The Grand Battle II! [Happy End!]

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

---

"You SURRENDER?!"

Gestalt's speaker shrieked to life, its furious question borne on a wave of unintelligible eldritch chanting and moaning; as the mechanized scream faded, the muttering behind it only rose in volume, echoing with fragments of the schrotgolem's syllables. Lucian was aurally surrounded by voices bombarding him with "REND" and "YOU" and "END", backed by the otherworldly descriptions of the Diarist's book. Even as the speaker howled, Gestalt's weapons wobbled in midair; establishing another connection with the hateful tome, even accidentally, had sent pain lancing through the golem. It was too spread across too many alternate realities, and the book had been forced to do far more than it had been designed for; coupled with the Speakeasy's gradual disintegration and already-patchwork nature, the mounting spacial instability sent a spiderweb of invisible cracks spiraling through the air and floor and walls. The mist vanished, leaking out beyond reality, and Gestalt came face-to-faceless with its quarry.

"Yes," Lucian said simply, doing his level best to appear calm and collected under the onslaught of sound and fury. "I surrender."

He dropped some complex piece of gadgetry that he'd been holding off the golem's attacks with and raised his hands, taking a step forward.

"You've bested me, and I can do nothing else."

For a moment, Gestalt struggled to turn its speaker back off; even unpowered, the chanting continued, albeit mutedly and without ghosts of the golem's own outburst floating through the sea of noise. A coruscating wave of glass shards rose from a box, swarming around the tinkerer and coming dangerously close to flaying him then and there. After a sufficiently-threatening series of near-misses, bits of the glass broke off from the cloud and arranged themselves.

and what makes you servant of the grandmasters user of the contestants callous beast unthinking selfish mongrel believe you deserve the mercy of surrender

Before the sentence could complete itself, Lucian opened his mouth to speak; before he could raise his voice, the glass still hovering around him pressed inwards, and he wisely chose to wait.

did vyrmn have a chance to surrender did i

did anyone caught up in your playmates your idols your protectors games

we could surrender only to long death and callous laughter

why should you be afforded anything better worm

"Gestalt–"

Clara put a hand on his rearmost box and raised the other one placatingly, but the schrotgolem rattled and vibrated with rage and shook her off. Still woozy from her trance and forced seizure, still struggling to focus on the present instead of the internal feeling there was somewhere and -when else to be, she pressed on nevertheless.

"Gestalt, you came here to seek justice, not–"

"And justice will be what I find!"

Apparently unbidden, the speaker had clicked back to life, Gestalt wailing over a cacophony of furiously-reciting spectral readers.

"Justice for Reccxer!"

The glass whirled and descended, nicking Lucian and hemming him in.

"Justice for Cabaret!"

With every word, the spacial distortions emanating outwards from the golem splintered farther.

"Justice for the Sunset, for Samuel, for Galus, for Maxwell!"

It was obvious that Gestalt had no intention of seriously harming Lucian yet; the maelstrom of twinkling death was carefully controlled and merely tore delicately at his skin and clothing, leaving him bleeding and screaming and pinned to an ever-cracking wall.

"Justice for every being with blood poured on their hands from on high, justice for my own crimes and those who brought me to them!"

Lucian fell to his knees as he found a long needle of unbreakable glass embedding itself in his eye.

"Justice that–"

The shards fell to the floor. Clara, grim determination plastered across her tired face, pulled her glowing hands backwards, taking Gestalt with them.

"Then give him the mercy that he could never give you. Even if his death saves those to come from a fate like ours, peeling his flesh away and breaking his body will do nothing to avenge or repay those who came before."

She released the spell, but kept her hands raised just in case. Gestalt curled its way back into its now-familiar shell, silent save for the book's reaffirmation of its enforced reality.

"Justice is blind, not cruel. This," she said, gesturing to the stricken man in front of them. "Is no kind of justice."

