 
# Where It All Begins

By Matt Dymerski

Copyright © 2019 by Matt Dymerski

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Art within by Mariah Long

Cover by Jacqueline Christine Miller

#

# Where It All Begins

Two versions of Noah Fulmer sat quietly on a black scaffold, dangling four boots in vast emptiness while their gigantic buckyball of interconnected transmorphic spheres slowly rotated in a vast space framed by countless colliding moons. Slumped upon a tremendous span of scaffold rods behind them lay several billion members of the Second Tribe, all purposely asleep, all waging war in the realms of sentient dream, where no version of Noah Fulmer could follow. That was the curse of mental immunity.

Far below, past the massive fractal ruby array whose antigravity field was beginning to dig into the crust proper, the Earth—or at least, the Earth that local humanity had called home for the last two years—glimmered darkly with molten pain.

"Interesting," commented the first Noah. "There's a balancing effect delaying the inevitable. As the realities rip apart in this region, their molten Earths are pouring into this one, making it bigger and heavier."

The other Noah nodded. "Giving us more time before the competing antigravity field causes this Earth to explode underneath us."

The two looked at one another, both thinking what had more or less become a Thompson Doctrine mission statement: balance Armageddons against one another, and therein find survival.

"Curious. If it didn't happen exactly this way, we'd already be dead."

Which one of them said it out loud? It didn't matter.

Beside them, a Second Tribe woman awoke with a start. "Goddamnit, died in the dream!" Quickly, she slumped over and closed her eyes to return to dreaming.

"We could watch them, you know," said one of the Noahs. Uncomfortably, he flexed the extra-dimensional bio-machinery attached to the core of his being.

"We should," said the other Noah, watching a crumpled invisible satellite orbit past with Venita still bleeding and dreaming in the wreckage. That cloaked satellite had been the final straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. One last desperate plan to survive that should have worked— _would_ have worked—had been foiled by something absurd and impossible. No one knew what the satellite was, or why it was here, but others had seen similar distortions in the sky at times throughout the last few years. It was not a new object. It was possible it had been a stumbling block on the road of Fate since before the New Exodus itself. "Even damaged, that satellite is still hard to see. I suspect there's more going on here than we'll ever understand." He studied the wounded Venita from afar as she orbited past. "We should support our esteemed leader any way we can."

"Yes." There were more Noahs spread throughout the billions of dreamers, and, as one, the combined Noah collective focused its attention toward a higher plane of thought, working together to create an array capable of viewing what those sleeping around them were experiencing at that very moment. "Let's look for her."

\---

Series-kneeling below a statue of God, Zemithaug contemplated his own existence for a span of three limbic pulses. Here, on this solitary moon drawing a thin line through the darkness between galaxies, life had evolved in combat with itself. His ancestors had survived generationally and incrementally through mutations of form, and thus he himself had a sinuous chitin-covered body and eight bristly legs. This form was all he had ever known. But God—looking up at it, being looked down upon in return—God was a fish.

The oceans had dried up ten thousand years before. Why, then, had worship of that form survived through the ages? God, named Scebie by those that came before, did you ever truly exist? Why did you look like a fish when we looked like this? Or did we once look like you? Did you create us in your image and then... forget about us?

Zemithaug knew himself to be an unkind person. He was the third most powerful individual in this hemisphere through having the third seat at the Round Debate, but he had done many unkind things to achieve that power. Deep down, he believed this to be due to his abandonment by parents he had never met. He looked up at Scebie, wondering, conflating, imagining; his reverie in that chapel of the high keep flattened smoothly into an awareness of his surroundings as he began to hear a sound.

The curious thing about that—his ancestors had not found much value in the ability to hear, and thus no one currently alive actually could. There were vestigial ears similar to those of the creatures of flight that remained aloft by starlight, but he had never once heard a sound himself until that moment.

No, that was wrong. He had dreamt of hearing 'sounds' a few times before. Once, as a child. Once, as a youth. Once, as he lay in private regretting his actions after seizing the third seat at the Round Debate. If he could just _hear_ , Zemithaug sometimes thought, then everything would change.

And on this fourth occasion in his life, in this particular dream, he finally did.

Instinct conveyed to him more than he should have logically understood. The sound was, first and foremost, _approaching_. Second and secondmost, it was _angry._ Somebody, somewhere, was—there was a word for this— _shouting._

Shouting was bad.

Was shouting bad?

He series-stood on eight legs, nodded to Scebie, and then turned to the window to throw it wide. Set atop the tallest mountain on the planet, the high keep was nearly outside the atmosphere, and he held his breath as air rushed out the newly opened slats.

Below, something flowed.

Below, creatures unlike anything he had ever seen were swarming through the courtyards of the high keep—first dozens, then hundreds. They were smashing things. They were crashing heavy objects into doors. They were, above all, _shouting._

Zemithaug series-sat curled at his position in the Round Debate. The nineteen others were equally as sleepless, for their dreams had been overrun by the shouting bipedal animals as well. His limbic system pulsed slow and labored as he fought hibernation deprivation; to the others, he groaned in visual flashes of blue light, "What do we do about this?"

To his right, Ayubet muttered, "It's a damn invasion, is what it is."

To his left, Croorriweww flashed sarcastic emerald. "If the fourth cannot handle some bad dreams, perhaps the fourth should resign."

Ayubet did not dignify that with a response.

"Watch," flashed the first, two spots to the left. "The people are all sharing a bad dream. The Scriptures claim that this has happened before, when Scebie was mortal and swam the land. It is just an omen, and we can safely ignore it for this night and get some sleep. Its meaning will become clear in the scarcity of time."

The collected other nineteen of the Round Debate flashed agreement with his theocratic logic—but then they looked to Zemithaug, who faltered. The others had seen the bipeds in their dreams, but had they _heard them?_ "Watch," he began, considering his colors carefully. "I—"

The massive coral door to the chamber burst open, then, and a torrent of screaming bipeds with hairless faces and _no organ for emitting light_ burst through. Terror ripped through Zemithaug at the exotic horror of these beings. Gripped in place, he had no choice but to pay attention.

The first biped to reach him smashed a two-thousand-year-old vase with a fist, then gestured up at a statue of Scebie while screaming something in a tone he understood to be questioning. One of the biped's fingers extended, aimed again at Scebie. Feeling like he actually vaguely understood, Zemithaug took that moment to turn and run with the rest of the Round Debate and its gathered servants. The halls became filled with fleeing people as the bipeds surged behind.

Ayubet flashed, "We are still dreaming!"

To Ayubet, he flashed as he ran, "They want Scebie!"

"But why?"

"I don't know!"

Ayubet flashed again, "We are still dreaming..."

"I..." Zemithaug slowed alongside his recalcitrant friend. "I think I want to find Scebie, too. I have many questions plaguing my soul, and I have never received an answer."

Ayubet came to a full stop. "You know what, friend? Neither have I." With a light blue flash of a grin, he began pushing on a statue of Scebie.

Understanding now, Zemithaug joined in the effort to topple the stone fish.

And the bipeds swarmed around them, screaming, shouting, hollering, and grabbing onto the statue with their fleshy pink hands. This was no invasion. This was not an attack.

This was a riot.

As the stone hit the floor and shattered, Zemithaug raised four of his arms and made ululations with his eating orifice. This was a _shout!_ And it felt good. His shout was, in his best approximation of light into sound, the word—nay, the demand— **Scebie!**

The syntactic projector paused on this shout, and Heath looked around warily at the massive spherical cathedral of collected dream-governments. Bureaucracy was an emergent phenomenon of sentient interaction, so even in the realm of imagination, there was paperwork—oh, Lord, the paperwork—and he himself had become the mayor of a Nameless City of Brass that later had been Named but whose Name had not properly been processed through the Hierarchy of Filtered Symbolic Meaning yet so technically it still had no Name as far as these beings were concerned—or something like that. They were all gathered here, thanks to a swift Emergency Action Declaration, and they were all scrambling to adapt their paperwork mechanisms at their tables.

He had a sneaking suspicion they had no idea he was sympathetic to the riot.

"There are billions of them," boomed the High Prefarch, who floated rotund in a body laden with anchoring technology that kept dreams from shifting around him. "At least two billion, possibly as many as seven."

Thousands of representatives were assembled above, below, left, right, and across from Heath, and most of these gasped. The sentient dreamlands were no stranger to the unkempt nightmares of individuals, for a great deal of the work of the Hierarchy involved isolating such terrors, but billions of collected rioters seemed to shock these politicians. These people were genuinely scared, which was odd for bureaucrats of a stratum of reality that tended to be self-correcting and self-repairing.

The High Prefarch aimed a proboscis at the syntactic projection, resuming the feed from another location. "This one at the front, with the jade thorax and red mane, seems to be the primary instigator."

Heath kept his features neutral even as his heart leapt into his throat. He wanted to smile, but that might give away his loyalties. As he watched, Venita led a river of angry Second Tribe rioters into a new dream bubble—but the Hierarchy of Filtered Symbolic Meaning had already rearranged some of the synapses in that region. Someone in the Second Tribe had seen one of Her Glory's defensive installations going haywire and firing siege lasers at random; one of these siege lasers hit Venita full on, killing her in the dream world and snapping her back to reality.

Would their personal connection still function? Technically this might count as an opportunity, since she'd died just then, even if it hadn't been strictly real. Heath concentrated at his desk, attempting to maintain a veneer of presence so that the politicians around him didn't suspect he was absent. Yes, there it was: that dark movie theater of the mind where he'd met young Venita as she'd brushed death an absurd number of times.

He sat in the dark on a poorly upholstered seat. The floor was sticky, and the air smelled of old popcorn. Up on the screen, he saw her in the real world, her injured body wrapped in the crumpled remains of something barely seen despite it being blatantly present. "What the hell _is_ that?"

To his left in the row of seats, Venita reacted with surprise. "Where—"

A look of recognition crossed her features in the dimly lit darkness, while he noticed she was several years older than the last time he'd seen her. That was the sad truth of living a metaphorical life rather than a real one. He'd once been the wise caretaker, but now she was leagues beyond him, leading an uprising all her own. Time was slipping away from him, though that was something to be grappled with later.

She finally understood where she was, and turned her head right happily. "Heath!"

"Hey." He couldn't help but smile briefly, then it was down to business. "Venita, there's no time." In the weakest sub-layer of his perceptions, the vote was beginning, and a red button emerged from the desk in front of him. Thousands of red buttons were rising from desks of all types.

Her features tightened with military intent. She was ready. "Explain."

"The dream worlds and the people in them have a number of defense mechanisms," he said rapidly. "The closest thing we have to a stabilizing government is about to vote to shut you down. They'll use your own memories against you to seal you into your region. Wherever you're going, you better start moving."

"I just died in the dream world for like the fourth time since this started," she replied quickly. "I'll have to start at the beginning again."

He had so much he wanted to say and so much he wanted to ask, but there would never be a chance. "I'll delay them as long as I can!" Around him, others were pressing their buttons, lending their support to a vote that had to be unanimous for such a drastic action. It needed to be unanimous, but that didn't mean it had to be willing, and these politicians were scared enough to do anything. "You have to go!"

Her eyes were filled with concern. "But where? We're spreading out in every direction, going up as much as possible, but every next place is just another dream!"

Other politicians and their aides were starting to notice him. "They're rearranging the connections to delay you, but you can go faster than they can change things. The Hierarchy only has power over memories and connections, but not imagination and—" Hands grabbed his arms suddenly, trying to force him to push the button. Fighting with those angry grips, he shouted, " _Go!_ "

Randy Ellwood stood among a crowd of a hundred-odd others on a beach with sand the color of fire under a brilliant sky. A gigantic face carved out of stone, worn by time and its purpose forgotten, towered nearby. Ostensibly, this gathering was the command center, and they were trying to coordinate the riot and map the lands of dream, but the reported data simply wasn't making sense. It was as if the dream bubbles were changing position at the worst possible moments, and she stared at the wide table of conceptual information while dark blue water surged around her ankles. If she could just make this logistical system work in her thoughts, then maybe she could crack the next step.

To her right, a fellow redhead faded into view, but this one was dressed for battle. Recognizing the woman in her jade armor and grey uniform, Randy stood at attention, looking up at what felt like a seven foot tall giant. "Sir!"

Venita nodded at her, then looked to the others as a hundred men and women reported with their silence that they had found no new solution. She looked perturbed, but not by that. "I have intel that the region is going to be sealed off. We need to pick a direction and move as fast as we can. Gamble it all on a blitzkrieg push."

At the head of the table, hands flat and expression grim, Casey Concord suggested, "Straight up?"

"Up isn't up." Venita shook her head. "Local government is working against us, moving things."

She knew it! Now looking at the full picture while considering that someone was working actively against them, Randy hissed.

Oops.

All eyes were on her.

"Sir!" she shouted, going with the revelation. "Here, here, and here. Three known bubbles that have never moved since the counter-actions began."

Watching the indicated locations in the conceptual data, then gazing down the firesand beach at the enormous stone wall in the distance, Venita nodded. "We have our direction, for better or worse. Spread the word. Have them follow us that way."

"How many?" a comms-man asked, holding his dreamed headset out to hear better.

Their dear leader was already running across the firesand. Shouting back, she replied, " _Everyone!_ "

So this was it, then: the Second Tribe and their allies would all follow Venita one last time. Randy's nerves still burned with the awesome terror of leaping from a rupturing Earth into the eye of a celestial storm after that crazy woman, yet this somehow felt more final. This wasn't about surviving. This was about something far bigger than that. As those around her picked up what they could and began running, she gathered her courage. Sometimes, in moments like these, it felt like only yesterday she'd sat around a campfire drinking with nine squadmates she'd just met. They'd shared stories, laughed about every Earth having some version of Molly Ringwald, and hooked up in the tall grass like soldiers on the eve of a hopeless battle.

Because that was what they were.

That was what they had always been—fated to die, if she understood right.

Dying had just taken a really long time.

And in that long drawn out process of dying, life had somehow continued in the moments between absurd dangers. The Second Tribe deserved more than being forgotten. These years meant too much for that. Balling her fist and absently touching a dream version of her wedding ring on a dream version of her finger, she nodded to no one and began to run across the sand with the others.

