“How would you like to be remembered Dyrena? Pretend for a moment that they will be someone to remember us.”

“Ideally? I’d like to not  be remembered at all, Helgon.”

“That seems rather unlikely given what we’ve done.”

“Yes. I suppose there will be some small, and wholly insufficient, measure of justice in the infamy my name shall carry into future generations.”

“You don’t imagine we shall be worshipped? Sasarai seems to be convinced that we shall garner more and better worship than the gods themselves ever enjoyed.”

“That is what he would believe isn’t it? I suppose I have no doubt that he is correct, at least in regards to his own situation. The design of his Garden was written quite meticulously, as was his selection of the people he would include within it. The fact that they will also be the most likely cause of his eventual downfall is also undoubtedly something he has failed to consider. It follows inevitably from the preconditions he arranged and was clearly laid out by a variety of sociological studies, but it seems unnecessary to point that out given how very clever and insightful he had always claimed to be.”

“He quoted one of your own papers back to you again, didn’t he?”

“Not directly. That would imply he’d actually read and understood any of them. He merely suggest a trio of papers to help me understand the foundational points I’d missed in his argument concerning the conversion yields he can expect.”

“And you wrote, no wait let me guess, two of them and co-authored the third?”

“I was co-author on two of them, but those two both drew from my original paper. Perhaps that will be my legacy? Oh, yes, as an extra spark of justice; Sasarai could republish my papers under his own name and be handed all of the credit for the work by future historians, while my name remains attached only to our failures.”

“I would not allow that worm to claim credit for even one of your papers, and who would believe that claim? All one would need to do is read any of the papers he actually wrote and compare the two.”

“I believe that by the time our legacies are being decided, neither of us shall be in a position to argue with those future academics who will malign or misattribute our works. In fact, I believe that to be a requirement for those future academics to exist at all.”

“You’re still committed to your plan then?”

“I must be. To falter at this stage would be to succumb to the most despicable of temptations.”

“Is it despicable to wish for as much time as one can grasp hold of?”

“Dearest Helgon, we all will reach our ending. That is not to be feared. What is to be feared and hoped for is what we can make of our lives and what we will leave behind. I have been the cause of great sorrow and overwhelming horror and my only comfort is that I will be leaving behind a world of sorrows and terrors where there might instead have been nothing left at all.”

– Helgon and Dyrena looking to the future fates they can accept

I was staring death in the face, quite literally, while around me whirled the end of everything. The loosed energies of the slain Neoterics were pouring into the Assumption Ritual faster than any number of mortals or gods could have withstood.

“If you would let me, I would carry all of this to the lands of the dead,” Malgenia whispered into my ear.

We were pressed so closely together that only hair cut in half could have fit between us.

“That’s your world isn’t it? The one you wanted to make?” I asked, wondering which of us was holding themselves away from the other at this point.

It’s her, Responsibility said.

We’re ready for this, she never will be, Clarity said.

And how could she be?

Who did she have to face the end that was awaiting us? Vitor was lost to her and always had been. Who was it who would be with her beyond the last veil?

I had my answer. After a lifetime of failing to connect with them, I’d found my answer and together we could face anything.

“It’s the only world that can exist,” Malgenia said. “Life is transitory. The others sought eternity, without understanding that this is what eternity is.”

“You settle for far too little,” I whispered into her ear, sliding my lips so close to her that even an inhalation was a caress. “Your eternity is empty and silent. Simple. That’s not the eternity that we choose.”

“There is no more ‘we’. There’s only you and I. The world beyond us has burned away. Will burn away. Just touch me and all this power can render a true cenotaph to mark its passing. To hold its history. To sing of its beautiful demise.” And she backed away. Malgenia backed away from me?

To give me a choice?

No.

No that wasn’t it.

She was afraid.

Of me?

Why should she be afraid me? After I all, I loved her. Couldn’t she see that in my eyes? Hadn’t she felt that in my touch the last time we’d struggled? When I’d grabbed her by the throat and choked her until the last of her life had departed? Wasn’t that what she’d taught us love was?

Don’t be mean, Responsibility said, remind me how often our love had been expressed disguised as violence and anger. It was something we’d walked away from though, a mask we’d been able to let drop once we saw each other as we really were.

And saw ourselves.

The kissing had helped a bit too.

Okay, more than a bit.

We don’t want to move in cruelty. It will mar what’s to come, Clarity said and she was right.

I mean of course she was. She’s Clarity.

With a quick mental hug of my better halves, I let out a breath, let time move beyond the moment we were frozen within, and hugged Malgenia.

Which did not go quite how she’d been expecting it to.

To touch Malgenia is to die.

