, reluctantly. He was unsurprised to see the Spirit of Fairy tales behind him, and only slightly surprised to see a crow covered in something unpleasant roosting on her shoulder.
"What do you want now?" he asked the Spirit. "Can't it wait until after this farce of a game ends?"
"No! Listen to me! Haven't you noticed the way Phil's been playing?" Soft insisted.
"You mean everything he's been doing to Balance?"
"Yes! That is terrible sportsmanship!" she hissed quietly. "So you need to be the good sportsman who'd rather lose the game than let his teammate get away with cheating and dirty plays. Or maybe you get the coach to kick him off the team. Or resign in disgust. Look, the point is, you need to set a good example!"
Cole groaned.
"Listen, Spirit. All I want to do is kill Balance, and that means I need to play this incomprehensible game. That's what your grease-covered friend there told me, anyhow."
"Look, it's not my fault they slather all that stuff on the popcorn!" Crow protested. "Or that this place doesn't have any decent showers, and believe me, we looked."
"And if we hadn't spent so long looking, we could have gotten the story underway sooner!" Soft said, glaring at the crow. "But I suppose it's just as well, the story has to end at the final inning anyhow. Now remember, whatever you do, you have to make sure that Phil's foul play has consequences. Then this story can have a proper ending."
"But..."
Crow flew up to Cole's ear - or where it would be - and whispered to him.
"Listen, I know she's difficult to deal with, but tell her you'll do it, okay? There's a lot going on around here and it's just tearing her apart trying to make sense of it all. She needs this. She needs to have a story, even if it's not really the story."
Cole sighed. He was not in any mood to put up with this.
"No," he grumbled. "Now leave me alone, I can't exactly focus on the game while you're here."
"Well!" Soft said angrily. "See if I give you a chance to be a real hero again, then! I'll just have to take care of this cheater myself!"
She stormed off, and Crow flew after her. Cole turned back to the game, relieved.
Phil was on the mound, readying his pitch.

Phil was having trouble keeping a straight face. Luckily, his visor meant that he didn't really need to.
The bees and the mudslide had been good, but when he discovered that the locker room had turned into an armory, he'd seen the perfect opportunity.
He looked at the sun in his glove, then "accidentally" dropped it.
"Whoops," he said, bending down to pick it up. "Give me a minute."
But he didn't pick it up. The glow of the sunball would be too obvious even from a distance, he realized; so he simply buried it in the mound. Then he stood up, and carefully reached into his belt, pulling out an incendiary grenade. He pulled out the pin and put it in his glove, holding it carefully.
"Okay, ready now!"

Balance stood, bat at the ready. He was covered in mud and bee stings and bruises, and the audience had been booing him for most of the game. He was weak, and weary.
He didn't care. All that mattered was maintaining the balance. With the sudden death rule, however, the game would end with the next point. That would mean an imbalance and there would be no chance to correct it.
The game could never end, then. Whether he struck this ball or not, no one could score from it. Or the next one, or the one after that.
The balance had to be maintained.

Phil threw the grenade. He chuckled beneath his visor; he knew that whether Balance hit it or not, it would explode either way.
The god of balance raised his bat, and struck the incoming grenade, then collapsed from the effort.
The grenade didn't explode, somehow. Instead, it went sailing through the air.
"The hell?" Phil grumbled. "Did I go to all that trouble for a dud?"
"An amazing hit by Balance!" Carl declared. "Will this be the throw that wins the game? It sure looks like it's going out of the field... in fact, it looks like it's heading right this way..."
There was a loud crash, as the grenade broke through the glass of the announcer's booth and fell into Carl's lap.
"Wait a minute!" he shouted. "This isn't a regulation sunball! It's... oh my god, it's a live grenade!"
And then it exploded.
The Elder stared at the empty space where Carl had been a moment before, jaw agape. It was now nothing but flames.
He had no words.

The explosion had caused a panic in the crowd, but it was soon overshadowed by a small feminine voice calling out from the stands.
"CHEATER!"
Her voice was soon joined by others. The chant of "CHEATER!" filled the stadium, and grew so loud that it could even be heard by the crowd outside awaiting its imminent fall. The Elder's prophecies of doom
Phil was taken aback. He wasn't so much concerned about losing his sudden fame - he didn't exactly do the sort of work where a positive reputation mattered - but being caught was something he'd been trained to avoid.
It was also something that he'd been trained to deal with. If you were caught, you eliminated the witnesses. No matter how many of them there were.

Within the crowd, Soft beamed.
"All they needed was a little push," she said to Crow. "Now Phil's been humiliated and he's learned a lesson about sportsmanship."
"Er, I'm not so sure about that," Crow replied nervously. "I don't think lessons about sportsmanship usually involve pulling out a gun."
She turned back to the field. Oh.
"Some people just can't let a story end nicely," she grumbled. "I'd better take care of this."

Cole had already seen it. He flew over to Phil and tackled him, knocking him to the ground just as he started firing into the panicked crowd.
"What are you doing?" he shouted. He grabbed Phil's gun and flung it away.
"What are you doing? I had this under control, we're totally winning this game now!"
"You are not," the umpire growled. "That was a non-regulation ball there, boy! That's a one-point penalty for the Outsiders."
The scoreboard shifted, showing a score of 35-34.
It also still said "SUDDEN DEATH".
"Wait, how's it still Sudden Death?" Phil asked, confused.
"Can't be taken back," the umpire shrugged. "Game ends with the next point, even if it's a tie."
At the sound of that, Balance stood up.
"In that case, let us end this game."

It was not that simple, however. The score had shifted in favor of the Eternals over the Outsiders; this made reality more normal. Not significantly, but it was enough to bring the flow of time within the stadium more in line with the rest of the Plateau.
And so it only took moments from the perspective of the players before the stadium crashed to the ground and collapsed.

***

"The wicked fortress has fallen!" Ur declared triumphantly. "The gods who built it have been humiliated. But that alone will not deter them! We must drive them from the Plateau, so they never disturb our peace again!"
Amala's followers cheered, though some were less eager than others. They feared their goddess was taking too much pleasure in the suffering of others, even the wicked; was that truly Amala's nature?
But they put their concerns aside for the moment. Amala was right; these gods were certainly wicked, and that could not be ignored. Surely once they were banished, all would be well again.
Surely it was so.