The call was going out. "Everyone return to the burning beach and follow through the brass city. I repeat—"

Hearing this, Lian Yen clipped her radio to her belt and corralled her nearby wave of rioters; it seemed those in command had finally chosen a direction to spearhead. It was a good thing, too, because there were now more strange and horrific creatures than humans in her group. Each new dream bubble they'd broken into had unearthed new sentient races dreaming away in private, and the vast majority of them had vital existential questions. Who knew rioting was so contagious?

She led the climb up the blood-geode pits, then across a bubble of inverted sky mazes; the brightly-colored beach wasn't far past that, and then they were melding into a massive flow of humans and sentient beasts of countless forms. With so many creatures about, what point was there in hiding her true self? She was a monster, more so than any of these beasts that were horrifying only in form. This was a place of the mind, and that was where her true savagery hid. She sped up, surging across the sand with a predator's gallop, feeling oddly free.

The throng thickened at the gates of the brass and gold city; the speed of this running of the bulls picked up within the narrow alleyways beyond. The labyrinthine passages could easily have dulled the momentum of the entire thing, but, apparently, the mayor had commissioned high-posted signs that pointed the way.

The city itself was populated by blurry-faced folk in simple primary colors, mostly red and blue, who moved at an incredible pace. These people joined the flow, shouting encouragement in their strange distorted voices, and Lian soon found herself emerging on the vast docks of the Nameless City. The crowd was getting denser by the moment here where the world ended in a sudden expanse of dark water.

The others were waiting for boats to take them across those dark waters, but she was not afraid. Leaping out, she swam sleekly in her natural form—and others took the cue. Their undulating rioting serpent grew to ten bodies thick, then a hundred, and then a thousand, pushing its way forward through dark chill waters. The sky came to an end ahead, quite literally, and they barreled through assembled clouds into another ocean entirely. A sandy shore emerged under her boots, and, as imaginary water sloughed off and left her dry, Lian continued at speed right up to the top of the first sand dune of an endless desert.

A shadow ran beside her, as it had throughout her entire life. It had two pinpoint ruby eyes, and it shared her awe at the vista ahead. **Thank you for allowing me to accompany your crusade.**

It was _her_ shadow, but not hers alone.

Among the runners just behind, Venita exclaimed, "You're here!"

Death made itself somewhat distant as it ran. **Merely an observer. Though I sympathize, I cannot interfere.** His pinpoint eyes turned forward as he ran. **Ah, the Scraper of the Sky.**

Ahead, the horizon was dominated by a massive rectangular glass prism with one angled corner; seven dark blue beams of light ran out of it and disappeared to the right no matter how far Lian followed them with her eyes. Forward once more, beyond, through the Glass Gateway from whence those beams emerged, a purple night sky dotted by red stars promised entrance to yet another realm.

The desert dunes danced with the impact of millions of feet. Stray sand leapt slightly in the air at staccato intervals, but none sought to slow. The serpent of angry rioters that she'd helped form shot straight through the Glass Gateway without fear.

A shifting span of prismatic crystal gave way to rusted girders and old metal catwalks that dripped foul industrial black and emerald liquids. Nothing moved here; what had once been some sort of tremendous factory realm was now a silent and decaying ruin.

While the others flooded down those ancient catwalks, up unreliable ladders, and across shaking walkways, Venita chose to run directly through one of the canals that had once channeled black and emerald. Her bootfalls felt more solid here, not just because she was on metal instead of sand, but because something else was different. "Is this place more real somehow?"

Beside her, Death's running shadow nodded. **This was once the base of a tremendous rescue operation run by a previous Death. A story for another time.** He pointed at a massive cylinder up ahead in the factory realm. **One tank of a dark blue liquid remains. Those who drink it will find themselves more solidly present.**

Venita angled toward it. "I thought you couldn't interfere?"

I have taken no action and made no suggestion. I have merely commented on facts as an observer.

"Since it doesn't qualify as helping, I'm guessing drinking that stuff isn't all upside."

No. Those who drink the liquid will be more vulnerable as well. You may fail to wake up if injured, and thus risk dying for real.

"There's no going back, and no stopping, so I don't see a downside here." Looking back, she ordered, "Spread the word. It's a personal choice." The runners behind her nodded and grabbed their radios to explain to those who would come later. With that handled, Venita turned forward and imagined holding her pistol. Aiming it carefully as her speed brought her closer to the main tank, she punctured the major pipelines so that the dark blue liquid within would spray out in several places.

It took a few moments to reach the spray, but, as she first scooped a dreamlike handful from the air and sipped it from her bare hand, a new sense of weight coursed through her limbs. Her bootfalls shook metal. There was air in her lungs.

This was a real place.

No, still not completely real in the sense that the Earth was real, but rather this was a real construct of ideas and metaphors that had solidity thanks to the energy of sentience. There were whole worlds of living beings out there in the multiverse, billions upon billions of them, and each of them had some small spark of _more_ inside them. She didn't know what it was, and she couldn't even define it, but a rock was just a rock, a fish was just a fish, and a tree was just a tree, while a sentient being was _more than that_ somehow.

And that small and indefinable sliver of _more_ had a unique energy all its own. That was what this was, she suspected. Not just this factory that hosted millions of rapidly slamming feet and shoes and boots, but the realm of dreams and ideas itself. A physical universe was like mountains and valleys, while this place was the sky. Land-bound creatures with feet couldn't go there, not really... but they could see it. They could imagine it. They could dream about it. They could write poems and songs and wonder what their lives meant. Did the sky hold secrets the land-bound could only ever guess at? There was no way to know, because they'd been trying to fly their entire lives, but the cruel particular construction of existence wouldn't let them. They'd been born into a prison.

Her determined bootfalls took her out the other end of the factory. Under that purple sky with its twinkling red stars, a world of neon fuschia flowers served as a demented landscape leagues below the end of her ledge. That was not the way. Above, those seven blue beams of light shot off into the horizon again; there was nothing to do but pick one. Without stopping, she leapt for the seventh and easternmost beam.

The light caught her, somehow, in the manner of a zipline. Soaring along just underneath it, she let herself feel relief for a brief moment. It wasn't flying, but it felt damn close. If her instincts had been wrong and she'd fallen, would the blue liquid she'd consumed have made the distant ground lethal?

Those behind joined her on the beam, zipping through the hazy purple sky toward a moon that was emerging over the horizon. The beam led straight into a dusty lunar sea, and through, to a realm of darkness that held a castle she recognized. This realm, too, had a certain solidity to it, but it was less physical and more emotional. She could finally recall in detail the lessons Death had taught her here on this castle of ray-traced light and blackness, after she'd fought a war of bitter resentment seventeen million years long in an instant. Time had no meaning when compared between the dream and the real, but she could remember it all. She'd flown.

She'd flown.

Not like falling toward the ruby array, and not like soaring back up with the baby cube. Not like strapping stolen wings to one's back, and not like being thrown from a crashing aircraft. Not like jumping from a plane and being too paralyzed by fear to open a parachute, and not like zipping along under a blue beam of light. Not like jumping through an anti-gravity field into a planet-sized storm, either. After detonating the sapphire core, she'd come back from the dream realm high in the sky, and she'd _flown_ safely to the ground. It had happened in that brief span of waking that made it impossible to know oneself, but it had definitely happened.

Heart racing in a more realistic manner as the blue liquid coursed through her blood, she held her arms close, speeding along the blue beam through an enormous boulder from which Death's castle hung. Stone whistled by on every side, and then open darkness returned.

A star of bold green seared an arc toward her through blackness, but she refused to flinch. It burned next to her, settling in to match her speed, and she realized that it held the form of an elegantly clothed bipedal bird with concerned eyes. It was not flapping its wings; just the opposite. Its wings were up and out and should have been acting as a brake against the wind, but there was no wind. There was likely no air at all.

Shouting calmly over the roar of the blue beam's energies, the bird stated, "I hail from the Hierarchy of Filtered Symbolic Meaning. We don't normally do this, but I've been sent to ask you to stop."

A dozen men and women Venita didn't specifically recognize were keeping up with her to her left under the wide blue beam; she looked to these, and, as one, they shouted, "No, sir!"

She shrugged.

The winged being fixed its eyes on her. "You're being foolish. You have no idea what lies beyond this realm of darkness. This is as far as the civilized dream realms go, and the Beast lurks beyond."

Finally, some hint of an enemy. It was the silence that hurt her so badly. All throughout her life, there had been physical enemies, but never any hint of God or Fate or Luck or Chance or any being by any name that might have answers. Where was the primary impetus? The first cause? There had to be some _driving force_ behind existence. It couldn't be, as Ed had once strangely postulated, 'turtles all the way down.' That wasn't a satisfactory answer. "The Beast?"

In its avian eyes, there were haunting images. "The metaphorical manifestation, at least in this plane, of that entity that sits at the end of all existence, flailing blindly and madly, destroying without provocation."

The fact that she understood what the avian was talking about sent little jolts of fear through her ribcage despite her best efforts to remain determined. The Devastation; the creature that had destroyed a canyon three hundred realities wide; the creature that had broken open the Shields, exposed the Amber Worlds, and sent her entire life into a blender of madness and struggle. It had done all of that in a mere instant with a single unseeing impact, forcing the Second Tribe on the New Exodus, forcing all of this to happen.

Now _that_ sounded like a driving force.

Focusing, she began to zip along through blue-lit darkness even faster.

The bird flared, keeping up with her pace. "The Beast will destroy you!"

"But it's blind and mad," she countered. "How will it even know we're there?"

"It functions in an overlapping series of probabilistic waveforms," the bird shouted back. "The closer you are, the more likely you are to be destroyed. We've had a very long time to watch the destruction, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. You are leading these assembled races to their doom!"

For the first time, she truly looked back.

Her heart skipped a beat as she took in the enormous serpent of people and creatures and beasts and birds behind her. Races of sentient beings she'd never imagined, beautiful and horrible, had all piled in to join the riot. Too, she saw that the boulder from which Death's castle hung was actually an enormous carved stone face, and it felt extremely real and clear in her sight. Shifting the composition of her eyes, she scanned farther back, now seeing that the factory had been on top of an enormous stone face as well. As she zipped along at an ever faster rate, both faces seemed to be watching her.

No, they were simply looking in the direction she was going.

Odd. There'd been a stone face back at the firesand beach, too...

The avian was having trouble keeping up now. Flaring even brighter green, it matched her speed a third time. It shouted, "Will you turn back?"

Instead of giving an answer, she suggested, "Join us."

"Join you?" it squawked. "Don't you understand what's happening here? The Hierarchy isn't some selfish local government looking to squash you for its own reasons. We are defending the very essence of sentience. Every one of us is a being in a coma, or otherwise unable to return to our bodies. We _live here_. And we've seen what happens when dreams bleed into each other. Continuity of thought is crucial!"

She narrowed her eyes. "Go on."

"Eons ago, when I was new here, I made a mistake. I let a recently sapient race of insects share a few dreams with a space-faring culture of mammals. Do you know what followed? The insects developed nuclear technology and destroyed themselves with it. They had no idea what they were dealing with. They came into contact with thoughts they weren't ready to handle, and it ended them."

A small rush of anger constricted her chest, but not the way the avian had intended. "On my world, I grew up under people who censored all concepts of religion and non-secular philosophy. When I had questions about existence, I had no way to process them, and nobody to ask. Who are you to decide what ideas are appropriate for someone else?"

He didn't have an immediate reply.

"And let me ask," she continued. "Who created the Hierarchy?"

"It has always existed, in one form or another. In many ways, it is a natural emergent function of the realm of thought and metaphor."

"Walls? And censors?"

"Yes. Simply to preserve the coherency of knowledge from one idea to the next."

Truly perturbed, she demanded, "What if someone out there has the answers I seek? What if I have the answers for them? Have you ever actually _seen_ the multiverse without your walls separating our hopes? All of this self-blinding might be keeping you from the Truth itself!"

The avian shook its head. "I have never seen any evidence, no matter how small, that there is any greater purpose. I have never seen anyone in charge, and I have never heard of a being or entity that truly knew the reason for existence. No one I know has ever seen or heard of anything like that."

She tilted her head as their speeds began to diverge. "This whole thing here, all these people behind me, this is unprecedented, right?"

It nodded.

"Then it sounds like this is your only chance to find out. If you do manage to stop us, things will remain the same. Nothing will change, and this will always be how it is. Whether we go to the Beast now, together, or whether we separate and scramble about in the dirt and go screaming a hundred years from now, we will all end up there one day. I've already survived one impact from the Beast, and I don't plan to give it another shot at me."

The avian stopped abruptly.

She looked back, watching the green flare recede in the distance.

Whether it had stopped because of her words, or whether it was because the Beast was fast approaching, there was no way to know.

Pale light began to fill the darkness, and she smelled the ocean on dreamlike winds.

The hurricane approaches. The Beast lies at the heart of the storm.

She glanced back at the shadow that sailed close with its arms held against its sides to mirror her. "Can we defeat it?"

No.

Past the shadow, under racing dark blue energy, a man was climbing nearer along outstretched arms and legs. "Venita!"

She wasn't alone any longer. "Ed!"

The Senator looked over at Death, widened his eyes, then awkwardly clambered a little further up. "What's ahead?"

She didn't pull any punches. "The Beast. Some sort of other-dimensional aspect of the Devastation."

He frowned. "Well shit. It seems we've reached the near end of the dream realms. Can we beat it?"

Death said again, **No. In this realm, it is the Beast, representing all nightmares and all pains and fears, but it is also your personal Truth. Not the universal Truth you seek, but the unmitigated core of your own being. If you face it with any wants in your heart, you will be obliterated.**

Edgar shivered. "Okay then. What's the plan?"

Raindrops began to splatter against her face at random moments as the cosmic storm grew nearer. Despite their blistering pace, the distances involved were large enough to give them time. "We're too spread out, and we don't know enough. We can't face it by crashing into it like this." She turned to Death. "How many layers of existence does the Beast inhabit in some form?"

Death was solemn. **All of them.**

Nearly laughing with the madness of her idea, she turned to Ed and suggested, "Then we go _up._ "

"Every time we try to go up, we're blocked by the Hierarchy."