Even looking at him, Clara couldn't have noticed what Lucian was doing; to her, it seemed like one of his arms had simply fallen across himself as he had collapsed. Before she could notice he was very slowly reaching towards a pocket, she'd returned her attention to Gestalt. Lucian's fingertips slid under a hem, causing him to wince as his lacerated skin rubbed against the rough fabric; as Clara wordlessly waited for Gestalt to respond, those fingertips brushed against the cool metal of the detonator.

Without him willing it to, Lucian's arm suddenly retreated from the pocket, whirled backwards, and slammed against the wall; he howled in pain, attempting to tug it away, but it steadfastly refused to move. The blood pooling on his skin and at his feet rose and twisted, forming itself into coiling, ropy words.

did you think i couldnt see you

did you think i wouldnt know about your devils bargain

With no warning, the black orb Gestalt had apparently-absentmindedly picked up after the confrontation with Jessamine launched itself from the box it had been nestled in and impacted with Lucian's chest.

you are a monster lucian

but more than that you are a fool

Lucian felt his jaw clamp shut and his throat tighten; Gestalt clearly wanted no interruptions.

you think everyone as snivelingly self serving as you dont you

you took advantage of the trust you forced on vyrmn

you rigged her with an explosive

you planned to <font size="4">bribe me with victory wither her murder

to save your cowardly life

just by holding your unholy tool your shy knife i can see every cog and circuit every intention and meaning every moment of its past

and i can see the blackness where your soul should be

but you

you cant even see beyond your own nose

you must have known i had done what was done out of love and hatred and necessity

but to you there is no motivation but the self

you are an animal in a mans clothing and under the trappings of civilization you hide the terrified heart of a blind mewling whelp

Lucian struggled to right himself, but Gestalt leaned heavily on his muscles and bade them still themselves. He thrashed, but could not rise or speak.

i could make every bone in your body splinter under your own weight or your blood rise in your throat to drown you

Lucian's eyes widened and his breath struggled to quicken; Clara began preparing another spell, but hesitated as the speaker roared again, Gestalt's this-time restrained purr nearly indecipherable over the backing of the extraspacial chorus.

"But I will not, because I am not you, and I have been reminded why I never will be."

Clara dropped her spell, but remained wary; the muttering was beginning to emanate not just from the speaker, but from everything around the group. The fractures in reality that had filled the room were gradually widening from invisible anomalies none present could perceive to visually and tangibly obvious cracks around the edges of the tiny dimension.

"Know, as you die, that you will not be the last. Know that your fate was unfairly fair, and be grateful to me that you will go softly into the abyss."</font>

"Mmmnnnggg!"

"For the first time in your coward's life, have some dignity, Lucian."

Gestalt didn't bother even with the theatrics of the pop of a snapped neck; it simply withdrew from Lucian, stopping his heart, setting his lungs still, and soothing his brain into inactivity. The man was quietly turned off, and felt nothing.

For several beats, there was nothing but the susurration of voices struggling to be heard as Gestalt forced the speaker back off. The room around the surviving pair throbbed in time with the heartbeat of wounded space; it wasn't peaceful, but it was as close as the golem expected it would ever experience again.

As it quietly repacked itself, it realized it had been some time since it had felt the stabbing icy burn that accompanied Vyrm'n's collision with another sapient; perhaps she was too far away to transmit it, or perhaps she had run out of patrons to obliterate. Was Frank herding her somewhere? Without the energy to wonder, Gestalt simply closed the lid on its last box and mentally turned to Clara. Glittering messages spelled themselves out in the small handful of glass it had let unpacked.

when i asked for your help i intended that you should help me find the man who had wronged vyrmn wronged me

i suppose it seems i never needed it although i had little way of knowing how the speakeasy and its new proprietress would make that so

but i am fortunate you were here

you saved me from becoming even for my last moments that which i so despise which i so desire to see wiped clean from the multiverse

Clara thought for a moment as the last words disintegrated. "Did I?"

The glass rose again questioningly, but Clara continued.

"I of all people know that sometimes, the only way to make room for life is through death, dear. Heavens above could tell you that. And it certainly seems that Lucian and those like him need to be shown through the Veil so those they leave behind can prosper, but…"

The nun turned away, biting a lip and organizing her thoughts. "Just because I stayed your hand doesn't mean I changed you."

