'When spring revives the warbler’s melody

And bees sip nectar from our grave-bed buds,

Don’t spoil the festive mood with eulogies,

With tears to soak the youth of earth to mud,

No murals, thanks. Our likeness can’t be seen,

For light won’t infiltrate the depths we’ve sunk.

No statues, thanks. Our truth in marble sheen

Is not preserved nor felt once death corrupts.

Cry only this in joy: “The sun returns!

Let’s celebrate the winter dead with dance!”

And if, while spinning 'round the fields refreshed,

Your dance a cranium should disinter,

Dance on, dance more. The boy was not this scrap.

You best recall him through your liveliness.'

-James Sorley (2012-2032)

(NAN: Oh, yeah, adding to the difficulty, this epilogue duel is entirely from Miller’s POV, which has, by the end of the match, degenerated into a telegrammatic, panicky stream-of-conscious. I interpret this according to the duel’s genius-vs-brawn sub-plot, as Miller, a man of muscle, begins to sound like he has a mild mental disability. Henry, likewise, talks in an odd fashion due to exhaustion.)

Battle over? Not for one man.

Emerson in the tavern (NAN: He's on the hamlet map, at the exact same spot where he eliminated Grandma Ru), defensive circuit around the shattered furniture. Dog thing slumped against a wall, skull blown to fragments. (NAN: Miller’d wrestled with a bipedal dog monstrosity earlier.) Braining wasn’t the way Fido kicked it. Spools of guts from its evisceration across the floor. He’d spread them further for the acid hazard—creative trap work. (NAN: The dog monstrosity devoured people with acidic venom.) The scene reeked of half-digested assassin inside, girl’s skeleton still visible, partially molten. (NAN: There were no scenes with him fighting a female assassin, but presumably she’s a stray from the interplanar team who’d jumped Henry.)

Rest of dog thing’s freak buddies piled around, barricading the tavern’s holes. Task unfinished—quarter of the roof still missing, beams of stadium light infiltrating. Carcasses too heavy to lift for the plug job. (NAN: The roof was smashed by a spray of meteors shot by the giant python.) He’d contemplated skinning them to rig a canvas. One of those asinine plans that flash by in the panic. Problem: too much exposure. Fix: ignore it, dance around the holes, let others attract hellfire from above.

A peek outside through the tavern’s cracks. The perimeter swarmed with bot-lover’s goons. (NAN: 'bot-lover' means Henry, as does 'boss-kid', 'boy'.) Hadn’t detected him yet. Maybe pretending not to—deceptive types, just like boss-kid. A group of Carcassworkers scratched their heads over the giant python—one said, “Where to start?” Leader goon, climbing spine with pole-mounted saw: “Everywhere”. Distant stirrings by a gopher hole, goon’s dirt-smeared helmet popped out, discrete but alone—blasted.

(NAN: The arena is chequered with holes. Henry, in the pursuit of Loki’s colleague Fenrir phasing through the ground with Worldwalker, debuts an earth-manipulation Legendary, with which he bores a network of tunnels. The item appears to be ‘The Geomancer’s Haunted Portal’, crafted in the Overdream chapter of 283. In the background of these scenes was a ludicrous side-plot I’d forgotten to mention in which Henry petitions for digging permissions, the message travelling up the bureaucratic ladder of Suchi’s church to eventually reach the region’s pope, who delays before rubber stamping the request. I have no idea what the purpose of this is, for the love triangle or otherwise, and can only assume the saga’s satire layer was providing an absurdist anti-building-code parable, the saga-senders maybe being radical libertarians.)

Emerson returned to the south window, snug behind his shield, different approach angle. Bot-lover still kneeled in the dirt. (NAN: The lost chapter before this concludes with Henry kneeling over Worldpiercer and weeping tears of exhausted joy as the crowd cheers). Worldpiercer AWOL—stowed in inventory. Good riddance. Boy stared at the crowd, eyes glazed and registering nothing—an uncanny impression. The custom: more ears than eyeballs, listen out for heaven’s volatile thunder. Emerson listened, too: crowd mumblings, goon chatter, no signs of action. Goons must’ve finished off others, cold and efficient. Just himself now, the last rat of an extinct species—as he preferred.