This time, the laughter did escape her throat as she spoke. "That's what I'm saying—we've got to do something insane. Something they'd never expect. They avoid it, so _let's go up the Beast._ "

He shivered at the thought, but then donned a determined expression.

Somewhere far behind, an explosion boomed out, momentarily pushing the rain out in an expanding spherical blast wave.

Death angled his shadowed head to look back. Then, his pinpoint ruby eyes fixated on Venita.

He didn't say anything, but she understood: something very bad was happening. Far back in the torrent of people, a white glare flickered.

Scattered ragdoll bodies went flailing down into infinite storm-lit darkness.

**Your move has been anticipated,** Death said softly, his voice still audible somehow over the thunder. **But not by those tiny bureaucrats in the Hierarchy.**

There was no time to worry about that just yet. A literally indescribable threshold approached, where idea-space seemed to be breaking down and disintegrating, and Venita instinctively understood this to be the event horizon of the Beast. It might have been possible to pass beyond and survive, but that was not the goal today. Gripping the raw essence of imagination from the storm around her, she broke from the dark blue beam's deadly vector and veered upward as hard as she could, imagining a new surface and a new dynamic. There was hardly a moment to think, so she went with what was most familiar to her.

She hit the ground hard, but her motorcycle took the bounce admirably. She leaned into an unseen curve, hit the gas, and let her bike take her along this new dreamlike terrain. Flickering just above the event horizon, the imagined dirt landscape was the only thing between her and an unwilling encounter with the unimaginable.

The curve she'd created remained, and those who followed began shifting seamlessly from gliding to riding. Their motorcycles were not fully there, but it didn't matter. Only the idea mattered, here on the bleeding edge of dreamspace itself.

Now, how did the Beast destroy those who came close? Or was it only the Devastation, the physical form above the ocean of universes, that did that? Had the Hierarchy every actually come close enough to see past the eternal storm and watch the Beast's behavior?

Another explosion sounded. This time, she caught a distant glimpse of white light moving through the throng of riders.

To come closer, Ed hit his turbo.

She looked down at his bike. "You've got turbo?!"

He grinned. "That means you do, too."

Indeed it did. In the extreme distance behind, the dark blue beam coming down from the sky was still depositing an endless stream of rebels onto imagined bikes. A wave of motion separated the front as each rider saw those ahead of them hitting the turbo and gaining even greater speed.

The white light prioritized the front.

Ed radioed, "What's happening? What is that?"

"Some sort of rider made of light," a woman replied. "It's hostile—!"

An explosion cut her off, and Venita saw several more ragdoll bodies go flying. This time, instead of flailing into stormy darkness, they fell through the imagined ground... into the Beast's waiting maw. Adrenaline punched her in the chest, and she imagined a helmet with a working radio. "All groups, avoid that white light at all costs!"

She didn't have to order them twice. They split like a parting sea, and she was finally able to see her opponent. It held the form of a humanoid on a bike, and it was slightly faster. It began to close the ground between it and the entourage that had formed around her.

To Death, she shouted, "What is it?!"

This place is where imagination and hope flow to be dissolved. What is the death of a dream, but the brutal constraints of reality?

The rider made of white light had pinpoint sapphire eyes.

Ed screamed over the wind, "Holy shit! It's _Life!_ "

Still not sure how to react, Venita nodded at the squad closest to the entity. They dropped back, firing at Life, but their imaginary bullets had no effect. One man rode close and attempted to grab the being's arm directly.

Life made sudden piercing blue eye contact with him.

The arm under the man's hand grew brighter; that blazing white energy flared—and exploded. The entire squad went tumbling in random directions, again sailing down into the Beast's waiting maw.

Her heart seized. " _No!_ "

Those piercing sapphire pinpoints aimed forward again—directly at her. As it glared, the arm that had exploded quickly reformed. Fingers smoothly appeared and grabbed the handlebars of its spectral bike. It began to accelerate, closing the gap once more.

Ed turned to Death and asked a desperate question she didn't hear.

Death answered. **It is her way. She is my opposite, and the ender of dreams. She is not here simply to destroy you. An idea is not erased simply because its holder is slain. She is attempting to end your hopes and dreams through the infliction of absolute despair.**

Trying to snap out of a new kind of apprehension, Venita asked her friend, "What was your question?"

Ed shouted back, "I asked him why it looks like us. Why it took our form, bike and all. Why doesn't it just destroy us?"

She gazed back at Life with haunted eyes. It—or she, rather—was bent forward over its bike with a look of grim intent. Its long hair flowed in the wind, and its face—"Ed, it's not just our form. It's _mine._ "

His face spoke ominous volumes.

Death nodded. **She will always be slightly stronger than you, slightly faster than you, and slightly smarter than you. That is the nature of Life. You can fight, even survive for a time, but you can never win.**

Venita clenched her handlebars tight; her knuckles began to turn white to match her approaching opponent. "We'll see about that."

"No!" Ed countered. He locked his handlebars and reached over with one hand to cover hers, urging those white knuckles to relax. "I'm a gamer. I know a little something about unwinnable fights, and this one ticks all the boxes."

What was this strange fear lumping in her throat? It made her want to viciously turn and fight. This being, this _Life_ , that would always be slightly too much to handle—it felt like the representation of every single challenge she'd faced, because, in this place of metaphor and mind, it literally was. From the moment the Crushing Fist had opened up her world, every day had been a constant struggle to survive horrific unfair events. She wanted to turn and fight valiantly no matter the risk, probably mirroring the way she'd died the first time when Legate Blue had stabbed her in the chest. She would have done that if not for Ed's terrified face. For once in her life, she chose the unthinkable: " _We run._ "

The white being was close now, almost on top of them. Ed reacted by imagining a rocket on the back of his bike. He picked up speed, and, fighting her fear at this custom-crafted opponent's approach, Venita followed his lead. Others did the same; their bikes shook underneath them, so somebody came up with the idea of transforming them into racing vehicles. The rockets flared, pushing their front wave of drivers to what felt like sonic speeds.

Looking in her new rearview mirror while her dragster literally rocketed across the flat terrain, Venita watched Life transform her bike into a similar vehicle.

Over the radio, Ed commented, "Damnit!"

She couldn't disagree. Life's dragster was slightly bigger and slightly faster, exactly as Death had warned.

Behind Life, the armies of the rebellion were taking note, and imagining ways to attempt to catch up. But what could they do, even if they did? Guns didn't work in this barely-real place, and Life could not be touched directly, lest it explode.

Time was up. Venita clutched the wheel to keep it stable as the white dragster bumped against the rear of her vehicle. It was not an attempt to destabilize her, but to hook on, and she locked eyes with Life in the mirror as the latter left its seat and climbed forward. Leaping up against the wind herself, she realized there was nowhere to go.

Until there _was_ somewhere to go. A woman to her right pulsed with thought, and the dragsters—all of them—became dozens of rows of high-speed trains running on tracks that traveled off into the unseen and not-yet-made realm ahead. Turning on one boot, Venita dashed forward along the car roofs.

On the next train over, Ed ran alongside her, shooting at Life with an imagined sniper rifle, and then some sort of railgun. "Gotta try everything!" Other soldiers followed suit, peppering the pursuing white being with fire, but there was no effect.

Life was, in simple terms, absolutely relentless.

An older woman leapt from the train to the right and charged at Life with a knife—but the blade was a ruse. Instead, she grabbed the blazing silhouette of one leg.

Did these people have any idea what they were sacrificing here? Venita screamed, but it was too late. The explosion crumpled the car and disconnected the endless copies behind; Life stumbled, paused to reform its leg, and then jumped to another train to continue pursuit.

However, the delay brought the mass of rebellious billions behind slightly closer.

Those around her _did_ know. That was the horrifying part. This wasn't simply a place of pain and death. Falling here meant tumbling into a nightmare beyond words, and still they sacrificed themselves for mere seconds bought against Life.

She screamed again, but Ed shouted over her: "Let them make their choice! She cannot be allowed to reach you!"

One by one, and then two by two, and then three by three, the members of the Second Tribe that had begun this journey with her charged at Life, grabbing arms, legs, even the being's head. The explosions brought brutal screams and tremendous wreckage, but each sacrifice delayed the inevitable that much longer.

But Life seemed to be slightly smarter, too. Ed was the first to notice. "It's using the explosions we're causing to crash the train lines so the others can't catch up!"

She had an idea. Falling was the problem, so falling had to be removed from the equation. Concentrating, she imagined every train car reshaping into a jet fighter, one for every person around her. While Life continued to run on a single remaining train car, Venita pulled the stick and slammed the afterburners to soar away into the sky at a speed that pressed her back into her new seat.

The radio in her helmet was filled with action chatter, but closer voices seemed to be louder, and she remembered that these probably weren't radio signals at all. Were they pure thoughts transmitted in the manner their owner expected them to travel? A Vanguard man who had been near her at many engagements in the past, but whose name she did not know, called out, "Bogey coming in from above!"

Deep in the hurricane surrounding the Beast, a red star burned. It was moving extremely fast, but was also extremely far away, giving it an eerie stillness.

Another voice she recognized, this one a girl of twenty years at best, quickly warned, "Some sort of energy up ahead!"

Snapping her eyes forward as the afterburner roared, Venita's blood ran cold. Heath had said that their memories would be used against them, and she'd seen this before. Sinuous snakes of golden fire danced on the distant horizon, perhaps a thousand leagues away, perhaps infinitely far away.

The red star settled into a parallel trajectory, and she saw within it a rotund figure whose features were hard to discern behind all sorts of embedded exotic technology. It announced, "I am the High Prefarch of the Hierarchy of Filtered Symbolic Meaning, and I must urge you all to stop what you are doing immediately!"

Looking out the side of her cockpit, Venita scowled. "Sounds like you're in charge. I suggest you check my memories of what I did to the man in charge of _my_ world."

"We are well aware of your exploits, Oathbreaker," the High Prefarch radioed in return. It spun slightly, apparently looking this way and that. "You will never get past our golden barrier, devised as it is from your own memories. Your remembered _Shield._ "

While he talked, she sized him up. If the man at the very top was here, and his Hierarchy was creating something so massive so close to the Beast, it probably represented their last ditch effort.

Ed shouted, "Life's back on our tail!"

Indeed, a jet sculpted from white light was in hot pursuit, and it was gaining.

The High Prefarch rolled its porcine eyes in that direction, then expanded and contracted rapidly twice. Was that an indication of fear? It said, "This realm is self-regulating and self-correcting, by and large. That _thing_ is a defense mechanism. An arm of the Beast, if you will. No one has ever beaten it. You should give up. You're about to be cornered between technology, madness, and destruction."

"We're used to it," she retorted. "Why are you even here?"

"Because you're heading _up_. That is a very hazardous direction." He paused before adding. "For everyone."

"Is that why you block off _up_ any way you can?"

He gave a robotic self-deprecating laugh. "You overestimate us. We are nothing, in the end, just another set of dreams. We can delay you, but it will be the Beast that crushes you. No, all of existence seems to run in a manner that makes traveling _up_ extremely difficult."

Ed cut in with, "Like it's designed to be that way?"

"I've seen no evidence of a design, nor a master plan, nor anyone in charge. That is why we do what we do. No one else will."

Growing increasingly annoyed and nearing outright anger, Venita demanded, "Then why hinder us? What's up there?"

The High Prefarch spun its round body to face her jet's cockpit. "I suppose you could describe it as increasing layers of abstraction. This inhabitable layer of thought represents coherent ideas, even fundamental metaphors, but up there—" He shuddered. "Raw morphemes. Stinking sememes. Volatile phonemes, and free-floating idea-forms. And beyond that, base sensations. There is a realm up there that is simply the concept of _pain_ , expressed in all its forms, through the lens of every possible type of pain that has ever happened or ever will happen."

A nearby ally asked, "Hell?"

Venita narrowed her eyes. She hadn't heard of the concept until leaving Amber Three, but it was not a nice idea.

"No," the High Prefarch responded compassionately. "It is not malice. There is no one _there_. You are simply puncturing the layers of existence itself, moving into the paints rather than the painting. You will find no answers within."

To that, she did have a question. "So there's a painting and paints in your metaphor. Where's the painter?"

At last, the bureaucrat had nothing to say.

She pushed further. "What's beyond the realms of basic sensation? Have you ever been?"

Hesitant, he stated, "No one could make it that far."

"Are you sure about that? Does this uprising behind us, swelling and churning and rocketing up through your precious dream bubbles, represent something you've never seen before? _Does some small part of you think we might actually stand a chance?_ "

In an instant, he was out of sight, for, like the avian ambassador before him, he had stopped his velocity completely. As he receded into the distance, he radio-murmured, "Yes, and that scares me to my core."

That was not what she'd expected to hear.

Behind, Life's jet grew near enough to set off proximity alarms. The white being climbed out onto the nose of its own aircraft, preparing to leap onto hers.

Ahead, so very far ahead, perhaps impossibly far away, those gold snakes of energy began to thicken and oscillate. When they met each other, the Shield would become solid. It was just like racing for Gisela's ship eternities ago, but this time a friend was on her side rather than acting as an opponent. "Any more game-changing ideas, Ed?"

"If we're going through Hell—" He paused, but then she saw him lower his head in concentration. "Then we'll need spaceships."

A pulse went out in a wave from his expanding thought, and her jet became a strange kind of craft she'd never seen before. The acceleration of these new rockets pinned her hard against her seat, and the rainy hurricane became a nebular storm instead.

Life shrank to a tiny speck as it stood evaluating this change from its atmosphere-bound jet.

Some of those from the main body of the rebellion had anticipated this change, and scattered spacecraft began soaring up around them. A new voice joined those on the nearby imaginary radio channels. "If you're going to dream, boy, how about giving it a little ostentatious flair?"

This time, the pulse did not give each person their own separate vehicle. Venita found herself stumbling onto the open bridge of what she sensed was a massive starship. Many of her entourage were also getting their bearings. She tore off her imagined helmet, and it dissolved before it hit the ground.

Atop a high captain's chair, Conrad grinned. "Haven't any of you seen a movie? Engage your hyperspace, or warp speed, or whatever it is. Enough fiddling about with chemical engines."