Gestalt reeled, mentally and physically.

what do you–

"Maybe it was a moment of weakness. Everyone loses control. Maybe all I did was hold your hand through your darkest time. These battles could bring out the worst in anyone, in everyone! You could be forgiven for a lapse into madness when all the impotence you were saddled with since your abduction was finally lifted and a target presented itself for vengeance.

But more truthfully, it seems like this callousness has always been in you. The first time I saw you you had let go of reason and were a whirling ball of violence. Since then, you've done your damndest to rebel on those who brought you here, only to kill those close to you in an attempt to make your way to those above. You've played into their hands, and ensured their game was an entertaining one to watch."

The boxes shook as Gestalt struggled to respond. Many of the same things had occurred to it, the same thoughts beckoning it to end itself or all back into the welcoming arms of nonsapience. But–

i did what had to be done what else could happen that could threaten the grandmasters

"What else did you consider?"

there was

The glass spun and reformed into the same two words several times

there was

there was

there was only ever one way

"Why?" Clara threw her hands up. "Because another Grandmaster told you so? Because you never stopped to think of any other ways? Because this was easy?"

easy

you have the gall to tell me that killing a man who held the whole worlds future in his mind was easy

that making the sacrifice of the only being i ever considered a friend was easy

i have borne the burden of these sins not because they are easy but because no one else should have to

what right do you have to tell me i am wrong to assure me the souls i have broken could have been left whole

what of your own grandmaster did you sit idly by watching as those he chose to die fell at others hands and assure yourself it was okay because you were not the one holding the blade

what

would

you

"HAVE

HAD

ME

DOOOOOOOO?!"

Reality groaned under the stress and both Gestalt and Clara looked away from each other to see the black roof above splintering into something beyond blackness. Gestalt could sense the rooms beyond following suit under the combined strain of Vyrm'n's mindless will and the schrotgolem's own destructive presence, and it could sense that this one was only barely being held together by the same force that was pulling it apart. The sound of a universe disintegrating resolved slowly into the rhythmic thud of... applause.

Even with no hands bringing it forth, the applause rose to a stunning crescendo, filling the room and nearly drowning out the sounds of tortured words. Clara clamped her hands over her ears as it became a physical force, and Gestalt's boxes vibrated sympathetically and skittered randomly across the filthy floor.

"Well done. Well done indeed."

In the space between instants, he appeared, beaming as only those with no mouth can; the Observer raised a hand and the applause silenced itself.

"She's right, you know. You have made this little contest quite an entertaining success. A constant cavalcade of betrayal and passion! A bloody battle to death and beyond! A spectacle, and a good one at that. I love it!"

He snapped theatrically, and Gestalt felt the speaker fade into nonexistence, the recitation it had been broadcasting fading moments after.

"Unfortunately, all this fantastic drama and bloodshed is going to have to end with a little bit of an anticlimax. Disappointing, really, but I can't let you and your little diary there completely destroy what's left of my establishment." He paused for a moment. "Or the clientele!"

Desperate and filled with the terror of facing down an annoyed Grandmaster, Gestalt's mind spun. hurriedly, it raised its glass:

so you would see all your work and effort from orchestrating this entire battle collapse and end on a dull flat note

"Hum. Manipulation's not really your strong suit, is it? Still, you're on the right track. No, I'm not going to just make you vanish. How boooring would that be?"

The Observer straightened his tie and cracked his knuckles.

"Besides, nothing's quite as exciting in this business as the big showdown between the last contestants and the almighty Grandmaster! It's almost a tradition, and it's certainly got that tragic appeal of a desperate last stand. And let me tell you, I am one hell of an entertainer."

With no more prelude than that, the cyclopean Grandmaster lazily extended a finger towards Clara and Gestalt, a bolt of searing light springing from the fingertip; it was all Clara could do to raise a shimmering golden barrier in time. The light hit her wall and diffused; the wall itself shattered, and Clara was flung backwards as the feedback rom the Organizer's attack traced its way along her spell and into her body. He laughed, shrugging.