Cole lifted himself out of the rubble, just in time to see Phil flying off. He groaned, and wondered just what had happened.
The first thing he noticed was that he no longer held a bat in his hand; it was a sword once again.
The second thing he noticed, much to his dismay, was that the scoreboard still seemed to be intact.
The third thing he noticed was Balance kneeling weakly on the pitcher's mound, staring up at the score.
"The balance... must be preserved," he muttered, as Cole approached, sword in hand.
The former biologist paused. Balance was badly injured, from Phil's assault throughout much of the game, and from the stadium's crash. He was covered in filth, bruises, and bee stings.
Cole had hated gods ever since his first encounter with one. But the being before him hardly seemed a god. He was a broken man, a pitiable creature. He had been humiliated, weakened, rendered helpless.
But he was still a god. He still toyed with the lives of intelligent beings. He would have to pay.
Cole stepped closer. Balance suddenly turned around, and stared at the blade.
"Oh, are you going to kill me with that," he said blankly.
"Yes," Cole said angrily. "You gods think you're so much better than us. You treat us like we're nothing. And all you do is cause pain and ruin!"
"I have, haven't I," he muttered. "This is all because of my carelessness." He held up his scales, which were shaking violently, and stared at them. Then he looked back at the scoreboard.
"My death is worth one point," he muttered. "End me now, and all will be well."
Cole raised his sword. It was an act of mercy at this point, wasn't it. Pitiful as he was, the god was asking him for it.
But before Cole could strike the final blow, a thrown spear knocked the blade out of his hand, and a club knocked him unconscious.

"Is this the faceless god?" Ur asked. The tribesman shook his head.
"No. I have not seen this one before," he replied. "I know nothing of him."
"I see," she said. "And the other?"
"He is the god of the scales and hammer."
Ur dismounted from her horse, and picked up the weapon.
"Is that Crow's blade?" one of the followers asked.
"The sword that drove us away," Ur said. "It is."
She picked it up, and turned to the disheveled god.
"What is your name, god of the scales and hammer?"
Balance stared at the goddess weakly.
"Mother?" he asked. "Do... do you still not know your son? It's me, Balance."
She paused, seemingly lost in contemplation. But in fact, she was changing, as two sets of belief affected her, and tried to reconcile.
She was Mother Amala.
She was this god's mother.
The similarity was enough. She remembered her son.
"Balance. My son," she said, surprised. "How could I have forgotten you? My time in exile is so vague..."
Then her surprise gave way to anger.
"What have you done to this world? Is this not your doing? Did you not guide these men to war?"
Balance nodded weakly.
"I... I wanted them to stop the other army, Mother," he said apologetically. "But I failed. I made everything worse. It's all because of me..."
His voice trailed off, and he looked over at the scoreboard again, then kneeled before the goddess.
"Please, Mother. Decide my fate. I am at your mercy."
She hesitated for a moment.
Then she drew her blade.
"Your crimes are too great, my son," she said. "The price must be paid."
She stabbed him through the heart, crying all the while.
"Thank you, Mother," he said, falling onto the mound. His blood soaked through the earth beneath it.
As Ur vanished, the scoreboard suddenly gained a third entry. It simply said "LIFE", and it had a single point.

The people of the Plateau remembered it well. The day Amala had to leave them once more. Her parting gift had been a new tree, from which a new sun would one day grow.

Originally posted on MSPA by Solaris.

---

Rather than hear the voice of the Executor as they had the previous three times they had been transported across the multiverse, the five remaining contestants heard an unfamiliar, nervous voice greet them. "Ahem, this is a pre-recorded message, if you are hearing this, then my machine has taken you from your location and is bringing you to my homeworld. I apologize for this hasty and unannounced retrieval, and I hope that, if you find me, you forgive me, forgive me for my foolishness and my stubbornness and my damned desire to create this wretched machine."

There is a silence before the voice continues. "I do not know what state my world will be in when you get here, but I will say this, at the time of this recording, there are outages of power and communications everywhere, destruction has spread to even my beloved home town, and I fear for our future. Despite this, I've noticed that this machine is still powered, still active, and that I can't do anything about it. All I can do is pray that you get this message and that you find a way to set things right, or at least find a way to stop this from happening anywhere else. Please. I beg of you, even if you don't save my home, don't let what happened here happen anywhere else."

There is another silence, then tears before the transmission cuts to static. The static grows louder and louder before there is a flash, and suddenly the five contestants find themselves in a new location. The skies are dark, the land is unkempt, and it feels as if there is something lurking, hiding in the dark...

SpoilerShow

I'm sure that I've told most of you, but in case you didn't know, Aryo had trouble coming up with a new round, he told fogel that if he didn't have one up by last weekend, someone else could do it, I did it. The idea of the round is that some Unspecified Bad Thing came in and wrecked the round area. It is maybe still here. There are definitely survivors of the Unspecified Bad Thing, but who they are, how many there are, what they are, what resources they have, how they act, where they live, all that stuff is up to you all to decide! Same goes for the Unspecified Bad Thing and what happened to the person who recorded the message your characters heard. One final thing of note is that the machine that summoned your characters here might have summoned other things, is still active and could still summon other things, and could maybe be found/manipulated?

Good luck!

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

Fortune, it seemed, had a sense of humor.
Cole had been knocked out in the ruins of a stadium under a darkened sky, and when he woke up again, he was in the ruins of a stadium under a darkened sky. He had completely missed the shift between dimensions, and so had not heard the message that might have told him what had happened.
Of course, the stadium he awoke in was not identical to Eternity Stadium. For one thing, it was decidedly more modern in design, although this was only apparent after a close look at the piles of rubble that had once been its walls. The damaged scoreboard was less subtle - Cole recalled that it had been intact, still displaying the scores. But now it was broken. The entire upper half had fallen off, leaving no trace of the team names, and what remained was drained of power. There was no sign of the final score.
Under normal circumstances, Cole would have been fairly sure it was a different stadium. But the rapid changes Eternity Plateau had undergone left him decidedly unconvinced. What if this was simply another such change?
He had been mere seconds away from killing Balance. Now he had no idea what had happened...
The sword was gone.
That explained the attack, he supposed. Someone had been after the god-killing blade.
Had they killed Balance with it? And if so, what if they were a native rather than a contestant?
Then the sword would still be in the Eternity Plateau. Beyond his reach.
He paced around the remnants of the stadium, lost in thought. A closer glance at the floor revealed rectangular lines on the field; it appeared this was a football stadium, rather than baseball. Of course, given the changes he had already seen over the course of the game, this proved little.
That was the worst of it, Cole realized. He had no idea of the situation. He might still be in the Plateau, or in another world which he knew nothing of. If this was a new round, he had no real idea which of his competitors had died. He had no idea where the sword was, or if he still had any hope of retrieving it.
As he wandered the ruins, lost in thought, a dozen or so roaches scurried onto his body, only to be stunned as they touched him. He barely noticed. His main concern right now was information.
If only he had some idea of where to find it.

***

They called themselves the Rebuilders. They had only been active for a few months, but the dozen or so buildings they had reconstructed and converted into shelters had given them a strong reputation in the city.
Initially, there had only been four of them. But their numbers grew with their popularity. After they rebuilt City Hall, twenty men and women signed up to help with the next project. Inside of a month, they had rebuilt three more buildings, and their numbers had triples.
Then the first Outsider came. They soon discovered that they needed the numbers.
The damage from the battle had been severe; three Rebuilders dead, seven severely wounded, and four civilian casualties. They were baffled at where the creature had come from, and even moreso when a different creature appeared two weeks later.
That was when they shifted their focus to defending the city from the Outsiders. The rebuilding became more strategic in nature, ensuring there were command centers throughout the city.
One of them was a restaurant not far from the stadium.
"Picking up an Outsider, ma'am," the radar technician said to his commander. "It just popped up in the stadium."
The commander nodded.
"Only a couple blocks away. We'd better move quickly." She grabbed a megaphone from a nearby table.
"ATTENTION EVERYONE!" she declared. "OUTSIDER ALERT! ARM YOURSELVES AND GET TO THE STADIUM, ON THE DOUBLE!"
The men rushed off to the makeshift armory that had once been a kitchen. The commander smiled.
"About time we got the drop on one of these bastards," she said, half to the technician and half to herself. "This one's not getting a chance to hurt anyone."

