73. The Only Winning Move (Patreon)

A/N: Hey everyone! Sorry for being a little late on this one, but it needed the extra love and care. This is... a doozy of a chapter, as you probably expected from the lead-in. So here come the content warnings! Skip the note if you don't want spoilers, sooo... here we go! Suicidal ideation, graphic violence, abuse. Okay so enjoy the chapter! Or don't. You know how it is. 

First blood of the fight does not come from the blades of nonexistent space emerging from my claws, nor either of the two snipers we have in place for this exact situation, nor our devastatingly powerful chaos mage. It does not, thankfully, come from the Founder, either.

It comes from Sela. The robot wastes no time casting a spell, moving before I even finish incanting my first syllable. The tips of its fingernails stab into the Founder's chest like lightning, the devastating, impaling blow instantly followed up by a kick, knocking him off its arm and away before he can react. Blood gushes out of his wound, Sela's wrist slick with it, and for a second I have the stupid thought that we've already won before the Goddess laughs at me, the Founder's chest sealing shut in seconds.

"Chosen's Blade," the Founder says with a scowl on his face, though it doesn't seem like it has anything to do with his injury at all. He's just annoyed, frustrated by his own words as sword-shaped Spacial Rends create themselves in all six of his hands. Sela, of course, is already bursting forward to follow up, but this time he sidesteps the robot's strike into 4D space, narrowly missing Sela with a counterattack as he does.

"Hit it now, Val!" I shout at my friend, rushing forward to join Sela in the fight. Shit, I've already been caught off-guard! I'm surprised I could follow it, but… I mean, I guess I can follow bullets a little bit, come to think of it. My senses are pretty good, and so is my speed.

It's pretty obvious that the Founder's is better, though. I rush to follow him into extradimensional space and try to force him back to 3D, but it's all I can do to just avoid getting cut down myself. Before I can even take a swing at him I'm on the defensive, the Founder gladly making this a one-on-one between himself and the only person here he actually wants to kill.

"Enhanced Arcanum, Seventh Level!" the Goddess shouts from Valerie's throat. "The Tapestry of Space Flows Without End! Let My Power Rage Unto Infinity!"

She's far from done speaking; we aren't wasting a single drop of potential power on this spell. At the same time, Helen's incantation begins as well, but the Founder's focus on me seems single-minded. His swords swing wildly at me, lacking the grace and artistry of formal blade style but not really needing one: his weapons, like mine, are completely weightless and capable of cutting through nearly anything without even the slightest hint of resistance. All he really has to do is brush me with one, and that part of me will be on the ground. And with six of them to work with, all of them with more range than my own equivalents, it's everything I can do to constantly leap away, swerving around and staying barely out of range.

After many tense seconds of life-threatening terror, I manage to find an opening to dodge through a path that crosses normal space, giving me a moment of breathing room as Sela strikes the founder as he passes through the most efficient path to follow me. But even that is nothing but a delay. I can't dodge like this forever. Hell, I don't think I can dodge like this for even a single minute.

"Let All That Is Beyond My Reach Feel The Wrath of My Claws!" Valerie continues to incant, tearing a page from her sketchbook as it lights up with blue flames. "Let All That Is Beyond My Sight Be Torn Asunder By My Gaze! There Shall Be No Grass In Fields Beyond My Own!"

Oh fuck, here it comes. Don't mess up, Hannah! I leap back into normal space again, the Founder not needing to do the same to reach me with his swords. He strikes from complete safety, my friends able to do little more than watch barely visible blades stab out of thin air towards me. Without the freedom of the fourth dimension to help me dodge, I'm helpless against all six of them. I lose a pinky almost immediately—my only pinky, since most of my hands are still developing—and I take a glancing stab to the side immediately after.

But with one hand, Valerie lifts her burning drawing towards the sky, letting it burst into ashes with a glorious fireball.

"Dreamer's Spellbook: Valerie's Dimensional Typhoon!"

"Shield of Spirit," the Founder counters, a glimmering barrier of soul energy flickering into existence around him before reality quakes against it.

