Hailey

The main bar at the [Get Well Water Tavern] in [Sparks Junction] was pleasantly empty as the sun crested over the horizon. In her early adventuring days, Hailey couldn’t have imagined the [Get Well] ever being packed with less than a hundred people, day or night. No matter the season, the weather, or the time of day, there were always calamities to address, riches to quest for, and monsters that someone was willing to pay to have slain.

Of course that was all back in the [Fallen Kingdoms].

In the world that was shaking off its shadowy bedsheets and revealing the multi-hued forest valley below the tavern, adventuring was still alive and well, but the calamities had calmed down enough to let people catch their breaths a bit.

Hailey pulled up a seat to the bar and checked her [Coin Pouch of Holding]. They’d been running flat out to stop the world from ending for so long that she hadn’t even considered if she had the money needed to pay for her stay the previous evening, or to treat her team to the breakfasts they deserved when the arrived in a couple of hours.

Rather than any coins spilling out of the bag when she opened it, a number appeared in bright green digits. 

A large number to be sure, but one that was far below what her in-game gold balance had been. Comparing it with the prices on the chalkboard that was hanging behind the bar, Hailey saw that she was still comfortably wealthy, just not at the level of “corner the entire world’s market on cakes” if she chose to invest her fortune in pastry. If she wanted to, she could probably retire for life on what she had, provided she was willing to live somewhat modestly.

Or she could take a sabbatical for a year or two and pick up some new gear off the auction house at ‘buy it now’ prices. 

There were a lot of perks to the ‘retire for life’ option, but of the two, Hailey had to admit that she was more likely to go for the second. 

Or, if she was being honest with herself, her real answer would be ‘skip the sabbatical, get the gear, and loot some forgotten treasure hoard to pay for more’.

Assuming her party was up for all that.

They hadn’t talked about what would come after they saved the world, in part because none of them had expected to succeed.

Success had been a pleasant surprise, but it left open the question of who they were to each other. As a group that had been thrown together as the world was falling apart there weren’t longstanding ties that bound them. On the other hand though, they’d proven they could work well together, and that they could rely on one another even in the worst of conditions. 

Which unfortunately didn’t say much about how they’d handle working together when times weren’t quite so tough.

Hailey thought back to all the guilds she’d been in. Some had lasted a while. Others had dissolved to nothingness in only a few weeks or even days. There were a few commonalities to the long lasting ones, but ultimately it boiled down to how much energy people were willing to invest and just how compatible they were, neither of which was easy to guess at the outset.

Cambrell was the first to arrive, wandering into the tavern after a dozen or so other patrons had shown up. The serving lad directed him over towards the table off the main bar that Hailey had moved to.

“Expecting everyone will show?” he asked, seeing how many seats she’d reserved for them.

“More like hoping,” Hailey said. “Even if folks want to head off to do their own things, it’d be nice to be able to wish them well and exchange contact info in case we need it later.”

“Any more apocalypses coming?” Cambrell asked, taking the seat one away from Hailey to her left.

“I hope not,” she said. “All my special knowledge is basically obsolete at this point. The Consortium forces are either dead, in ruin, or freed from Consortium control. With the Fallen Kingdoms rising too, all the data I had on locations and points of interest is all old news.”

“You don’t sound too unhappy about that?” Cambrell asked, eyeing her steadily.

“I’m relieved and delighted by it,” Hailey said. “It was nerve wracking knowing that I could ruin everything if I said the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person. Plus, a new world means new things to explore, new dungeons to run, and new loot to find.”

“And new people to kill,” Cambrell said.

“Thinking about going back to your old job?” Hailey asked. “Or, wait, how would that work now that everyone can use the [Heart Fires]?”

“Quite well apparently,” Cambrell said. “Assassination business is booming since people feel like it’s okay to hire an [Assassin] for basically any reason at all.”

“People aren’t guaranteed to come back though,” Hailey said.

“Oh, I know. Doesn’t seem to be slowing anyone down though,” Cambrell said. “Or maybe that’s just the view I got from the guild’s office.”

“Easy millions for you then I guess, right?” Hailey asked.

“Could be,” Cambrell said and hesitated before adding, “Don’t think I’m going to take them up on it.”

“Got a better offer you want to pursue?” Hailey asked.

“I’m hoping so,” Cambrel said, nodding at the empty chairs around the table.

The serving lad brought over the plate of fruits and cheeses Hailey had ordered and the two of them had just started to dig in when Wrath Raven arrived. 

She strode over to their table without needing direction, pulled back the chair opposite Cambrel and plunked down into it, diving into the fruits without saying a word.

Hailey let her eat for a few minutes, noticing as she did the care with which Wrath                                   Raven was selecting and consuming the food. Wrath didn’t spend much time move from one piece to the next, but each bite was chewed and savored for a clear moment before she moved on to the next one.

“Did you want me to have them bring a meat dish over too?” Hailey asked, thinking that most [Berserks] she knew tended to eat like obligate carnivores.

Wrath Raven looked up, met Hailey’s eyes, and shrugged.

“If you want,” she said. “The fruit’s good too.”

Hailey signaled to the serving lad to bring another platter. When she’d ordered she’d been thinking of Earthly appetites but if there was one thing all [Adventurers] were capable of, it was packing away enormous quantities of food and drink, at least during those times when they weren’t starving themselves in order to reach an ever deeper level of whatever dungeon their were in.

Hailey was trying to work out how to ask Wrath Raven if she was staying when an unexpected-yet-delightful guest arrived.

“Oh, good, does this mean you’re sticking with us?” Glimmerglass asked, sitting down between Hailey and Wrath.

“Yah,” Wrath Raven said. “That okay?”

“Definitely!” Hailey said. With Wrath and Glimmer they had healing and off-tanking covered, and between herself and Cambrell damage dealing wouldn’t be a problem.

At least not for small party fights. They wouldn’t be able to tackle big battles without more help since none of them were decked out in the newest top of the line gear yet, and maybe not even once they were, not with just four of them.

“Hope that means you’ve got room for us too,” Mellisandra said. She arrived with a floating tray of various beverages while Damnazon had two kegs hoisted under her arms.

“And I’m hoping we brought enough ale!” Damnazon said. It was still well before lunch but Hailey recalled a bit of lore that mentioned [Half-Giant] physiology having a rather different relationship with alcohol thanks to their high resistance to poisons and toxins in general.

“For those without heroic-tier livers, we brought some [Exotic Juice Concoctions] from the [Bizarre Fruit Bazaar]. Supposedly the risk of accidental transmutation is low, but we did have to promise to inform anyone we gave them to that it’s not guaranteed that they’ll retain their current form,” Mellisandra said.

“Bah, they said best case the transformations only last about ten minutes,” Damnazon said and placed the two kegs beside her own chair and Wrath’s.

“You two look happy today,” Cambrell said, a sly smile stifled on the edges of his lips.

Damnazon sat down on the over-sized chair next to him, and Mellisandra slid onto her lap.

“We are,” Mellisandra said, snagging a piece of fruit and offering it to Damnazon.

Cambrell let a happy huff escape his lips and said, “surprised you two didn’t figure that out sooner. The whole world could have ended without you saying anything to each other.”

“I didn’t want to distract her,” Mellisandra said.

“And I’m, uh, kind of a chicken,” Damnazon said.

“You literally ran into one of the Consortium’s [Cleaving Machines], twice,” Hailey said.

“Yeah, but, that wasn’t anything that could really hurt,” Damnazon said.

 Which meant they had two off-tanks to work with. Hailey liked where this was going. High damage parties were always a wild ride. There was one problem though. If everyone else from their original party showed up, they’d have too many for just one party.

“That brings us to six so far,” she said.

“Six total I think,” Glimmerglass said. “I talked to the others and they’re going to try their hands at [World Walking].”

Hailey was both relieved and disappointed to hear that. She’d hoped their team would stay together, but she understood that lure that had called the others away.

[Adventurers] were driven to seek out new challenges, and new vistas. With the world reborn there were plenty of those in the [Risen Kingdoms] but the temptation to explore other, even stranger worlds was hard to resist.

She suspected in time they’d be back though. There was something special about the world that your heart called home.

The thought surprised her only in that it had taken her that long to put into words. She’d chosen the [Fallen Kingdoms] over Earth not only because she was needed in one far more than in the other, but because this was where she’d always longed to be.

Always who she’d longed to be too.

“That puts us a little short of a full party, is that right?” Cambrell asked.

“Not necessarily,” Mellisandra said. “I was talking to someone who’d like to join us if we’ve got room still.”

Hailey saw a man talking to the bartender glance over and notice their table, specifically Mellisandra and Damnazon.

Unfortunately she knew who he was.

“Oh my,” Byron said walking over to them, “I didn’t expect to meet you again so soon.”

“Him?” Hailey asked, her hands reaching for the hilt of her knives.

She hadn’t had any direct dealing with Byron but she’d seen him in the [High Beyond] and she’d read the minor bits of lore the EE dev team had developed for him. An arrogant bastard through and through.

“Oh, uh, probably not,” Byron said. “I’m only here because I saw the help wanted sign on the door.

“Were you able to get a room at the [Cozy Whale]?” Mellisandra asked.

“Yes. Thank you for recommendation,” Byron said. “It seems I can start here tonight as well, so allow me to return the gold you lent me.”

“Wasn’t a loan,” Damnazon said. “I got ten times that from a [Berserker] when I was starting out, so this is just paying it forward.”

“Thank you again then,” Byron said, sketching a small bow. “I’ll keep an eye open for the chance to do likewise.”

And with that he wandered off, troubling them no further apart from perplexing Hailey beyond words for a few moments.

She caught back up on the conversation when Mellisandra added a new person to the party channel she’d apparently setup between them all.

“Hi folks,” Feral Fang said. “So my old party decided to jump ship for a world of racing cars. Mellisandra you could use a warm body to fill your ranks though?”

“Uh, yes!” Hailey said, recognizing the name of one of the God-tier fishers who’d been instrumental in stopping one of the deeper apocalypses. “Where are you at now?”

“[Heliot],” Feral Fang said.

“Where’s that?” Cambrell asked.

“Currently it’s cruising over the [Amaranthine Scar]. [Heliot’s] a [Balloon City],” Feral Fang said.

“What’s it doing there?” Damnazon asked.

“Acting as a mobile [Adventuring Guild] base,” Feral Fang said. “The Scar got formed by one of the apocalypses that we got to a bit late so it runs from the [Risen Kingdoms] down into the old Fallen lands right on through to the [Sunless Deeps]. Nobody knows how big the dungeon is, or whether it’s multiple dungeons, but people are queueing up to find out.”

“Are there low level areas there?” Mellisandra asked.