Immediately taking a seat, Ed exclaimed, "This is amazing. I can't believe this wasn't the first thing I thought of!" While the others grabbed things for stability, he slammed a big red button, and the stars in the forward windows elongated.

Coming up over Ed's shoulder, Venita stared at the nonsensical readouts in front of him. "Are we going fast? Will we reach the Shield before it becomes solid?"

"I think we're going as fast as we _think_ we're going," he said, frowning at the ambiguity of his own sentence. "But I can't really think of anything faster. There was one episode where the Enterprise went absurdly fast, but then they ended up in a realm of pure thought—which is where we already are. And one time a shuttle went infinitely fast, but then they turned into lizards."

She frowned. "Okay..."

An explosion shook the ship somewhere distant.

Conrad demanded, "What was that?"

On another console, a Vanguard soldier shouted, "I'm seeing... thousands... millions of ships behind us. They're all following! And there's something..." He turned dramatically. "Life is on the ship. She's on the outer hull, near the engines."

To Ed, Venita asked, "There's nothing faster?"

He shook his head worriedly.

"Then we've run as much as we can. Get everyone to the Shield in time. I'll face Life."

His expression was grim. "We can't do this without you."

Her heart burned for need of answers, but she guessed that she would not be there to see it. "Yes, you can. Remember those things you said about epigenetic triggers bringing out my Architect Angel side?"

"Yeah?"

"The same thing's been happening to the entire Second Tribe," she said softly, imparting a suspicion that had been finally fully realized in her mind once she'd seen the idea-pulses others had sent out. "This has all been the most horrible possible crucible, and I might have been a catalyst at one time, but look at what we're doing. This isn't just me anymore. It's all of you, and I know nothing can stop your combined strength." She turned away without giving him a chance to respond.

With wide eyes, the others on the bridge watched her go, but her thoughts were on the coming fight. This had been a long time coming; far longer than this simple chase.

Through the imagined chrome hallways, she strode quickly, accompanied only by a single pair of boots. Beside her, Conrad gave animated advice. "Left jabs, you know? Like this."

She glared sidelong at him.

"Of course, of course," he said. "This thing, this Life being that is always slightly more capable than you—it has a lag time, doesn't it?"

Riding the elevator up toward the outer hull, she paused. "Yes, actually."

"Then there's how you defeat it. Just keep getting better throughout the fight."

She glared sidelong at him again. "That's your advice? Just keep getting better?"

"Yes," he replied, quite serious. "Evolve constantly, and Life won't be able to keep up."

Not bad, actually, if it was possible.

The airlock hissed open, allowing her to step into open space. Around the enormous peaks and valleys of dim metal that Conrad had imagined for their ship's hull, the stars were long beams of relativistic light. Her matching silhouette of white stood at the far end of the chrome valley, awaiting her.

Conrad hung back by the airlock. "Shouldn't we need helmets out here?"

"It's not really space," she said absently, her attention forward. Journeying out into the endless night alone, she called forth, "Why are you trying to stop us?"

Life's pinpoint sapphire eyes were unreadable, and it did not speak.

Should have expected that, Venita realized. Life had always been silent, keeping any secrets or meaning hidden for reasons unknown.

"So be it."

She pushed off with one boot, charging forward across the hull, and Life did the same. The first objective was not to attack, but to try what Conrad suggested. Dodging the white being's first arm swipe, Venita called on a tiny piece of her memory of Porcia, the quickest friend she'd ever known. Leap back, dodge to the side, duck under a punch, tumble and pop back up—and there it was. Life sped up ever so slightly.

There _was_ a lag time.

But how does one fight the untouchable?

Pulling out her multitool and forming it into a sword, she tried an experimental slash while dodging away, but the blade went through the white light of Life's arm without resistance.

Calling on more of Porcia's memory, Venita continually sped up, managing to stay slightly ahead, but Life fought her into a corner against a metal outcropping. When it seemed there was no way to avoid a blow, she raised her sword again out of pure instinct, thinking of a time she'd blocked an attack in a similar manner.

Life's palm impacted the blade—and stopped.

Both combatants froze for a split second, processing the event.

Then, they separated in unison, re-evaluating.

The sword hadn't blocked the attack. The _memory_ had. Was it the same kind of energy, in this place, that the Hierarchy was using to generate the Shield ahead? But that meant she could only block strikes in specific ways; only in a specific position and feel that she'd felt before, and could recall.

Life changed tactics, hinting that it had worked this out as well.

Did it know her available memories? Or did she have the advantage?

It juked to the side, spun in an unpredictable manner on one foot, and attempted to headbutt her from below.

It _knew_. It was aiming for exotic attack vectors that she'd never experienced before. She evaded the headbutt by bending backwards rapidly, then flipping her boots up to kick off from Life's exposed stomach using memories of doing that to someone else. Sliding along the hull of the ship, she let her own momentum help her rise again.

But Life was getting faster with each passing moment, too, and its glaring white form was upon her immediately. She blocked the first string of strikes, and pushed herself right to her limit for the next, but there was no end to it. Already moving as fast as she could using all of Porcia's memory, she knew she would soon lose against the accelerating assault.

She mentally drew on Celcus' leadership, which allowed her to call on others at the same time. Perfectly picturing Porcia, Celcus, and Sampson, she used the latter's strength in one all-out surge to chop straight through Life's arm—and neck.

The being's hand and head sailed away into space, exploding harmlessly in the ship's engine trail. Breathing hard, Venita watched the remaining body of light slump. Would it, too, explode?

No. The severed pieces were already reforming.

She slashed again, and then a dozen more times, but Life quickly formed its head and sapphire pinpoints out of a completely different section of its shape.

And it was far stronger now.

Each blocked hit took all her strength, and even then, sent her sliding back. Life punched and slashed with horrifying speed and power, driving her past the halfway point of the massive ship.

It was too much. What else could she possibly do?!

Her heart began to constrict as the hopelessness of the fight sank in. This was the same feeling she'd always struggled with: the cosmos was a horrifically unfair place that cared nothing for humanity. Every day had to be earned through brutal struggle, and there was a limit. One could not hold Life's assault at bay forever.

But as she stood holding her ground with screaming muscle-straining ferocity at the nose of the ship—indeed, in front of the very windows at which the crew leapt up and stared in amazement—she realized she didn't need forever.

The metal hull was beginning to glow gold with reflected light.

With strength and speed at their limits, there was only one more stat to max out, as Ed might have put it. Calling on her dearest memories of Flavia, Venita saw the angles and logical structures of this metal cliff on the front of the surreal spacecraft for what it truly was. Lifting her arm, she imagined the hull shifting, creating a barrier between her and Life's intended lethal blow.

A white fist ruptured the metal, but Venita leapt to the side, raising another barrier. In fact—she raised a dozen, and surrounded Life with layers upon layers of imagined steel, reinforcing them with memories of tanks and aircraft she'd seen throughout her career. Life battered on them from within, but the delay was enough. Curving pillars of layered gold fire approached, and the ship hurtled toward that barrier, its speed much more apparent now that a landmark was near.

But they were too late.

The pillars reached their crescendo and started forming into a solid grid.

She looked back at Ed, who simply nodded. The ship would not balk.

Expecting to be obliterated, she winced.

There was no moment of titanic collision. The ship simply stopped abruptly, lodged in wavering gold, for they had never truly had physical momentum. She looked around in awe; the nebular storm was gone, or at least held at bay on the other side.

The _other side!_

The nose of the ship was in a new layer of meaning, somewhere bright cyan and painfully loud. On the other side of the gold barrier, the bridge crew were already emerging through the shattered windows—but they were blocked off.

She was the only one that had made it through.

Ed gestured, and many of the crew ran back into the ship to go through the internal hallways. The others remained, focusing on keeping the ship's idea firm in their minds, no doubt. If they could use the hallways inside to pass the Shield, then it would be a way forward.

To her left, Life finished battering its way out of the hull. Lifting its hand, it sent a massive spike of metal at her from the craft itself, showing that it had the same ability now.

"Just stop!" she screamed, barely escaping the attack by whipping around a corner using her multitool as a lash. "Why can't you just leave us alone?!"

Unexpectedly, Life relaxed its shoulders and stood tall, ceasing its offensive. Framed by eye-searing cyan and screaming phonemes, the white silhouette that looked like her focused its sapphire points on her face.

But instead of speaking, it turned and studied the ship.

Venita watched, using those moments to recover. Her muscles were at their limit, and her lungs burned, despite the air not being real. Was it the blue liquid she'd consumed back at that factory? She felt heavily real, and not at all dreamlike.

Life braced itself—then began exerting force on the hull with its hands.

It was trying to push the ship back through!

It was a good thing she'd already said goodbye. Her ace in the hole came to her with no time for doubt. Charging forward, she wrapped her arms around Life at the waist and kicked off into screaming cyan. That tell-tale humming flare began.

She discarded everything else, thinking only of the most vulnerable pain she could imagine, something she'd carried with her through all of her days, yet never talked about. It would leave her wide open, but Life would have some sliver of that vulnerability, too.

Perhaps because it was still mirroring what she held inside, or perhaps because it knew it was about to cease to exist, Life embraced her in return. In its last moment, as its own hum grew, it finally spoke.

Its voice was her mother's, half-remembered, eternally cherished, compassionately admonishing her for getting herself covered in mud while playing as a child.

Oh, you fool girl. Now you've gone and done it.

Edgar Brace kicked out the final hatch, emerging into the incredibly annoying cyan realm he'd seen through the golden barrier. Somewhere around the corners of the exit valley, an enormous explosion sounded, silencing the screaming bits of language native to the area; a terrible sense of loss gripped his ribcage as he hurried up imagined metal.

Life was gone, and a badly singed Venita slowly touched down several dozen feet away. He ran to her, asking, "How did you survive? I thought for sure—"

She shook her head. "The explosion was very weak."

"We got lucky?"

She grimaced against the pain. "We got lucky."

"Maybe it's this place."

"Maybe." She limped to a low hillock of metal and slumped against it. "Maybe..."

With the mad dash finished, she was allowed to rest while others began pouring through the hole her efforts had helped make. Those others assisted in imagining wider hallways inside the ship, and thousands marched in every moment. There were reports that Life had re-formed and was attacking the rear of the column, but even with whole swaths at a time being knocked down into the Beast, there were too many rebels to stop the momentum. Each new group imagined the halls wider, until whole armies were taking newly formed elevators up into that realm of shrieking phonemes and irritation.

The elevators, too, expanded.

Many wide flat circles began to rise, lifting the rebellion.

The next realm was completely dark and completely silent. At times, she thought no progress was being made at all. Was she alone? Had they accidentally left existence altogether, and fallen into oblivion?

No. The Beast was still quite near. It warped everything around it in a way she could still sense. They were still rising.

Blackness gave way to bright red, that promised realm of pain.

Somewhere, she was screaming; somewhere, her body was on fire, and frozen, and being burned by acid, and sliced, and a thousand other tortures—but so simple a thing would not stop her now. She lent her strength to the imagined elevator, and the assembled dozens that had stuck with her through thick and thin gasped with relief as bright red gave way to a series of nonsensical spans too obscure to understand.

After those, they reached a bubbly realm of rising pink stars.

It held a song. She'd heard it before.

Her father had been here before.

She laughed, and even cried a little, still slumped against her metal hillock in the center of their imagined elevator disc.

He'd gotten this far. The song he'd played for her as a child had evoked visions of this place. Had he been a rebel at one time, too? Bound by the Oath as he was, had this been the limit for him?

A spectral blue speck burned through the rising pink stars, and she sighed.

Nearby, Ed commented, "The Hierarchy again? I thought we ditched them."

Standing alone on one side of the disc, Death refuted that. **No.**

It was someone else entirely.

Venita slowly rose, despite the pain and exhaustion, as her father came to a gentle landing on the side of the disc opposite Death.

His face was full of concern. "I followed as fast as I could after you escaped the false timeline-break." He looked around, returning dozens of startled gazes.

Stepping closer on pained ankles, she asked, "That was really you? In the insanity dream?"

He hugged her tight. "Of course."

She explained his identity to the others, who welcomed a new ally, but she couldn't help but notice her father's wary gaze often focused on Death's pinpoint ruby eyes—and Death regarded him in return.

Ed asked, "What can you do? What can you tell us?"

"It is part of my very core," her father explained. "The Oath of the Architect Angels. I cannot interfere, only defend myself."

"So how can you be here? Isn't this interfering?"

He sounded humored, but his face was deadly serious. "I am merely defending myself. Venita is my daughter, and thus core to my definition of self."

Ed laughed. "Nice. Loophole."

That statement didn't sit well with her. She had a vast well of mixed emotions about her father, but if he considered her part of himself, then why hadn't he been there to defend her all those times before? All the pain, the suffering, the injuries to the ones she loved... why now?

**That's a dangerous game you're playing,** Death commented.

Her father simply nodded, unfazed. "I'm fairly certain you're not supposed to be here, either."

Was she imagining things—in the metaphorical sense, not the literal one—or did Death's eyes narrow to even smaller than points at that?

I am simply doing my job. The death toll of these events is enormous.

"Makes perfect sense. I'm glad you're so diligent."

The enmity was not lost on the gathered dozens, who watched in awe as a celestial being traded barbs with an incarnation of Death itself, but there was no time to comment. The calm realm of rising pink stars gave way to a blank pitch blackness, but without the blanket of silence and darkness that had come before. This was simply _empty space_ above a dark blue fog.

And it was not imaginary.

Testing her movements, Venita exclaimed, "It's real space!"

The others noticed, too, wondering aloud at it.

Ed asked, "How can there be real space beyond all those layers of dreams and madness?"

**We're at the top** , Death said with a hint of warning. **The final destination.**

Venita scanned the infinite emptiness. Their imagined disc remained, now far more solid, yet it would no longer rise. It seemed they had run out of 'up.' Countless other discs appeared, carrying their assembled rebels, but they, too, came to a halt. "Where's the Beast?"

"No longer the Beast, here," her father answered. "You've left its roots behind. Here, it is fully the Devastation. Look. We're above it all."