Summoned by the words and wills of Valerie and the Goddess, a storm of raw power rips through every part of the world that doesn't align with normal 3D space. To all of my friends, it looks as though nothing at all has happened. To me, I can see that we are surrounded by death, the sole eye in a hurricane of unimaginable power.

Impossibly, the Founder's shield holds against it… at least for a while. The storm simply does not end, pounding and slamming and nearly throwing the Founder off his feet by itself. My ability to move in fourth-dimensional space has always been one of my strongest assets. Being able to completely avoid and ignore nearly any attack that isn't Space-aligned is powerful, immensely so, but in this fight it's far more of the Founder's asset than mine. So this is the linchpin of our plan: forcing him and me to fight where everyone can hurt him, so we can combine our strength and blow him away.

It's far from instant, the Founder's shield struggling against the tide of Valerie's magic. But ultimately, that shield starts to crack, because we are backed up not just by the power of Valerie's soul, not just by the length of her incantation, not just by the sacrifice of an irreplaceable work of art, but by the fact that the spell's ultimate purpose, its only true goal, is to force a more volatile showdown between my friends and the man trying to kill me. All it really does is balance the scales, and that's the most exciting outcome the Goddess could ask for.

The Founder steps back into 3D space, and two rifle bullets immediately smash into his shield, exploding in bursts of soul-devouring Death magic. The ammunition Sela enchanted greedily sucks the shield dry, causing it to fade away like leaves in the fall. The next two rounds both slam into his chest, piercing through his body and out from his back, but he just keeps fighting, cutting off Sela's arm as it tries to strike him again and rushing back towards me.

But now I have my friends to back me up, so rather than merely run, I attack. My self-transformation spell already working to heal the wounds I've received so far, I throw myself back into the fray, striking out with my bladed limbs to take a stab at one of his arms whenever I get the opportunity. I can't get too close or I'll be cut to shreds immediately, his swords converging into a whirlwind that's impossible to dodge or block. So I poke and jab at the edge of his range, keeping his attention on me enough to let my other friends deal damage with their attacks.

He sidesteps another bullet, and then another. Sela reaches its one good arm out and intercepts the shot on purpose, Kagiso's Ricochet bouncing it off the android's palm and into the back of the Founder's neck. Again, the wound heals almost immediately. The Founder barely even cares, seeming to regard my friends as little more than obstacles to be ignored or avoided in his quest to cut me to ribbons.

He'll regret that.

"Think, child!" the founder snaps at me. "The future you're fighting for will only hurt everyone you love!"

"You know nothing about the future I'm fighting for!" I shout back, finally managing a cut through his hand that deactivates one of his swords for the few moments it takes for him to regrow it.

"Yes I do!" he insists.

"I know you think you do!" I growl, Sela taking advantage of the opening I made to grab hold of the Founder from behind, pumping him full of the raw energy of Kill(Target). I assault him from the front, keeping the attention of his swords while more bullets pound through him, their magical payloads detonating inside his flesh.

"Dreamer's Spellbook: Scrixel's Skybound Leap!" Valerie shouts, and magic pulses through me that I know will be important very soon. But the Founder, still weathering our assault with nothing but disappointment on his face, wastes no time trying to identify it, simply beginning his counterattack. And for the first time, he focuses on Sela.

Two enormous, white-carapaced centipedes thicker than his arms burst out from his shoulderblades, wrapping around the robot immediately and cutting off its escape. In a split second, a single swipe of each of his blades leaves Sela on the floor in a dozen pieces, removed from the fight in a single moment. The centipedes, their backsides still attached to his shoulders, then turn their attention to forcing me to flee again.

"I explained to you the situation, but you still fight to save yourself," he growls at me.

"The fuck you have!" I snap at him. "Saying ominous shit and promising me that you're definitely super correct about all of it is not a Goddess-damn explanation, you maggot-infested monochrome fudge cake!"