“Oh yeah. It seems to start at level 1 and we know the [Sunless Deeps] can hit the level cap and beyond for raid content.”

“In that case, I’ve got one other person who’d like to join us too,” Mellisandra said. “If we don’t mind doing some power leveling to get him caught up?”

“I like that idea,” Cambrell, of all people, said. When Hailey looked at him quizzically he added, “This is a new setup we’ve got here, and, well, I’ve never run a proper dungeon before. Be nice to take it slow learning the ropes.”

“No arguments here,” Feral Fang said. “The Scar is so huge I think trying to rush through it would be madness.”

“Who did you have in mind?” Glimmerglass asked.

“I think that would be me,” a fledgling adventure said. Hailey looked up to find Mellisandra’s Earthborn partner Brandon waving a tiny greeting at them, somehow standing in the [Risen Kingdoms], the stat bar over his head proclaiming him as a level 1 [Paladin] named Sir Ton Tee.

Byron

It had been hours?, or days?, or weeks since his grand defeat. Byron knew one of those was right. Unless it was months, but, no, it couldn’t be months. He couldn’t have lost that much time. Not when he’d lost so much else.

Once he would have despaired at the idea of all that had been taken from him. His position, his wealth, he painstakingly curated collection of fine brandy. As he plodded along an ill defined path towards an uncertain destination though, all he could muster the effort to feel was gratitude that he’d managed to lose the things he had.

Well, except for the brandy. That truly was a tragedy.

The rest however? He could still feel the burn marks that seared his soul. He’d fought for those. The pain of his very essence being consumed the only thing agonizing enough to allow him to recall that he had an essence, an existence, that was distinct from the endless hunger and nothingness that had reached out and jumped inside him.

He hadn’t deserved that, he’d told himself, and he’d clung to that belief and wielded it as something less than a weapon. 

Hurting the [Oblivion Remnant] had never been an option. You can’t hurt something that isn’t there, no matter how much that cloud of ‘isn’t’ was puppeting you and making you do everything that you’d never wanted to do.

He couldn’t hurt his attacker, and couldn’t kill it, but, as it turned out, he could shape it. 

It was his mind the Remnant had poured itself into. His viewpoints and biases had provided the Remnant with the ability to understand and interact with the world on a level beyond simply eating it all. Those had been the tools he’d held onto. His attitude. His disregard. His overwhelming sense of self importance. They’d been what had saved him…

Hadn’t they?

Trying to steer his hijacked thoughts towards an outcome where he could be free of the corruption that had eaten his life had been Byron’s only option but since that had seemed like an impossibility he’d settled for at least trying to prolong his own tortured existence.

Then she had come along.

Tessa.

The one thing the Remnant seemed to fear.

No. That wasn’t right.

The person who’d given the Remnant the ability to fear.

Her presence had been a powerful lever to move the Remnant with, right up until the moment when it hadn’t been.

Byron had assumed that the final confrontation between the Remnant and its creator would end in death, despair, and destruction. That was likely the Consortium’s biases he’d acquired in the years he’d spent navigating their maze of treachery and ambition. They had served him well as long as he’d been surrounded by similarly minded people but they had left him ill prepared when someone chose a different path.

In the grand chaos that had followed the final Oblivion Remnant’s sundering and instantiation as a new and fully real being, no one had seemed to notice or care that Byron had all but crawled away from the assembly and began the solitary march he was still plodding along on.

They’d been in the [High Beyond] then. Some time ago. Somehow, he was on the surface of the [Risen Kingdoms] as his thoughts turned inwards, having arrived there some indeterminate amount of time later.

Had there been a portal?

There must have been a portal.

Except all of the portals had been sealed shut.

Or destroyed.

Thoughts in that direction led to the burned and still smoldering edges of his mind. The state of the portals was knowledge the Remnant had possessed, bits of reality and history that had inevitably poured into it, every bit stripping away its transcendence and grounding it in the world it was devouring. It had know what had happened with the portals. It had been there for their destruction. Hadn’t it?

Byron couldn’t be sure and had no wish to be. It wasn’t something that mattered to his current state of affairs.

He tripped and found himself on the rocky edge of a stream. It was a big stream. More of a river? He wasn’t sure. He was used to considering bodies of water smaller than oceans as being fundamentally inconsequential. 

The water was cool and clear and when it passed his lips became the single most important substance in all of creation.

With the few reserves of strength he hadn’t known he still had, Byron scrambled forward on his hands and knees until he was able to dunk his entire head into the water and drink, and drink, and drink.

He would have stayed there forever, or for the rest of his life which, granted, wouldn’t have been very long, if a pair of strong hands hadn’t hauled him back out of the blessed (if somewhat difficult to breath) flowing current.

“It’s a long run to the nearest [Heart Fire],” a woman who was at least twice as tall as he was said. “You weren’t trying to drown though were you?”

“Not as such,” Byron admitted. The idea had flitted through his head, but it wasn’t a good one. He’d fought too long and hard to give up in the face of no opposition at all.

“Oof, smells the you could use a bath,” the woman, Damnazon, said. “Want me to throw you back in?”

“We can do better than that,” a noticeably shorter woman, one only slightly taller than Byron, said. Mellisandra twitched two of her fingers in short, abbreviated gestures and Bryon felt a wave of sparkling energy pass over him.

When he looked down his clothes were repaired, and had the warm comfort of being recently pressed. Running a hand through his hair he found it bereft of twigs and dirt and the other unsavory things it had accumulated. He almost felt like a new man. Except he didn’t want to be a new man. He much preferred the old one.

“Thank you,” he said. “That was unduly kind.”

He hadn’t stopped to think about the words. They’d been the simplest and easiest reaction to the unexpected good deed. What they weren’t, however, was the kind of thing the old him would have said.

Which begged the question of where those words had come from.

“We’re traveling to [Wagon Town],” Damnazon said. “Is that where you’re heading?”

“I didn’t have any particular destination in mind,” Byron said, again being more truthful than he should have been.

Making plans like that would have meant grasping at an ambition.

Byron was done with ambition.

His careful dancing and clever scheming and desperate manipulations had all lead him to a ruin than only an unexpected and undeserved moment of kindness had saved him from.

Byron had never been a scholar, never excelled at any of the academic arts, and yet he was capable of learning, especially from his own past mistakes.

Particularly ones which had left him with injuries down into depths that he’d never known he possessed.

“You might want to tag along with us,” Mellisandra said. “We’re heading to meet up with some friends, but we can make the trip a lot safer for you until then.”

“Forgive me,” Byron asked, merely as a figure of speech. Forgiveness was laughably far beyond anything he could expect from the people of this or any other world. “From your regalia, I would have presumed you to possess the ability to teleport to the location of your choice directly. Why waste time on common foot travel?”

“We had some things to talk out,” Mellisandra said. “And our party wanted to visit their hometowns to make sure everything was still in order. [Wagon Town] was the most central spot to gather in.”

“Some of them are going to take a little while at home so we had a little time to kill,” Damnazon said. “Figured we’d scout the road between here out to [Storm Jammer Peak] and make sure there weren’t any monsters starting to move into the gap the [Wagon Town] guards had to leave.”

“That’s quite considerate of you,” Byron said, and meant it as a compliment.

Which was wrong.

Entirely wrong.

Where was the sneer? The condescension?

Where was the overwhelming sense of pride and superiority?

Hadn’t those been so integral to who he was that they’d preserved him from utter annihilation?

“Did you wind up breathing in some of that water?” Mellisandra asked. “You look a little green around the gills?”

Byron had never gone in for the sort of body modifications that would allow him to sprout gills or other body variations as he needed, but his translation implants handled the turn of phrase well enough to prevent any confusion.

“I seem to have misplaced some things,” he said. His gaze darting around the peaceful forest around them as though he might spy his missing arrogance somewhere and be able to stuff it back into a pocket before it got away from him completely.

“Were you robbed?” Damnazon said. “You looked pretty rough when we found you.”

“I suppose in a sense I was but,” and at this he couldn’t suppress a chuckle, “I’m afraid all I’ve lost is a variety of things I’m better off without.”

“Still, if they’re yours, I wouldn’t mind knocking a few [Bandit] heads in,” Damnazon said.

Byron chuckled again.

Why was he laughing? 

The absurdity?

Had his life become absurd or had it always been a joke and he’d finally woken up enough to be able to see that?

“There weren’t any [Bandits],” he said with a placating gesture. “Nor do I have any valuables to recover.”

“That’s a shame,” Damnazon said. “It’s been a while since we fought low level [Bandits].”

“They might not be so low level anymore,” Mellisandra said.

“Even better!” Damnazon said, raising her axe in a salute towards the road ahead.

Byron was briefly unsure if traveling with the two [Adventurers] really would be any safer than continuing on alone. Then it occurred to him that if he traveled at their side, neither they nor any other [Adventurers] were likely to stumble across him and decide that he looked too much like a [Bandit] or other miscreant to be allowed to remain in possession of all of his limbs.

“I thank you for your offer of protection,” he said and took a spot just slight behind them as they set off on the road Byron had been stumbling towards.

They’d walked for another hour or so, the two [Adventurers] chatting between themselves about a variety of topics. From the small furtive touches they were exchanging, Byron guessed they’d only recently decided to merge their enterprises.

Except that wasn’t right either.

It wasn’t how people thought. It was how the Consortium thought and the words felt foreign and ugly in Byron’s mind to the point where he had to resist spitting them out onto the ground.

The [Adventurers] weren’t ‘merging any enterprises’. They were dating. Or courting. Or any one of a hundred other local variations on ‘getting to know someone with whom you would like to be in a relationship with.’

Byron had never seen the appeal of relationships, though he’d always been aware of their power as a point of leverage and an intoxicant capable of dulling the sharpest senses.

The [Adventurers] did not seem to be intoxicated though. 

They seemed happy, and at ease.

And quite cute together.

Which was…was what? 

Not something he’d ever thought before? Not something he ever should have been able to think? Something he should have been oblivious to? Or afraid to recognize as having worth?

Yes. If he was the Byron he’d been then definitely yes.

Which begged an important question; was he not himself?

No. He’d had experience with being something that wasn’t himself already and these new thought and emotions weren’t that.

What had happened to him then?

Everything. Everything had happened to him.

He’d been stretched to the edges of eternity and had snapped back into a facsimile of his old state of being.

He’d become himself again, after being dissolved into nonexistence.

Except, he could never really go back to being himself, could he?

Not the old Byron. Not the one who saw ever world and word from only his own narrow perspective.

He’d been pulled apart and what had come back together, the bits that had survived that process, they were ones which had possessed the capacity for growth. Not the cruelty, or the false superiority, or the desperate demeaning lens through which he’d viewed everything and everyone.

Those were gone.