Now that he'd pointed it out, her senses suddenly understood the dark blue fog below. It was not a mist, nor clouds. It was a roiling endless ocean whose bubbles were universes. Everyone gathered at the edges of their discs, gazing down in horrified awe. Their entire home Empire, all the universes they had called home as the Second Tribe, were nothing more than bits of foam in a sea uncomprehendingly wide and deep.

"We're on Olympus," Ed said cryptically. "This is what the Titans saw when they looked down."

Conrad commented, "Oddly poetic, for you."

Ed stuck out his tongue petulantly at the thousand-year-old Emperor.

Feeling somewhat recovered, Venita tore herself away from the vision below. "What do we do now?"

**Whatever you want,** Death said calmly. **There is no one here. No one to fight you or stop you.**

She modified her eyes for sharpness, looking into the empty depths in each horizontal direction. True to Death's word, there was nothing. No creatures, no beings, no entities.

Except the Devastation, should she wish to approach it.

Innate primal terror gnawed at her belly as she regarded it. To the infinite east, as she decided the direction would be, a monster beyond comprehension rose without limit from the multiversal ocean. Fractal limbs terrifyingly wide and hideous smashed this way and that, blindly and madly wiping out whole swaths of universes as easily as a child swatting a wave. Entire civilizations, billions upon billions of beings, were likely being wiped out with every impact, but the sheer size of the sea made even that unthinkable loss of life quite small in the grand scheme. All universes would one day end, their destruction growing more likely the closer they drifted to the Devastation, but the chance that today was that day for any given speck was infinitely small thanks to the sheer scale of the multiverse itself.

The impact that had damaged the Empire's Shield and kicked off the Crushing Fist had been impossibly unlikely—yet it had still happened.

Her father stepped close. "You're starting to understand."

Channeling some Empire rudeness, she replied, "That this is _bullshit?_ "

He said nothing, waiting for her elaboration.

"This is the multiverse?" she continued. "There's nobody here? There's nobody in charge? Everything we've been through—it isn't part of some grand plan to destroy us. God doesn't dislike us. If it exists at all, God isn't even _here_. Fate is just a logical mechanism, and we were doomed to be destroyed the moment somebody from the future told us that we already had been. Not because of some driving force of existence, but because _that's how physics works._ "

His features held subtle sadness, but, still, he only listened.

Ed approached across the disc. "No. Hell no. We've come too far, fought through too much. I've _felt_ something trying to destroy us. It's too pointed, too ironic, too personal. Like, what the hell was that invisible satellite you crashed into back in the real world? There were more satellites like it throughout the region—Neil even mentioned seeing a distortion in the sky once, at night—we were being _watched_. This empty asinine nonsense here is not the full story."

Conrad added, "Gisela never did anything with satellites, that I know of."

Studying the dismayed faces around her, Venita steeled herself. Reaching the top of all existence and finding nothing was an extremely demoralizing experience. But what had Death said? It wasn't necessarily about killing, but about inflicting despair. "We keep going."

The hearts around her immediately rose, but there was the obvious question: "How?"

Their disc was the highest, making them slightly above the assembled throng of billions, but if the discs wouldn't move, then she needed another way. "I can fly."

Ed did a double-take. "You can?"

She wasn't exactly sure how, but they didn't need to hear that. Earlier in her life, stepping into such a directly visible role might have scared her to her core, but all that had fallen away at some point. It was okay to be visible, and she was too angry somewhere deep to hold back any longer. To the horizon-spanning array of gathered discs, she gave an augmented shout: "Lend me your strength, and your faith, and whatever else drives you. You all have something to give. Let me use it to fly forth as your eyes."

The Architect Angel part of her that existed in forms above the physical immediately began to expand like a sail filling with wind. Most of them hadn't even finished fully understanding what she was asking, but she already felt herself getting lighter.

Ed stepped back. "You're, uh, glowing."

She couldn't reply. The sensation was simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating. Not only was she stronger than she had been, everyone else was, too. The activated Architect Angel sides of the billions of Second Tribe members were growing. Those aliens and creatures that had joined them in the dream rebellion also had their own unique energies to give, and she felt some unseen part of herself begin to shake with raw power.

Her boots were radiant. Spectral blue fire began to emerge all on its own.

She took one step off the edge of the disc.

She dipped, nearly letting loose a scream—but then caught herself.

On nothing.

She caught herself on nothing.

She took a second step, placing her other boot on empty space.

Hovering in place, she regarded her feet and hands.

Looking back, she saw her father smiling with pride.

He called out, "Imagine a point ahead of you, and imagine gravitating toward it."

Like being taught to ride a bike, she listened to his advice, and quickly went from flailing about to sailing forward with intent. When she was ready, he gave her a push, and she rose into empty blackness.

"At least we'll be able to see her," Ed said to someone else. "She's like a big burning beacon."

She laughed. "I can hear you."

"What? How?!"

"We're connected. We all are."

Indeed, the voices of the throng were whispers, but definitely there. Intended communication seemed more audible, and she began to hear individual shouts.

"Go!"

"Do it!"

"We believe in you!"

Yes. She would do it—for them. Moving out over the terrifying open ocean of the multiverse, she continually imagined a point ahead of herself and continually tried to reach it. _Up_ seemed to work again, and she rose to give herself some distance from the frothing sea.

And _up_ was not empty, as it had first appeared. A structure hovered there silently in the center of the infinite sea, its undersides black, but its upper spans clearly some sort of ancient metal. "There's something up here."

Her father spoke from the disc: "It should be safe, if I know my myths."

Flailing toward it, she gently set down on what had the general appearance of an empty and unpowered techno-city. A few people asked her what she thought it was, but she had no guess yet. The gate was enormous, perhaps a thousand times taller than her, and it stood ajar. Slipping inside, she crept down gigantic hallways whose metallic walls were lined with countless examples of unrecognizable technology. All of it was dark, and all of it was silent.

At the center of the city, she came to a league-long chrome table, but this was at a height more to her size. "What is all this?"

"I think it is where our ancestors took the Oath," her father said, his voice filled with no small awe. "So long ago that the number of years is nearly impossible to grasp, or so they say, we Architects agreed to help build and maintain the multiverse."

Ed asked, "Who with?"

She could almost hear her father shaking his head.

"It is not known. Possibly the agreement was just made amongst ourselves, if we were the first sentient beings to arise after Time appeared. But the tale passed down to me by my father, and his father before him, states that this city was the first location to exist. It was abandoned after the Oath, never to be visited again."

"And it's _still here?_ "

"There are no decaying forces at work here. No time, no rust, no fading binding energies."

Conrad added, "And no one to come back and demolish it."

Venita continued wandering for a time, but that empty place held no secrets and no hidden wonders. She broke a few panels open, studied some wires and unimpressive machinery by the light of her own glow, then rose out through the open dome above the long table. There hadn't been a need for a ceiling, because there was no weather—no stars, and no sun, either.

It was hard to deny the disappointment. A sinking feeling rose in her core even as her ability to fly grew more reliable. Speeding through emptiness, only aware of her own motion through her relative position to the infinite sea far below, she set off in the direction of the Devastation.

Ed sounded nervous. "Venita, whatcha doin'?"

"There's nothing else here, Ed. I want a better look at that thing."

"But the closer you get, the more danger you're in."

Her tone was angrier than she meant it to be. "We're not leaving without some answers." She noted, however, that neither her father nor Death said anything about this decision.

As the towering monstrosity grew larger in blackness, she began to get a sense of its scale relative to her own size. Rather, she understood that she was but a mote of dust compared to a fractal being that rose through all dimensions and through infinite height; its flailing limbs had the length to reach the full opposite end of the multiversal ocean; it merely did so rarely as a result of its nature. In a way, it was a pillar of existence, holding up the structure as a place where all things went to end.

There was nothing here. No consciousness, no plan. She watched it wipe out countless universes without a care. She watched it strike empty space above the sea, not hitting any universes at all, and still it did not care. It likely had no idea at all.

Was this _it?_

Was the multiverse merely blind and mad?

Her spectral blue aura flashed briefly crimson.

She soared forward.

Many people shouted at her, but it was too much. Anger boiled inside, driving her toward the risk. Darting between randomly flailing gargantuan limbs, she drew her sword, imbued it with spectral blue flame, and stabbed into the scaled body of the Devastation in the area of highest probabilistic danger.

It didn't care.

She darted away, dodging at the greatest speeds she could manage, almost getting herself obliterated in the process. One limb passed close enough that its very gravity nearly pulled her in and crushed her; this she escaped only with a flaring burst of force fueled by a flash of crimson rage.

After escaping to a safe distance, she floated, breathing hard and letting her sweat fall into the sea.

Death was unimpressed. **That was very stupid.**

She gazed back at the Devastation as it flailed. Nothing had changed, and nothing would change. The wound she'd made with her sword had involved absurd risk and once-in-a-lifetime daring, but it wasn't even visible in its endless fractal hideousness. She could hack at it for centuries and accomplish nothing.

And even if she did chop down that gargantuan tree somehow, what would that accomplish? If universes were no longer destroyed, would the multiverse slowly fill up—and then start crushing itself? Death had taught her, in his own way, that life had to end to have meaning.

She screamed at the void, "What is any of this _for?_ "

But, of course, there was no answer, for there was no one to hear the question.

Unless—

She gazed straight up.

It looked black and empty—but that ancient city had not been visible at first, either. Focusing the energies still pouring into her from the rebels, she donned her own star, mimicking what she'd seen the avian, the High Prefarch, and her father do.

Surrounded by flame and more energy than mass, she found she could move at astonishing speeds. This she used to rocket straight upwards.

Her father sounded nervous. "I wouldn't do that, daughter."

Death murmured, **For once, I agree with the old man.**

Ed asked, "Wait, Venita's dad, are you older than _Death?_ "

Conrad interjected, " _I_ might be!"

She could hear billions of others as whispers as they expressed concern over the warnings; some part of her recognized that the Architect Angels were probably communal entities in their natural form, and she was beginning to experience that. Yet, she was still her own individual, and she chose to continue.

Blackness faded into a barely perceptible extremely dark blue.

She redoubled her speed, blazing faster into the void.

She heard Death say, **I have made a terrible mistake.**

It was that particular dark shade of blue that underpinned existence itself. She'd sipped some liquid in a factory that exact color, and here it was again, found above absolutely everything. Something told her, without words, that she would not have been able to come this far upwards without that liquid still coursing in her veins. This place was more real than real, and orthogonal, in its entirety, to the multiverse itself. Above it all, she soared impossibly high, only stopping when she came to a flat cerulean ceiling.

Touching it, she found that it was warm.

Wait—it was _skin._

Confused, she employed a burst of crimson flame to boost her speed along that surface. It curved gently on a scale unimaginable, and she flared again, doubling her speed, then quadrupling it, then reaching sixteen times her initial speed. Still, its sheer scope outmatched her, and she screamed through the pain of donning several more exponents. A million times faster, shrieking through dark blue thinness; her form couldn't take anymore, but the curve traveled up, up, up.

She flared one more time, nearly scorching her own skin from the sheer exertion of the energy gifted her by those below; their gifts kept increasing as their shared unity grew. At terrifying speeds made pathetic by the cosmic size of this thing around which she flew, she slowly came to understand what it was.

Her initial approach had been toward its bald head.

It was upside down.

She was now soaring past its eye.

It had a face, and it was asleep.

From her new vantage, she could see other giants like this one, all with cerulean skin, all bald, all upside down—all asleep.

Ed said it for her: "What the hell is this?"

Her father's voice trembled with fear. "It's real. It can't be real. You need to leave, immediately. The myths say that if they wake—"

Death finished the phrase for him. **If they wake, the multiverse will end.**

Her anger had only grown. "Forgive me if that sounds like more nonsense designed to keep us in the dark."

**No,** Death whispered. **Your friend Heath found that Truth when he faced the Beast with no desires in his heart. He said that he saw a trillion male and female giants with cerulean blue skin that slept for hope, slept for peace, slept for understanding, and if they ever awoke, they would die, and the multiverse would end. They dream so that we may live.**

She was breathing hard to the point of bursting, but not for lack of air. "Heath saw that?"

He didn't fully understand it, nor do I, but yes. In a time of great darkness for his soul, it reminded him who he was, and he began taking care of others again. You met him in that imagined movie theater instead of coming to me a great many times because of the Truth that he saw. The Truth you are seeing now.

Awe-struck, Ed asked, "Is this it, then? Are they God? Or Gods?"

Death's tone was uncharacteristically pure compassion. **No. I'm sorry.**

"Then what the hell are they?!"

I don't know. No one seems to know.

Her decision-making was compromised. That much she knew after charging the Devastation like a fool. She fought the anger inside, but it had been building her entire life. Leaping forward in red, she sailed toward the massive canyon between the giant's closed eyelids. There were no lashes in the way, and nothing prevented her from landing between. Pushing forward across cerulean blue crinkles until she found leverage, she ignored a choir of shouts from her allies—and began to pry the lids apart.

They were heavy.

But that was an understatement.

They weighed more than the entire multiverse, while somehow being light as a feather. Every instinct in her Architect Angel side roared not to do this, but she'd been hurt. She'd been wounded; treated poorly by God or Fate or Chance or Luck one too many times.

Dark blue light emerged from between those eyelids; just a sliver, and just on her face. In that instant, she understood the seven blue beams under which her rebellion had sailed. In that instant, she entered another place.

A man stood before her. He seemed familiar somehow, and had determined eyes. "I died fighting against tyranny for the sake of my fellow citizens."

To her left, an eight-year-old girl looked up at her defiantly. "I died fighting my abusive father for the sake of my little brother."

To her right, a young woman with long brown hair and a burnt face grinned. "I died fighting for gold—for the sake of the poor."

There were a dozen more behind each of them.

Thousands more.

Millions more.

There were too many to comprehend.

They each spoke to her, and she could understand them all.

She turned to face after face. "Who are you?"

"We never survive the war," said a middle-aged man, a grizzled veteran of a long campaign. "You have to pick your stand wisely."

A ten-year-old redheaded boy continued, "You usually only get _one_."

"She should know this lesson by now," a dark-skinned woman with high hair countered. "She's already died once before."