Which I did.

As I did though I took Vitor’s place as the fulcrum for the stolen centuries worth of power that was set to unravel the fundamental substrate of creation.

“No!” Malgenia screamed. “You can’t! It will all be for nothing!”

“It was all for this,” I said, embracing her tighter than ever. 

I had too much power and too much more was trying to surge through me. Death? Obliterating that would have been something that happened without my being even slightly aware that I’d done it. Godhood? What I was holding was something far more than any god could have wielded. 

That was why I needed Malgenia. In holding onto death, I held onto my mortality, onto myself.

“Let me go! Let me take this! You can’t do it alone!” Malgenia pleaded.

My voice was strange to me when I spoke. It wasn’t loud precisely, but it filled a volume which shouldn’t have been possible to fill.

“You are helping,” I said.

“And she is far from alone,” Beauty said.

“She never has been,” Inhibition said.

“And neither were you,” Reason said.

“We’ve always been with you.” A chorus of Deaths spoke, risen at last from their long slumber filled the space around us.

Beauty, Inhibition, and Reason were the ones who’d been the most present for me, since they were the most recent and the ones I’d known before their Assumption rituals, but there were so many others who’d been consumed by so many other Assumption rituals before us. 

Consumed but not lost, rather they were trapped within the weave of Malgenia’s power, locked in a dead, dreamless slumber until I happened to claim so much power that shattering the cords that bound them was impossible not to do.

They were my sisters and more. Parts of my soul, the scions of my lineage, strangers bound to me closer than blood could ever have allowed. I could never have known most of them, their lives beginning and ending long before I was born, but even so I recognized each and every one.

I needed an army to hold back to the flood of divine light, and they were more than ready to make their stand and hold the line, giving everything they’d ever been to buy me the chance to say the most important words I’d ever uttered.

“This doesn’t matter,” Malgenia said. “Even all you whoever ever lived, all of my precious Deaths, you are not enough. Not for this.”

“You mistook what I was,” I said, squeezing her tiny, frail form tight. “Not just before, when we fought and you let me win, but now, here.”

“You will unmake even death itself. There will be nothing. No rest for the departed and no history of their passing.”

“You would give them the world, wouldn’t you?” I asked. “The resting spirits. The echoes of those who’ve gone before us? Your world would be a monument to them. To all of us, since we would all be silently departed.”

“It will be truly eternal.”

“Do you think so?” I asked, and in the overwhelming light, I let my shadow unfurl from within me. 

Light banishes shadow.

Ultimate light banishes everything.

But my shadow wasn’t a part of everything. It was an error in the universe, a division by zero, an exception to reality. In Malgenia’s eyes I saw understanding bloom. Whatever world she made, the End of All Things would eventually consume, either the one she’d summoned or the one which filled the space of the concepts which withered away over time. 

With no living people, what would remain of the concepts that only the living could embody? Could music exist with nothing to play it and nothing to listen? Ephemeral concepts weren’t the only ones at risk though. Over countless aeons, even solid, unreasoning matter would cease its ringing and melt away into non-existence. 

“Everything ends,” I told her. “Everything. You showed us that. You defended it and made us the guardians of it. For the longest time I didn’t understand how important what you’d given us was.”

I drew back from her, still holding onto her, still dying over and over to keep the deluge of power from unmaking me.

“It’s change. A world where nothing ends, is a world where nothing changes. We die so many times, every day, becoming new people as we leave our old selves behind, bit by bit. With the power you and the other Neoterics assembled, you thought you could avoid that. Vitor, for all his experiments, never really wanted to change, he just wanted to become what he already thought he was. And you? You guarded death, even explored it but you’re afraid aren’t you? Letting go of all that you’ve been? When you haven’t had to change at all since you were a child? I know it’s terrifying. I know its what you want to avoid, what you want to be the master of, but this is your chance. You’ve been Malgenia. It’s time to let go. It’s time to become someone new.”

“I…I can’t,” she said.

“Then let me help you.” I had to look into her eyes. I had to let her look into mine. Her touch was killing me, but I had to let her see what had never been true before.

She was a monster.

She was a terror.

She had done unforgivable things.

I saw all that.

And I saw her too.

It wasn’t my purview to forgive her, but I could still open my heart to her. 

I could still offer her peace.

If she wanted to, she could have claimed the power of the Assumption Ritual then. Even with all of the Deaths standing together, even with my shadow to shelter me, we still couldn’t have stood against her.

Instead though she nodded, slowly, and dropped her hands from the embrace she’d been holding me.

“Goodbye. And thank you,” I said and kissed her on the forehead.

And I stopped dying.

Because Malgenia was no more.