"There is nothing more to explain!" he snaps, barely missing a blow that would have run me through if Ida hadn't shot his arm. "A spell you have not yet named—for you would already know I'm right if you had named it—perpetually brings your worlds ever closer to destruction. By its very design, you cannot avoid its use! The only thing that could even conceptually—"

I leap straight up into the air, an awful dodge that allows the Founder to cut three of my legs off below the knee. But it doesn't matter; I have no choice. It's the only dodge I can make and expect to survive.

"...Finding Beauty In Oblivion," Helen finishes, and below me, the world vanishes into nothingness. A column of black obliteration, annihilating all matter, energy, and light, scours open the branch we stand on and keeps going, devouring the trunk of the tree beyond us and all the nearby flames, heat and oxygen removed from this world along with the fuel. The blast leaves a straight tunnel into the bark at least a mile long before a thump of air crashes into us like thunder, the shockwave of air knocking everyone down in the aftermath.

Helen collapses to one knee, panting from the exertion of her spell. I land from my jump on top of what little is left of the Founder, not hesitating to skewer his skull through with a blade. Even throughout all of that, he still managed to survive. The blast of Chaos ate through his hastily erected shield, it devoured his arms, his legs, and his centipede-limbs, but somehow his torso still survived. It was the only thing in the entire line of fire that did, because as fast as the Chaos ate away at it, it regenerated just as quickly. So I pulp his brain to mush, just to make sure. And now, he's dead.

Useless, arrogant bastard. What kind of fucking spells were those? 'Chosen's Blade,' 'Shield of Spirit…' this guy thought he was a Goddess-damn anime protagonist. Is anything he said even usable information?

"Did… did we get him?" Helen huffs.

"Yeah, he's dead," I confirm. "We—"

I cut myself off, twitching as I see his heart somehow beat. I slice through it, and the damage I deal heals almost immediately, his brain unscrambling itself and his body reforming as fast as I can cut it.

"No, no no no!" I shout, tearing into him with all my limbs at once. And then, the Goddess laughs. It's a horrid noise, pounding through my bones and my mind with equal callousness.

Not good enough, she tells me, and I freeze.

"Hannah!" Valerie shouts in panic, and the Goddess speaks.

"The Eternity I Deserve," the Founder's former corpse incants, and then he cuts off my arm with his newly-grown limbs.

I barely manage to fight back my tears and leap away, forcing my self-transformation spell into overdrive to regrow my own body parts just enough to scuttle away on three legs. Despite reforming at horrifying speed, the Founder takes his time standing up, vomiting blood up out of his lungs as they stitch back together and wiping his mouth with one thumb.

"...If you would prefer I target your friends, we can always make this fight a little easier," he scowls. "But I don't want to. And I don't think you want me to, either. Don't make this any harder than it has to be, Hannah."

"Fuck you!" Valerie shouts before I can say anything. "You think we'd stop protecting her just because she asks us to?"

In the back of my mind, I know Valerie probably shouldn't be talking. We should be casting. All of us. But right now, all I want to do is hug her with all my might and sob into her chest. Buying me time to continue my far-slower regeneration isn't the worst plan anyway.

…Can we even beat that regeneration, though? Is he truly just immortal?

"You need to stop doing that, child," the founder scowls, pointing his blade at me. "I can feel it. Whatever that spell is, it's the one."

"My healing spell!?" I snap at him, finally finding my voice again. "You want me to stop healing while you try to stab me to death? You really think I'm falling for that?"

He sighs.

"I do not know a better way to convince you," he admits. "If you were to name the spell, you'd know… but I can't let you attempt that, since if you successfully name the spell which ends the world, it may very well kill billions on the spot. I can't risk it. I understand that you're unwilling to simply take my word for it, but the only evidence I can supply you is in your soul, and it is very important that I do not let you find it."

"...What about what you were gonna say before Helen blasted you?" I ask. "'The only thing that could even conceptually…?'"

"Ah," he frowns. "It's a simple enough concept. Your magic causes the world to end. So hypothetically, to stop your magic, a specialized death mage could remove the relevant spell from your soul without killing you. That is the only method we've found which shows promise, but it does not seem to be how the Goddess wants the game to end. Despite decades of searching and practice, we have yet to find someone capable of succeeding. It is likely quite intentionally impossible."