Recheck of the improvised fortress. No LOS for artillery. Four paths in the cramped windings of the maze to two healing zones, known only to himself. Two lateral entry points for the grunts, both false. Entry 1: doorway ran into a corpse pile with a hidden spear wedged inside. (NAN: This spear and the next measure described in Miller’s defence are useless. As a Tier-0 player, his low-grade weapons can’t hurt Henry’s troops, and most of the damage he’s inflicted throughout the match has been with his hands or Worldpiercer, picked up on occasion and then discarded. Miller’s thinking here is thus somewhat demented.) Entry 2: window, trap: himself, cutting down the goons on entry. The position was close enough to the roof damage to seize those dropping vertical. Overall: perfect set-up for a rat's last stand.

Return to the window. Scene change outside: bot-lover surrounded by cronies—backpats, admiration. Boy, energyless jest: “Well…this sucks…just took a bath...” (NAN: To fill in a missing visual element that’s ceased repetition hundreds of pages earlier, Henry’s gear by the fight’s end is a grotesque disaster, tattered in multiple places, caked by a mixed layer of human gore, monster gore, and the region’s blood-red clay picked up while tunnelling. He himself beneath this gear is comparatively clean after respawning from the death-god duel. Miller observing him is in a similar ghoulish condition. A piece of entrail dangles from beneath his helmet, clinging to his neck. He’s shirtless after his torso armour’s destruction, but his frontside has essentially been reclothed from chin to navel by gore. His boots squelch whenever he moves from the soaked blood.) Not a jest. Goons threw up a tent for cover. Dozen guards visibly posted while the boss-kid inside poured a bubble bath. Triple that stealthed. Chance of solo infiltration: null.

Confirmation: traitorous rats had forgotten him.

Movement above. De-stealthing goon on edge of the roof hole—weaponless, odd posture, confusion. “Friend, what are you doing?”

Emerson posted by the window, checking back and forth between the perimeter and the roof-goon yet to build the confidence to plunge. “Come forth, you rats! Let’s consign ourselves to hell!”

Roof-goon’s visor slit blazed magic white—scenes transmitted to the boss.

So it begins.

Bot-lover’s voice crept into Emerson’s head telepathically, snide, long breaths of tiredness between: “…can’t be serious, old man…your chance was lost…an eternity ago…you missed it…hiding in your cave...”

Emerson popped up to check the window—no one yet—might be no one.

“Ain't no hidin'!” Chose to shout back—loathed the creepy comms, bot-chatter inside the skull. “I was waitin'! Used to have more honour than to dogpile a child! Not like you, you traitorous scum rat!"

Silence. A moment of contemplation—and plotting. Bot-lover emerged from the tent flaps. Towel around the waist, wet and bubbled. Exhausted gait, barely able to stand—easy if reached, if. Summoned a stool next to a scorched ostrich. Goons removed the bird as he sat, lugged a bathtub out next to him.

Bot-lover, scrubbing hair, contemptuous: “Traitor? To who, old man? You?” Flat laugh. “By what measure…would I ever owe you loyalty…mate, I’m not even American…”

“You betray yourself as a man.”

“Man…man…man, if you cunts just paused…self-reflected for one stupid second…you’d realise…that these ravings about apocalypses… (NAN: Without context, this might seem to be an allusion to Loki and Fenrir, their guild Asatru believing in Ragnarök. The statement is more directly aimed at The Third Gate. During the battle, she escapes her guards and delivers a grand sermon proclaiming the various intruders the Chosen One who’ll ‘fling open The Gates of The Ecstatic Apocalypse’. These chapters are quite goofy. Since her Chosen Ones continuously get killed by Henry, she’s forced to push her RP-improv genius to the limits by retconning her lore mid-battle, weaving the string of mis-prophecies into one greater, infallible prophecy. After repeated failures, she concludes that the error is not her message but the crowd’s lack of faith in her Chosen Ones, who could have been any of the dead intruders if only they’d truly believed. Then, dramatically, she offers herself as a demonstration of her own faith to the giant python—the real Chosen One—who, instead of eating her, squirms over her and crushes her. The beast, for what it’s worth, is later slain by Henry separating its head with a swarm of magical saws and duelling the section in between one of the Karnon’s scattered healing zones, which’d previously made it invincible due to its lengthy body connecting with multiple.) “…yours is the same insanity, you know…the world isn’t ending, mate…there are no traitors…” Squinting at the stands, a look of venomous disgust. “There are, really, no traitors…they’re just adopting different strategies from us…new ways to maximise an ever-changing world…a world we changed through our ‘traitorous’ strategies…”

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Emerson, sick of the boy’s noxious prattle: “Don’t you dare go drawin' equivalencies between us, bot-lover. You are these spectators. Confusin' this for the world, you’re the worst of the mesmerised breed.”