"Maybe I'm going to have to pull my punches even more, huh? Don't put this all on me now, you have to fight back competently too!"

As Clara groaned and tried to convince herself she couldn't smell burning flesh, she struggled upright; Gestalt, for its part, had opened one of its boxes and raised several unassuming shards of what appeared to be white pumice. Weaving them through the air, the golem spread them through the room and attempted to move them erratically enough to confuse whatever tracking the Grandmaster had. At the same time, it raised more weapons – as well as a handful of items that seemed to have no relevance to the conflict at hand – and made threatening gestures.

The tableau stood still for several moments, reminding the golem strikingly of the fight with Jessamine; no-one wanted to move until someone else did first. Perhaps fortunately, the Observer didn't seem to have his servant's patience; obviously unfortunately, he outmatched her power by leagues. He lashed out again, hand sweeping through the air and waves of dark energy swelling behind it and launching themselves at Gestalt. The golem formed a shield out of unbreakable glass and took the opportunity to lunge with its weapons.

The attack was obviously a feint, of course; Gestalt had no illusions that simply chucking knives and spikes at a being like the Observer would ever accomplish anything. All it hoped was that the desperate gambit would momentarily distract him, allowing the real assault with the Labyrinth Bricks to land. Unfortunately, the knives were deflected by an instantly-raised forcefield that surrounded the Observer on all sides, and Gestalt was forced to simply drive all the bricks home at the same time, hoping they could overcome the field, rather than taking advantage of a blind spot.

After a grinding noise and greenish sparks scattering across the room, the shards of brick did astonishingly penetrate the barrier, holes spreading outwards until the entire thing collapsed. The Observer raised a surprised eyebrow, now having expected something so mundane and spawned in reality to have any effect on his shield, and sent a wave of force outwards to repel the slivers before they could touch him. They scattered, gouging holes in the walls and floor, and allowing more of whatever surrounded the Speakeasy to seep in.

Clara, aware that she'd been largely ignored for several seconds as Gestalt occupied the Observer's attention, began chanting and gesturing as quietly and subduedly as she could; though she had a dozen invocations for banishing or binding demons and other otherworldly creatures, she had little hope that any of them would prove successful against something like a Grandmaster. This was going to involve some improvisation and delicate tweaking of magic she only barely understood; she bit her lip nervously and tried to shrink back from the fight.

Gestalt gathered its shards back up at the same time it launched another wave of assorted spiky objects, desperately trying to keep the Observer's attention divided and confused. Spinning wheels of glass deflected perfunctory attacks and scythed towards their source; bits of matter-shredding brick carved through whatever defenses the Observer raised; clouds of worthless garbage rose to conceal the nature of Gestalt's attacks and machinations. It seemed to be a stalemate at first glance, but Gestalt was rapidly losing many of its tools as they were destroyed by the Grandmaster's unfathomable energies. Only the brick and the glass didn't seem to be depleting, and it was unlikely those alone could sustain the fight.

The golem simply didn't know what to do. Its entire plan had banked on being a distraction as Vyrm'n destroyed the beast nothing else seemed capable of harming, but she was nowhere to be found. Frank's promises seemed and plans had seemed to come to nothing, and with them Maxwell's death and the deaths of all those that fell before him. Gestalt would die here as it had known it would, but without having accomplished anything and with the crimes of its plot buried with it in an extraspacial grave.

Even as that moroseness overtook the little golem and made its attacks falter slightly, a sliver ring interspersed with golden glyphs inscribed itself around the Observer's feet. Surprised, he looked down, allowing Gestalt to blindside him with a handful of brick shards; the shoulder of his perfectly-tailored zoot suit was shredded, and with it part of his own shoulder. An expressionless snarl crossed the one-eyed face, and incandescent ichor seeped out of the wound and into the suit.

"That's enough playing around then."

The Grandmaster clenched his hand, and all the brick slivers crumbled to powder and evaporated. He made as though to step towards Gestalt, but was halted as his foot crossed the glowing threshold beneath him.

