The Grand Battle S2G1! [Round Six: Eddelin City]

Kracht was lost, or pretty sure the gods were fucking with him.

The first path "upwards" as dictated by Moses had trailed uncertainly off into a trepdiatious end at the mouth of a cave, which smelt in equal parts industrial, abandoned, and of high-proof ethanol. The hummingbird in attendance thrummed uneasily, landing like a sunbeam upon Kracht's shoulder. It laid down its flower, appreciating the rocklike steadiness of Kracht's unbreathing torso.

"Izzer wrong way we've been givvin, zhir."

"Xadrez' doing, then?"

"Th'Librerrien-Gen'ril? Wouldn' think it, leazterways wither time zhignature in m'heart, szhir. We're zhuppozed t'be thirr's fazht we can. Race ter the top, winner take all."

Kracht tasted the air, and felt worse for it. "A shortcut, then?" he asked, uncertain.

"Weren't any tunnels in th' Feethills, back when... y'know. th' Library jes' zhtood on a cliff and not this zhpire." The hummingbird hmmmed in recollection. "Great-Grampzh-Hummer, actual, uzhter talk about the Mines of Middling Hill, but they weren't carved've th'rock - th' Zhiren-golems sang th'gems out. Great-grampzh zhmelt've the peyote-flower a lot, though, 'n I think I rimmember 'im claiming spezhil dragonbreath was what painted the zhky, so... pinches of zhalt."

Kracht didn't get far down the tunnel (his companion all too happy to wait at the entrance) before he ran into something, the sort of something lacking the tactile signature of a point where two worlds met - but still left your constituent elements scrambling for each other. Pretty sure of what he was dealing with, but figuring it was too late to turn back, he reached about in the now-pitch black until his faintly glowing digits alighted on a door.

It was of jet; the hinges handle and ominous knocker all filigree and tarnished silver. Kracht ignored the entire arrangement, having seen quite enough arrangements to suit any man or mineral. The door creaked, and Kracht flinched, and there was something behind there acutely aware of his presence and making no attempt to hide nor show its omniscient face.

Kracht slipped in, closed the door. Two wing-backed armchairs had their backs to him, conspiring to each other and the ink-black flames crackling soundlessly in the fireplace. Death, slumped in a seat and out of Kracht's sight, extended a suited arm through the fire-backed rift between the chairs. The shadow it threw across Kracht crackled faintly as it crossed him, the murmurs of a gramophone's needle in a record's curves.

“It's been a while,” said Death. Kracht made a glacial noise of discontent. “Why don't you take a seat? No?”

Death sighed; dignified the deathless green aberration by unfolding from his seat. Kracht had already drawn a weapon, or at least a silver talisman which emitted a sort of bluish anti-glow that either radiated darkness or gently drew in light. Death glanced at it, something behind his mask giving a “tch” of disapproval.

“Enough of that.”

Kracht couldn't really bare his teeth, settling instead for expressionless disapproval. “Enough of you, Redeemer. Did you not get the message from last time that I'm finished with you?”

“Clear as Arabic arsenic,” smirked Death. His hand gripped the armchair's back, magician's white gloves hanging a little hollow over the bones therein. “Which makes me just as curious as you what brings me back to my den. Have the battles finally made it to my bolthole?”

Kracht deliberated, the shade in front of him a neutered, muted, but indelible reminder of the true enemies. The ones the Battlers could've all banded together to slay and bring peace to the Multiverse, if he were telling the tale to Emma. Things were simpler when all your problems could be ascribed to higher beings of unquestionably wayward morality. People were messy. Mortality was messy, or at least that was Kracht's interpretation at his most cynical. Annihilation of some cosmos-spanning force, by comparison, was lacking enough in a frame of reference that your mind could just grapple with the idea for a bit before discarding it.

Gestalt'n (with Hoss at the reins) had just about finished ripping All-Stars a new one, and the first seeds of doubt were scattered across the Network that their commander's intentions were less than noble. It was still all about killing the Grandmasters, back then. The Controller had slayed the radio silence, joining the still-under-wraps-then human side in the upcoming war, offering a list of his traitrous agents as tribute. By the time the Monitor was decommissioned, the Executor executed, and the memories of innocent bystanders' winnowed out and de-demonised from the actual traitors of the Network (who were probably only among half the list of the lynched), the Controller was away laughing.

They couldn't trust the Grandmasters after that, although the Hoss-induced xenocide didn't leave anyone much time to reconcile. Kracht and Eureka were already fighting their own, ((comparatively) cosmically negligible) fight against the forces of the Chrome Witch, whose unceremonious devourment of Sirius hadn't ended the round because the Observer had either done a runner, or had already died and local linearity was only just catching up.

Kracht blinked, suddenly uncertain as to whether he'd intruded or if he was the one being intruded upon. This Redeemer wasn't the most imposing of the Grandmasters, and being more akin to a collective of unknowable cosmic forces it was hard to be consumed by terror at the thought of them anyway. Not the way a good old-fashioned racist cyborg could do for you.

Redeemer didn't scare Kracht, and Death seemed mostly content with the fact. “They're almost over,” Kracht said slowly, the fact just now occurring to himself. “Have been for a while, if the survivors amongst you Grandmasters turning tail was any indication.”