SpoilerShow

So, to clarify some things there: there's a local military that also works as a construction crew. They have some way of detecting the arrival of "Outsiders", which are basically beings brought here from other worlds by the machine; they've had the bad luck of only running across dangerous ones.
They don't necessarily have enough units to scan the whole city, feel free to use this as an excuse if you don't want to be immediately detected.

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

---

Soft lay on her back, listening to the Narration about her lying on her back.

The Narration seemed sensible once more, so that was nice. The whole thing had been tearing her head apart. Unpleasant.

But she still felt horrible.

She thought she knew everything. She thought she could get everything under control. In the middle of a prolonged escalator ride down towards the realm of confusion, she thought she found a way to get back up again by like, I dunno, jumping over the barrier to the up escalator or maybe just running back up faster than the escalator could move down but then it turned out the escalator was part of an Escher painting in the first place and there was no way out and damn this metaphor was horrible.

Just like her.

The thing was, for a while now she had been steadily snowballing into a realization that this shit was her fault

“Yup.”

and that there was something wrong with what she was doing

“Yup.”

and that maybe, just maybe, there were things beyond categorizing, which she constantly did

“Yup.”

“Please leave me alone,” said Soft, voice rasping with the weight of Bad Life Choices. Crow fluffed himself and continued standing on her forehead. “How are you even here? I killed you.” She didn’t actually need to ask. She already knew because of the book. It just seemed narratively appropriate to ask at this time, since the readers didn’t know. God, was she actually considering herself a character now? An honest-to-God, fallible servant of the narrative, rather than the judge?

“I think I’m like a representation of your own guilt or some bull like that,” replied Crow. “Except made real because of all that shit that was going on in that place back there. You can call me your Conscious, though. Or Crow.”

“Like you would even be remotely close to a good Conscious.”

“I could peck out your eyes instead. Hear they’re delicious.”

Soft kept silent this time, too apathetic to hold up any decent conversation. Her entire world view was degrading, or even maybe shattered, and she didn’t know how to build it back up again. She wasn’t even sure if she could trust or follow the Narrative within the book, if it could actually go haywire like that. This wasn’t much of a time for conversations. More of a time to lie down for a long while and then maybe die.

“Well, Conscious or not,” said Crow, staring ahead, “I have a feeling you might want to move? Now?”

Soft could feel the vibrations in the ground and hear the crunch-crunch of boots approaching. The book was already telling her who they were, what they were doing, why they were doing it, but she didn’t care. The Fake-Crow flew off as soon as they got near. They nudged her, kicked her, asked her questions. They talked amongst themselves, argued about putting a bullet through her brain, then started dragging her away. She could have answered many of their questions, even questions they hadn’t asked. She knew the history already, she knew the trouble, and the Narrative was already foreshadowing possible ways to solve it. But she didn’t care.

She just didn’t want to meddle again.

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

---

"How tragic, that everything should come to destruction like this."

She looked over the destroyed cityscape from her perch on a charred billboard, the decaying decaying buildings only cast into more tragic light by the occasional reconstructed ones that dotted the carnage. Nevertheless, the city and its unkown inhabitants weren't the only things on her mind, nor were they all she had meant: images of the collapsing sunball stadium and the bodies of fallen warriors and her own son's blood staining the soil still danced behind her eyes. Unbidden, memories that seemed to be hers but could not be summoned up a flying city that burned as it fell, of a house that collapsed in the rain, of otherworldly static that threatened to devour everything.

How appropriate, that everything should come to destruction like this.

Everything seemed to waver. It was harder to continue being Amala, here. Harder without her children gazing at her, harder after they'd seen her relish the assault on the stadium. Harder in this strange world. Harder because she was not Amala, was never Amala; this foolish delusion would die a death of nonexistence like the rest of them.

"No!"

The shout echoed across the desolation, denial permeating the air and repeating itself more feebly with each iteration. A fitting metaphor for your gradual descent into nothing. Fade like your voice as they forget you, as they deny you, and as you disappear, realize what they deserve.

It was impossible to argue, because it wasn't someone else saying it. It was her, some part of her that had never existed before. Perhaps the void had nested itself in her heart as she had passed thought it... She blinked behind what remained of her mask. That didn't make sense. Had she ever passed through a void? She sank back against the crumbling signage, trying to collect her fleeing thoughts and assemble a coherent personal narrative out of the conflicting memories that she had. It was all... wrong. Something was wrong. Something inside her was wrong.

She straightened back up, hovering steadfastly above the city that mirrored her mind. If there was something wrong inside of her, then she would remove it. She would pull it out of herself, and then she'd... Well, it wouldn't be part of her anymore. What happened after that would just have to make itself clear.

Even as she resolved to separate whatever was causing her destructive internal monologue, though, she was overcome by a feeling of despair and futility. She'd tried this before, hadn't she? Tried something like it. Tried to destroy what she had hated, tried to fix herself and the world around her, and it had... What had it done? What had happened? She couldn't think, she couldn't remember, and in her ears and in her mind a wheedling, bloody voice lead a chorous of thousands of millions, uncountable whispers of hate and anger and betrayal and–

She screamed. It was enough! She was losing herself, couldn't think, couldn't remember. She had to act now, before she couldn't act at all. She reached for her sickle, but... There was a sword already in her hand. A sword, stained with blood, that hummed quietly to itself with power and promise. She blinked again, and recalled what she had done with it. Killed a man, killed her own son, he had deserved to die, they all did. It was an evil thing, a glorious thing, and she'd shed her own blood with it the way she had shed his. Penitence and recompense in one act.

Hands shaking, struggling to overpower herself and shut out the voices that every second threatened more to overtake her consciousness, she raised the sword. It glinted briefly in the dull light, flashing grey and red, before she plunged it into her chest.

She screamed, louder and longer than ever before, but didn't stop. Bloodless knuckles even whiter than they ever had been threatened to snap with the force of her self-inflicted violence; there was a sickening series of splintering noises as her sternum yielded before her wrists did, and she began to drag the blade downwards. Ribs split and broke more easily than the breastbone had, and Crow's blade made sure that the flesh didn't immediately knit itself back together. As the sword finally cleared the ribcage and sliced indelicately through her gut, she let her arms go limp. It was harder than ever, especially with an enormous hole gaping in her torso, to think, but now more than ever she couldn't afford to lose herself before finishing her work. The blade dangled loosely from one hand, but the other shakingly rose itself to the widest part of the gash.