He wasn’t Byron-as-he’d-been. That entity had been destroyed. What he’d become was who that Byron could have been is the hungry parts had consumed themselves. If the raging narcissism had gazed on its own reflection and been devoured by it.

He wasn’t who he’d been. Who he’d been had led him to his destruction. Who he was had forced him to hold on and weather the ravages that still burned within him.

Both of those Byrons fell away into the past though.

They needed to be recognized and remembered but the person who mattered was the Byron who he yet be.

Once, ambition and pride would have cast the image of a great and renowned master of creation onto the Byron-who-might-one-day-be, but those leading lights in his life had crumbled as had his need for power and mastery.

In their place, Byron looked at the two people walking in front of him

The two happy people.

He wasn’t sure he deserved happiness, but that wasn’t the illumination they’d provided.

They’d stopped to help him for no reason other than they could.

They’d done something kind because they’d seen the opportunity to do so.

Was there any reason he couldn’t do the same?

Tessa and Lisa

As she packed her keyboard back into its original box, Tessa breathed in deeply, taking in the almost forgotten scents of her apartment. It was strange how new something so familiar could feel.

“So is it different than before?” Pillowcase asked.

It was. So very different. Tessa had never possessed an exceptionally acute sense of smell, but among the other perks she’d picked up, that seemed to have been included in the package. It wasn’t just the old scents that had changed though. It was the scents of the Clothwork Soul Knight who stood beside her rather than sharing a body with her. And the scents from the shower as the woman she loved indulged in the chance to clean up after all the lifting and moving they done. And the Vampire who was currently raiding her fridge for the leftovers from the take-out meals they’d had the night before.

Even taken all together though, there was something else different in the air. A freeing lightness that lifted Tessa’s spirits where she would have been prone to maudlin nostalgia.

She didn’t have reams of good memories to associate with her apartment. She’d gotten it after her last breakup and it had been little more than a place for her stuff and a place she could collapse into bed after a long and unrewarding day.

That ‘little more’ though? It was still meaningful, and she’d always been the sort to be sad at leaving even small treasures behind.

“I think I’m the one that’s different,” Tessa said, looking around at the sum total of her Earthly possessions. The boxes of clothes and books and tech and stuff didn’t really amount to much. Certainly nowhere near the mountain of loot she’d amassed in the Risen Kingdoms. She was glad to have them nonetheless though. For as much as she couldn’t claim to be the woman she’d been, both physically and mentally, that Tessa was as much a part of her as any other, and had been just as vital in ensuring her survival as anything other than yet another cosmic horror.

“I gather that, in and of itself, isn’t unusual though?” Lost Alice said, coming into the living room with a box of fried noodles and some chopsticks. 

Tessa paused for a moment to consider that before shaking her head.

“I’ve always been the odd one out, but I was always me. Inescapably so. There were so many times when it sucked to be who I was. I would have sold souls to get to be someone else.”

“Souls? Plural?” Pillowcase asked.

“Well I wasn’t going to sell my own so I always figured the rate would be higher.”

“I’m curious that you choose to let Pillowcase go in light of that,” Lost Alice said.

“She didn’t,” Pillowcase said. “We’re still as connected as we were before.”

“Mostly,” Tessa said. “We don’t have our easy telepathy when we’re in different bodies. But Pillowcase is right, we’re not exactly separate either. Not when we can do this.”

She gestured towards Pillowcase who was standing on the other side of the small living, offering her hand as though for a dance. When Pillowcase returned the gesture, they flowed into the center of the room like a shower of sparks to reform together as Pillowcase.

“I thought we weren’t supposed to do that here?” Lisa asked, towling her hair dry.

“Non-Void Speakers should be careful with it,” Pillowcase said. “Mostly because it’s easy to get stuck like this.”

“The rebonding is pretty intense, so it can be a bit sticky,” Tessa said. “And theoretically there’s a chance that it doesn’t work and the two personas wind up Disjoined.”

“Disjoining only seems to be possible though in cases where one side is forcing the bond on the other, and even then the far more likely result is a bonding failure and Backlash,” Pillowcase said and visibly released a breath she hadn’t needed to take. With her exhalation she fizzed back into light and reformed as herself and Tessa.

“I don’t think any of us need to worry about Disjoining, and getting stuck isn’t really a problem for Pillowcase and I because I can just Fracture us apart again if we need to separate,” Tessa said.

“Like for carrying the last of these boxes?” Lisa asked, glancing with a smile at the small stack of cardboard containers they had left to haul down to their rental truck.

“I figured four of us would have an easier time polishing off the left overs too,” Tessa said. “I’m supposed to the leave the apartment in ‘move in condition’.”

“I thought your landlord got eaten by a Lava Pterodactyl ?” Lost Alice said.

“That was the Director of IT where I worked, my landlord was eaten by a Magma Mole,” Tessa said. “Someone else will be moving in here though, probably, so leaving the place in good shape seems like a decent thing to do.”

“A decent thing and significantly less like to get you eaten by the next Magma Mole that comes through if the statistics I was reading are even vaguely correct,” Lisa said.

“How much do you think this world is going to lose its mind when people figure out that there was a serious bias in the casualties of the apocalypses?” Tessa asked.

“Oh I think this place lost its collective mind a long time ago,” Lisa said. “I suspect the responses will range the usual gamut though from people who are chill about it to ones who either form up a new religion or go into a frothing rage over it.”

“That sounds like something it would be a delight to stay and watch over,” Lost Alice said, rolling her eyes at the thought.

“I do feel a little bad for abandoning everyone here to that,” Tessa said, fighting to keep the frown out of her voice and off her face.

“I’d feel bad too,” Lisa said. “Except that we’re not abandoning them. You know we can’t make the whole world listen to us just because we’ve got some good ideas.”

“Well, we did talk to Gaia for a bit. That’s kind of like having the world listen to us, isn’t it?” Tessa asked.

“And she’s going back to sleep why again?” Lisa asked. “Because it’s supposed to be up to the people here what happens next right?”

“Yeah. and I suppose if anything catastrophic does come up, we can always come back if we’re needed,” Tessa said. “I guess I’m not worried about that though. The big catastrophes are easy to see and and clear to respond to. It’s the little things. The day by day moments of keeping things on track so that the next day can be better than the last one. It feels like if we take our eyes off that, everything’s going to start backsliding immediately.”

“I don’t believe that will happen,” Lost Alice said. “Not on either world.”

“You think things will be calm and peaceful on Earth and in the Risen Kingdoms?” Pillowcase asked.

“Not at all,” Lost Alice said. “There will be strife, and problems, and plenty of work to do in rebuilding. Both of our worlds, and all of the others we know of, have something new in their favor though.”

“The other worlds,” Tessa said, seeing what Lost Alice was getting at. “They can act as pressure release valves. People won’t feel as trapped in bad situations anymore since they won’t be. Not to the same extent at least.”

“Most people aren’t World Walkers though. So hopping off to another worlds on a whim?” Pillowcase said.

“True, but there will be gates that anyone can use,” Tessa said.

“Gates that people will definitely fight each other for control of once they understand what they are,” Lisa said. “Unless my sister nips that in the bud.”

“Wait, Rachel is still teaching people how to World Walk?” Tessa asked.

“Yeah, why, that’s not bad is it?” Lisa asked.

“That’s fantastic!” Tessa said. “If that becomes common enough, the Earth will embrace and people moving back and forth between world and a lot of worlds should get really easy to get to, at least compared to how it is now.”

The image of a sky full of different planets with people jumping between them as columns of light filled Tessa’s mind’s eye.

As much as she couldn’t imagine humanity turning its back on the petty cruelty and irrational divisions that it had clung to for millenia, she equally couldn’t see a place for those old hurts in the future that awaited them all.

She was different from who she’d been, and not because of the class and level she’d won. The apartment she stood in had been half of her life, and it was so small, but she hadn’t been. Her imagination had carried her to distant worlds long before the Fallen Kingdoms had taken her bodily to the High Beyond. 

In stepping out of dreams and onto another world in reality though, the horizons of her life had altered on a fundamental level.

“So you’re still okay with leaving then?” Lisa asked.

Tessa breathed in and knew that she was. The wistful, nostalgic part of herself let go of what she’d had in her apartment, in her city, and in her world.

She could carry forward the things she valued, she could retain her connections with the people who mattered to her, but she couldn’t pretend that she would fit back in her old life.

“Are you still willing to come with me?” Tessa asked, knowing the answer but wanted to hear it anyways.

“Always,” Lisa said.

It was just as nice to hear Lisa say that as Tessa had hoped. Part of her wanted to jump for joy still, unable to believe she’d fall in love with someone who was willing to love her back. The rest of her was kicking at her own backside to do something she’d been considering for probably longer than she should have been.

“How about you two?” Tessa asked instead, nodding towards Pillowcase and Lost Alice.

“For us it’s going home, sort of, so of course we’re going back,” Pillowcase said. 

“Though I’m not sure we’ll be following you exactly,” Lost Alice said.

“What do you mean?” Lisa asked.

“I thought I’d take this one,” Lost Alice indicated Pillowcase, “and start searching for some nice spots for the reception.”

“What reception?” Lisa asked.

“I think they mean this one,” Tessa said, causing Lisa to turn to her with an expression caught halfway between puzzlement and hope.

In her outstretched hand, Tessa held a simple, unenchanted ring. It had no mystical effects bound to it, it hadn’t been forged by a master craftsman, and there was no secret history hidden in its heart.

Tessa knew exactly where the ring had come from.  She remembered the day her Grammy had passed on the engagement ring she’d received and worn all her life.

“What’s important is that you find someone who makes going through the bad times better,” Grammy had said. “Doesn’t matter who that is, just that they’re good for you and you’re good for them.”

Lisa was that person. Tessa knew it to the bottom of her soul. It wasn’t just that they’d been through so much together, it was how they’d been through it and who they’d been for each other. Lisa was good for her and, after everything, Tessa was starting to believe she could be good for Lisa too.

Even if that meant apparently giving her a heart attack.

“This is an offering,” Tessa said, her careful speeches blowing like autumn leaves out of her mind as the words her heart want to say tumbled out of her lips. “I love you. I love you and I’ve loved for you for so long now. But this is still an offer you can refuse and I won’t love you any less. I want to be with you, I want the world to know that I love you and that I am yours. Always and forever. If you’ll have me that is. Will you? Be my wife?”

Lisa, who’d been struck speechless and frozen, let out of a short gasping breath before conjuring a similarly plain ring to her hand.

Tessa watched, similarly stunned, as Lisa hurriedly but with perfect dexterity slid the ring she’d produced onto Tessa’s ring finger.