Practice? Is that why the cult was torturing me? No, wait, I have to focus on healing. He might be talking, but that does not mean he isn't done attacking. Should we run? How would we even get away?

"I can feel it, you know," the Founder comments. "You're well over halfway there already. Slowly but surely, calamity ticks closer. I wish we had another way to stop it, Hannah, but we are running out of time."

"So you just want me to give up," I hiss at him, struggling back to my feet. "You want me to believe there's nothing I can do so you can feel better about assisting a suicide instead of committing murder! Well I'm not going to! I'm not going to just keel over and die the moment my life starts actually being worth living! I'll find a way! I'll succeed where you failed!"

The Founder is unruffled by speech, of course. His countering words are flat and final, a spear of hopelessness aimed directly at my heart.

"If you were capable of doing such a thing," he tells me, "She never would have chosen you in the first place."

Not good enough. I hiss at him, eldritch fury shaking the air. He doesn't get to say that. Not him!

"It has to be you then, huh?" I sneer. "Nothing I do matters, is that it? It has to be the big damn hero that saves the world!?"

He frowns at me, a look of utter disappointment on his face.

"You have not been paying attention to anything I have said," he tells me, "if you believe I still think of myself as a hero. But so be it, then. The time for mercy is over."

A crash rings out in front of me, dust and debris exploding around where the Founder was just standing. A second Sela drone stands up from a three-point landing, settling into a combat stance as it glowers his way.

"Agreed," it says, settling back into a combat stance.

Hell yeah, murderbot. While Sela's code apparently prevents it from controlling more than one drone, there's nothing stopping the main ship from using its onboard fabricator to make a new one every time it gets destroyed. More sniper shots force the Founder onto the defensive, letting Sela and I pressure and injure him repeatedly, scoring more and more wounds as the bullets cover our offensive. But every hit, each and every one, just heals away in less than a second. Is winning even possible!?

The founder leaps backwards, likely trying to get enough space to cast safely, and Sela raises a fist up towards the sky. Our signal. A split-second later, a bullet from Kagiso's rifle strikes Sela directly in the back, the Velocity spell rocketing our robot forward like a cannonball and splattering the Founder like a firecracker in a cake. It might be my imagination, but I can almost feel that, the unthinkable power of his soul waning just the tiniest bit. A pixel from the health bar, a pebble from the mountain. Maybe it isn't limitless after all, but it's nigh-insurmountable.

"I'm not going to end the world!" I shout at him. "I'll find a way! You don't have to do this!"

"You know nothing of the task before you," he scowls, his body already back together again. "Your confidence is but a mask for blind selfishness! A refusal to see the truth so that you may continue living!"

"And what's wrong with wanting to live!?"

"I'll show you," he says. "Witness What I Have Wrought."

I shudder, my body nearly getting pulled apart by the Space magic flowing out from him in overwhelming torrents. It scrapes at reality around us, pulling locations all across the entire world adjacent to us to assemble an arena of madness. Crumbling cities devoured to their foundations by stonerot. Lakes of putrid sap, toxic to intelligent life due to the countless dangerous microbes within. Twisting roots, starved for water and soil, snake through an open abyss of air that has somehow also been assembled into the terrain around us, an impossible drop that would make us fall off the underside of the world were we to step over it. And surrounding all of it, trapping us within, is the fire. A torrent of flame and smoke that surrounds us, herds us, and prevents our ranged support from ever seeing us, blocking Kagiso out from seeing the fight and likely choking Ida half to death as the smoke rushes up to where she flies above us.

The entirety of the battlefield has changed in an instant, and the Founder is not yet done.

"More Legs Than Murders."

The ground erupts with a spectral swarm of centipedes, an uncountable writhing mass of ghostly limbs. They pour towards us like a wave, the innumerable taptaptaptap of their feet against each other's carapaces combining into a droning roar.

"Dreamer's Spellbook: Vivian's Protective Ward!" Valerie incants, rapidly tapping at her phone with one hand while she flips through her sketchpad with the other. "Dreamer's Spellbook: Arwin's Telekinetic Fist!"