Venita shook with understanding. "You're the previous Burning Hearts."

A billion faces smiled.

"Yes." A voice behind her, from a face unseen, spoke with warmth. "And we love you, my darling, but this is not what you're looking for."

She turned around, a tear falling down her cheek, but she couldn't find the face she sought. She turned, faster and faster, eyes filled with tears, a sob seeking to escape her lips—but a dark blue spark impacted her chest.

In an instant, she was out, and falling backwards into blue thinness. Her ability to fly refused to function, and she knew that she had been banished from that place of sleeping upside-down cerulean giants. She tumbled while her allies shouted.

"Venita, what did you see?!"

"Did she see something?" Conrad sounded confused.

It is possible she saw something.

"What was that light? Why can't she fly?"

"Someone, try to catch her!"

But she wasn't scared of heights anymore. Refusing to panic, she let herself fall back into open blackness—and her spectral blue flames returned, as did her flight. Shaking off the experience, she said only, "That wasn't it. Not God, or Gods." Beyond that, she had no idea what to tell them. She didn't understand it herself.

Her thoughts lingered on the one face that she wasn't able to find.

There was something missing, though.

If there were upside-down giants above, generating the raw components of sensation and idea that mixed to form dreams and sentience, and if the Devastation was the end where physical and mental realities went to be destroyed and recycled—

She lifted her head with rising suspicion, looking in the opposite direction from the Devastation. "Dad... where do universes come from?"

Her father sounded surprised. "I'm not sure I know, actually. There's some vague child's rhyme about a Silver Barrier."

Ed's tone was excited. "I think you're onto something."

Venita set her gaze on the black horizon. "This ocean has a flow, and it ends at the Devastation. Let's see where it comes from."

Her flight speed was far faster than before, but that only revealed how close the Second Tribe's home was to the tail end of the sea. The multiverse was possibly infinite in time, but not in space; in terms of physical parameters, it was merely mind-bogglingly enormous. She soared over it, slowly revealing a new horizon to what she decided was the west. It had not been hidden. It had simply been over the natural curve of the absurdly large ocean.

And like the Devastation, what she sighted at the far end was infinite.

A flat wall of silver extended in every direction; down into the sea, to the left, to the right, up. It had no end, and no features. It was not reflective. The multiverse simply ended at a Silver Barrier.

No, _ended_ was not the right word.

Ed asked with wonder, "Is this where it all begins?"

To describe how small she was in the face of that wall was impossible. She gazed up forever, left forever, right forever. Charged energies here created storms above the sea; storms many universes in size, but still visually small against silver. As she watched, purple sparks emerged from that Silver Barrier in random patterns.

Once it began to fall, each purple spark of cosmic energy exploded into a full-sized universe on its way down to the frothing waters below. This was the place universes came from, the opposite of the place where universes were destroyed, and, finally, she began to let herself hope.

Flying at it for several minutes, she did her best to approach through the storms. Lightning crackled and gale winds tore at her, but, like she had on the other end, she dodged and zipped, refusing to be cowed.

The rebellion cheered her on. They, too, saw possibility in this finding. It was the single greatest moment of energy she'd felt yet, and she used a burst of it to finally reach the endless surface.

She came to a stop, hovering a few spans from silver.

There was no reflection.

Looking left, she watched a purple spark emerge at a great distance; it exploded in size and became a new universe as it fell. Looking right, she saw a purple spark emerge high above; it exploded in size and became a new universe as it fell.

Like the Devastation, this was happening all the time and in countless numbers, but the multiverse was just so enormous that it was still rare in the face of things.

She braced herself, and floated forward.

Billions of people held their collective breath as she put a palm out.

The silver was neutral. It wasn't cold or warm. It had no texture. She ran her finger up and down it, finding it to be so perfectly smooth that she wasn't sure she was touching anything at all. The only confirmation that this surface actually existed was the flattening of her finger. It was _there_ , it was just utterly frictionless.

Conrad exclaimed, "Don't just stand there. Knock!"

"Do it!" Ed agreed.

Her father said, "Can't hurt to try."

Death stated, **I sense no danger.**

She closed her hand slowly into a fist—and then rapped twice.

The silver surface made no noise from the impact.

While thunder boomed in the distance and purple sparks fell like rain, she waited.

After a tense time, she knocked again.

The minutes passed, and her watching allies began to grow restless.

Confused, she decided to try scouting more of the surface. Taking flight, she blazed along in a random direction, looking for any sort of entry or device. She checked near the sea, then higher up, and then in either direction. There was nothing. The surface was completely flat and unmarked. "What _is_ this?" She pounded on it with her fist, again making no noise. "Hello? We've come a long way. Fought nightmares and horrors and everything in between. Hello?!"

Thunder boomed in the distance and purple sparks fell like rain.

While she waited, her anger returned, and continued to fester.

She took out her sword and tried a stab, but the blade just stopped on the silver with no bounce.

Disappointed, Ed commented, "Maybe it's like the rest of this plane of existence. Nobody home."

Despondent, Conrad complained, "It's too bad you can't just get lucky and open it with your hand like you did my facility."

Hmm.

Seizing upon that, Venita searched within herself. She doubted she could open this with her hand, but Conrad had reminded her of something deeper than that. She was a distant descendant of Gisela the Yellow, Machine Empress of Mankind, which meant some of that power might be inside _her_ , too. It might always have been part of her ability to control transmorphic spheres—meditating on that feeling, she drew it forth, imbuing it with the gifted power from her rebellion.

She went silent and dark, simply listening, her hands and ear pressed against silver.

Her father said softly, "What we didn't have last time."

Death replied, **It still might not be enough.**

Her eyes shot open.

It was faint, but unmistakable.

She could feel a certain quality about it.

Her spectral blue flames returned, and she moved back a span from the barrier in horrified awe.

Feeling that, Ed asked, "What is it? What's wrong, Venita?"

She studied that infinite expanse. How? No. It wasn't just a surface. No. It wasn't just some implacable function of the multiverse. She backed off to a further distance, trying to take in the scope. Who could possibly— _how?_ Letting the astonished words fall from her mouth, she uttered, "It's a _machine._ "

"What is?"

She said again, terrified. "It's a _machine._ The whole thing. The Silver Barrier either has a machine behind it, or _is_ a machine."

Conrad blurted, "Does that mean God's a machine? I never expected that."

"Not necessarily," Ed countered, his tone concerned. "But who could have built something that _big?_ What the hell are we up against?"

There were no more directions to go. There were no more routes to explore. They'd reached the top of the world and found it barren. "No." She couldn't accept this. "We deserve an answer. We can't just go home and die after all this. We have to know what the point is! What is the secret of this world?" She punched the silver surface, but it didn't even hurt. Her fist simply _stopped_ on contact, as if the kinetic energy of the motion had been nullified.

She slashed repeatedly, shouting in anger, but the blade again stopped on contact. She focused her flames in a directed wave, but the silver didn't even take on a glow of heat. It remained neutral to the touch. "The silence is the most painful part. If you hate us, at least tell us so! We'll go into oblivion with grace if you just _explain why this had to happen!_ "

The energy level was rising in her support as they, too, grew angry, and she felt herself heating up.

She was still lying fevered in that well on that long-ago Sick Day, staring up at the night sky and wondering what it was all about. Her entire journey had been pointless—

Except for that one element that still didn't make sense.

She'd seen the distortion in the sky that night.

She'd _seen_ a cloaked satellite, perhaps the same one she'd crashed into bodily years later, or perhaps a different one. There were many things that satellites like that could be chalked up to—especially considering they were mundane tiny things all the way back down in the physical universes that floated like so many specks on the ocean below—but that particular satellite had been the last great mishap that sealed the final nail in the Second Tribe's fated coffin.

What if the Second Tribe had actually almost done it?

What if they'd been on the verge of escape?

What if that satellite had been a desperate last resort?

What if someone had been watching the entire time?

What if God was a machine?

What would its eyes look like?

How would it watch the multiverse?

These were questions without answers, but they were enough to make her feel raw and furious. There was a set of explanations here that warranted an extreme reaction.

Now she understood what the Burning Hearts had been telling her. It was time to throw a wrench in the works, no matter what the cost.

Keeping her eyes sharp, she waited for an opportunity. She knew her fists, flames, and sword had no effect on the Silver Barrier. Far below, whole universes constantly crashed upon it like waves upon a cliff. There was likely no force in existence that could so much as dent the surface. There was one thing, however, her newly kindled understanding of machines brought to the forefront of her thoughts: every factory had a vulnerable point.

The output.

Blazing upward toward a purple spark emerging from the Barrier nearby, she grabbed the crackling seed of a universe with her bare hands—and caught it while it was still halfway in silver. It was impossibly hot and riotously random, but she gripped the core and pushed against it with all the might of her hands, her mind, and her gifted flames.

The spark's forward momentum slowed to a stop.

No one said anything. The rebellion was silent. All eyes watched through her.

The seed itself was about twice the size of her; an impossibly compressed ball of energy that had likely started out as a single point not too long ago. As she pushed on it, it did not continue to expand like the universes falling unhindered along the rest of the wall. Some sort of failsafe, no doubt, to avoid having universes expand and possibly explode inside the Barrier.

Which meant that this was something that could possibly do the Barrier harm.

Realizing that, she pushed harder.

The spark slowly began moving backwards into silver.

The flow of energy from her support arose like a tidal wave of cheering enthusiasm. This was _something_ , after endless disappointments. If the great machine could be damaged, then someone would have to answer for it. If there was someone on the other side, then the greatest victory now would be the simple act of making them flinch. By reacting at all, they would reveal their own existence.

The spark's progress backwards faltered. It flared to a slightly bigger size.

The force against her hands increased.

Now it was she who was being pushed back, bit by bit.

She screamed, "I won't _let you!_ "—and let more of her supporters' energy burn through her. Her flames fanned higher, and she brought the spark to a standstill again as it crackled more intensely.

Shaking from the strain, she started pushing it back into the silver surface.

Again, at a certain distance within, the spark magnified upon itself, repulsing with greater force. Her screams filled with pain as it began to win the mad tug-of-war once more. A gale wind arose from within the spark, battering her as she pushed at its aura; electric purple wind and blue spectral flames blazed a trail behind her like that of a comet.

"Come on, Venita!" Ed shouted. "You can do this!"

But what will happen if she succeeds?

Conrad's reply to Death brought a grin to her face. "For once? Something _new._ "

Her father's voice was soft, but determined. "New doesn't necessarily mean good, but something must change."

She could feel the rising power of those collective billions. It was a baby being born; a cosmic entity unto itself. Not yet strong, but germinating. To the Silver Barrier, she shouted, "Is that what this is all about? Are you _afraid of us?_ Of what we might become?" The people that made up that forming entity had countless questions and pains and needs. They deserved an answer.

There was no reply from the Barrier.

A titanic punch hit her as the spark swelled to double the size in the span of a single racing heartbeat. Its electric ravings began to touch upon nearby thunderclouds, sending shockwaves of resultant energy through the cosmos.

The spark was nearly free. She pushed with all her might.

It wasn't going to be enough.

If this was the ultimate moment of her life, she decided, she would not just give her all. She would give more than that. This needed more than one lifetime of determination; reaching out into the dark blue energy that still lingered within, she asked for help.

The previous Burning Hearts had all died in a blaze of glory for worthy reasons. That was the very definition of who she was, and of who they had been. "You died, but something of each of you remains. Lend me what you can. I think, somehow, it has never mattered more."

Her rebels didn't know who she was talking to, but she had no spare capacity to explain.

She could still see their faces. They were neurons somewhere not too far away, and she felt the vitality of those lifetimes kindle within her. They were not lending her energy; no, she _was_ them. They _were_ here. She could remember dying ten thousand times before, always triumphantly, always defiant. She had never survived the war.

But, more often than not, the war had been won.

Her spectral blue became the corona of a star, dwarfing the universe seed. Something shook briefly as she took back the advantage and pushed it deeper into silver.

She heard Ed cry out, "What was that?!"

There was worry in the ranks, but Conrad knew how to handle it. He shouted over the fears, "It's _working._ She's winning!"

Fear turned back into hope, and the unseen beam filling her with energy intensified.

But the forces at play were far bigger than mere mortals. The universe seed took on a constant deafening roar, and erupted to twice the size. The heat began to singe her face and hair even through her aura, and her vision blurred with pained tears as she struggled to stop the spark's advance.

"Why do you deny us?!" she screamed, her heart breaking as she felt herself losing the struggle. "All these theories we have about whether you exist and what you are—all these ideas, all these religions—so much loneliness, wondering, pain—we deserve better! We deserve—"

Her eyes burned with sudden flames as her thoughts took her inward, and backwards. She had come from someone; her father, and her mother. They had come from parents, too, through a long line of beings through the ages. Life everywhere fought to survive in a brutal universe of violence and meaningless perpetuation. Every being that had been a part of her genetic code still existed somewhere inside her—all the people, all the primates, all the animals and fish and amoebas. She felt their hearts burning, too, with a single clarion call that all living beings shared.

The word came out as a burgeoning star unto itself, burning away the nearby thunderstorms: " _MORE!_ "

All that living beings had ever wanted was _more_. More food, more security. The multiverse could have been a place of happiness and bounty, but it was not, and that was unforgivable. "I—say—we—deserve—"

"MORE!"

"THAN!"

"THIS!"

Edgar Brace lifted his arm reflexively against the hot wind now ruffling his long greasy hair. She felt this as if she was him.

Conrad stood taller, taking in the sight on the other side of the ocean. There was no longer a need to sense what Venita was doing, because he could see the spectral blue flames and the purple lightning for himself. She felt this as if she was him.

She could feel them all, human and not, all standing to attention and pouring everything they had to her. Many thought they were about to die, and many believed they were about to succeed, but all trusted her enough to give everything.

But it wasn't enough.

She had all of her own strength, all the strength of those who believed in her, all the fires of the previous Burning Hearts, and the primal cry of evolution and every being that had gone into bringing her into existence—but the primordial universe upon which she burned could only be brought to a standstill. The sea below raged with this new tempest; lightning clashed with flame on a scale unimaginable.

The shaking emerged again.

Edgar looked around frantically. "We're on floating discs. What's shaking?"