Weeping and shrieking, she plunged her fingers into her own chest, brushing aside skin and fat and bone; after what felt like hours, her fingertips found their prize, and she grabbed it roughly. What was visible of her face contorted into an even more ghastly rictus of pain and fear, and she pulled. Tendon and vein fought hard, but gradually they snapped, and with the last of her strength, she pulled a cancerous, pulsating lump out of her chest.

She looked down on her own heart, sight blurring from tears and pain and the trauma of what she'd inflicted on herself. Truth be told, it wasn't even really a heart in the singular; two organs seemed wrapped around each other, one seeming healthy but dessicated, while the other was slimy and bloated and blackened.

"This must be..." She swallowed and struggled to breathe. "This must have been what plagued me."

She tossed the pair of hearts down to the ground below, intent on watching them smash and splatter on the hard ground; before they'd even made it halfway, though, her eyes simply gave up and shut. She fell forward, the cacophony finally silent, and crashed to the ground only moments after her purged hearts.

Time passed, and it was only luck – and the Rebuilders' preoccupation with other Outsiders – that kept her from discovery. Whether it was lucky for her or for those that might have stumbled on her was hard to say.

As time continued its march, a pair of shadows eventually fell across her body. The beings casting them might have been duplicates of her, save for their ages and demeanor: the first seemed ancient, her skin hanging off her skeleton like a shroud, her hair and clothing tattered and yellowed, her eyes locked in a hateful scowl; the other was younger, slender, and might have been beautiful if she didn't seem to have just escaped from being imprisoned in a dark room for years.

The older one smirked at the downed figure. "So weak. A fitting first death for the end of everything."

The younger one didn't say anything, or at least didn't respond; she was constantly muttering, but didn't seem to be doing so towards any meaningful end. Her eyes were downcast as she babbled, one hand clutched tightly to her breast and the other tugging constantly at a lock of brittle hair.

"Hmph." The older figure bent to reach for the god-killing sword. "I don't know if it would be better to save you for last or just gut you after her. You deserve to watch everything burn, know it's your fault."

Before she could grab the blade, though, Amala's eyes slammed open. Without thinking, she swung it at the crone, whose fingers were only saved by lightning-fast reflexes and superhuman speed.

"No!"

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

After four minutes or so of wandering the ruined stadium, Cole had come to a conclusion.

There were entirely too many roaches.

They were nothing more than an inconvenience, but after involuntarily collecting thirty-five of them, they were an inconvenience he could no longer ignore. He grew some moth wings and began flapping them to hover a small distance over the ground, out of the cockroaches' reach.

"Much better," he said to no one in particular. He briefly wondered why he was bothering to search the ruined stadium at all; what did he hope to find? He could simply fly away to...

To where?

Even if this were still the Eternity Plateau, where would he find any of the others, or the missing weapon? And if the round had changed while he was unconscious, he had even less direction.

A brief glance at the ground revealed a growing swarm of cockroaches below him. Cole groaned; of course, his scent was still drawing them. If they couldn't reach him, that simply meant they would gather below him. Perhaps it would be better to fly away after all.

"Target sighted! Open fire!"

The sudden shout clarified the matter perfectly. It would definitely be better to fly away before the shooting started. Cole flapped his moth wings as hard as he could, and flew towards the opposite side of the stadium.

"I should have just used dragonfly wings," he muttered under his breath as several bullets flew past him. "These are much more tiring for long distances."

He soon discovered that the other side of the stadium was no friendlier.

"The Outsider's headed this way! And man, is it ugly. Break out the heavy artillery!"

If there was one phrased more unnerving than "Open fire!", it was "Break out the heavy artillery!" Cole flapped his wings harder, striving to gain height before he learned exactly what sort of heavy artillery they had.

He had climbed perhaps a foot higher into the air when they fired the rocket. He didn't think he could fly out of its range in time, and even if he did, there were too many bullets for his liking.

Cole wished he was somewhere else.

And then a small bee granted his wish.

***

"You're telling me it just vanished?" the commander asked, annoyed. "Tell me, Simonson. How many rockets did we have on hand coming into this mission?"

"F-five, ma'am," Simonson replied nervously. He was twice the commander's size, but at the moment that didn't help him feel any safer.

"And now we have four, and no dead Outsider to show for it." She glared at the soldier. "Wonderful use of resources there, Simonson."

"Ma'am, with all due respect, Simonson fired that rocket on my orders." A middle-aged man walking on a cane and wearing a chef's hat stepped forward. "The Outsider had wings, if we hadn't fired then it might have flown away. We just didn't realize it could vanish like that, too."

The commander wasn't any happier at this news.

"Then, Mr. Whistler, you can take responsibility for getting a new rocket to replace the one we lost."

Whistler saluted.

"Understood, ma'am. I'll get on it soon as I finish makin' tonight's dinner," he replied.

"Don't take that tone with me, Whistler. You may be a good cook, but that doesn't mean you can take your other duties lightly."
She turned back to the other soldier she was displeased with. "Simonson!"

"Y-yes, ma'am?" the larger man stammered, saluting.

"Take a squad and scour the area for that Outsider."

"B-but, it could be anywhere!" Simonson protested. "It just disappeared!"

"Exactly. It could be anywhere. Which means it could be within a ten-block radius. Get looking."

"Y-yes, sir!"

He marched off, and two dozen equally nervous men followed him. Whistler watched them leave, then turned back to the commander.

"So what's our fearless leader doing in the meantime?" he asked, smirking slightly.

"I'm reporting this to HQ. I'm going myself to make sure they take it seriously."

"Fair enough, ma'am," Whistler said with a shrug. "I'll be sure to have dinner ready by the time you get back."

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

---

Ur jumped backwards, grinning in a way that had no relation to happiness whatsoever.

“Still some fight in you, then. Don’t worry. We’ll fix that soon.”

It wasn’t hard to put two and two together when staring at a clearly evil duplicate of yourself, and Amala did so in an instant; it took only an instant longer than that for the horror of the situation set in.

“No… You were supposed to be gone! I removed you. Got rid of you. You were never even real.”

“I’m realer than you could ever be. Look at yourself: a new name, new memories, another new flock. Stealing the face of some long-dead spirit to hide behind, pretend you’re not just a ghost of a ghost.”

The crone moved closer, slowly circling her armed doppelganger. “You can feel them leaving you even now, forgetting you, lying about you. Like they always have before. Like they always will. You’re a figment of your own imagination, and it won’t be long before you stop daydreaming. Even she’s realer than you are, and barely anything of her even exists.”

Amala narrowed her eyes, hesitantly raising the sword she’d vivisected herself with. “I should destroy you. I should finish what I started and purge you from existence.”

“You should. I’ve been so greedy, been so ungrateful. Give me life, give me death. Give me food, give me happiness. Mother Amala, Mother Amala, save me from myself. Let me turn my back on you. Let me forget you, let me curse your name.”