“Mine!” Lisa said and wrapped her in a hug before pulling back and smothering Tessa with kisses. “Mine. Mine. Mine!” she said between each kiss, moving from from Tessa’s lips to her neck and then her ears.

“That’s a yes then, right?” Tessa asked with a chuckle, to which Lisa clasped her tighter and returned her kisses to Tessa’s mouth.

“Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes you goofball,” Lisa said and they were both crying and laughing and at some point Lost Alice and Pillowcase had vanished to carry the last boxes downstairs.

There would be people to tell and plans to make, but for that moment, Tessa longed for nothing more than to keep holding her fiance close so she could lose herself in the love she saw shining in Lisa’s eyes.

Unknown and Undecided

“What’s your name.”

The Creator had asked that question and, because she was the Creator, his creator, she was able to compel him to answer.

They’d stood past the end of the world, a co-joined pair of goddesses holding the newly reborn planet in their hand, faced by an army of unkillable, nigh-unto godlike [Adventurers] and none of that scared the former Oblivion Remnant as much as the three words his Creator had spoken.

“I don’t know, I can’t decide on one. I don’t know what I want to be.”

“It’s okay,” Tessa had said, her eyes filled with a compassion that didn’t make any sense at all. 

He’d tried to kill her. He’d tried to destroy everything she ever was and everything she’d ever existed in. She was supposed to want to destroy him. She was supposed to want to erase him completely. To give back what she’d taken and return him to the nothingness he’d once been.

Except, she’d seemed happy about what they’d done to each other.

And despite every chance at letting go of the world and accepting blissful peace, she’d clung tight to her lives and chosen to keep existing as she was, over and over again.

“You can be undecided on that for as long as you need to be,” Tessa said, “but you should let Byron go. He can’t help you with the rest of what you need to do. Are you ready to do that?”

“What do I need to do?”

“Become the person you choose to be,” Tessa said.

“How?”

“Like this,” and she placed her hand on his chest and said a single word.

[Fracture]

There wasn’t any pain, but there was a sense of loss. One moment he had a resilient shell wrapped around himself, layers of contempt and ego and self-assuredness which kept so much of reality safely at a distance. The next all that went away and he was alone. 

Entirely alone.

“Steady there,” Unknown said, catching him before he could topple to the ground.

No one caught Byron but that was okay. It wasn’t a long fall and he was fairly disoriented  so he barely noticed the impact.

“Why are you helping me?” It seemed like a valid question to ask his predecessor, especially given that he’d tried rather seriously to eliminate Unknown and was under no compulsion to not attempt that again.

Except he wouldn’t.

His Creator had been right. Something had grown in him. Something ugly and repugnant and terrible and disgusting. Something that was glad to exist. Something that answered the endless hunger inside him. Something that he wanted to protect, even from himself.

“Because you needed it,” Unknown said and stepped back, letting him stand on his own feet.

Because he had feet now. They weren’t stolen from Byron. They weren’t the fading memories of appendages which had been erased from existence. They were just feet. Normal, everyday feet.

Just like all the rest of him.

He wasn’t what he had been. Not anymore.

Without any aggression or animosity, Tessa and those with her had slain the last of the Oblivion Remnants and converted his remains into someone else.

His last transformation.

“It’s not,” Unknown said. “You’ll keep changing. This isn’t what you will be, it’s just what you are now. 

“Every change brought misery though.”

“Some of them still will,” Tessa said. “We don’t always change for the better. But we always can. It’s up to you now. You get to pick who you are and if you don’t like it, you get to choose to be someone different. The question you need to work towards answering is just who do you want to be.”

He thought about, and say the goddesses gazing down on him with faint amusement.

“I just need to work on it? I don’t need to have an answer now?”

“Most of us spend our whole life finding that answer,” Tessa said.

“Then I think you’ve already given me my name. I’ll be Undecided for now, and I’ll try to figure out who that is as I go.”

Way and Jin

Sitting on the shore of a lake of fire shouldn’t have been the most relaxing of picnic spots but with her head cradled in her wife’s lap, Way couldn’t imagine a more restful spot in any world.

“That felt like a pretty close one,” she said, accepting a tiny [Sugared Delight] that Jin offered her.

“We had more safety nets than it seemed but I’m glad none of them came into play,” Jin said, nibbling on the next treat herself.

“I suppose Tessa could have woken up,” Way said. “That would have fixed things in a hurry. I’m impressed she resisted it so well.”

“She really likes this world, or these worlds I guess now,” Jin said. “She was one of the last resort options though. I was thinking of some more ‘out of context’ solutions. Like the other worlds in this constellation coming together to create a solution.”

“Isn’t that more-or-less what happened? We had spaceships flying over the Fallen Kingdoms helping prevent the apocalypses here,” Way said, lifting her head to get a better view of Jin.

“Yeah, but that was all their doing,” Jin said. “Or almost all. We did help a little by training up a few World Walkers, but they all figured out how to do it on their own first. We just accelerated things a bit.”

“Ah, you didn’t want us to be the ones to merge things together or they’d have gotten stuck like that,” Way said. “We’ve left worlds is much worse shape though and called it a win.”

“True, but I didn’t think you’d want to leave this particular place that bad off,” Jin said, offering Way another [Sugared Delight].

“You’re thinking about staying, aren’t you?” Way asked. Normally she and Jin conversed via a mode of speech that carried far more than words could convey. While they were inhabiting a reality, especially one which had a recent brush with Oblivion, they dialed their more impossible aspects down and enjoyed existing as only a little more than the women they appeared to be.

“You are thinking of staying, I’m thinking of joining you,” Jin said, daring Way to correct her.

Given all the multi-world calamities that had been unfolding, Way hadn’t considered the notion of hanging around afterwards. Was that what she really wanted to do, or had she become too immersed in the role she was playing? Was Oblivion’s Daughter a side of herself that she wanted to explore further or just a fun mask she’d worn in order to see the end of the world from a ground level point of view?

“Is that something you would really want to do?” Way asked.

“Stay with you? Uh, I’ve literally ripped worlds in half when the wrong sort of people tried to prevent that,” Jin said, looking ready to do so again if she needed to prove her love and devotion.

“I mean stay here. This world isn’t all that much like your own,” Way said.

“True. The Earth-analog here is lower tech and definitely blander with no super heroes running around. But there are other worlds in the constellation that are like my old stomping grounds,” Jin said. “And, it’s not like we’ll be stuck here. We can go home and see my family and yours whenever we want. We won’t even upset this world if we pop in and out.”

“I thought we set it up that the worlds would spin back to their original positions though?” Way said. “Eventually that’ll cut off cross world travel all together.”

“That’s what we had in mind,” Jin said. “Turns out the locals have some other ideas.”

“They brought the world’s back together?” Way asked. “Do they want another breakdown of reality?”

“No, they’re being more clever than that. Kari was going to step in to throw up a few walls at first but she decided an experiment was in order instead.”

“Let me guess, turns out she likes what they’re doing?”

“I think you will too,” Jin said. “The World Walkers are searching for the natural routes between the worlds.”

“The what now?” Way asked.

“A lot of the worlds in the constellation have magic and/or tech sufficient to allow for cross-world transits. Even better than that though, there are natural points of congruency and counter-congruency that they can use as transfer points. Basically the worlds in this constellation have always been linked together, even before the Remnants began gobbling into the Earth’s core reality. The World Walkers are expanding on those connections and making them more real in the places where they won’t be in danger of breaking the worlds they join together”

“Oh, that makes sense. Those connections are how the Nightmare Queen got here in the first place.”

“Her and a lot of others,” Jin said. “I looked into the afterlife situation in this constellation and it’s seriously complicated. The neat part of it is that lots of people who’ve ‘passed on’ wound up taking their next lives on other worlds in the constellation, either in new bodies or in replicas of their old ones, usually with a fair bit of their previous memories intact.”

“And that’s why you want to stay?” Way asked. “Or why you think I want to stay?”

“I think you want to stay because this world, this constellation, will be good for you,” Jin said. “We’ve lived a lot of lives but they’re usually in the service of some goal. Sure, sometimes we just hit up a nice resort world for a vacation, but we don’t put down roots while we’re on vacation. And, more importantly, we don’t form connections and really become part of the story itself.”

Way sat up and twisted around to face Jin.

“You will always be the only connection I truly need,” she said and watched Jin blush despite all their years together.

“But not the only connection that you deserve,” Jin said. “You have friends here, and it’s okay to love them as well. We’ve been on amazing and wild adventures, but I don’t think we’ve given ourselves a chance to be part of a community like you are here.”

“We do have friends though. Kari, and Beth, and Astra as three fairly obvious examples,” Way said.

“We do. But the community of Dream Lords and Dream Walkers is a fairly small one, and our interests wind up being somewhat esoteric,” Jin said. “I love the friends we have now, but I don’t think they’d want us to shutter ourselves in with just them. Kari’s got her whole menagerie for example, and Beth and Astra have their College of the Unseen crew that they normally socialize with when we’re not dragging them off on escapades like this.”

“So you’re saying I should get some friends too so I’m not left out?” Way asked.

“I’m saying you fit in here. This world works for you and so do the people you’ve met. Unless I’m all wrong. I can only say how things look from the outside. If you tell me that this world isn’t really your jam and you’re fine with heading out to bigger and better things, I’ll be just as close to your side there as I will be here,” Jin said.

Way paused to drink in Jin open expression.

Way had once been lost to emptiness, a vessel of destruction far more efficient and successful than the [Formless Hunger] had ever managed to be. Even then Jin had believed in her, had loved her for who she was and who she could be. Part of her had wondered if it was the excitement of her impossible nature that had drawn Jin to her, but on some level she’d always known better.

Here was Jin offering her something adjacent to the ‘normal life’ she lost when Oblivion had first claimed her. A life where they wouldn’t be exceptional. A life where they would have friends, and enemies, and hardship, and joy. A life they would only step away from together, so that despite the unfathomable power they could draw on, they wouldn’t. At least not until they both decided to.

Neither of them could ever be fully ‘real’, but this would be close. Or close enough.

“I think…I think I would like that,” Obby said. “But if I get to keep being me, who will you be?”

“I thought I’d try being someone new too,” Dreamlit Wayfarer said, “Though I think you might need to power level me just a little bit.” In her hands she brandished a Level 1 [Apprentice’s Wand], the same tool all 1st level casters began their journey with.

Grenslaw and Ryschild

The fighting was over, and yet the war had just begun. Grenslaw was glad to be getting back onto familiar territory. Ryschild was delighted to have more reasonable constraints on troops could be moved and apportioned. Thanks to them both, the mood in the [Apocaypse Revocation Office] was one of relative harmony and good natured complaints, despite the fact that at least half the nations of the [Risen Kingdoms] seemed intent on treating the post-apocalypse landscape as open land rush.