Her father looked to Death.

As the wind picked up and the trembling grew deeper, Death's normally pinpoint eyes expanded with awe. For once in many eons, he forgot his eternal doldrums, and his ruby eyes were fully open. **I think it's... everything...**

Edgar stared at Death's eyes, shocked by how normal they were.

Still, she pushed, refusing to back down.

Her father made the decision. He turned to face her distant blaze and raised one worried fist. "Venita, you have to stop!"

The multiversal sea grew choppy with impossibly high waves; space itself seemed to be shaking. The feeling brought out primal terror in her soul, but she just threw that on the pyre too, burning everything.

"We'll find another way!" Ed screamed. "Everything's going to come apart!"

Conrad was looking the other way. "By God, the Devastation's gone berserk!"

"She listens to you," her father shouted. "Tell her to stop!"

Wide-eyed and stunned by fear, Death remained paralyzed.

But this was why she was not the Hero, and this was why she was the Burning Heart. The Hero would have backed down, her previous selves told her, but not us. Instead, she let every danger she'd ever faced course through her—and not just her own. She called upon every injustice that had ever happened to everyone she was connected with.

We deserve more than this.

"Stop, Venita! _Stop!_ "

She refused to relent, and the very multiverse began to tremble.

Pressing the pain of how life _could_ have been versus how it actually _was_ , she let her anger compress into an infinitely dense point—and then explode.

Her flames turned crimson red.

Somewhere distant, there were many shouts of fear, but she didn't have words anymore. There was only pure rage. If God existed at all, she would force it to answer.

The thunderous purple star refused to budge.

She let her much hotter crimson flames burn higher, blazing trails out to the left and right now that the rear was reaching her rebels on the other side of the multiverse.

Still, the thunderous purple star refused to budge.

They were screaming. Was it terror? Was it alarm? Were they making plans to take her down?

Ed screamed, "Venita, turn around!"

She burned brighter.

Conrad shouted, "Great-granddaughter, turn around!"

Seeing nothing but red rage and purple resistance, she pushed harder.

Turn around, Oathbreaker.

Death, too?

And the expected: "Venita, as your father, I'm _asking you to turn around!_ "

Screaming from her very soul, she became crimson flames entirely.

The thunderous purple star began sinking perceptibly into silver.

They were all screaming as the shaking grew to dangerous; she was crying for some reason.

A single whisper cut through the masses. For the third time, she heard her mother's voice. "Venita, my darling, you have to turn around."

As she had inside the mind of the sleeping cerulean giant, she whipped about, looking for her mother's face.

Her mother's face was not out there—but every single other face was.

While bracing against the purple star with her back, still blazing crimson red in three vast coronas, she finally understood what the rebels had been shouting about. The shaking had ripped the seams and sent the multiverse into chaos; the many layers of dimension and dream that their crusade had fought through had been pulled aside.

On every planet, in every universe, in every speck of foam on the sea of the multiverse, sentient beings stood staring up in awe.

They could _see her._

She could feel them, the way she'd felt the others.

On a deserted Earth with a green sky, a desperate and hungry man ran from creatures with sixteen eyes. They'd been tracking him for days, and he was out of strength. He was cornered, and they would have him soon—but red firelight fell on his face, and he and his pursuers stopped to look up in awe.

On a dusty fragment of a shattered world floating in sunless blackness, millions of people dressed in grey clung to each other for warmth. They were going to freeze to death or starve to death. There was no third option. A soot-covered young man with fiercely intelligent eyes clung to a soot-covered young woman, his gaze hopeless—until he looked up at red firelight in awe.

Deep in the interstitial void between universes, a man who could not be seen floated endlessly with no way to save himself. He was struggling to keep his sanity as he faced an eternity lost in darkness.

Countless worlds, countless people, countless horrible situations. Tears ran down her cheeks as she took it all in.

The multiverse was burning.

Not from her flames, and not from any one fire.

The multiverse was a realm of nightmare and pain more terrible than the actual realms of nightmare and pain they'd traveled through. Everywhere—absolutely everywhere, and absolutely everyone—was in some kind of hopeless bind. Those civilizations that did have peace were decaying and collapsing under corruption and lack of will. Those who had the spirit to fight for survival were constantly hounded by dangers that were slightly too much for them to handle. _Everyone everywhere_ was fighting just to survive.

She looked upon this with utter horror. If God did exist, it didn't just _not care._ It had to _actively hate its own creations_. How else could any of this make sense?

Either God hated everyone, or there really was no one in charge.

Both outcomes wracked her with pain. This would be the time to give up. She had her answer, even if she didn't like it.

Except—

If there was no help coming—

Then they would have to do it themselves.

Quadrillions upon quadrillions of faces watched her, all looking up from deep within the sea at the crimson blazon of her flames in their varied skies. Too many desperate people to count, but _not_ infinite. There was a finite number of people alive in the multiverse at any given moment.

And at that given moment, knowing she could not win against the Silver Barrier, knowing that even if she did so it would not solve the problem—

At that moment, she smiled.

They'd given her so much energy, and there was nowhere to use it now.

Instead, she gave it to those desperate onlookers.

Just like Life had been slightly more than she could beat, all of these people were in situations that were slightly too much for them.

Tip the scales, break the balance. If they couldn't save themselves, then perhaps others could.

The hungry man on the deserted Earth with a green sky received a sudden burst of strength, and he shouted. Fighting his way through the cornering strategy of the creatures with sixteen eyes, he burst free, and broke for freedom.

For the people dressed in grey, starving and freezing in darkness, she found the larger remaining piece of their world. Illuminating their faces with red firelight, she let them see each other. The young man with fierce eyes leapt to his feet, his motions intent. Now that the pieces could _see each other_ , there was hope.

For the man that could not be seen, she illuminated the interstitial void around him, making him apparent through his silhouette. In the depths of the multiversal ocean, a small craft saw this, and began traveling in that direction.

These, and countless more, she helped with what little she could give to each. There were so many—too many—but they were all watching, asking, shouting for help, and the scales were tipping as she broke hopeless scenario after hopeless scenario by interfering from above.

It would be too slow to help them one by one.

They would have to help each other.

Burning brighter, ever brighter, she let her three coronas blaze to the corners of existence itself. Everyone everywhere, on every Earth and spacecraft and asteroid and every exotic thing between, turned to see the faces of their distant kin in other universes. Igniting her very soul to achieve this effort while still holding back the universe-spark, she had the strength for only four words.

"You."

Break it. Break everything.

"Are."

All the traps, all the scenarios, all the fates worse than death, all the lost, all the confused, all those without hope—

"Not."

See each other—and help each other!

"Alone."

Fight—! Fight this madness! We deserve more than this!

The second purple star hit her from the side, catching her by surprise. It exploded into a full universe against her, scraping her away from the first.

Blood sprayed from her mouth; her flames went out; she felt her spine snap.

The multiverse went silent and dark as she fell, leaving a smoking trail in darkness.

\---

The Noahs looked at each other in shock as the Second Tribe began to wake up all around them. The last-ditch effort to be heard was over, and they were unwillingly returning to their prison made of crashing moons and a soon-to-explode Earth.

To their left, Senator Brace clambered quickly over waking people and across black lattice rods. He motioned out to the invisible satellite upon which Venita still orbited. "We have to reach her!" He clenched his fists, then decided, "Screw it." Taking a chance, he leapt out.

His soaring path took him gently to the half-seen satellite, where he crouched over Venita, who lay bent and broken. He asked, "Those injuries? Did they really happen?"

She choked out, "I... already had them... before I went..."

Edgar swallowed that unhappy realization. She'd broken her spine in the initial impact with the satellite. There had never been a happy way out of this.

She gasped, "Ed."

He carefully climbed close on metal he could hardly see.

"We won."

He frowned. He didn't understand.

Her smile was bloody, but exultant. "We... made it flinch."

The meaning took a moment to dawn over him, but when it did, his eyes slowly widened. "The second spark from the side. That was a purposeful attack." He looked out at the massive buckyball where billions were waking. Locking distant gazes with one of the Noahs, he sought confirmation.

Still listening to all that was transpiring, the Noahs suddenly stood.

The Second Tribe had just done the unimaginable.

They'd made God flinch.

"There's somebody up there," Ed breathed, laughing triumphantly. "And they _all saw_ —everyone in the multiverse saw it happen. They saw the Silver Barrier, and they saw proof that there's somebody up there." Laughing louder, he shouted at the heavens, "You hear that? Humanity—everybody, in fact—they know you're there now, and _they will be coming for you!_ "

His exultation became amazed relief.

"Don't you see, Venita? That's your answer. This is why the timeline couldn't be changed. This had to happen. Kumari told us that it all begins—" Breathless, he seized on the casual mention of the term from the future. "The Phoenix." He wiped tears from his eyes. "Our deaths aren't meaningless at all. We started the revolution! _This_ is where it all begins! Everyone's together in the future, fighting for the fate of the multiverse, because of _our_ dying shout! From their perspective, the three trails of fire must have looked like an angel, or a bird! _You_ were the Phoenix! You did it! You found..."

He trailed off, fighting a sob.

Her eyes were blank.

She was gone.

The return target was much larger; he floated back to the ball in solemn silence.

Not sure how to feel between a great victory and a great loss, he looked sidelong at one of the Noahs. "Do something."

"Us?"

His tone was harsh. "Your bio-mechanical soul machinery. The Soul Reader book. Those satellites. Now that I've been on that satellite and touched it, I recognized the architecture. It's all the same technology. _Do something._ "

"There's nothing more to be done," one Noah told him.

The other looked to Venita's crumpled body out in space. "At least not by us."

The two Noahs shared a glance. "One last perspective shift before the end?"

They both nodded, as if it was some sort of in-joke.

Edgar followed their new gaze.

Venita's first sensation was pain. Much of her was broken, but she was being helped. The Second Tribe was spent, so they could not help themselves—but she had, without realizing it, blazoned a new philosophy across the sky.

As hearts across the multiverse began to swell, a glow overtook her.

The quadrillions upon quadrillions of people out there, now helping each other, now finding renewed hope and a chance at escaping their prisons, did not know who or what to thank—but the upswell of hope was so enormous, it didn't need to be targeted.

She rose from that crumpled grave of invisible metal, glowing effulgent spectral blue. The rage was gone now, and there was only love once more. The energy within her was Titanic, but temporary, for it could not heal the kind of injuries she had sustained in both the physical and mental realms. Eyes aflame, she saw all, and she followed the lines of the trap Fate had drawn around the Second Tribe. There was no escape through any normal logical or tactical means. They needed to transcend those chains completely.

They were as ants before her now, in this moment, but she loved them dearly. Taking that buckyball of their clinging billions in one giant hand made of spectral blue light, she gave them a moment to hold on. They screamed at the enormity of the moment, but clung to one another and to the frame.

This would not be velocity as they knew it, so the acceleration would not kill them. This was something else entirely—a portal tunnel fueled by cosmic levels of power, angled through a black hole of sufficient size, and aimed such that the Second Tribe would purposely pass through the event horizon for a certain number of fundamental units of Time. The man on the ruby array had told her the Second Tribe was outside of the universe's memory, and, indeed, a black hole was the only place where information could be lost. It was also the only object in existence that could do what was needed.

Curving her Titanic arm, she threw them off into the cosmos, giving them everything she had to ensure the journey would be safe.

There was one last thing to do. In exchange for that man's vital information—a careful exchange that had operated on many levels, she now understood—she still owed him her sword. Taking her weapon and imbuing it with flame, she eyed her silver dolphin bracelet. It was out there in the multiverse with him, radiant with her own aura after so many years wearing it, and she could sense it now with her moment of Titanhood. Her arm curved back, building power, and then—she threw.

Her sword flew, burning, spinning, on its way to the very end of everything.

And then she was mortal again, alone, falling; she sailed for a time before her useless booted feet hit lunar dust, and she came to rest with a kick to the back on one of the many moons in the sky.

Sampson would live.

Celcus would live.

Flavia would live.

She smiled as the Earth began to take on a special glimmer underneath the ruby array. It was starting to happen. It would likely be several hours, perhaps even a day or two, which was still amazingly fast for astronomical events like this one, but it would be a beautiful sight to watch as one died. Dying alone was rough, but not the worst thing that could have happened, all things considered.

Full ruby eyes, not pinpoints, peered into hers. **It's almost time.**

Her father touched down on the regolith opposite. "We had an agreement."

Take her then, old man.

She tried to talk as her father slid two arms under and picked up her limp body, but she didn't have the strength.

"It's okay," he said softly. "You did well. I'm proud of you."

He turned with her and leapt, sailing into open space past the arena of impacting lunar spheres. Death remained standing on the moon, alone, watching the domain of life burn through its final hours.

\---

Edgar Brace held on for dear life, screaming the whole way, as the massive ball of interconnected spheres careened through a tunnel of racing spectral blue light. A blast of gravity came and went, eliciting shouts of terror from those around him; he held Sampson tight, not letting the unconscious man shake free. That thirty seconds felt like an eternity, during which he only managed to scream, " _Venita, where have you sent us?"_

But he knew she would not be coming with them. That amazing second wind after dying was the kind of thing that marked the final end of a life, not a rebirth.

The tempestuous forces reached a crescendo he was certain would tear them all free—until they were suddenly still, silent, and floating freely in open atmosphere. Around them ran a massive artificial chamber of a scope that seemed impossible. His stomach churned at the lack of gravity. In the distance, he thought he saw a _planet_ being _constructed_ in a scaffold. He asked again, "Venita, where have you sent us?"

Dozens of high walkways spanned the vast metallic wall nearby, and, flanked by two black-helmeted guards, a single young woman with dark brown skin and hair ran along one of these. It appeared the walkways had gravity, and that there was some sort of device clutched in her arms. Holding it close, she shouted, "Is there an Edgar Brace over there?"

He yelled for people to calm down so he could communicate over the noise of such an absurd number of people echoing near walls. "Yes, me. Who are you?"

"We've spoken quite a bit, but you've never heard my voice," she replied. "Until now."

It couldn't be. Breathless, he shouted, "Kumari?"

In the distance, the figure nodded.