By now she was so close that Amala could feel hot, hateful breath on her face with each word she hissed. “But you can’t, and you never could. Everything you’ll ever do will turn out wrong. Look what you did to your children, look what you did to yourself. She’s just a husk and she’s filled with your failure, crying to itself in the dark. And you’re not even that.”

With a blur too fast to see and a crack like a bullwhip, Ur backhanded her; she crumpled to the ground, staring up at herself in horror and on the verge of tears. “You’re a fool. You’re a lie that told itself, but even you don’t believe it. You know what you are, what you’ve done. You know that as long as you exist, your children will know nothing but an eternity of narcissistic suffering. And you know what I am. Only I can save you. Only I can save them, give them what they deserve. Existence is a curse, yours doubly so. I can break it. And I will. Give me the sword and accept the death that’s so long eluded you.”

Amala’s eyes darted back and forth helplessly. She seemed nearly ready to hand the blade over when something in her snapped and she lashed out with a kick. As her tormentor fell, she righted herself and hovered threateningly over the old woman.

“No. You’re wrong. About everything. I can fix what’s been broken. You left scars across a hundred worlds, not me, but I can heal them.” She snapped, and a bark scabbard wove itself around Crow’s sword; she hung it on her belt before continuing. “And I choose to let you live, because I will not be an avatar of death and chaos.”

Ur snarled; she knew she couldn’t overpower Amala as long as the deluded idiots on the Plateau venerated her, remembered her every day as they tended to the tree she had given them. As long as her connection to their universe persisted, she’d always have the upper hand. It was impossible to know when and if that connection might fade, and it would be impossible to break it herself. She would have to make the deluded idiot destroy herself, or convince her to hand over the weapon.

But that shouldn't be too hard. Not if she remembered who she was.

---

The bee. Of course. For the second time in as many hours, it had saved him; this time, he didn't even have the excuse of not knowing what it could do to justify not thinking of it sooner. It was as bad as not remembering he could turn off his hearing to shut out the ridiculous prattle of those idiots with the machines. No, it was worse than that because it had nearly cost him his life this time.

Cole gave a little mental shrug and attempted to stop berating himself; it was just a manifestation of his frustration with the whole nonsensical, violent situation, and it wouldn't get him anywhere but stressed. As many insects as he'd collected with as many talents as they had, anyone was bound to let a few possibilities slip through the cracks from time to time. It'd take a computer or a god to recall them all at once, and if there were two things he'd never be, it was those. At least his body had had the sense to take advantage of what he could do, when he needed to do it; self-preservation was one of evolution's finest works.

It wasn't long before he realized he couldn't hide himself in his thoughts forever: for one thing, that was incredibly foolish and self-indulgent during a battle to the death, regardless of how asinine and infuriating everything was and how tempting it was to just ignore it all; for another, there were voices nearby, and it would be best to pay at least a little bit of attention, if only to figure out which way to run and how fast. A pair of antennae burst out of his forehead while a series of tympanal slits opened across his arms and torso; in the end, it was all a bit overkill: the voices were coming from almost directly behind him.

“And I choose to let you live, because I will not be an avatar of death and chaos.”

That sounded... Bad. And familiar, which was worse. He slowly turned around, willing the universe to arrange itself in a way other than the one he expected. In a way, it did. In a terrible, terrible way.

He hadn't been the only one to notice the presence of others; the voices' sources had been turning to look at him even as he'd been hoping – if not praying – for them to be anyone else. When he came face to amorphous bug-plastered face with three times as many pairs as he'd ever hoped to see of those eyes, it was all he could do not to fly and run and teleport until his legs and wings and bugs failed him; only one thing held him transfixed, his faceted gaze focusing on the hip of one of the doppelgangers of the thing he hated most in this battle.

Forgotten was the mystery of why there were three of her. Forgotten were questions of how the bee worked, or whether he was still on the Plateau. Forgotten were even the basic reflex actions that had saved him only moments ago. All those concerns melted away as he recognized the hilt swaddled in cloth and bark. She had the weapon.

Before Cole could set his mind straight or even decide on what to do in the shortest of terms, the goddess on the ground scrambled up and glided towards him, whatever her conversation had been now ignored as a wicked grin slithered across her loose features.

"Ohhh," she breathed through an ophidian smirk. "Look who we have here! The scientist, he is. Too good for gods, no need for gods. Given everything he has by divine hands and mortal womb, guided by the mind made in the image of some benevolent or creative little overdeity, watched as he sleeps by countless genii."

Cole sneered and made as though to respond, but the haggard version of the creatrix raised a clenched fist and he felt his mandibles weld themselves shut with his own will. She circled him a few times before shoving him roughly in the back towards her sisters or duplicates or whatever they were.

"Look at his affrontery! Cursed directly by the hand of a god, he denies their power. Shown his worthlessness, he believes himself stronger than ever. Taste his thoughts, taste his memories. Everything about him is a portrait of why he deserves death, why they all do, painted in broad strokes of flesh and bone and hate and self-interest. He's a worm that dreams it is the Earth it swims in, spiting the mother that spawned it, devouring her even as she nurtures him."

She shoved him again, her bony claws like ice and apparently impervious to the shocks that he couldn't stop himself giving her. He stumbled and fell to his knees, finding he couldn't force himself to rise. She cackled.

"And look at him now. He will only prostrate himself if whipped, if forced. He is loyal only to the lump of fat that moves him and the lump of muscle that sustains him. So convinced of his deification that he denies it. Denies yours. Rejects the god that brought him into being, rejects you. Has done nothing since being shown proof of divinity but plotted to bring it down. Had the gall to require that proof! Rejects it still!"

She leveled a swift, stinging kick at the back of his head that left him kowtowing to the goddess with the sword on her hip and seeing nothing but soil and stars.

"They are all like this pathetic piece of meat. They worship themselves, in the end. They all will. Taste his memories." She pointed at the muttering image of herself. "Taste theirs, and remember."

The one with the sword – although it was harder and harder to focus on the sword in favor of the gaping chest wound that was slowly knitting itself together as the shock of finding it wore off – finally spoke. Her face was hardened and passionate, but her voice cracked almost imperceptibly as though she wasn't sure she believed herself. "A gift willingly given is still a gift even in the absence of gratitude."

"Then you think you can save him, save every mortal like him? You tell yourself you can mend what I've broken, but I never broke this one. Never broke your children. They break themselves. To spite you. They're built to last, to love, but they refuse even that."

"I don't need... Don't need to save him, or anyone like him. Even if he is not one of my children, he was given the gift of choice just as they were. I– I don't have to love the choices they make, only to love them."

"Then love him."

Cole was hauled up by the scruff of his neck and pushed forward again, this time finding his limbs responding.

"Love him, and love his hatred. Love him and the way he eyes that sword. Love him as he plans to murder you, to end the symbol of what gave him his very existence. Love his selfishness and hypocrisy and rapaciousness. Love him as you loved them, and love him as he turns on you as they did."

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

I will not be your pawn!