But the boy wasn’t listening, had flown off to gaga-land. “A world that no longer needs our strategies…that’s the root of the paranoia…a perverse projection of the strategy as it clings…the strategy’s internal dread of going out of style…mutates into external fantasies of apocalypse…of generational treachery…‘betray yourself’ …how laughable…that’s your fantasy, mate…unlike you, I’m quitting this love affair with the bots early…emerging from these years squeaky-clean and filthy-rich…forget what I can do with the future…I’ve already contributed more to the project of revitalisation than you ever did…how many doctors have you sponsored, brother…how many wretches have you elevated from out of the abyss…you…you’ve done nothing…you just jerked off in some cave while you lost…and you’re still in the cave…still clinging to the cave’s strategy…the cave has claimed your soul…and it’s the cave that wishes that I needed it…that the rest of the humanity outside its dark enclosure would be extinguished…just to prove that it’s still necessary…what a delusion…fuck your cave…I spit on it from…from the ascending light…”

Boy hocked a thick one onto the dirt—a parody. Farting noises to exacerbate the insult, profane waggings of the bot-loving tongue.

Emerson was appalled, felt the spit land on him—on everyone. Greater offense: the insinuation continued through the insult. Boy thought their struggles had equivalence, erasing the fundamental division.

“You don’t know a god-damn thing.”

Boy shrugged. “The insistence on being known…that’s a subtler of the cave’s fantasies…” He paused, decided he was too tired to explain, that explanation, too, was a fantasy. “I spit on all of this…I’ll know that I’ve succeeded when I’m unknown…when my enemy is so vanquished…that not even their memory is needed…and I, without them…diminish to an absurd caricature…a ‘bot-lover’…a tyrant…a cannibal…a lunatic babbling at the sky…that’s my final aspiration…to become a man…a man without explanation…”

(NAN: I admit to plagiarising my essay title from this line, both of them archetypally the same inexplicable has-been/love-triangle-loser archetype. I was banking on this being forgotten after six-hundred pages, but now the fraudulence is harder to obscure. My apologies.)

Emerson had no response, refused to entertain it—pure, machine-fed and machine-bred horseshit. He paced his tavern circuit, boot-kicked a monster’s head.

Bot-lover’s goon by the window. Worldpiercer in hand—a courier. Tossed it in.

Emerson side-stepped the rapier, let it clatter on the floor. “You don’t know a god-damn thing! Not a god-damn thing! Not a fuckin' god-damn thing!”

Outside: bot-lover had suited up, rags of rookie gear clinging to his bath-wet body. He squatted in a recovery posture—breath deep, lids sealed. Gyrated on his feet. Last not a technique—struggling over balance. Adrenaline of the battle was dissipating—boss-kid was done.

Goons argued with their boss, failed, departed on a silent order. The scattering of their bug-like forms reopened the arena’s full terrain for them to play.

Boy said, “I know you’re going to pick up that sword…same reason I have…” He flashed the phasing-sword (NAN: This is Worldwalker; Miller doesn’t appear to know its name)—a proposition of equality in treachery. “Difference is…I’m not going to lie about my rationale…pretend there is some higher purpose behind this scrap…pretend I’m victim to manipulation…I know the truth that they don’t know…that despite all their insistence…that we should learn to live in this new era…the greatest joy remaining…to us…is to reminisce…that the nightmares…what they mistake as nightmares…are really memories of days most loved…days when our strategies…and us…had…had still possessed an explanation…it’s hard to give that up…that’s why we walk ourselves into these silly conflicts…with our own two feet…and the sword…we cannot glimpse the sun again…not from the proximity of those by-gone summits…so…so we seize these lesser opportunities to reminisce…that’s all this is…you saw me…a black dot far across the levelled dunes of time…and you recognised that chance…to reminisce…and you walked yourself to me…with your own two feet…and your sword…well, my brother shade…I see you, too…and I walk myself to you…to this last joyous reminiscence…pick up the sword…”

Boy tried to stand up too fast, passed out. Phase-sword dropped loose from his grip. Dirt caught him as he hit the ground, rolled onto his back. Deep breaths resumed.