"You have got to be kidding me!"

His enormous eye darted over to Clara, who was kneeling on the ground, furiously scribbling across the floor and her arms with both hands; her eyes glowed gold, and every syllable she recited formed out of silver light in the air in front of her before vanishing. The Observer could see the tangle of spells she'd woven around herself and him and into the very fabric of his domain, but even through her furious effort he nearly laughed.

"Do you really think this can hold for more than a moment?"

The old nun's head slowly shook from side to side as she continued her spellcraft. It was a very resigned gesture, and The Organizer raised a hand to wipe the meddling magic away. However, proving that one didn't get into the position of a true Grandmaster by being stupid, he hesitated; if she knew she would only pointlessly delay him by seconds, why would she have chosen this course of action rather than one that might have actually had a chance of harming him or saving herself? He squinted, following the trails of abjuration and enchantment, time slowing down so that microseconds ticked by like hours as he absorbed the result of her efforts.

And gasped.

The old bitch had tied the circle into the spacial rifts that Gestalt and its foolish use of the Diarists's cursed blessing had created. If he tried to smash her spell, it'd tear the entire Speakeasy open and dump everything in it into the Timeless Interstice before even something with a Grandmaster's power could escape; if he tried to nullify or cancel it, it would become unbalanced and tear itself apart as though he'd attacked it himself. There was no way she should have had the power for an undertaking like this or the ability to power a spell with the Void. It made no sense.

Granted, there was no way she could outmatch him if he slowed down and gradually pulled the wretched spell apart –*and it wasn't as though Gestalt would truly be able to harm him while he worked –*but the sheer ignominy of being forced to spend so much time engaged in a battle of tedium with a contestant that wasn't even his... It was nearly as bad as the bumbling Director and his embarrassing near-defeat at the hands of a backwater nincompoop and a vacuum cleaner. His eye narrowed further, seeking for some mistake or weakness he could exploit to send his manabound cage tumbling down without destroying himself and his entire demesne, but the entire thing had been executed with a keen perfection even the care of undeath shouldn't have lent the old woman. It seemed he had no choice.

As the Observer set about the arduous process of pulling magical threads, Gestalt was regrouping what it still had available. Every fragment of soul-shearing brick had been utterly destroyed, including the ones it hadn't even been using in the assault. The glass was still fine, but it was unlikely to have the power to do any harm. Gestalt was gradually coming to the very same conclusion that the Observer had come to moments ago: there was nothing it could do to the Grandmaster, and all Clara was accomplishing was insuring the pair of them would suffer inordinately when their furious captor was released from his improbable bonds. It was as though–

Glass and metal clattered to the floor as pain lanced through the golem's spectral form. The cracks in the walls rasped dangerously, and the ceiling above swirled with the dark potency of the beyond; even with no source, the words of power rose again, so loudly and distinctly that individual fragments of meaning could be heard over the obscene rabble of sound. It seemed that the book was even rewriting itself to account for the changes it was in the process of bringing about. More imminently relevant than the words themselves though was the event they heralded: several more jolts of unbearable agony surged through Gestalt, each one coursing through it and every iteration of it it had smeared across uncountable alternate versions of the Speakeasy, each one degrading this Speakeasy further. The Observer, finally tasting the first real shred of fear or worry he'd experienced in perhaps an eternity, frantically sped his work at Clara's trap: if he made a mistake, oblivion; if he took too long, likewise.

And then, after a dozen more nerve-wracking, space-wrending throbs of rewritten truth that left Gestalt scrabbling to gouge out eyes it didn't have– a shimmer, a door opening, a streak of black, a cackled "Have fun, kiddos!", wooden fingers sealing the air behind them.

The room around hadn't done something so dramatic or visually obvious as breaking into discrete chunks that floated through the void, but it certainly seemed to be threatening that or disintegration. The walls were gradually losing themselves, top-down, to whatever was beyond the multiverse; the floor moaned in the language of nothing, at once bidding the atoms that remained not to lose themselves and shoving them towards that oblivion; there simply was no ceiling, nor anything where it should have been. And into that fragile balance barreled a being that wanted nothing more to topple everything that remained into itself.