Cole tried to shout the words, but it was futile; the goddess may have allowed him to move again, but it seemed she had no use for his voice. This only enraged him further.

He promptly turned away from the younger Ur, and towards the crone. If he couldn't strike back verbally, then at the least he would strike back physically. He formed his arm into a mantis scythe, and raised it.

Sadly, he soon found his scythe-arm refused to obey, and it turned towards Amala. In the space of an instant, she raised her sword...

That sword should be mine, Cole thought. All I have to do is take it from her.
It would be a lie to say this was not a thought from Cole's own mind, but he knew - knew - the crone had somehow drawn it closer to the surface.

Amala, too, found a hateful thought forced to the front of her mind.
This sinful child dares strike back against the mother goddess? He shall pay with his life!
But unlike the mortal, she could not blame the crone for her temptation growing stronger. She had done this. She wanted to think it.

And she despised herself for it.

In both minds, an image flashed for the briefest instant - Cole drove his scythe through Amala's heart, she beheaded him with her blade. Cole found himself charging forward, Amala found herself preparing to swing...

I will not be your pawn!

With immense effort, Cole drew his scythe-arm upwards only moments before they collided. Amala's blade sliced through the arm, and it fell to the ground.

They stood there for an instant that felt like hours, their eyes fixated on the sword, still pressed against Cole's broken arm.

The crone was stunned - indeed, beyond rage. She had been so close! Amala's fury had returned to her for an instant. She would have destroyed the mortal, and that surely would have broken her, or at the least made her more pliable to the crone's words.

But now, that anger was fading. All because this mortal - this spiteful, petty, weak mortal, consumed by thoughts of hatred and vengeance - had dared to defy her!

She regained herself quickly, of course. Cole would suffer, but there were loose ends to take care of first. He still had his rage and his desire for the blade - and she could draw those out. He was, after all, but a mortal.

Cole and Amala slowly separated themselves, eyeing each other all the while. Amala held her sword defensively, and Cole regrew his arm into a claw. Neither wanted this fight, at least not under these circumstances. Both knew it was only playing into the crone's hands.

But their mutual hatred still lingered. Cole knew the crone would stoke his anger, and Amala feared hers would emerge once more if either of them moved to strike.

That sword should be mine.
The sinful child must face justice.

For nearly a minute, both simply walked in a circle, fighting less against each other than against their own thoughts. Cole's desire for vengeance was only held back by his hatred of the crone manipulating him, Amala's wrath was tempered only by her guilt.

It could not last. And it did not. They charged each other again, this time angrier than before. Cole raised his claw and Amala raised her sword...

And Cole's claw joined his scythe on the ground. He would have shrieked in pain if not for Ur's hold on his voice, but he also felt relieved at the narrowly-averted disaster.

His relief soon evaporated as Amala held the sword's point to his neck.

"Stand down, mortal," she said, staring into his eyes with barely-contained rage. "Stand down, and you will be spared my wrath."

How dare she tell me what to do! Cole's mind roared. Take the sword! Punish her for her hubris!
He should be grateful for your mercy! Amala told herself. Yet he still defies you! Punish his for his hubris!

But then something around Cole's neck caught the goddess' eye. A hollowed-out animal horn, tied to a string.

Instinctively, she knew it was divine in nature. Her fury grew. How dare this man steal from the gods?

"That is not yours," she said, pointing to the horn. "Surrender it to me, and you will have my mercy."

Why should I give you anything? Why should I give up what I fought so hard for? I need this for my vengeance! Cole thought.

And I can't even use it because I don't have a proper mouth, he told himself. What good is it to die over this?

Still unable to speak, he slowly nodded his head, mindful of the blade pointed at his neck. He turned his uninjured arm into an ant's foreleg, and lifted the necklace over his head, dropping it onto the edge of the blade.

Amala withdrew the blade, and the horn slid down it. She smiled.

"Perhaps you may yet redeem yourself, sinful child."

She held the horn to her lips, and sounded a single note. A moment later, she was gone, leaving Cole with two Urs, one near death and one furious.

"Where is she?" Ur demanded, grabbing Cole and shaking him furiously. He felt the strength leave his body everywhere, save for his mouth.

"I believe she's gone to pay Anansi a visit," he said defiantly. "And I have a few choice words for you about treating me as a pawn--"

She silenced him, and simply shoved him to the ground.

"You will only answer the questions I ask of you, worm."

Cole simply lay on the ground, helpless, his mind filled with ever more hatred of the crone.

He was beginning to despise her even more than Anansi.

As soon as the note rang out, Amala felt herself vanishing into the ether. It should have taken a specific melody and the approval of Anansi for the horn to give its blessing, but it should also have been being blown by a mortal. Fractured and confused as she was, she was still a goddess; her implicit and innate understanding and manipulation of divine energy was more than enough to overcome the ritual's barriers. She simply fueled it herself.

Of course, for all that, she didn't really know what she had expected to happen. She'd seen the webby threads of divinity hanging around the object and known it wasn't for hands – or claws – like the the arrogant scientist's, but that was about it. The confidence – or haughtiness – borne of her station had been enough to make her act, but not enough to give her any idea of what was to come. Even if it had, her prediction wouldn't have been that she'd reappear in a small, tidily-cluttered office, or that the only other being there would have been the man in a suit idly drumming his fingers on a keyboard. It was far from the grandeur or power she would have expected from a divine artifact if she'd bothered to expect anything at all, but as implicitly as she'd seen the horn's nature, she saw the man's too. Plain and dark and seeming nothing much, but without question, a god. He swiveled to face her as she arrived, smile betrayign nothing.

"Ah!" Anansi effused. "This is a surprise."

---

Cole watched for he-didn't-know-how-long as the old one stalked back and forth, muttering furiously to herself. Once upon a time, he'd been referred to a psychologist when his temper had gotten the better of him once too often and too publicly, and she'd worked with him on an number of relaxation therapies and techniques. Most of them were nonsense and foolishness, and one in particular had stood out as exactly the sort of witch-doctory that proved that counselling was for idiots: he'd been made to lie on his back and close his eyes while she spoke soothingly to him, trying to tell him what to see and feel. Tell him what his body was doing, tell him he was tired and relaxed. "You feel your limbs relaxing, becoming heavy," she'd said. "Heavy as lead. Heavy as lead." There had been a lot of repetition, a lot of circular speech and stories. "Heavy as lead." It was foolish, and it just made him more tense. "Soft and relaxed. Heavy as lead." He spent so much time concentrating on how he didn't feel what she was saying that it had completely defeated the purpose of the exercise. "You feel your arms wanting to sink into the sand. They're as heavy as lead." He'd left in a huff every time, and she would shake her head and tell him he wasn't going to make progress if he wouldn't cooperate. As though it was his fault she couldn't do her job.

All in all, he'd forgotten about the whole experience a week after he'd no longer been required to go. He probably never would have thought about it again, ridiculous nonsense that it was, if it weren't for the fact that he finally felt what the therapist had been trying to do to him all those years ago. His arms and legs and chest really were heavy as lead. He could feel himself wanting to sink into the ground. He could feel the loss of control, the loss of responsibility.