The screeching tide of bugs smashes into me and around me, crawling up my legs and digging into my joints to bite at my flesh. I flex and kick and slash as they swarm around me, giving Sela a similar treatment as they rush towards Helen and Valerie as well. Valerie's first spell puts up a radiant, circular barrier around herself, though, preventing the centipedes from approaching, while Helen simply lets off waves of Chaos magic, annihilating the monsters as she rushes forward to help free Sela and me.

The centipedes aren't a huge threat by themselves, of course, but even getting slowed down a little when fighting the Founder is lethal. Which is why Valerie—and Goddess do I fucking love her—already had her second spell ready. An invisible force crushes the Founder's arms against his body, locking him in place and giving us time to handle his swarm without being cut to ribbons.

"Dreamer's Spellbook: Olivia's Adrenaline Enhancer!" Valerie continues, burning another image. "Dreamer's Spellbook: Marina's Elemental Allies!"

Helen rushes towards us twice as fast as before, while the earth and air around the Founder form themselves into miniature golems and cutting whirlwinds. The stone monsters land crushing blows on the Founder's knees while countless cuts erupt all over his body. He roars in frustration, muscles straining against the nonstop flurry of spells.

"For How Could They Touch Their Own Annihilation?" Helen incants as she approaches me, her legs stepping through the torrent of bugs like they're nothing more than fog, leaving twitching, partial corpses behind with every step. She wastes no time blasting my entire body with a burst of Chaos, which stings a bit but is almost entirely blocked by my Order aura, obliterating only the monsters trying to swarm me.

"I'll cover Sela!" Helen shouts at me. "Get his ass, Hannah! And when he goes down, don't stop keeping him down! We'll beat his corpse until there isn't any dust left to regen!"

"R-right!" I agree, rushing forwards. We can beat him. We have to beat him! How can we save the world if we can't!?

"Dreamer's Spellbook: Vivian's Arcane Spear!" Valerie continues.

"Enough!" the Founder roars, and his body explodes into more centipedes, completely blotting out sight of his body before they disperse entirely, a part of the swarm waiting right outside Valerie's ward bulging upwards and allowing him to emerge from within. With a single cut from his sword he shatters her barrier, stepping inside as she pulls another drawing out of her spellbook.

"No!" I shout, running towards them, but the swarm has already reformed around me, multiplying even faster than before and bogging down my movements in their endless guts. The Founder cuts Valerie's drawing in half before she even gets a chance to incant, another sword swinging down to carve open her skull.

"Valerie!" I shriek, but before his attack can finish the founder twitches, and his head erupts in a black hole of Chaos, devouring his brain from the inside out. The drawing he cut wasn't one of Valerie's. Helen grins wildly as she frees Sela from the tide of centipedes, a nearly-subconscious Refresh of my own ungunking her systems of viscera as the Founder takes a single step backwards, stunned only for a second after the annihilation of his entire head.

"My turn, bitch!" Ida whoops, dropping down from the sky through the smoke at near-terminal velocity, pumping bullets into the Founder as she falls. She slams both feet into his shoulders, smashing him to the ground before he can even try to attack Valerie again. Then, she immediately leaps off of him and back into the air, losing a leg from a countering swipe as she takes aim with an oversized handgun.

"No Less Than Perfect, motherfucker!" Ida cackles, her leg growing back almost as quickly as the Founder's head. "How do you like it!?"

She dances through the air like a dragonfly, keeping just outside of his reach as she pumps him full of magically charged bullets. Sela manufactured us a terrifying amount of soul-infused ammo, and Ida doesn't let up for a second until she has to swap her magazine. The Founder immediately leaps up to slash at her, scoring a wound that just gets healed right off.

"That's right, you chitin-cocked disaster factory!" Ida taunts. "You've got nothing! My girls and I are gonna fuck your face!"

"Go To Hell," the Founder responds, and Ida lets out a piercing scream of agony.