“This is all your fault,” Grenslaw said, offering Ryschild the carafe of [Dwarven Deep Mountain Brew] coffee.

“Is it?” Ryschild asked, accepting the carafe. “I would love to think so, but it seems an immodest claim, and likely unsupportable. If anything, credit likely belongs to Her.”

He didn’t have to give a proper name to ‘Her’, only Azma could hold that distinction as far as either one of them were concerned.

“Insofar as she entrusted this work to us? Yes, I suppose,” Grenslaw said and took a small pull of [Dwarven Deep Mountain Brew] before it could get cold and solidify. “That would make you merely the one immediately responsible for all this, rather than ultimately so.”

“Even there, I cannot help but feel that some portion of the responsibility lies on your shoulders as well,” Ryschild said, swirling the coffee and seeing strange patterns emerge from the ripples. The [Deep Visions] the coffee sometimes induced hadn’t been a problem yet, but the longer one relied upon it for the wakefulness it provided the more profound they became.

 “In what sense?” Grenslaw asked. “I’d rather not claim credit for work that was not of my own doing.”

“Yes. The grades from other’s works are always inferior aren’t they?” Ryschild said, offering a smile to go with the old, familiar joke between them.

“With one notable exception,” Grenslaw said, a nod and a return smile completing the memory.

“In answer to your question though, while it’s certainly true that no one would be massing for war had my strategy deprioritized the survival of the non-adventuring forces, it was your logistic and deployment plans which translated that strategy into an actionable reality,” Ryschild said.

“That was little more than basic workmanship,” Grenslaw said. “Without a flawless foundation, the entire enterprise would have come to ruin.”

“Flawless? Certainly not. I am fairly certain that She will be able to point out more than a few cracks in said foundation. I see several myself with the benefit of hindsight.”

“Such as?” Grenslaw said, sounding fully offended at the notion that anyone, Ryschild included, would cast aspirations on the plan they had implemented. A plan which had, in point of fact, saved a world that was not at all their own.

Or, not at all their own yet.

“The obvious failing was, of course, not sufficiently accounting for the current state of the [Risen Kingdoms] that would be as the result of my strategy. With armies of the [Great Kingdoms] mostly intact and the [Lesser Kingdoms] having borne the brunt of our initial invasion, it was relatively simple to predict that the [Great Kingdoms] would take the opportunity to grow someone what ‘greater’ at the expense of their former neighbors.”

“I distinctly recall you mentioning that in our initial planning session,” Grenslaw said. “Also, I feel compelled to point out that given that other constraints we were placed under this turn of events is still trending towards the most optimal outcome possible.”

Kashiren, one of their [Senior Communication Staff] members, paused on hearing that. He’d brought them a [Secured Crystal] with updated battle summaries and was decrypting it into the [Grand Tactical Table] Grenslaw had assembled.

“You had constraints beyond ‘save the world’?” he asked. “Are you telling me each of you did this with one hand tied behind your backs?”

“A closer analogy might be with one hand severed and the wound unstaunched so it could bleed out freely,” Grenslaw said.

“But we were facing the end of the world. No, scratch that, we were facing many different ends of the world. How did you have slack to account for anything but ‘fix things no matter what it takes’?”

“Fairly simple,” Ryschild said. “The ‘fix things’ part of the mandate negates the ‘no matter what it takes’ rider all on its own. We were already operating under many different constraints in terms of how we could approach solving the situations which had arise.”

“The key,” Grenslaw added, “was that we were able to leverage the constraints placed upon us to become strengths we could use to augment the whole enterprise.”

“I’m afraid you’ve lost me there,” Kashiren said.

“Me too,” one of the other nearby staff members agreed.

“The constraint we were requested and required to labor under was to preserve as much of the Fallen Kingdoms population as possible,” Ryschild said.

“Had we been able to consider the value of the various factions and group based on their capacity to contribute towards the effort of ending the apocalypses, many other paths would have opened to us,” Grenslaw said.

“In all likelihood however utilizing those safe and more conservative strategies would have resulted in the loss of sixty five percent of the global population,” Ryschild said. “The remaining thirty fix percent would have been the ones most optimized for fighting apocalypses and would have been at their peak strength for doing so.”

“That has a rather significant drawback however,” Grenslaw said.

“Yeah, two thirds of the world winds up dead,” Kashiren said.

“There are many warfare doctrines that would consider that a reasonable and acceptable casualty count given the situations that needed to be resolved,” Ryschild said. “There would have been far deeper problems that simply the diminished population however.”

“For example,” Grenslaw said, “a world full of apocalypse fighters is rather lacking in other essential professions.”

“Even more critically than that, had we attempted to reinforce the power of the strongest by sacrificing the weakest, we would have changed the internal tenor of the armies. Fighting for one’s own survival can yield optimal results, but with the challenges we faced, optimal efforts would have fallen far short of what was needed.”

“We needed people to go beyond their limits, to rise above what they were in the moment and grasp onto something greater,” Grenslaw said.

“Saving each other was a far more inspiring endeavor than allowing tragedies to compound,” Ryshild said.

“Grim resolve played a role too, to be sure,” Grenslaw said. “Those who died were still tragedies. That was unavoidable.”

“What they were not however, was victims,” Ryschild said. “Those who chose to fight against impossible odds? Their futures weren’t stolen from them. They spent all their tomorrows to buy the hours, minutes, and seconds we needed to ensure tomorrow came for those they left behind.”

“I wonder what they would think of the world now?” Kashiren asked. “It seems a poor memorial to them for so many nations to be intent on spilling the blood they died to save.”

“Some would be disgusted, some would be in favor of it, some would be unconcerned so long as the conflict didn’t affect anyone these cared about, and some would probably rise from the graves to protest the aggressive actions in a spectacularly violent manner,” Grenslaw said. “While it is tempting to canonize them as saints, those who fell in defense of this world were still just people, with all the variety and foibles personhood breeds.”

“Also, there won’t be any bloodshed,” Ryschild said. “Thanks in large part to my colleague.”

“That is certainly not true,” Grenslaw said.

“Yeah,” Kashiren said. “Take a look at the latest intel on the troop positions. We have sixty seven armies posed to invade forty three territories as soon as local conditions allow for a full offensive advance. By this time tomorrow, the entire world will be plunged into open warfare.”

“Sixty seven? I’m impressed,” Ryschild said. “I’d only projected forty two would be in place by now.”

“Your projections were correct,” Grenslaw said. “You were counting [Grand Armies]. The armies in this report count the fissioned segments of the [Grand Armies] as their own forces.”

“An understandable mistake,” Ryschild said.

“It’s going to a bloodbath around the world whether its forty two or sixty seven,” Kashiren said. “And this time we don’t have most of the [Adventurers] around to mitigate it.”

“Oh, they won’t be needed,” Grenslaw said. “Or, not for this at any rate.”

“They could at least cut down on some of the dying though, couldn’t they?” Kashiren asked.

“There won’t be any dying,” Grenslaw said. “I wasn’t objecting to that part of Ryschild’s claim, only that I should be allowed to take credit for it.”

“But…how? That doesn’t make sense,” Kashiren said.

“Trust us that from an external perspective, this entire world has only a passing acquaintance with sensible behavior,” Ryschild said.

“Accepting that was, admittedly, harder than it should have been, but once we got past that particular mental hurdle, working with the world’s nature rather than against it became relatively straightforward,” Grenslaw said.

“Uh, I’m still lost. What did you do?” Kashiren asked.

“It’s not what we did, which is why I feel I don’t deserve the credit for what is about to occur,” Grenslaw said.

“To provide some clarity,” Ryschild said, taking pity on the increasingly confused Kashiren, “In about ten minutes the [Pax Deus] will begin. It’s a rather complicated effect, and one which I suspect will be refined significantly in the weeks to come, but the simple statement of its intent is that no combat or assault of any kind is possible between those sapients who choose to accept the favor of the [Reborn Gods].”

“To begin with all sapients are opted in to the [Favor of the Divine], though renouncing it is as easy as saying so with a true intent in your heart,” Grenslaw said.

“What does having [Divine Favor] mean?” Kashiren asked.

“Aside from being protected from violence by other sapients, it’s also a necessary token for beneficial divine spells to affect someone,” Ryschild said.

“And It enables access to the [Heart Fires], even for non-adventurers,” Grenslaw added. “Apart from violence, people will still die to environmental hazards after all. On this world however they will no longer stay dead from such misadventures.”

“There is a wide variety of non-sapient ‘monsters’ as well, especially in the world’s hidden places,” Ryschild said. “The [Pax Deus] is meant to remove the perils of a population which has just been subjected to a cataclysmically large traumatic event. There is no shortage of other perils in the world though.”

Kashiren blinked.

And blinked again.

And fell off the seat he’d been sitting on when he tried to rise.

“Are…are you telling me, the wars are over? War itself is over? Wait! Are you telling me you have the GODS THEMSELVES on your payroll now?” he stammered as he tried to regain his footing.

Ryschild and Grenslaw both stood and offered him their hands to help him rise.

“Payroll? No of course not,” Ryschild said.

“We expect our budget to be slashes quite thoroughly once word gets out of the new global effect.”

“Okay. Okay, that makes sense, but, uh, why are you still here then? Shouldn’t you be off celebrating or something?”

“This is how we celebrate,” Grenslaw said flatly. Ryschild nodded agreement with perfectly seriousness, before they both cracked a smile to show they were joking.

“We’re using these last few moments before our irrelevancy is discovered to facilitate some logistical issues that will be time consuming to work out later.”

“What sort of issues?”

“The [Lesser Kingdoms] need resources to aid in their recovery,” Grenslaw said. “Thanks to Ryschild, the armies of the [Great Kingdoms] will be delivering those resources in the supply trains for their armies.”

“Some of the supplies will make it to the armies of course,” Ryschild said. “Don’t want to starve them, not after the fine work they did for us, but the majority is being directed to the cities and towns that need it the most.”

“People are going to love you for this,” Kashiren said, awe writ plain on his face.

“Oh, I very much doubt that,” Grenslaw said. “We’re the horrible Consortium invaders who used our ill gotten influence in order to undermine the [Great Kingdoms] so that we could take them over as soon as the [Pax Deus] ends.”

“Okay, yeah, there’ll probably be some of that too,” Kashiren said. “Still. Wow. It’s going to be hard to top this. Or impossible maybe. So what are you going to do now?”

“I suppose this is the point where we turn and kill each other before the [Pax Deus] can make that impossible,” Ryschild said, drawing an ebony dagger from a sleeve that should not have been able to hide it. “It is the Consortium’s modus operandi and certainly inevitable between any two people of equal capability.”