Vyrm'n charged towards the Observer, who by accident or design was the closest to her entrance. Hemmed in and elbow-deep in delicate reality-manipulation, it was all he could do to duck the hateful amalgam of void and fury; she wheeled and he pressed himself against the invisible confines of his cage; she jinked and he jerked away. Time, already malleable and beaten, slowed again to a crawl with every near-miss and barely-deflected charge. But even lashed to the floor and facing down the avatar of entropy that was all that stood a reasonable chance of destroying him, the Grandmaster would not be harmed. It was another terrible reminder of the futility of rebellion, Gestalt thought dreamily as its mind threatened to vanish entirely under the Diarist's revisions; every sacrifice was made to an uncaring god, or one who didn't exist. There would be no victory, and every being in every reality would gradually disappear by eights. They'd lost, and they'd lost for everyone.

It feebly tried to raise a weapon, to raise a word, but it couldn't fight through the droning. That horrible feeling that had come with concealing the book seemed to fill its entire being, save that part that was being threshed by the pain it had caused. The tool that had promised salvation had ultimately done nothing but doom its wielder and erase its champion. Poor Vrm'n.

Rational thought and desire for planning draining away, Gestalt summoned all its will and lifted the book above its boxes. Its cover glowed faintly in the dun, sourceless light, and the golem brushed a curious tendril across its pages. Meaning and meaninglessness rushed into its mind once again, words of consequence and power describing in intimate, unholy detail a world that no longer was and the ones that had replaced it as it died. A twisted dramatis personae filled every conscious space Gestalt had left; all were bit parts and supporting characters save for the one, dark protagonist, and a timeless litany that described her in every possible detail roared across the schrotgolem's reality.

Suddenly, surrounded by the chanting nun, the embattled Grandmaster, and the starry bulk that sought to break them all, understanding struck Gestalt. Energy filled it as a plan coalesced and it raised the book higher, rifling through the pages. One ink-stained leaf stood straight up from the spine, unconscionable prose livid against the creamy parchment, straining to escape its bindings.

Why did it take me so long to do this?

The page pulled free, sending the abyssal tongue that filled the air cascading into gibberish; a dozen more followed it, then a hundred, until the entirety of the Diarist's gift was whirling like a flock of literary magpies around the empty cover. After moments, most of them fluttered to the ground; several, though, rose nearly to the level of the ceiling. None were paying attention to the book's defiling or the spiritual hand that had accomplished it: the life-or-death assault of the Faceless on her erstwhile tormentor was more salient to those present. Even had they been watching, though, none would have been able to discern why Gestalt had selected those pages among all the others to cast into the spaces between the worlds.

The Interstice claimed them, and their influence began to fade from the multiverse. Without any given piece of the book, all the others would have eventually fallen: its narrative had been an entire house built of keystones, and its collapse would have been catastrophic for all the players that had inhabited it. But Gestalt needed only moments, and the Diarist's work had been so carefully created that it could have been literal ages before it truly fell; Vyrm'n was immediately affected, and spun backwards across the remains of the room, quivering and writhing in midair.

Reccxer's light was hurriedly thrown after her; as it struck her glittering "skin", she fell still. As she did, so too did what had remained of Gestalt's limbs.

The Observer returned immediately to his escape; he was curious, of course, as to what had happened, but it was rather more pressing to be alive to figure it out later than to explore it right now. Clara herself was fighting valiantly to undo the damage he was doing to her improvised dimensional barrier, but she simply couldn't keep up; it was weakening, and in time it would fall and she'd be too drained to continue fighting. Their struggle continued for what could have been minutes or hours, Clara bitterly refusing to give an inch she could keep, until a shape rose behind the Observer.

And, for the first time, it truly was a shape; throughout the battle, the Faceless had largely remained amorphous and fluid, but a perfect sphere of blackness had risen from the floor. Stars glittered across its surface in sympathy with the confusion that roiled below it. The creature reached out, its surface unmarred, ghostly black tendrils coalescing and fading in the air; it recoiled as matter and light pressed in around it, simultaneously disgusted and pained and thrilled and curious. A world called to it, cajoled it, rejected it, and it spun dejected in midair, exploring and retreating at once.

