Deep beneath the rocky arctic tundra, Mann looked up in his cavernous pit on a dark figure. 

"I am the Logician," the enthroned man said. His voice was low and even, without echo or grandeur. He was almost sleepy as he went on, "It has come a long way to see me."

Mann found that even though he had been near to drifting towards oblivion moments ago, now his focus was sharp. He responded with clarity. "We didn't come for you." He looked down at his gnarled, calloused hands. "We crawled into this cave to die." 

Heinrich had gone completely still. His friend feared that he was already dead because of this. The more he thought about it, in fact, Mann feared that both of them were slipping away. This strange figure before him was likely no more than the paroxysm of a dying mind. Still, he would not waste this final vision, so he listened intently through the surreal encounter. He prepared for his final moments.

The Logician merely corrected Mann's statement without moving or blinking. "It came here to die a proper death. This is only a sublimation." His head tilted slightly, and with it, the room groaned. Icycles splintered and fell at once, crashing down in the distance. "As in all things, it has expressed an intent to be. This is why I open my home, wherefore it has sought me. There shall be no ceremony for the reward I give. For, in placing the will so resolutely to my command, it has been a good and faithful beast."

"What are you?" Mann demanded. If this was to be his final, gasping chance to live, he would have answers above all. He would not go quietly into that good night. If this was his mind offering him some final consolation of meaning, he would have it in plain English, by God.

"I study the Forms," the grey being told him. "Wisdom is all I seek and possess. The apes might know me as a god, but I am only a Priest. This world is my devotion and its face is my Holy Book." Suddenly, he reached up to touch his forehead, as if tracing an eye there. With this motion, the ice covering his entire body crunched and shed. The cave trembled. "In the deep recesses of time, I seeded the life upon this world. I set its course so that I might study the workings of Higher Nature. To that end, I have pushed evolution towards consciousness. This, such that the apes might find enlightenment, avoiding unnecessary suffering and living in balance with their growth. But a doom approaches, despite my efforts.

"Three hundred years hence, civilization will progress to its inevitable end. It is not war or environmental destruction I speak of, but a permanent end to consciousness. The technological deconstruction of reality is nigh. It is the end of the process I have ordained."

"Armaggedon?" Mann said. "You brought me here... to stop it?"

"It will do that for me, yes."

This was making no sense, Mann thought. Not, at least, as the way for a dying mind to make peace with itself. Instead, it sounded like a call to very real action. "But how? We're in this bloody cave in the goddamn pit of hell. There's no future out here. No life. You can't even be real... So how would I save the world?"

"It has already been done." Suddenly, the Logician outstretched his hand. For a moment that the cave grew darker. "To prevent the end of my devotion requires that division be maintained in the face of abundance. Technology cannot be allowed to defile the great purpose. Therefore, I have granted it the ability to create Power within others. It is this which man will hunger for, even greater than peace. And it will divide him. He will continue to grow and learn then. He will not be able to storm Eden's gate and find rest."

Before Mann could say anything, he felt the beginnings of a change coursing through his body. Behind him, Heinrich had already morphed in appearance. Mann did not know, but it looked as if his skin had gone black as wrought iron. The worst frostbite he had ever seen.

But not Mann. His appearance stayed the same. It was his mind which opened, and in it, he could see infinite possibilities stretch out. So many impossible abilities existed to be taken. Reality was, he realized, ultimately malleable and, though he did not possess more than one or two means to manipulate it at a time, he saw that he could bestow more upon others. He could give and take these Powers.

"Go now," the Logician said. "Be fruitful and multiply."

As I watched him, the cave faded to black. Only one last perspective remained in the other room. Despite being dead, Booker had been touched by the Logician's gift.

Now he sat before me in the metal vault on the moon. It took me a few long seconds to remember who I was then, but I found the strength to speak. "You're the Lich?" I asked.

"No," Booker laughed, "I'm just the sickly little brother to the Seventh King. The Lich is one of his lackeys." His bones cracked as he shifted forward, ready to tell his secret. "Don't you see what I'm trying to show you? It was that entombed Logician who started it all. He sired this fever-dream of terrible, aching lust for Power in humanity. With his unceasing rest disturbed, what does he do? Beyond all reason, he responds not with wrath, but with a gift. Yes, he says its to keep the show going, I suppose for his own amusement. But why does he need amusement? Why does an immortal need anything? Only meeting you did I figure that out. Do you want to know why that is?"