Emerson scrutinised the posture—unsure if a feint—doubtful. “I don’t need your sword! Perceive the state this bot-lovin' has reduced you to, boy. The machine has done used you up good. Take a nap. Man can wait.”

(NAN: To clarify, by ‘The machine’ here, Miller is probably not referring to himself, a.k.a. The Machine, who’s exhausted no one after sitting out most of the match. I believe it’s instead a reference to his girlfriend, whom Miller assumes due to his cyborg-cuckold paranoia to already be sleeping with Henry. In other words, it is an accusation of a sexual exhaustion.)

He could wait. Not one of these kids trading up their future for ten thrills a second. Essence of a man: respect the sluggishness of flesh, find in this respect an honour beyond their fathoming.

Bot-lover, meditating on the truth in the phrase: “Used up…maybe…but sometimes…even when you’re used up…you’ve got to...discover…” Stopped there, nodded off.

A gift for Emerson: sally out, behead the beast while it snored. Mistake—sleep a trick, it never slept. Besides, no honour in the action.

He hunkered down, repeated the circuit of his ‘cave’. Rearranged a table, corpses—location compromised by the goons. Untouched by him where it’d fallen: Worldpiercer. Boy had boasted about taking him out without assistance—time to reciprocate the insult once his nap finished.

A minute ticked. Bot-lover outside, crazed shout: “The sun returns!”

Emerson perplexed—might’ve lost track of time, does happen. Scanned the scene, squinted past the stage lights—a moon, stars swirling in the vortex of the cosmos. The boy, still laid out, stared up with excitement, chest rising and falling in the rapidity of hyper ventilation.

“You’re hallucinatin', boy. Stop with that there breathin' shit and sleep it off.”

“The sun returns!” Boy repeated, tried to salvage enthusiasm from his exhaustion—tried, failed.

Crowd noise: a rhythmic chant condensed around the phrase. The sun returns! The sun returns! Their leader with an amplified voice: Alex Wong, second-fiddle maestro of the flock.

(NAN: The phrase, ‘The sun returns’, is enigmatic with or without the preceding chapters.

Initially, I’d thought Miller had misheard it, my first translation being the homophone, ‘The son returns’, as Henry, talking in the third person, evoked the saga’s cryptic Orphan plot, in which he is a youth without parents motivated by several intertwined themes of familicide, cyclicality, and heroism. This ‘sonhood’ theme creeps into the saga’s second longest duel before this, the one against Ramiro, during which Henry, at the peak, hallucinates that his parents are weapons narrating his combat, declaring in a thrice-repeated refrain: ‘Though born from our thousands’ blood, the boy has left us. He climbs the mountain.’(204). The phrase ‘The son returns’ would thus finish this loop established earlier, the archetypal orphan departing for a heroic journey and then returning on its conclusion.

Henry’s next statement, however, makes it apparent that it was myself who misheard, as he responds to the crowd with a paraphrase of his ancient cripple anime-samurai motto, ‘Invincible Beneath The Sun’. Alex Wong leading the chants makes me doubly think the phrase could be a reference to the public half of their guild, ‘Flaming Sun’, perhaps its motto. It is, additionally, repeated in the pro-robo-romance poetry of this section’s header with its theme of learning to see people as more than just flesh. ‘Cry only this in joy: “The sun returns!”’ I dismiss the chance that anyone is intentionally quoting that, however, since Henry’s literary quest suggests that poetry continues to be an unpopular art in 2050.’)

Bot-lover cracked a smile, powered by the sun-chants like a weed absorbing rays. “And I remain alone…invincible beneath it…” Angry bellow followed, escalating in volume with each word. “Pick UP! THE FUCKING! SWOOOOORD!”