Then one of its coiled, ephemeral limbs brushed across the Observer, and a torrent of memories and emotions rose from its unseen and unseeing core, a lattice of minds and urges it could not consciously find nor understand. The creature was filled with fear and loathing, and the twin desires to kill and to escape reared in the forefront of its perceptions. The song of space and unspace rose around it, at once drowning out and melding with its primal urges, and it spun literally as its mind did figuratively. Everything was so confusing, but behind that facade of incomprehensibility was a comforting sense of of safety and order. It lurked beneath the surface, at once close as the air and so distant as to be unreal.

The fact was that the creature could feel it though, and it was determined to find a way there. It whirled around the room, new senses reaching out and pulling back as everything around it beckoned and pushed it away; finally, as the Observer could only watch, entangled in a once-mortal woman's spell, the creature's tendrils brushed across the cracks in the Speakeasy's fundament left by Gestalt. Stars glowed brightly on its surface for a moment before disappearing again, and it wedged its limbs in the break

and

pulled.

The tortured dimension buckled and popped, a gaping rift opening as the creature struggled. The invisible membrane that had separated the dissolving room from the ravages of the unknowable tore, leaving a hole too black for darkness; gleefully, the sphere launched into the beyond, disappearing in instants, reveling in what it knew in the core of its core to be home.

Behind it, the last vestiges of the Speakeasy gave up the ghost. Clara's spell unravelled as the delicate balance it had been built on disappeared, and reality around her and the Observer fell piecemeal into the very force she'd spent so much of her energy and self maintaining. Instantly freed, the Grandmaster bounded across the room, straining beyond his mere physical form to seal the gash left behind. A few tense heartbeats later, what had seemed to be a certain end to the Speakeasy and everyone in it was merely an ugly, lumpy scar in midair. With a relieved sigh and a wave, the Observer made that too fade away.

There was more silence, this time truly quiet. It was eventually broken by the rustle of fabric as Clara struggled exhaustedly to stand up. Her rise seemed to remind the Grandmaster of her presence, and he turned towards her.

"Oh. Right."

Unburdened now by a desire for showmanship or any real care for a conclusion, he didn't even bother to point or snap or wave. Clara simply collapsed, molecules pinging away from each other before she could hit the floor. She was gone in less than a second, and the Observer turned back to the blank spot where the breach had so recently threatened to swallow him up.

Well, he supposed, he pretty much had one contestant left. It was basically still his contestant, anyway, at some level. It was gone, sure, into a realm even he had next to no power, but... Given time, he could find it. Him? Her? Was it still a her? And it wasn't as though time was of any concern. What was more pressing was making sure news of this actual, successful escape didn't spread too far. That would be embarrassing, and worse... Could prove problematic. It wasn't as though All-Stars was his only concern anymore.

Still, there was time, always time. For now, to regroup. The Observer mentally reached out, finding all the scattered remains of his once-proud Speakeasy and pulling them together. He supposed he'd need a new Jessamine too, which was a pity; she'd been a real lucky find. There were always more out there, though, and maybe this next one wouldn't have such... Changeable humors. One thing at a time. Or, more accurately, one time for everything.

---

"Clara."

She couldn't see, couldn't feel herself or anything outside, couldn't even hear but was nevertheless aware of the voice that filled her or perhaps was her entire being.

"Clara Jungfrau, Mother Superior, Slate Emissary of Schleier. You have done your duty admirably; even guided and empowered by my own hand, few could have accomplished for even moments what you managed."

She was filled with a sense of peace and contentment and approval. It was utter bliss. If this was to be the entirety of her after-afterlife–

"But your work is not yet complete."

---

"Well, wasn't that interesting!"

It wasn't a question, of course, and didn't remotely sound like one. The piecemeal pattern of the speaker's voice made inflection difficult to discern in any case, but there was certainly no interrogativeness there.