“The prime-time debut of the latest propaganda extravaganza, with your host the Amalgam, exclusive to the Network Affiliated With The Network?”

“Yeah.” Kracht would've realised aloud that his only realistic goal at this juncture was ensuring Emma never joined the ranks of the Silver Army, which would probably entail making a martyr of her. He pushed the thought aside, not least because the ex-Grandmaster before him was the last entity that needed to know about his personal problems. “That.”


“It's quite all right, you know,” said the Redeemer after a while, voice coming from where a friend might stand in solidarity, perhaps to clasp a hand on your radioactive shoulder. “Giving up on saving the multiverse.”

Kracht swatted at the voice; his fist found only scattering butterflies. He glared at one of the armchairs, which sported an extra pair of legs reclining out of them again. “Because subjugating it is so much easier, isn't it?”

“Kracht, please. It was a game to us,” hummed the Redeemer, apparently so disgusted with having to spell it out that it warranted another snooty sip of wine. “A pasttime. A distraction. A way to defer answering those unpleasant questions we asked of ourselves, when we escaped or transcended our universes of origin.”

The rock didn't bother asking what those questions were, but that didn't stop the Redeemer. “We were still motes in the extrastellar scheme, my dear Kracht. We could orchestrate the ruin of all the civilisations we pleased, but we could wave our hands and gesture all we pleased and the damn things still stood. We were tinkerers. Meddlers. We still built our towers brick by meticulous brick. Once we tired of that, and tired of seeing how far the Multiverse Proper extended, where else did we have left to turn?” A sip, a pause, before finishing the glass and casting it aside. “Our only recourse was to remind ourself, that no matter how insignificant we were, we could be as gods to the likes of you.”

Redeemer arched out of his chair again, voice and shadow and vintage fumes taking a languid stroll about the rock. “That's why Hoss is such a credible threat to us. Because he's delusional. Because whatever rational check we Grandmasters have when contemplating a path to true omnipotence, he lacks.”

Kracht had one of his moments where he envied the full gamut of emotion offered by a form of flesh and blood. He cracked a testy joint, though that only made him keener to punch the Redeemer (for lack of a more constructive course of action). “So. Local omnipotence wasn't fixing your existential angst, so you figured Death was a nobler post?”

“Zaire was a damned fool, and a travesty of a Redeemer at that,” snapped the Redeemer, temporarily displacing a digit or two in a sleight-of-wringing-hands. “Hoss' challenge was a trap, plain to see - no dissuading the boy despite it. Encouraged him, even.”

“So you killed him?”

“And I suppose-” a chipped and faded mask at his ear, a conspiratorial whisper without breath “-you'd prefer Hoss got the chance?”

“No, but-”

“Re-wrote the rules of death? Promised an eternal afterlife's suffering for all who opposed him, or better yet, differed too much? And realise it?”

Kracht would've retorted, but the Grandmaster had raised a chiding finger (from the armchair again, fuck these guys) and the mineral found his voice stopped.

“Zaire glorified death, pronounced himself tyrant of the afterlives. If I let the dead stay dead, my only crime is restoring to death its rightful dignity.”

“And murder.”

“Most foul,” shrugged the Redeemer.

“And kidnapping people and making them fight to the death.”

“A socially acceptable crime, at least in my social circles as we've already-”

“And the cameo rounds-”

“What was it you wanted, again?”

Kracht strode over and hurled the vacant armchair into a wall. Redeemer only 'tsk'ed, which didn't improve the mineral's mood any.

“I've got one job,” hissed Kracht, “and that's to find Xadrez and take back the Middle-Gem. So unless you're squatting in the Library's basement-”

“One moment.” The Grandmaster's focus wavered, in that palpable way they will. The next instant he was already standing to attention, straightening his suit and radiating alertness the way Grandmasters will when they're really more elsewhere.

“Oh, so now you'll take this seriously?”

Redeemer's retort was palming a dove out of nowhere, and snapping its neck. Kracht had no time for outrage before it fell through the floor, which had vanished into black with the rest of the room. The dove soundlessly hit the water, ink consuming white as the river's endless sigh rose into something almost audible.

They stood on the shore. The colourless, lightless sand squeaked in protest beneath Kracht's feet, like it knew he didn't belong here. A glance at the Redeemer only gave the strong impression that the very idea of his having feet was ludicrous, which tackled Kracht's mental defenses and left him with a headache.

“Are we waiting for a ferryman or some-”

“No. Norns, in case you were wondering.”

“Aren't those, like, tree spirits or something?”

“Mythology and post-existence in the Place is... whimsical. We'll put it that way. There's no real rhyme or reason to it, but if you must fight the General for the Middle-Gem in the Library itself, then being dredged up by a Norn is the fastest way to the Library. With my help, at any rate.”

The Redeemer shuffled back from the shore. Something sullen and very difficult to argue with lumbered atop the now-choppy water, all gunmetal grays and refinery stains.

“Do say hello to Peppi for me. Once you've saved the Multiverse and all.”

Kracht had no time to ask what kind of a name Peppi was for a mythical beast, before the Redeemer kicked him in the small of the back, pitching the mineral head over sinking heels into the Undercurrent.