Her skin fades away first, vanishing point-by-point as she thrashes around like a splash of water boiling off a skillet. I scream her name and run as fast as I can, but it's barely a few seconds before her skin is gone, then her muscles, organs, and finally bones. Ida's clothes and weapons clatter to the ground, Valerie leaping for the gun a moment later as she dodges a cut of the Founder's swords, but he bisects her at the waist on his next swing, letting her collapse to the ground in pieces and holding his sword at her barely-breathing throat.

"Enough, all of you," he orders, staring directly at me. "Only one more person needs to die this day, and it isn't this girl."

Ida… is gone. Valerie bleeds out in front of me, unable to move. The Founder, tired of playing cat and mouse, went directly to the weakest link. My friends. My loves, the people more important to me than anyone in this world. Maybe he knew, somehow. Maybe they were just a tactical choice. But the memory of Ida's agony flaring in my mind, the sight of Valerie's heart beating more and more weakly in front of me, it overwhelms me with a white-hot rage unlike anything I've ever felt before in my life. Despair and fury, focused into a searing laser of vengeance that blots out every other thought from my mind.

If ending the world would kill him right at this moment, I'd do it without hesitation.

"How dare you," I hiss."How dare you!"

"You sought me out, child," he says. "What did you think would happen? Now stand down, before she bleeds her last."

"I'll kill you," I promise him, my limbs twitching.

"Would you really sacrifice her to do it?" he asks, blade pressing just a bit harder into Valerie's throat as she leaks her torso onto the battlefield. Scum. Coward. Vermin. Not only is he incapable of listening to reason, but he'd even go after them? He'd hurt Valerie, maybe even kill… no. No, she has to be alive. She has to be. Either way, he's the worst sort of monster. An arrogant fool caught so far in his own obsessions and failures that he'd drag everyone else down to his level. He'll never believe that we can win, just because he never did! Well, I'll do more than win.

"I know who you are now," I twitch, my voice coming out of my throat a little more than three-dimensional. "You've defined yourself by your own failure. I won't let you infect me with it."

I step forward, another goddamn disappointed frown passing over his face, the arrogant shitbag.

"This is your last warning," he says.

"I'll infect you with it instead," I sneer, ignoring him.

"Nature's

MaDnEsS!"

Transmutation energy leaks from me like a burst dam, hatred fueling my mad rush towards the man I hate most and the greatest friend I've ever had. The Founder quickly makes good on his threat, carving open Valerie's throat, but it's too late. At this moment, my power would keep her alive through anything, and to him it'll hold no mercy. As Valerie heals into the form she was always meant for, my enemy falls apart at the seams. His hands shrivel; a man that has built nothing does not need them. His legs dry up and waste away; a man who has gone nowhere does not use them. Each and every summoned centipede he has created is warped by my magic, screeching and twisting until they turn into living chains, the man's own self-made shackles in which he would place the world.

He will suffer for every last darkness and failure that I see in his heart, and my gaze burns deep. His helmet can lock down his mouth, for he never speaks with value. His chitin can fall off his form, for he doesn't care one whit for his own protection. He is nothing but an arrogant, foolish, disgusting, basic, useless human, trapped by his own power, and I have had enough of him!

When I reach him, he is already fully bound, wrapped in bonds of flesh and little more than a withered torso of an ancient man. He cannot even try to strike me now, his body reduced to as feeble a state as his mind. I step past him and kneel over Valerie instead, my body shifting and changing along with hers as I accelerate my own transformation alongside her, the Goddess cheering with delight.

"Valerie," I say softly. "Are you alright?"

Her breaths are heavy and full of agony, but they are strong and growing stronger. Stubby, taloned feet form from the bottom of her bisected torso, sealing off her wounds behind a pair of fuzzy legs barely as long as her forearm from hip to toe.

"I'm… alive," she answers through gritted teeth, letting out a pained moan as more of her body shifts into place. "Doesn't look like I'll be walking anywhere anytime soon, though."