He hated it.

He was snapped out of his reverie – which he'd only indulged in to begin with because it was somewhat less infuriating than focusing on his complete helplessness and how much he loathed the old crone – by the sudden, jolting return of sensation to his extremities, followed by his unbidden rise to his feet. Confused, he turned to his tormentor, who was already speaking.

"You know, you and I want something similar."

He snorted as well as he was physiology capable of, briefly amazed that he'd been allowed the capacity to do so. "So this is the part where I get a 'we're not so different' speech, and you try to convince me to work with you? Thanks, but I've had enough being ordered around by supernatural women who think they know what's best."

He pivoted and made as though to stride away, not really expecting to make it far. He didn't.

"Be silent."

He was. He was still, too.

"The fact that you have retained any notion of your own autonomy or will or power is as amusing as it is disgusting. You've seen that you can do nothing I do not choose for you, that I can control you as easily as you breathe. This is not a request for your cooperation. I have that already. This is merely for your own benefit, because an ignorant tool soon becomes a broken one."

He rankled at being called a tool, but couldn't even sneer in indignation.

"I can see your desires and thoughts written on your soul. When I say that our goals are similar, I am beyond contradiction. I will winnow the self-satisfied divinities you have been dragged along with and by out of this nonsensical contest, and many more will follow them. There will be a great spilling of divine blood by the edge of that blade, which I believe you can appreciate."

Cole found his mandibles loosened, although he honestly didn't see what benefit she thought she stood to gain by telling him this or allowing him to speak.

"And you expect me to believe that I'm going to survive your purge? That as soon as I help you get the sword, you're going to let me free?"

She laughed, or did something roughly analoguous to laughter. "Of course not. You will almost certainly die, soon, as part of its retrieval. But you will serve your purpose in your death. Be satisfied knowing that I will be accomplishing what you never could, knowing your played a small part in it." Her perpetual snarl twisted briefly into something like a smirk. "Perhaps whatever god takes mercy on your proud soul will let you watch. By their grace, of course."

He tried to respond furiously, to spit profanity or acid in defiance, but his maxillae were as heavy as lead. Heavy as lead.

She shoved him roughly in the small of the back.

"Move. There are things to accomplish while we wait for for her return."

---

"And, I suppose, an honor. It's not often I see an honest-to-Nyambe progenitress in my humble little corner of creation."

He peered closer, still smiling.

"Or something like one, anyway."

He extended an elegantly-long hand. "In any case, do pardon my manners. I'm Anansi. I do stories and knowledge, mostly as well as a few other... Odds and ends. When I have the time."

Amala was nonplussed, which was frankly a new experience. She took his hand awkwardly, eyes darting around the little office.

"I'm uh... Ama..." Somehow that didn't seem right. "I created... I create... I'm not a progenitor, just a..." Her eyes alighted on his, and suddenly she regained her bearing and certainty. "I am Amala, Who Tends the Garden, mother to plants and health."

"Of course. And what brings you here today?"

"I found this in the hands of someone clearly unworthy of its possession and sought to return it where it belonged." She held up the horn, which glinted dully in the harsh light.

Anansi made a good show of not having known as much already. "Haha, so you did. The poor boy can't win for losing can he?"

"I'm... sorry?"

"Oh, yes, I knew our buggy little friend had the horn. I even put it there for him to find, although I'm sure he thought he got hold of it by his own merits. You know how mortals can be. This one especially, right?"

She felt her hand drifting to the hilt of the sword. She knew how they could be.

"I hope you can do me a favor and make sure he gets it back. I'd rather like to meet him after all these years, see how he's getting on. You have to be a bit explicit with lessons for these ones, don't you? May I have the horn for a moment?"

She wordlessly handed it over; he returned to his desk, scribbled something on a sheet of paper, and tucked it in the instrument before returning to his guest and hanging it around her neck, carefully brushing a strand of her hair back behind what remained of the mask as he did.

"Sorry to see you come all this way for nothing, though. Is there anything I can do for you while you're here?"

She blinked, ignoring the question. "You're the god he has so much rage for? You don't really seem like the divine punishment type. Or even one with the cachet to pull it off." She gestured at the crowded space, almost knocking a small wooden totem off a filing cabinet it the process.

He rolled his eyes, and suddenly she fond herself in a seemingly-infinite darkened cavern, facing a towering monster of a man made of flexing biceps and legs going in every direction. "You'd prefer I manifest like this all the time? Waste my energy when there's no-one to impress? Act like I'm still in the age of sail? We've all got to move with the times." He chortled, which in his current form was a booming wave of malevolent sound. "Besides, you ought to know better than most how deceptive appearances can be."

And in another instant, she was in a cozy little wooden room, with only a heavyset woman in a mobcap and tattered apron for company. "Now why doncha tell ole Aunt Nancy what she can do for ya?"

"I don't believe there's anything I need from you."

"No? Well then watcha gonna do, child?I know ya have all these plans, all these things you want to fix. I see it in your eyes. But do you know where to start?"

Amala looked away. "I'll find my way."

"I'm sure you will, I'm sure you will. But sometimes it's nice to have someone who understands to talk to, ain't it?"

Amala didn't respond.

---

Deep in a fortified bunker in an undisclosed location, an alarm went off. It was only one of several dozen alarms currently going off, and it was ignored like the rest of them; the only person who could have done anything about them had lost the capacity to hear them when he'd finished decomposing, and lost the capacity to act on them around the time he'd died. It was just one alarm among many, unheeded and unhelpful. The only special thing about this one was that this was the first time it had ever gone off, and that newness quickly faded as it joined the cyclical routing of on, wail, off with all its siblings.

After several such cycles, a prompt appeared on a terminal. It politely asked if it should proceed with its automated response to the situation, or if anyone wanted to abort it. The skeletal hand on the keyboard did little to dissuade it, and so as the countdown hit zero, a nearby machine whirred to life and the alarm stopped, exotic particles and strange physics twisting together and reaching into the void.

---

"Maybe... I don't–"

Amala flickered briefly and clutched her stomach.

"Something's pulling me!"

"Go with it then, child." She tenderly patted Amala's hand, nodding at the horn around her neck. "If that's where you're meant to be, that's where you're meant to be. And if you ever need me, or just want to talk, well... You know where to find me."

Without another word, the goddess vanished, dragged back through the multiverse to the world she'd only just left. Anansi, once again all suits and ties and shining teeth, smiled broader than ever. Trailing from his fingertips and disappearing in midair were a pair of ephemeral cobwebs, invisibly anchored to Amala's face and hand.

---

Within the void, the Executor was working frantically. He'd already had to abort his planned launch of the next universe-program, and his contestants were nowhere to be found. One moment he'd been pulling them out of the chaos of the Plateau, and the next... Well, it was as if they'd never existed at all. Something had hijacked his transfer. He was furious about it.

And worse, he simply didn't know what to do.