“Indeed,” Grenslaw said, drawing a similar dagger from a similar sleeve. “If we don’t kill each other, we’d likely be stuck together forever.”

They stood at attention for a moment before raising the daggers in a formal dueling salute.

“It was always going to come to this wasn’t it?” Ryschild said.

“For the longest time, I wasn’t sure,” Grenslaw said.

“And now?” Ryschild said.

“I am quite certain of this now,” Grenslaw said.

“Good,” Ryschild said and relaxed out of the dueling stance.

Grenslaw relaxed at the same moment and both gave secret smiles whose meaning was known only by the other.

“To forever,” Grenslaw said and drew a rune on Rychild’s offered palm with the tip of the knife.

“To forever,” Ryschild said and drew the same rune on Grenslaw’s palm, sealing the [Eternal Pact] between them.

Pete and Starchild

The blasted runway had been destroyed long before anyone currently living on After Earth had been born. Under a purple and red sky though it still managed to capture a spark of the lost magic humanity had once held. At its far end, the skeletons of a mighty metropolis rose to catch the fading sunlight, age blackened metal and windows long since shattered to dust no longer glinting in the last rays of the day but still lit well enough to frame the memory of a skyline. 

At the nearer end of the runway was were the shadows lurked. Dark, ever growing things which cloaked the strange new vines and bushes of After Earth. The transition to a more natural setting should have been comforting but the vegetation which crept over the land was as much circuitry as plant life. 

“We should not be out here. Not now. Not ever,” Kevsmot said twisting the new Disintegration Lance in his hands like the world’s longest worry bead. 

When Pete had found him, he’d been trying to fighting building sized mechs with a rifle from the Before Earth. Getting the team fully equipped with the top end gear After Earth had to offer had been Pete’s first order of business and, happily, the caches he’d known about from the game had been mirrored in the actual After Earth as well.

A lot of his knowledge from the game had come in handy like that. Their current mission though benefited from none of his out-of-context knowledge. Not when what he needed was a miracle.

“It has to be here,” Pete said, motioning Kevmot and the others to hold their position. “This will only work at a boundary.”

He’d been with them for all of four days so far. Four days of standard Earth Time that is. As it turned, time on After Earth was a little different than on Pete’s Earth. After Earth’s days were 48 hours long, due to the weird science calamity that had transformed it into what it was  but they passed in just 2 hours of Earth time due to some weird dilation effect between the two.

The net result of that was that it had been almost four weeks of weird subjective time since Pete had left his Broken Horizons team and wound up fighting for the future of humanity on After Earth. 

There’d been victories and losses but none of them had worried him as much as waiting at the end of a runway, sheltered by the remains of a rotted and broken down Piper Cub, hoping beyond hope that something ‘not-of-this-world’ would be able to tear through the fabric of reality and manifest before him.

“I’m reading a power surge,” Kevsmot said. “A really big one.”

That sounded perfect to Pete’s ears. The power surge he was expecting would blow this world off its (metaphorical) axel.

“Multiple targets confirmed and closing from the city,” Kevsmot added and that did not sound perfect to Pete’s ears. That was not at all the direction the power surge was supposed to be coming from.

“What? How? From the city?” Pete whipped around and saw the bright sparks of afterburners blazing the darkness away from the ruined metropolis. “No! We cleared District 6 out yesterday! There aren’t supposed to be any machines left within a 20 mile radius of this place!”

He had fought so hard. They all had. The fifteen of them who were left were more a collection of wounds bound together by medkit gel and sheer tenacity than actual specimens of humanity anymore but the one redeeming grace had been that all their suffering and injuries had cleared them a safe refuge at last. They had desperately needed a spot they could regroup, rest, and replenish themselves, and they’d won it. He was sure of that.

So why was the sky rapidly darkening even though the sun was still hours from setting? 

Pete looked around for the cover that would shield them. The cover that had to be nearby. The cover that he certainly hadn’t walked them all away from on a foolish hope.

“Good news,” Kevsmot said, starring at the scanner. “They’re only Mark 3s.”

A Mark 3 Doombringer was manageable by a well trained squad, but Pete’s heart knew better than to unfreeze. It wasn’t going to be just one Mark 3 in the attack wing.

“How many?” he asked.

“Multiple,” Kensmot said, the nervous titter in his voice presaging some kind of fundamental breakdown.

Pete yanked the scanner from his hand.

It said “Mult.” in place of a number. 

One possibility was that the scanner had finally broken thanks to the miserable conditions they’d subjected it to. Glancing at the shadowed cityscape, Pete knew that wasn’t the answer. Beyond a hundred active contacts the scanner was simply incapable of reporting reliable results.

He laughed. It was infectious. They’d come so far, beaten a frankly ridiculous number of death machines, and this was going to be the end of their road. So close and yet still a world away from hope.

“Well folks, it’s been a fine run. Can’t say I’m happy dying here with you, but if they scrambled this many units against us, you know we had to have hurt Control One pretty damn bad,” Pete said, a wonderful calm falling over him. 

“Hey, upside, if Control One’s this pissed off at us, there’s not going to be anything left when those things are done to turn us into Revenants,” one of the troopers said.

That was a blessing. Pete wasn’t sure if his consciousness would wind up bound to a cyber-zombied version of his body and had no interest in finding out.

Raising his Disintegration cannon to his shoulder, he took aim at the rapidly closing machine, picked a target and began firing. He considered trying to world hop away at the last moment, but After Earth was a tech setting, not a magic one and he didn’t have the tech to make a jump out. His only hope had been to import some of the magic he’d used to reach After Earth in the first place and the dark and silent forest behind him suggested that the gap between the worlds had widened too far for that to happen again.

When the missiles arrived their aim was as lousy as ever. The first five fell so far short that Pete was only thrown ten feet back by the blast. Through the soot and smoke though he heard the next wave coming though. The familiar scream of the missiles tore through the air but this time there was no cover to hide behind, and no jammers to force the missiles off course.

This time there was only a bright light and then silence.

As deaths went, it wasn’t by any means peaceful but it was quick enough that Pete didn’t feel any pain.

Or he shouldn’t have. 

He’d been dead before.

A lot in the [Fallen Kingdoms] in fact. 

He knew what being dead felt like and it didn’t involve abrasion burns from being pitched across a rough patch of broken asphalt. Nor did it involve additional explosions. 

Or battle cries.

He blinked to clear his vision. Something was very wrong.

“I’m sorry, we would have been here sooner but the transit spell was blocked by something on this side,” the voice of an angel said. 

Or something was incredibly right.

“Starchild? Starchild!” Pete was on his feet despite rather more bloodloss than he could account for and hugged her for all he was worth.

A small army stood behind her, Specifically Lost Alice’s original guild, the [Army of Light], and around them all the dome of an [Unbreakable Aegis Shield] flared with brilliant light as thousands of rounds of ammunition slammed into it to no avail.

“Why don’t you take care of the the folks here,” Cease All said. “We’ll handle the bots out there.”

Pete let Starchild go and stood there slack jawed.

In his wildest dreams he hadn’t been able to hope for more than being reunited with her. The sum total of his plan had been ‘have Starchild get to After Earth, have her ferry people to literally any other world, end of plan’, and instead she’d brought a fighting force that was capable of taking on a hundred Mark 3 Doombringers like they were swatting a swarm of gnats.

“[All Life’s Embrace],” Starchild said, noticing the grizzly stomach wound Pete had acquired, and he felt every wound he’d ever experienced vanish as the high tier [Druidic] healing spell left him roughly twice as resilient as he’d ever been.

The spell spread out as Starchild maintained it, touching each of the members of his After Earth troop, and whether they were still living, hovering on the edge of death, or recently deceased, brought them all back up to as perfect physical condition as he was.

“What…how…who?” Kevsmot spoke the whole troop who were staring at the seeming goddess who, Pete noticed, was converting the forest around them from a techno-organic nightmare to a lush and almost disturbingly vibrant nature preserve.

“I think I mention I had a surprise I wanted to show you?” Pete said. “Well, here she is.”

“Only thanks to you,” Starchild said. “And almost not soon enough.”

“You’re timing was perfect,” Pete said. “How did you get the [AoL] to come with you though?”

“A lottery,” Starchild said and at Pete’s quizzical look. “We couldn’t take that many people and there were a lot of volunteers.”

Pete blinked again. Maybe he had died and this was what heaven looked like? Except After Earth’s heaven was a data storage center and it definitely couldn’t replicate what was happening around him.

“You look like yourself again?” Starchild asked, bringing his thoughts back to the present. “I was expecting to have trouble identifying you.”

“Oh, yeah, in the game this world is based on you play a fairly blank slate character and there’s no real customization options, so I’m just me here I guess,” Pete said. “A bit tougher than the regular me. And I know how to field strip a Disintegration Cannon in twenty seconds, but otherwise nothing special.”

“I’m pretty sure ‘nothing special’ is not even in the same kingdom as the truth, but it’s nice to get to see the regular you again,” Starchild said. “I was afraid I’d have to fight for you with your alternate self from this world.”

Pete chuckled, “it sounds like you ran into some of my other characters in the Fallen Kingdoms…huh, why doesn’t ‘Fallen Kingdoms’ sound weird anymore?”

“Because they’re the [Risen Kingdoms] now,” Starchild said. “And, no I haven’t managed to find any of your other selves in there yet.”

“I’m not surprised,” Pete said. “I don’t think we’re the same as Lost Alice and Pillowcase were.”

“Because we have our own memories?” Starchild asked.

“Yes but no,” Pete said. “I was thinking about it after I got here and wound up like this, with no ‘other me’ here at all, and how you weren’t ‘another me’ either, not like Pillowcase and Tessa seemed to be. They were the most obvious case because we saw them switch back and forth a lot, but some of the others like Lost Alice and Rip Shot were the same, I think. More like two different expressions of the same person than fully distinct beings. Pillowcase was Tessa and Tessa was Pillowcase, they were just different points of view I think?”

“But that’s not us?” Starchild said.

“I don’t think so? I mean, I’m not a metaphysician, I’m really just a gamer with a silly imagination, but with you it feels like we really are two distinct people but we make a greater whole as a result. Kind of like rather than one times one equaling one, we’re one plus one equaling two, or maybe even more.”

“Because together we’re greater than the sum of our parts,” Starchild said, her gaze going distant as she considered the idea.

“That and I don’t think it’s limited to just us two,” Pete said. “We clearly have the strongest bond at the moment since we’ve spent enough time together for you to do this.” He gestured to the army that she’d brought to After Earth. 

The army that was smashing through the largest horde of Doombringers that Pete had ever seen assembled.

He liked that army he decided.

“And the others then? Your earlier characters?” Starchild asked, some dim nervousness fading from her eyes.