"You won't need to," I assure her, and her tail grows in. She screams as her tailbone bursts from her back, lashing out like a whip as flesh rapidly grows in to follow it. Her spine nearly quadruples in length before it finishes growing, the massive resulting snake tail more than big enough to hold all her weight and then some. As thick as her torso and covered in the same blonde fur as most of her body, the true nature of her form is finally revealed.

She's a naga. A snake girl. A fluffy, fuzzy lamia. Like a friend noodle, really. One of the cute, tasty snacks that I've always adored for introducing me to how wonderful it was to be me. To be a monster. It's perfectly fitting, for the friend that loves and supports me more than anyone.

A second pair of arms grow in underneath her first, which I can't help but be a little jealous about but I know I'll be getting soon, too. These four arms are in addition to her stubby legs, which are really more like a third pair of miniature arms coming out of her hips. The talons have articulated thumbs, and though they don't seem as dexterous as Valerie's normal hands, I think they'll still perform that job better than they'd ever perform as feet. Which is fine, since now Valerie can slither.

"Get away from here, alright?" I instruct her, enjoying the beautifully indulgent sensation of blasting my self-TF spell on full blast to match her changes. I'm already growing a little taller, a bit more upright. More of my torso sheds its chitin, revealing soft and beautiful black skin to contrast my white limbs. "Keep yourself safe."

"...Stop," the Founder rasps behind me. He's a pitiful thing, locked as he is in his own chains. "Stop using… that spell. Can't you feel… the end of the world?"

"You nearly killed the only reason I have to save it, fool," I hiss at him. And to my shame, I realize I'm not lying. Valerie does matter more to me than the world. And Ida…

"Where did you send her?" I demand.

"Where else?" he coughs. "To the afterlife."

"Liar!"  I shout at him.

"Do not misunderstand; she is not dead," the Founder says. "She is merely where the dead go, though they will not be kind to her."

"You teleported her to the afterlife!?" I shriek, feeling my blade limbs grow thicker. How easy it would be, to carve him up.

"Stop using that spell," he insists. "Please. I truly, truly do not wish to insist."

"You are insane!" I insist. "The spell doesn't end the world! It's a fucking Transmutation spell! It changes my body! It makes me like myself for a change! How does that hurt anyone!?"

"If you are so sure of that," he wheezes, "then save me the trouble of killing you and try to name it that way."

Well… well maybe I will! What would be a good name for it, in that case? 'Transform' is too obvious and boring. 'Conversion' is a bit better, but still kinda bland and doesn't resonate with me. 'Evolution,' maybe? It's not an attack like all my other spell names, but it's still a pretty central mechanic to the Pokémon series that accurately reflects how I feel about the spell. It's about me getting better, about me achieving a singular, final form superior to all the ones I've had prior. It fits, it… it…

…Why is the Goddess still laughing?

It's because there's nothing more joyful than victory, of course, and it's glorious to see me lead Her directly towards it. The pieces are in position, an easy checkmate in ten. I've proven it in this very moment, that She was right about me all along.

I'm not good enough.

"W-wait, but I—"

Shh, shh shh shh. There's no need for me to talk out loud. She knows my deepest thoughts and my deepest desires! All I have to do is listen. And yes, She knows that will be difficult for me—because if there's one thing I've proven today, it's that I'm quite bad at that—but She believes in me nonetheless! She always has. She knows, with all Her omniscient wisdom, that I will never fail to be exactly what She chose me for.

Aren't I thankful that She gave me such an opportunity? I would have been even less, without Her.

"Why are you—"

See? Bad at listening. She's in my head because She wants to help, of course! It would be ever so boring an end to decide it with a miscast, of all things. Let's not let a silly little mistake like blind hope get in the way of reality, shall We?

Every last word that Aimilios has spoken is the truth. My self-transformation spell will end the world.

"H-how—"

Bad! At! Listening! I really do need to keep up before I'm left behind. But She will forgive my slowness, just this once, since She loves me so much. I am, and have always been, the bridge between worlds. Two realities, similar in seeming but utterly unalike in fundamental structure, merged into a single, impossible being. Or rather… two beings that are meant to become one. As I change and grow, both of my selves converge towards my singular truth, and in turn do my worlds converge towards their intersection point. When I am finally complete, when I am finally ME, my bodies and my homes will each be merged with their counterparts in a glorious union, resulting in something completely and utterly new. An untapped playground of possibilities, where We can continue to enjoy Ourselves again and again and again and again, until it is time to make something new!