He'd been combing for any scrap of data that might have revealed what happened, but whatever had pulled them from his carefully-scripted grasp had basically used the program against itself. There was almost no sign of outside interference, and what little there was had lead him to dead ends. He'd resorted to monitoring all sorts of interuniversal activity and heightening what surveillance he had of other battles, not sure if any of it would lead him anywhere.

And then, suddenly, it did.

A rapid departure and near-immediate retreat from one little dimension, yes. Similar signature to what little he'd found, yes, yes. And... There, absolutely, it was the goddess. Sort of. But he tracked her back, and there were the rest of them. Perfect. He'd found them, and nobody but him and them would be any the wiser, and if he spun it right, even they wouldn't be.

But the possibility of this happening again was unacceptable.

He set to work increasing his safeguards and fine-tuning his protocols and programs. He hadn't expected any real interference to begin with; the service he provided to anyone he expected would be powerful enough to meddle with him was valuable enough that he doubted any of them would risk it. He'd been careless because it had seemed like a waste of time to be careful, but no more. Distractedly, he turned off most of his feeds; this was going to need all his concentration. And what were the odds of something relevant or important happening in the battles at large during the brief window this would occupy him for?

There was a saying among the Rebuilders: Don’t mess with the cook. Society wasn’t quite shit, at least not as shit as before, but resources were still sparse, good cooks even sparser. Not a lot of good cooks had been well-equipped to deal with the apocalypse. The ones that survived, then, were tough and probably didn’t appreciate getting pushed around. They also had very ready access to the food supply. Of course, nobody would ever accuse Whistler of being the type to resort to poison or anything. But better safe than sorry, right?

Furthermore, nobody would ever accuse Whistler of harboring Outsiders illegally in an undisclosed location, ‘wasting’ resources on them because he felt the general principle of ‘kill them all’ was a tad too strict and could be reduced to ‘kill most of them.’

Sometimes the things that appeared were deadly. Dangerous. Mindlessly destructive. Sometimes, he had realized, they were terrified. He probably would be too if he had been randomly teleported among alien beings or spontaneously created apropos of nothing or whatever the shit was going on. And ‘sides, some of them could be real useful in the whole rebuilding project. Taking care of them was exhausting. But wasn’t he part of the Rebuilders ‘cause he didn’t mind exhausting work in the first place?

He made his way to the kitchen/armory (ready access to weapons; another reason not to piss off the cook) and checked to see if anybody had shoved any artillery into the stove again. But right when he was about to start cooking, the jaunty ring of the bell indicated some arrivals. A pile of soldiers he vaguely recognized squeezed in. That wasn’t very surprising. What was surprising was the figure they were dragging in. Recognizably human, or at least recognizable as a human, but not in any other aspect. This ruled out the possibility that she was someone’s daughter who got into trouble. In which case, she was either a kid who had been roaming the ruins and they only now just found her or…

“Outsider?” said Whistler, and the leader of the group, a heavy-set and wide-shouldered man, only nodded as the rest partially de-armored themselves and sat down, as relaxed as one could get in a place like this.

The girl, the Outsider, just lay on the floor. Not dead, he could see her breathing, but certainly not moving. Maybe sleeping. Somewhere outside, he heard cawing, which was a little strange.

“You didn’t kill her,” Whistler observed, which just served to make the leader’s expression glummer. The cook gave a wry grin to show that his comment wasn’t meant to be judgmental.

The leader took off his helmet and rubbed his head, eyes wandering everywhere except towards faces. “I…was gonna take her to HQ…but then they’d just, y’know,” he said with a deep accent. European, maybe?

“Yeah,” Whistler said. “So why here?”

“I was hopin’ the commander’d be here.”

“She just left for HQ.” Seeing the man’s expression, Whistler added, “But I think I have a solution for you, if you and your friends can keep a secret.”

The leader finally glanced in Whistler’s direction, but only to give a doubting look. “I’m not sure – “

“Look, the solution, it ain’t anything shady – well, maybe shady in that it’s not exactly legal, but it certainly ain’t bad. Not as bad as shooting her in the head. Trust me, you won’t have to worry about anything, Mister…?”

“Sasha,” the leader said, suddenly looking uncomfortable. “Um…I...prefer ‘Miss,’ please…”

“Oh,” said Whistler, his eyes glancing to the rest of the small group, who had very suddenly decided to stare outside the windows instead. “Sorry.”

The restaurant-made-command-center fell into silence before Sasha took it upon herself to cough loudly. “…There’s still the problem of what I’m going to report. I can’t say I neutralized her…none of us used our weapons. HQ’d know I’m lying. I can’t exactly return empty-handed either.”

Whistler, who had tried to maintain easy-going eye contact but failed, noticed something on the back of the too-quiet figure. “Well, you could take that.”

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Soft woke up, she immediately noticed the lack of the Narration. Before, she would have been worried. Now, she was relieved. And also a little worried. The second thing she noticed was the lack of an ax. That was more worrying. But she also felt relieved. That was two loads off her back. Her surroundings vied for her attentions less, but eventually she realized that she was surrounded by unfamiliar beings. Also, she was underground. The atmosphere seemed to be lethargic, or maybe melancholic, but that didn’t matter much too her. While strange things watched her with whatever visual systems they happened to have, she asked, “Where’s my stuff?”

“No weapons policy here,” said a middle-aged man she had never seen before. He was wandering around the dank, underground ruins, picking up various cutlery and bowls. Normally, the Narration would start telling her his life story. But this wasn’t a normal situation. “As for that giant book you were lugging around, we…confiscated that too. Hope you don’t mind too much. Y’know, it’s nice to have an Outsider who already knows English,” the man said cheerfully, but Soft ignored him.

Someone else had her book. Someone else had her book.

Actually, she was okay with that. Although whoever had it…they might be in a little bit of trouble. Mere mortal minds couldn’t possibly handle the Narration and all that shit. But that was someone else’s problem now, wasn’t it?

While she thought, the man had been talking the whole time. She tuned in just in time to hear him say, “…and you can call me Mr. Whistler.” In the meantime, one of the creatures made its snuffling way towards her and lay what she supposed could be called a head on her shoulder. Looking from the corner of her eye, she almost mistook it for a very pink and very fleshy mop stuck on a larger very pink and very fleshy mop that was in the generic shape of a small giraffe.

“Aw, don’t mind him. He’s just showing some affection.”

“She,” Soft corrected, catching Mr. Whistler off guard.

“…How d’you know that?”

“Because she introduced herself and is explaining to me that you mean no harm.”

The expression on Mr. Whistler’s face was worryingly joyful and psychotically excited. As Soft stared, she couldn’t help but doubt the consolations of Portia. “You can understand them?”

Being the spirit of fairy tales meant having dominion over all fairy tales. Meaning having knowledge of the tales of different cultures. More importantly, knowledge of other languages. So yes, of course she knew how to talk to different sentient beings, even alien beings, as long as they had some sort of storytelling tradition behind them. And she could have told Mr. Whistler all this.

Instead, she said, “Um.”