"A real first, I'd say. A series of real firsts! I shudder to think how bland things would have been if we'd not stepped in."

Ms. Dorcy shrugged noncommittally. "I can't speculate on that, sir. Our interference began before the final round even began; it's impossible to extrapolate any course of events with no beginning."

The Organizer sighed and waved one of his currently-numerous arms. "You're never much good to gloat with when you're like this. I've had more fun scheming with that dry little twig, Talis."

Something about this seemed to strike him as extremely funny, and Ms. Dorcy patiently waited for his gales of mismatched laughter to subside.

"Why did you pick this little place anyway?"

"I predicted – correctly – that the schrotgolem's emotional state and inexpert use of the tome would, coupled with the fortuitous mistake made by Jessamine's servant, lead to an Intersticial breach. The safest place to observe the results from was a dimension only tangentially connected to the Speakeasy, and the Diarist has repeatedly proven himself a safe and reliable ally."

The Diarist himself barely restrained a snort at "ally", but continued busying himself with his books.

"Well done, then."

There were several instants filled only with the scratching of quills.

"Too bad the Observer survived, but we can always see to it he doesn't survive the next one. Might not even have to do it ourselves once we let all this incompetence slip to some of our less friendly acquaintances."

Ms. Dorcy didn't respond for a moment, but eventually murmured, "Of course, sir."

"Hmph. So dry," The Organizer shrugged. "Alright, well, don't you have some other things to be doing now?"

"I should say she does."

---

The antechamber was one of the few rooms that had survived; maybe it was luck, or maybe it was because of the room's unusually careful sealing against the ravages of forces and beings that wanted nothing more than the absorb all that hateful matter into the gaps between threads. Maybe it was just a better story that way.

It was empty now; where in the past there had never been a moment it wasn't filled with muffled voices and the sound of raucous revelry from beyond the great double doors, now there was no-one to drink or laugh or plot. Someone had removed Paris's corpse and all the glass Gestalt hadn't already absorbed; the burns and blood smears and spacial distortions had been removed and smoothed over; the glass cases that had once held the remains had been replaced by a semicircle of plinths.

On the first, a pyramid of magnetically-sealed metal canisters was stacked; each was carefully labeled in a neat, looping hand with green ink. They bore names describing various unstable isotopes and exotic forms of matter, each paired with a small group of body parts. A bow tie was delicately balanced on the smallest, topmost canister, and several handwritten journal pages were arranged in a fan at the pyramid's base.

The second bore a sneaker and some more journal pages. It was easiest to focus on those things, rather than the ghastly reconstruction above them. A vaguely humanoid figure of shattered bones and pulped flesh, studded with metal scraps and charred at the edges, towered above the shoe; it spared the world a look at its doubtless-ghastly visage by hiding it behind a mask printed with a roughly-feline face.

The third display was among the least-horrifying of the bunch; it was simply an enormous, futuristic, and yet somehow cobbled-together-looking suit of armor or exosuit. It loomed darkly but nonthreateningly, seeming less like a corpse than a museum curiosity.

The fourth returned smoothly to the realms of gore and fear. On it was quite obviously a man in a once-fine, now-bloodied suit who had had most of his head shorn off – then carefully reconstructed, inasmuch as such was possible – with a shotgun. Or perhaps had seen fit to do it himself, judging from the angle.

The fifth was decorated with a dismembered humanoid; while the torn limbs had been placed back where they would have gone on a living man, all were missing huge chunks of flesh, and tattered intestines spilled out of a ragged spacesuit.

The sixth was nearly serene by comparison, merely showcasing a man who could be thought to be sleeping, were it not for the discoloration and bruising from strangulation. He was leaning on an epee, looking for all the world as though there was nowhere he'd rather be.

The last, somewhat larger than the others and with the other six arranged around it, was stacked blandly with boxes. A number of items of presumable import were arranged around the base of the plinth, none seemingly with any connection to the others. In the mind of the one who had put it there, it was close enough to the truth to count, and a harsh reminder of what was and was not possible.