His hands trembled. Venita had sent them to the one place in all the multiverse that was outside the trap of Fate; a place she'd already experienced a vector toward, however strange that vector might have been. The grey lifeline had shown the way.

Venita had sent them to the other end of the book's connection.

They were twenty years in the future.

His heart leapt into his throat. "Is—is Mona here—?"

But there was no chance to talk. Thousands of black-helmeted guards began pouring along the walkways, surrounding the floating buckyball on foot, aiming their guns up at the largely unarmed Second Tribe.

A black-haired man in simple grey clothing emerged at the tail end of the legion. He was too far away to see clearly, but he was clearly regarding the Second Tribe with concern, and had yet to give orders as to their fate.

Edgar looked around, but nobody he recognized was left, or conscious. Beside him, one man asked, "Senator, what do we do?"

They'd already exhausted every ounce of strength, every weapon, every tactic, and every latent revelation. They'd already made every heroic sacrifice that could possibly be made. There was absolutely nothing left, but they were outside the trap of Fate. Nobody had heard from the Second Tribe in the last twenty years _because the Second Tribe had skipped the last twenty years._ There was absolutely nothing left, but anything was possible now. The future was wide open.

He didn't even have to give the order. Seven billion exhausted and unarmed men and women raised their bare hands, ready to face ten thousand men with guns. Putting it that way, seven billion against ten thousand, it almost seemed unfair for the opposition.

He sighed, then gave a low laugh of determination. "We do the same thing we always do—we keep fighting."

# Epilogue

Rani Yadav pulled the truck a dangerous sliding stop, and she and Neil jumped out onto flat metal.

As the ground cracked and shook, Neil shouted, "Where is it?"

"It should be here!" she yelled back, hardly able to hear herself over the roar of the planet ripping itself apart. In every direction, Gisela's machine valley was splitting, upending, and breaking. A towering structure tipped this way and that. "Those are the engines! How could they have left without the engines?!"

Neil ran forward toward an enormous hole. "It's gone. This was it, right? They left without us! Where's Kumari?!"

"I left her with the other me!"

"The other Rani?" Neil asked, grabbing her, eyes frantic. "It happened _again!_ "

On the horizon, a mountain began to turn on its side.

"Come on," Rani screamed in his ear. "We're surrounded by machines. There has to be something here we can use!"

Near the massive hole, a metallic ditch held what seemed to be an upside down aircraft that had slid off the departed mountain during the chaos. Seizing upon that, he ran for it, and the two of them grabbed broken bars to try to pry it right side up. They would not have been able to manage it otherwise, but the quaking earth assisted them. Dodging out of the way as it slammed down, Neil and Rani darted inside and took the two seats at the front.

Breathless, she asked, "How do we fly it?"

He scanned the controls, looking for any obvious functions. "This has to be largely automated, right? There's always a big red power button. That's the rule." He found it and slammed it. "Come on, come on, come on!"

The dashboard lights crackled—and lit up.

" _Yes!_ "

Rani was screaming and pointing at some approaching disaster, but he couldn't let himself look. He studied each button in sequence, not daring to miss a single one. "This one!"

The engines roared to life, shaking the craft, and he pulled hard on the stick to ascend as fast as possible no matter the risk. The move pinned both of them to their seats, and he caught a quick glimpse of what Rani had been pointing at. The snake of erupting magma melted the abandoned truck in three seconds flat.

But he could only laugh.

They were flying.

He nearly hyperventilated from sheer animal relief as the dying surface grew more distant below. Only Rani's hand on his forearm stilled his out-of-control pulse.

Up here, the sky was tearing into pieces as the walls of reality between Earths shredded, but the jump-engine autopilot augmented the normal autopilot, steering around these dangers.

Rani took up the radio, sending out calls for help to anyone who might hear, even if that meant the untrustworthy men from the next base branch, but there was only static.

Neil found the engineering manual for the craft in one of the storage bins and began reading through it like his life depended upon it, because it probably did.

Rani turned and asked, "There has to be _somebody_ out there, right?"

"I don't know," he responded worriedly. "That red angel thing in the sky was pretty crazy. I still don't know what to make of it."

She, too, was at a loss on the matter. She kept trying the radio, but there was nobody out there.

It was strange, but he almost felt like he _knew_ they were gone. All of them. The world simply felt... empty somehow. It was very possible that he and his wife were the only two people left alive in the entire region. But what about the outer borders? Gisela's machine base had been on one extreme end. "Does that thing have a map?"

Rani scrolled through a screen interface, and she nodded. "Lots of red on here. No-go."

"Concord Farm?"

She shook her head.

He kept thinking. "What's it say for the Empire? Can we just go back to the First Tribe?"

"Says extreme cold detected, engines won't function."

"Radio them to come get us maybe?"

After a few taps, the console beeped negative. "Way too far away."

"Okay, do you see any Grey Rider bases?"

"All non-responsive, no signatures."

"Amber Worlds then?!"

She checked. "There are big R symbols where they used to be."

"The manual, the manual... it says R means they Rotated away. Not good. What else is left? Oh, the Zkirax homeworld! Is that listed? They should be far enough away to survive this."

"It's on here." She touched an icon.

The ship tilted hard, swinging in a new direction.

They were going to be alright.

Neil breathed a sigh of relief and put down the manual. He'd gleaned everything explicable from it; he'd have to hope the systems he didn't understand would hold up. "How long?"

"Says a few hours."

There was nothing else to do but let the ship fly itself; it seemed to be increasing its altitude for some reason, but they had to trust it. After several minutes spent sitting in the back holding each other, the adrenaline shock wore off, and they both fell asleep.

His dreams were in absolute shambles, filled with nonsensical rioting creatures that astounded him. In fact, the base fabric of his dream itself seemed to be in complete disarray.

He awoke some unknown time later, his mind less than refreshed. He stretched, carefully made sure Rani would not fall over, and went to check the front.

Odd. The screen barrier was down. The manual had said the screen was for protecting the cockpit from enemy fire. He pressed the button to open it, but it appeared to be jammed. Examining the pistons, he found the hydraulic crux and used a crowbar to manually crack the barrier.

A layer of harsh orange light illuminated a line across his waist.

Odd...

Freed, the barrier opened itself the rest of the way, expanding the rectangle of orange light up to his face, finally allowing him to see out.

He and Rani were going to die.

He knew that completely and instantly.

The greens, browns, and blues of Earth were gone. Outside, there was only a molten world of massive earthquakes, shifting mountains, and spraying arcs of lava that soared higher than the craft itself. As he held on, the ship dipped under one of these, angling left and right to avoid falling splashes. Lightning crackled between rising pillars of sulfurous smoke, and—there was another aircraft out there, parallel!

Grabbing the radio, he shouted, "Hello? Hello? Can you help us?"

But only his own distorted voice returned to him.

Looking again, he realized it was just a heat mirage. The aircraft out there—that tiny little pathetic thing surrounded by the gargantuan death throes of an entire region of Earths—that was _their own ship._

Behind him, Rani was stirring.

He closed the screen barrier.

Groggily, she stumbled her way along the shifting ship toward the cockpit. "What's going on?"

He shook his head. "There's, uh—" He looked down. "A dozen warning lights."

This he knew. He had to focus on this. Leaping up, he ran to the access port to one of the engines, opening it even though it was in operation. According to the warning light, it was being filled with some sort of particulate, and he popped out a modular filter, cleaned it, and replaced it as quick as he could.

Gisela's designs really were genius.

Rani approached. "How can I help?"

The ship rumbled with some sort of impact.

He pointed to the other side. "We're taking on smoke particulates. Do what I do. Open that panel. We're going to have to continually clean the engines, or we won't make it."

He directed the ongoing repairs as best he could, but he knew in his heart that there was no way out of this. Their altitude kept climbing, too, as the craft continually tried to escape the heat. Were the Earths melting together and forming a bigger planet? Then, in some sense, the lava was rising to meet them, and they wouldn't be able to fly higher forever.

Soon, impacts shook the ship every few seconds.

"What _is_ that?!" he screamed, nearing panic.

Rani shook her head. "Don't worry about it! We're still alive!"

She hadn't seen what he'd seen.

The ship tilted.

"Keep repairing that engine!" he yelled, running for the cockpit. "We're descending! Why are we descending?!"

"Are we there?"

He looked at the flickering map, then back at her. "The ship thinks so."

"Then we're fine!"

He wasn't so sure. He held onto his seat with sheer terror as the ship brought them down to solid ground over the course of several minutes. Finally, at the last bump, the engines died for good. The electronics dimmed, and then went out. "It made it. We made it. Props to Gisela the Yellow!"

Rani smiled brightly. Together, they pumped the rear hydraulics open.

Immediately, soot and sand blasted in on high winds. "Son of a bitch!"

"We'll be okay once we get underground."

Not bothering to open it the rest of the way, they ripped their shirts, tied scraps around their eyes and mouths to keep out the grit, and climbed into the tempest.

The Zkirax homeworld was a sulfurous desert of furious sandstorms. There was a painful heat on the wind, too, belying a coming gift of fire for anyone foolish enough to still be outside when the center of the region gave its last gasp.

Neil pointed. "I know this place! I've been here! This way!"

She held his arm as they ran; he followed nearly unrecognizable landmarks from years before. Where had Edgar and the guys—? Over there! He led her around a hillock and down a steep incline.

Right to a wall of rock.

She understood before he did. "They've sealed the tunnels."

"We'll get the radio in the ship. We'll let them know we're up here."

"No," she yelled back. "Even if the radio had power, they could never dig up to us in time. Look at these rocks! That's demolition! They knew they were sealing these entrances for decades, maybe more!"

That sinking feeling returned. They were going to die. He'd seen it in that first moment of bright orange revelation. Everyone was gone or sealed away, and they were the last ones still running around in a horrific game of musical chairs. "We can't stay here."

"You'll think of something," she said in his ear. "That's why I married you. Never regretted it yet!"

He loved her for that, but this wasn't the time to pretend like there was some way out of this. He wanted to turn to her and scream at her— _Me? I'm just some guy. I've seen the real heroes, even traveled with them_ —

Memories flashed.

Edgar, saying he _can't fucking do this anymore_.

Kumari, oh, little Kumari, batting at a toy, refusing to let it go.

With wide eyes behind his cloth mask, he exclaimed, "There's a church!"

"A church?"

"There's a—a thing—um—like a stasis chamber in it. We don't have to survive out here. We can bypass the apocalypse!"

Running out into the storm, they looked for a vehicle.

There were a great many scattered about, in fact, left by countless unknown refugees who had come to the tunnels for sanctuary. Picking one that seemed to be decked out for wilderness hazards, they hopped in.

The key was still there. Had the owners left it here in case someone else came by? He whispered, "Thank you," and turned the ignition.

The engine sputtered to life. " _Yes!_ "

He held the wheel for dear life, navigating the truck slowly through the sulfurous sandstorm. Now that they were protected by glass, they could take off their masks, but the conditions outside only made his fear grow. Trying to remember the path the guys had taken in a truck all those years ago, Neil rolled from landmark to landmark, not daring to travel too fast.

At times, Rani would shout a warning, and he would stop abruptly.

Through a natural rift, the sandstorm gave way to a worldwide forest fire, and his heart tightened in his ribcage.

"It's okay," Rani told him, stuffing clothing in the vents to keep out the smoke. "You gotta breathe normally. We will get through this."

He turned slowly this way and that, wending the truck through the burning maze.

It felt like it would never end.

It felt like Hell itself had come to Earth.

It felt like the center of the region was going to explode at any moment and simply wipe them from existence, since they were still driving around on the surface like fools.

He began hitting the gas a little harder. They had to risk a crash in order to reach that ancient church in time. How far away was it? Were realities still maintaining their relative position to each other? Would the path he remembered even work anymore?! How many hours or days was the church from the Zkirax homeworld?

It was impossible to know how long the journey took. Neil just kept following those barely recognizable landmarks and hoping. He refused to think, refused to hope. At some point, he was sure they were going the wrong way, and that it wasn't even possible to reach the church in time. He focused on that warm feeling of luck that he knew his daughter had sometimes gifted him. They needed it now more than ever; the multiverse was not flat, and distances could be traversed oddly, given the right rifts.

Just as he began to cry, the church emerged through the smoke.

They leapt from the truck.

Reality itself was trembling.

Rani cried, "I think it's happening!"

"Get inside!" He pushed her ahead, guiding her down into the secret stone room where the stasis chamber still resided. "Sorry, Wes." He grimaced as he dumped the emaciated body on the dirt floor. "Really, really sorry." He opened a panel within. "I checked what went wrong for Wes when I was here. I know how to fix it. And it doesn't have to function for eight hundred years. Just until things calm down outside."

Rani nodded. "What can I do to help?"

"We're good. It's fixed," he replied. "It was a tragically simple manufacturing error." Finally, his heart was light. "Get in."

She clambered over the edge, then sat looking at him.

He moved to the entrance of the chamber, intent on sealing it.

"What are you doing?"

He couldn't look at her. "The system's built for one person."

"Did you drive us all this way planning on just me going in this thing?"

Closing up the entrance against the coming catastrophe, he nodded. "I did."

"That's very romantic, but I told you, we're never getting separated again."

He finally turned to face her. "I'll be here."

"What, so you're just going to sit in the corner?"

"I'll have until the air runs out in this chamber. Something might happen."

Rani glared at him. "Neil Yadav. Get in the goddamn stasis chamber. We are surviving this or dying together."

He opened his mouth to protest, but then remembered who he was dealing with. "Okay." Climbing in next to her and pulling the lid over top, he told her, "With both of us in here, we'll only have about twenty years. Either someone finds us, or we die."

"That's a long time. I'm sure something will happen by then."

"I hope so."

They held hands as gas began to hiss inside the stasis chamber.

Neil closed his eyes, saying softly, "Hold on, Kumari. We're coming."

#############

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# About The Author

I grew up on classic science fiction, and that's what I seek to create. If I've made you think, I consider my work a success. I'm always writing, so follow me to further lands of adventure!

Winner of Best Series of 2012 - The Asylum Series

Winner of Best Story of 2017 - Fuck Oranges

Story of the Month, January 2017 - A Shattered Life

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