“I think we can share the same kind of bond with them,” Pete said. “My characters have never been ‘me’, but they’ve always been my friends. The people I wanted to explore strange new worlds with, or fight alongside, or just hang out with.”

Starchild wiped at her eyes.

“I don’t know why, but that helps somehow,” she said. “I think I’ve been afraid this whole time that we hadn’t joined the same as Pillowcase and Tessa did because I was lacking somehow, or it was too uncomfortable for you to be seen as me.”

“Absolutely never,” Pete said. “Being you would be amazing beyond belief and I would jump at it in a heart beat except for one thing – if I was you, then you wouldn’t be. We’d just be me together and I’m so, so happy that you’re free to be the person you want to be, because you’re awesome in ways I never could be.”

“I’m glad you’re you too,” Starchild said. “Though I must confess it has been somewhat lonely not hearing your voice when I needed someone to talk to.”

“I think you saw just how much fun I was having without you,” Pete said. “Bleeding out on a runway gets zero stars from me, would not be blown up by death robots again.”

“Well if being blown up by machine isn’t your favorite passtime, what would you like to do next?” Starchild asked.

Pete looked up at the stars burning above the ruined world.

“Explore,” he said. “I’ve played a lot of games, and made a lot of friends. What do you say we go find them all.”

“I became a [Druid] because the [Wilds] called to my heart,” Starchild said. “And I can think of no more exciting wilds than the worlds you can lead me to.”

Marcus

Marcus stood in a ruined wasteland, the smoking remnants of once great buildings cast down around him as far as he could see.

“You know, the bay looks pretty nice like this,” he said, taking in the stark beauty of it all.

Normally ruined cityscapes were synonymous with mass gravesites. There were very few methods of wrecking a modern city thoroughly that didn’t involve massive fatalities. The ruins before him though held no ghosts. 

Or no new ghosts at least.

“You know I didn’t use to be able to see ghosts,” Anna said, as a parade of spectral figures passed by them. “What do you think they’re doing?”

“Admiring the view?” Marcus guessed. “[Gaia] said that most of them spend their time doing things they missed out on in life. Can’t imagine the last time when any of them would have had a view like this available.”

“It still feels unreal that we’re not marching along there with them,” Anna said. “When you straight up vanished with that monster I thought we’d reached the end of the line.”

“From what I gather we came real close. Very ‘cut the green cord one second before the bomb blows’ kinda thing,” Marcus said.

“What was it like being on the other side of thing?” Anna asked. 

“Ever been to Niagra Falls?” Marcus asked. “It was like being at the bottom of that. You have this sense of this massive, constantly moving thing and you are so, so small in face of it.”

“So not so different from here then,” Anna said. “I thought living through a few earthquakes meant I could handle natural disasters like a pro. Turns out I was not right.”

“To be fair, there wasn’t anything even vaguely natural about the disasters you lived through,” Marcus said. Behind him the ‘Egress Entertainment’ sign that had been mounted over the buildings main entrance lost its battle against gravity and clanged to the ground.

“I suppose not,” Anna said, wrapping her arms around herself. “Or about the rebuilding.”

In the distance, a gleaming spire of quartz glass rose into the sky as a parade of faerie winged creatures danced in a triumphant circle around it. From its base, flowering vines sprouted, enwrapping the spire in a myriad of colors.

“I gather we don’t have that long to enjoy treats like that,” Marcus said, nodding towards the building.  “The worlds are already settling back into their comfort zones, so all the magic we picked up from everything colliding is going to ebb away and leave us nice, and normal, and boring again.”

“I don’t think we ever were any of those things before, or that we ever will be either,” Anna said with a chuckle.

“Yeah. We’re never going to go back to what we were,” Marcus said, searching for some twinge of nostalgia for the ‘old days’ and coming up surprisingly empty.

“Would you really want to?” Anna asked.

A gravity in her tone made Marcus turn to her. They’d been casually chatting up till now, waiting for one of the Egress Entertainment IT staff members to find a truck or bus they could use to head to Las Vegas so they could connect with Anna’s team. In the wake of the Earth’s near destruction, the two teams, along with many others, had found themselves the nearest custodians of the dwindling gates between the worlds.

Where the Egress Entertainment servers had once stood there was only severely flattened rubble, and rising above it, thirteen wondrous gates to the [Risen Kingdoms] and various points on Earth (Las Vegas not being one of them, unfortunately). One of the QA leads had come up with the idea of cross-pollinating the teams so that the attempts to understand the gates, which seemed to be composed of code to some extent, would have as many talented perspectives as possible to draw on.

There was another idea lurking behind Anna’s eyes though. Marcus caught a glimpse of it and shuddered, though whether out of longing or fear he wasn’t at all certain.

“Would I really want to what?” he asked, knowing what her question really was and what his heart’s answer would be. Hearts were stupid things though, and denial rose as a shield to buy his brain precious moments to think.

“Go back to what we were before,” Anna said. “The long nights, the lack of respect, the endless whining from the executives and the customers?”

“You paint such a rosy picture,” Marcus said. “Are you sure you weren’t working on our team?”

“Am I wrong? For any game shop? Or software company at all?” Anna asked.

“There are better places,” Marcus said. “You just need to get the right boss.”

“And then hope they don’t get fired, or leave because they can’t deal with their higher ups,” Anna said.

“Maybe this is our chance to built it back better than it was?” Marcus said.

“Maybe. Probably even I guess,” Anna said. “And we know people will be doing that. I mean, you’ve heard the stories right?”

Marcus knew exactly which stories she was referring too though he didn’t know if he could actually believe them. 

There had been fatalities during the apocalypses. Hundreds of millions of people were dead across the globe, but not randomly as it should have been during a worldwide calamity. No, from the reports that Marcus had seen the Angel of Death had played favorites quite strongly. Prisons still held plenty of people but certain sections of them hadn’t fared well. Billionaires, as a class, were nearly extinct, as well as the ruling parties and their supporters in many countries across the globe. Smaller scale problems hadn’t been overlooked either. Crisis centers for domestic violence, hotlines for all sorts of violence, and even calls for the police (those of who were left) were showing a pattern that spoke to the most predatory and harmful members of the population having been effectively deleted from existence.

That didn’t mean the world was in perfect shape, or that the people who’d been victimized and abused were magically good to go with their lives, but it did seem like a more hopeful place to start rebuilding from than Marcus had ever expected he would see.

“Do you not think that’s a good thing? Assuming those stories are true?” Marcus asked.

“I think it’s a fantastic thing,” Anna said. “In fact I think without that the Earth would be empty before the end of the day.”

“Because everyone would jump at the chance to go to one of the other worlds that wasn’t full of enormous assholes?” Marcus said.

“There’ll always be people we don’t like on any world,” Anna said. “The key, I think, is being able to find a place where you can be who you most want to be.”

“Is that what we do?” Marcus said. “Make places where people can be, at least a little bit, someone else?”

“You’ve been there though. You know what its like to actually live it rather than just imagine it. So that’s what I’m asking. Would you go back to what we were? Could that really be enough anymore?”

“The gates are closing though,” Marcus said.

“If what we had was good enough, then we should let them. If going back to the lives we lead is where we can find our selves, then we might as well walk away right?” Anna asked.

“Yeah,” Marcus said, drawing a deep breath for what was coming next.

“And if it’s not? If the worlds out there hold something precious?” Anna asked.

“Then someone needs to keep them open. Or find a way to cross over even without them,” Marcus said and as he spoke, all the denial in him fell away. With a smile he offered Anna his hand. “Would you like to go on a bit of an adventure?”

“I thought you’d never ask!”

Claire

Walking through a new hospital wasn’t an unfamiliar experience for Claire. She’d worked in three different states in her nursing career so acclimating to a new facility was almost old hat.

Of course those hospitals had been ones where she was an official staff member and none of them had been research hospitals.

“Excuse me? Can I help you Ms…?” the nurse at the central station wasn’t quite sure what to make of Claire, or rather wasn’t quite sure what to make of Lady Midnight. Vampire’s were exactly common at Earthly hospitals even if fiction had them buying or stealing blood from blood banks as an alternative to killing random people.

“Yes. Can you direct me to any of your research staff. I have a limited window of power here, and I’d like to use to provide the data we need to eradicate a disease or two.”

“Oh, of course,” the nurse said. “Please follow me.”

That was not the response Claire had been expecting, and a hundred counterarguments died unneeded on her lips.

Instead, she followed Nurse Gaylor into the elevator and road up to the 5th floor with her.

“I’m not the first one to think of this, am I?” Claire asked as they passed the 3rd floor.

“Thankfully no,” Nurse Gaylor said. “We’ve got a central data clearinghouse running in Stuttgart that’s coordinating efforts from people like you.”

“That’s…that’s excellent,” Claire said, stunned at what a worldwide effort backed by magic and ultratech science would be able to accomplish.

“I’m hoping it puts me out of a job to be honest,” Nurse Gaylor said.

“Me too,” Claire said. “I was working at Conroy General before all this stuff started.”

“Really? Oh that’s fantastic! A lot of the people showing up to help are new to actual medicine. You’ll be a big help there.”

They exited the elevator to a scene of oddly controlled chaos. Whiteboards were everywhere. Autoclaves were running at a fever pitch. Microscopes seemed to be strewn out as far as the eye could see.

“Another one?” someone said the moment Lady Midnight stepped off the elevator.

“Yes, and she’s got nursing experience!” Nurse Gaylor said.

“Oh thank god!” Doctor Kevins said. “We got a new assignment in five minutes ago and everyone’s tied up on the other projects.”

“What other projects?” Claire asked.

“Cures,” Kevins said. “We’re finding cures for things that we didn’t even think could be cured.”

“Cancers?” Claire asked.

“Nearly wiped out,” Kevins said. “The first couple hundred people that we had show up were quite adamant about eradicating every form of cancer we knew about. We’ve made more progress in the last hour than we made in the last century.”

That was far beyond what Claire had expected to hear. She’d been hoping to help the science leapfrog ahead by a few years to maybe a decade at most, but the best projections she knew of put unlocking full cures to most cancers as either unattainable or decades away still.

“How?” she asked.

“Analyzing [Remove Disease] spells has yielded us cure after cure after cure. Especially when that analysis is done by nanotech swarms that can write the information on the effect and suggest non-magical analogues directly into our brains.”

“That’s…” she was tempted to say ‘impossible’ but far too much of her experience argued against that word having any meaning at all. She also remembered the lore from the Crystal Stars game where players could pay for ‘Instant Skill Upgrades’ for their characters. In game it was just a mechanism so the players didn’t have to wait a realistic period of time when their characters improved in their abilities, but drawn into the real world it had become a copying machine for miracles.

“Which other diseases do we have cures for?” she asked, trying to imagine what might be left for her.