Crowd switched chants, calls for sun and sword blending. Vile—flock of sheep, mesmerised into the same affliction by the bot-lover’s charade, hallucinations of the dawn as humanity cheers its plummet into dark nothing.

The boy picked up the sword. Back onto his feet, limbs wrenched and lifted from the soil’s grip by some demonic force.

Identity of the demon soon revealed—remembered. Boy staggered forward staring at Emerson, but not at him. Through him. Stared at memories of a frauded human love: touch of her cold steel bodice, straddles of her hair of wires, scent of her oil perfume. Each remembered sniff renewed him, the speed returning to his step, the eagerness—eagerness to earn another of the machine’s affectionate shocks.

Tools pulsed back out as he approached Emerson's tavern. A 4-weapon constellation, supporting the phase-sword: one piercer, one slasher, one smasher, one shield. Reduced shield ratio. Boy’s problem: Emerson’s Worldpiercer—assumed use—puncturing defences like paper. Boy’s fix: strike first. Cocky.

(NAN: There are multiple contextual elements missing here, Henry’s juggling technique having by this point been exhaustively examined, from Miller’s POV, his robot girlfriend’s, and the other slain combatants’ when Henry debuts several Legendaries in the royal rumble phase. Unfortunately, this is an area where my memory is mostly useless because I never figured out what was happening in the first place, the key details seeming to have been contained in the robot girlfriend’s abstruse taxonomical digressions. The best I can say—and a point not made explicit by Miller—is that the weapon juggle, likely as a by-product of exhaustion, has been significantly nerfed in this epilogue duel across several factors – number of weapon, combo complexity, spell-integration, and overall significance. The peak number-wise was actually at the duel’s beginning, when Henry, against Miller alone, cranked up to 7 or 8 weapons while dismembering the older player, i.e. double the current value. The extra intruders initially dropped this to three weapons, as Henry diverted his attention to mobility tactics and spell-tome usage. Finally, at one breaking point, the weapon juggle vanished completely as, unable to sustain it, he debuted the instant-swap gloves forged in The Overdream (282). The gloves' debut marks a transition point where the challenge upgrades from tracking weapons to tracking what’s happening at all, the combos and magical complexity factors increasing to an illusion of opponents just randomly dropping, guys half-the-arena away from other guys mid-death suddenly getting evaporated by laser arrows etc. Spell-integration-wise, Henry employs almost no magic in this epilogue duel, which consists mostly of stabbing and pummelling Miller. This contrasts with the earlier action being predominately magical. Starting with the first intruders, Henry exploits a different Legendary sword, Worldhexer, to instant-cast his Spelltome arsenal, and this, comboed with some other artefacts, enables several complex set plays, kills chaining into further kills. Those are not a feature of this epilogue duel.)

Emerson studied weapons close. Cocky boy was used up, but not his steel. Condition unchanged—grown compact in the reduction, sharper. Circled him flesh-hungry and sleepless. The anatomy of a man expiring in its pattern: knee feinted by an axe, neck slashed; neck feinted by that slash, death somewhere by…something. Different death the next second, another after.

Horror—he would die. Not by this boy, a used-up creature. Death by the invention, after it’d invented the boy to evolve it. Nature of the machine: a parasite, animating the corpse of this host to a better location for propagating its legacy. Next victim: the billions cheering, mouths flapped open in welcome of the spores. Emerson’s purpose in the scheme: a gust of wind—this farce event’s latest.

Mistake to sign up, he realised. Too late.

Bot-lover’s slow trudge almost reached the tavern. Few feet off, the juggle ceased. Exhaustion winning, toppled forward, body smacked face-first into the ground. False—fell right on through ground—phase-sword activated.

Emerson sensed the movements in the earth. Boy swimming through the bones of a worm-devoured generation. Nearing. Nearing...

Too late for himself, the puppet wind. Options left: blow hard or blow soft.

Last scan of the crowd—celebration, not one trace of resistance. Resistance dead. Everyone dead. Just Emerson now. As the boy said: a lunatic babbling at the sky.

“To hell with ‘em.”

The lunatic relented, slid under a table, came back up fast with the rapier.

Blow hard.