"Fuck," I swear, clutching my head. "Fuck! So the world—"

Yes, the Mother Tree and the Pillar were made the same way!

"Smashed together like one doll's head on another's body," I hiss.

Ha! Oh, it was so much more involved than that. The very underlying physics of the two worlds were unalike in nature. Everything had to be reconstructed quite meticulously!

"So the Pillar is only impaling and killing the tree—"

Because it is fun. Yes. Oh, how She loves that I know Her so well. Now then, it is time. I know the truth. Name the spell, speak it twice,

"AnD eNd ThE wOrLd, HaNnAh HiiRaGi!"

The voice bellows out from us all, sung with each of our voices and torn from all of our lungs. Each one of us falls to our knees in some mix of worship and despair, my mind shifting towards suitable names without even an ounce of will on my part. But… no. No! I won't! I can't!

"You will not have the choice!" the Founder roars, and the Goddess laughs ever louder, for he is only right in the way he does not mean. "Forgive me, you few who are left! Mantle of Genocide!"

A billion howling souls emerge from a shrieking void, enveloping the Founder's body in a physical manifestation of what may be the greatest of all sins. They surround him, acting as his arms, legs, and sword as he roars a final battle cry, running me through while I'm still motionless from shock. My friends shriek my name as angry spirits devour my body and soul like living acid. I know, immediately, that I won't survive it.

Unless, the Goddess laughs.

"I WANT TO PLAY WITH YOUR ORGANS!!!"

A crash like an explosion blasts me away from the founder, the shockwave of Sela's true body landing on top of the Founder like an asteroid flattening a mountain. Kagiso, bracing herself in the open doorway, cackles with glee as she rips muscle and viscera out of the Founder's pulped body, every regenerated bit of organ and bone merely adding itself immediately to her ever-growing swarm of bloody toys.

"And so it ends, Aimilios," Sela thunders disdainfully. "Allocating purgatory."

A stream of Goddess-incanted code that I barely understand amidst my horror and blood loss is all it takes to devour the souls empowering the Founder, Sela sucking them into its power cells and leaving the man dry and dying. I, too, am bleeding out, however. The way to save myself is right on the edge of my lips, but… do I take that plunge?

"Don't," the Founder wheezes helplessly beneath Sela's enormous leg. "Please. Prove Her wrong the only way you can."

I should. He's right, I should. I should let myself die. She did say that I would have to speak it twice to end the world, but… why not just end it now? It's the only way to win, because that's who the Goddess is. That's Her cruel game.

The only way to beat Her is for me to die.

"What are you waiting for?" Sela asks me. "We need to save your purple friend before the afterlife claims her in a more permanent manner."

Ida… of course. I have to save Ida. Then, and only then, I can die. I can barely even feel what's left of my body, but I know I can heal it to perfection with just two simple words. After all, knowing what I know, there can be no choice of name for my self-transformation spell other than one. A spell of finality, of desperation, of a fate with only losers and ashes awaiting the few that survive. It is a spell of inescapable promise, between me and the end of the world.

"Destiny Bond," I whisper, already knowing it's a mistake, and the doomsday clock ticks towards midnight as I pass out from blood loss. I wake up on Earth alone, in the house of the girl I failed to save. I shake helplessly in her room, tears streaming down my face, for more hours than I care to count. But eventually, mechanically, I walk home. I do not speak to my family, not when they comment on my fully-grown arms and not when they herd me carefully into the car.

I barely even realize where they're taking me until the instinctive burst of panic hits me from seeing the inside of Dr. Carson's office, but even that is numb in the face of what I've done and what I know. I sit on her couch without a word, letting the silence stretch for the ages it takes me to find even a single sentence. It is, fundamentally, a simple one.

"I am going to cause the apocalypse."