“Lots,” Dr. Kevins said. “Heart disease is a thing of the past now. Same with three different forms of Chronic Fatigue. Oh, and Alzheimer’s? Full and complete recovery. In fact we have treatment for nearly all forms of Traumatic Brain Injury too.”

“Wow,” Claire said, feeling a bit woozy on her feet. “What do you have me then?”

“You missed Malaria by about ten minutes, but I just got in a test pack that we’re hoping will unlock the common cold, specifically the coronavirus variants.”

Claire imagined a world were no one ever got another coronavirus. That sounded like a world she wanted to see.

Yawlorna

Dealing with the end of the world had been terrifying beyond measure. Yawlorna had been intimately aware of the razor’s edge they’d walked on and how close to absolute annihilation they’d been. It had taken a one-in-a-lifetime effort to hold back the hands of the [Armageddon Clock] and she was reasonably sure that if the situation was to occur again, the dice could easily fall in the other direction.

Despite all of that however, she was still praying for another apocalypse to arise.

“People wondered why I kept trying to take over the world,” Xardrak said from the comfy insides of his prison cell. “That expression right there? The one that says ‘for the love of the dead gods, please let this world burn to a cinder so I can stop dealing with this bureaucracy? That’s where it started.”

“The gods aren’t dead anymore,” Yawlorna mumbled as she flipped to the a new page in a stack of forms as thick as her torso.

“Ah, that’s right,” Xardrak said. “Good for them. I suppose we have them to thank for this bright new world that’s around us.”

“Not exactly,” Yawlorna said, letting the paper drop back onto the stack.

The University claimed nothing could happen until the reports, and waivers, and testimonials, and clearance forms were all properly filled out and reviewed. There were deadlines and penalty clauses and late processing fees that were already mounting up, but from what Yawlorna could see it was all just a delaying tactic, where everyone at the university was trying to pass the responsibility for the debacle of the ‘slight trouble’ the research team had encountered onto someone else while at the same time retaining the foremost rights to data the survivors of the research team were able to produce.

“I suppose you had something to do with it too, no?” Xardrak asked. “The tales I’ve been hearing are difficult to accept but the more I poke around the more confirmations I’m discovering.”

Yawlorna had only partially been listening but Xardrak’s last statement had caught her attention.

“How are you poking around?” she asked. “I thought this cell was supposed to be impervious, even to you?”

“Oh, it is,” Xardrak said. “Exceptional craftsmanship, even if its not my own. Is it designed to allow for communication though and [Million Seeking Eyes] I left around the world are still quite able to show me what’s transpiring, well, more or less everywhere.”

“Everywhere?” Yawlorna have him her most dubious expression. Spells rarely lived up to their grandiose names, though if anyone was going to be the exception to that, Xardrak was clearly the most likely candidate.

“Well, no, to be fair I still haven’t quite made sense of the journey you described to the other world, or was it worlds?” Xardrak asked. “Also, I’m reasonably certain that no spell cast from here could reach there.”

“How far can you reach?” she asked. Her desire to ask for some precision targeted [Fire Balls] was strong, but Yawlorna guessed that particular temptation would remain safely out of the bounds of possibility.

“I can’t blow up your University for you,” Xardrak said, reading her expression with perfect ease.

“How about small and specific parts of it?” Yawlorna asked, mostly joking. Mostly.

“Alas, no,” Xardrak said. “The arcane connections between the realms would fray and snap if that much magic was sent down them. Also the core [Arcanophysics] of your world are likely different enough from this world’s that a spell matrix for a [Fireball] from here would express itself as a shower of rose petals or something equally useless over there.”

“Probably better that [Fireballs] are off the table,” Yawlorna said with a wistful sigh.

“If I may, two questions occur to me,” Xardrak said.

“Why aren’t I having someone else do this? Or just return these things with nothing filled out and see if anyone ever notices?” Yawlorna guessed.

“Oh, no, those are easily answered,” Xardrak said. “You won’t ask anyone else to do that work for you because you lack the requisite cruelty to inflict such suffering on those who put their trust in you, and you won’t return the pages unprocessed because you wish to ensure a favorable outcome for those you are responsible for.”

Yawlorna wanted to object. She could be cruel and uncaring. 

Couldn’t she?

By omission, or when emotionally compromised? Certainly.

On purpose though? Merely to further her own ends? No. Even the thought made her feel slimy. She supposed Xardrak was essentially correct, or at least enough that arguing against him wouldn’t serve any useful purpose.

“What did you want to know then?” she asked, glad for the distraction, but dreading how much it was going to push off getting everything sorted out for her crew.

“First, you are doing all this work on behalf of your crew, in order that they can return home, and retain a place of honor, correct?” Xardrak asked.

“It’s more a matter of ensuring they retain their academic standing,” Yawlorna said. “If they can be reseated as students, they can submit papers that will revolutionize our world’s understanding of virtually everything. Their names won’t be lost and discounted if they are officially recognized, even just as students.”

“It’s a noble endeavor to preserve their legacies,” Xardrak said. “One thing though; have you asked any of them what their feelings on the matter are?”

“Have I what?” Yawlorna said. “Well, of course, I mean that was the whole point of their coming on the expedition.”

“That was the point of the expedition when it set out,” Xardrak said. “You, and they, are no longer those people though. Your experiences have changed you, quite literally in many cases. Before you rebuild their fates for them, don’t you think you should ask your crew what they might want those fates to be?”

Yawlorna tried to speak, but no words came out for a long moment. She wasn;t just stunned by the question, and the face that it had somehow never occurred to her to consider it, she was reeling from the notion that Xardrak had eyes and ears all over the world and she knew, she just knew, he wouldn’t have asked her that question if the answer wasn’t one he already knew to run contrary to Yawlorna’s expectations.

“What’s your second question?” she managed to stammer out after another moment.

“A much simpler one,” Xardrak said. “Why did you come to see me? Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the company. Spying on the world is interesting enough, but it loses a bit of its luster when you can’t join any conversations. Or correct people when they’re clearly wrong! That would be another reason I kept trying to take over the world.”

“I…” Yawlorna began and paused. She wasn’t sure she wanted to say the words she’d been thinking out loud. It would make them too real, commit to them too much, maybe?

“I want to learn more,” Yawlorna said, the decision to move forward almost making itself for her. “We spoke of [Immortality] but that’s not the power that lies at the heart of this world. Is it?”

Xardrak laughed, a kindly tone to his chuckle.

“No, [Immortality] can be as much a burden and a curse as a gift, and over far less than ‘endless time’ it becomes both,” Xardrak said.

“It still seems nicer to have than not, but that’s not what I want to focus on anymore,” Yawlorna said. “I want you to teach me what you know about the [Heart Fires].”

Xardrak’s eyes burned bright in a sort of merry twinkle.

“And what do you believe the [Heart Fires] has to offer beyond [Immortality]?” Xardrak asked.

“Me. Or may I should say it as ‘Me’s,” Yawlorna said. “We’ve seen [Adventurers] rebuild their bodies from gas and dust. That’s simple with the [Heart Fires]. Even I can do that now. But there’s more to it than just remaking who we are. We can make ourselves into all of the other people who we are too.”

“And who is it that you would want to be so very badly?” Xardrak asked.

“Everyone,” Yawlorna said. “I like who I am, I like who I was, but there are so many other people I’ve dreamed of being. So many other lives I’ve imagined living. I want to learn what they’re all like. I want to meet those versions of myself and see what they can tell me about who I really am, and who the people around them really are.”

Xardrak glanced at the pile of papers.

“That’s not something you’ll be able to do back on your homeworld,” he said. “The magic of the [Heart Fires] only works here, on this world.”

“I know,” Yawlorna said. “I’m not filling any of those out for myself. I’m…I’m staying here while the others go back.”

Xardrak looked like he was suppressing a chest full of mirth.

“You should really talk to your crew,” he said.

Cease All

The [Army of Light] was dissolving. Not out of any animosity, or even a desire to form a new guild. People just wanted to explore.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Cease said, “but there’s a whole new world right here!”

“And it’ll be here when we get back,” Kozmos said. As one of the leaders of the [AoL] guild, Cease had expected him to take the guild’s dissolution the hardest, but he seemed to be one of the people the most excited about it.

“But it’ll already be explored by then,” Cease said. “They’ll probably setup gift shops outside the bosses lairs.”

Kozmos laughed at that. “Oh wow, can you imagine?”

Cease glared at him.

“It won’t be like that,” he said. “And if it is? All the better that we didn’t waste any time on it.”

“But we could see it while it’s all fresh and new. We could be [World’s First] for like a thousand different things,” Cease said.

“We’re not a [World’s First] guild though,” Kozmos said. “We never have been.”

“Yeah, I know, but we did so much! We saved the world. Like a dozen times over. Shouldn’t that count for something?”

“What? Of course it does!” Kozmos said. “This place will always be a home for us, and the [Guild Hall] will always commemorate all the greats we’ve played with.”

“But none of you will be here anymore,” Cease said.

“Come on now, we’re not all going. There’s a bunch of people who agree with you. They want to stay here too, for now at least.”

“A bunch? We’ve got like half a Raid team left, and some of them are already talking about running with some of the new guilds that are being put together now that we can talk to players from all over the Earth.”

It was an unexpected boon that while two Earthly players might have no shared languages, their [Adventurer] counterparts all spoke the common tongue of the realms, so a North American player partying with someone from China and someone from the Middle East became far easier.

“You could always come with us?” Kozmos suggested. “There are so many other worlds out there. Everything from books, and movies, and other games, and even wilder stuff.”

“I know, that’s problem,” Cease said. “There’s so much out there now, you’ll all scatter. What’s the point of going with you if none of you ever see each other again?”

“You graduated from school before the internet was really a thing, didn’t you?” Kozmos asked.

“Technically, no,” Cease said. “The internet’s been around since the 80’s.”

“I know, I was graduating around then too,” Kozmos said. “And I remember how all my friends promised to keep in touch. We’d write letters and get together for reunions, and everything.”

“And then none of that ever happened.”

“Exactly correct,” Kozmos said. “But that was then. Nowadays? You ‘friend’ all your classmates on social media and you follow their lives in excruciating detail basically forever.”

“So we’re going to be excruciating to each other?” Cease said with a small laugh.

“Almost certainly,” Kozmos said. “And I’m looking forward to it. I want us all to go out there and scatter into a hundred different worlds because I want to hear the stories of all those places. I want to imagine places I’ve never imagined before because I get to see them through one of my friends eyes. My friends who I am not going to lose track of this time, and who I will be reuniting with because we did more than pass a few tests together. We saved the damn world, no, the damn worlds. All of them, and that’s not something we’ll ever forget.”