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"Tell me."

"He gave each of us our Powers, even though he got nothing in return... And on we went, using them the only way we knew how; to fly after our greatest desire. Thus Heinrich built himself a world of metal and excellence while Mann was not satisfied. Merely possessing a single world of his own was not enough. It would remind him of his intractable finitude. So his goal continues to this day. All the while, I stayed quiet on the ground. Limp as a dead fish. Because the rotting man gets to see what the living cannot. His pleasures are subtle. And, in putrefaction, I lacked nothing."

"So they put you in this cage by precaution. They never really captured you?" I asked. "But why act now? And what about the end of the world?"

"When you change the game, you change the outcome. And nothing changes the game faster than Power. The world has already been saved. Or depending on how you look at it, damned forevermore to conflict. Thus his aim was met."

"And now you know why?"

"Through your ribs, I see your heart; Walter, Hickory, and the nameless Dao. It's the way, the truth, and the life that guides you. That is, we might say, the truth of the way to living. Yet everyone you meet will die. Every structure, decay. Every act we take; brought to the same black end... So spake the Logician to me and I rested content on the mount. You know this truth! You've seen the very last black hole decay, haven't you? In the end, entropy wins. Still, you keep on acting and striving. For this, I waited to meet you. You are his perfect disciple..."

Behind me, the vault door opened. My freedom was secured and I had every reason to bolt from these insane ramblings, out into the free expanse. Yet I didn't leave. I was wholly enraptured and I had to know why this man had deigned to meet me, even though he possessed what I so craved... this completely immortal man.

"Do not be so quick to want what I have. No, you are far more blessed than me. This is why I wake now for you, Creep, just as the Logician woke for us in his cave. Because even when all is writ in stone; a determined march towards an inexorable end... one meaningful act remains in the face of totalizing process. It is the source of all pleasure and the object of freedom. To know Purpose beyond the need for Mind is to know its name. Now say it for me, so that I know that you know. Let me hear you say the word."

"What word?"

"Say it. By what does the contingent touch infinity? Say its name."

He was almost desperate. This was the moment he had been waiting for and the silence of many lifetimes hung heavy in the air. He expected no more or less from me than to justify his reason for existing. What, I thought, does an immortal lack?

For an instant, my mind blanked. An idea was barely beginning to kindle then. Through the depths of my memory and all that I had suffered, I knew he could mean only one thing. That damned lesson I kept getting taught. The answer which had sustained me through so much transformation. It was the final reason for anything.

At last, I gave the answer to his question.

One word, I spoke. "Acceleration."

His hands fell over his face and I heard him let out an unsteady breath. It turned, slowly, into a weak chuckle. I could hear the relief in his voice. "Neverending..." Then, he pointed to the door. "You need no prophecy from me. There will be others, but not you... You will meet the Seventh King no matter what I say. Just as the turning of the wheel, your story is written. Now go. Be gone. I cannot bear to look at you any longer."

Doing as he said, I stepped out of the vault. Just as expected, the instant I was clear from its swing, the door closed. Perhaps never to be opened again.

"Where the fuck have you been, boy?" Hickory appeared from thin air. Breaking the previous rules of my visions, he emerged like a mirage from the charred lunar rock; a fully visible hallucination. "You just take a step out of the damn universe and leave us dangling blind?"

There was no more doubt left in my mind as to whom I had met. "It was the man in the vault. He was over two hundred years old," I said. "You could tell that just by his bones."

Next, Walter appeared. He looked all around the cave, seemingly surprised that he was able to. Once my words sunk in, however, his attention snapped back. "That's not possible. The earliest Supers appeared late nineteenth century, Creep. You must be mistaken."

"No." I was adamant. More than just the sight of bones; a possible illusion, Booker's story rang true. He had no reason to lie to me. With all that he was capable of, it was just as he said. He had no reason to do anything but encourage a problem such as me. To push consumption onward.

Hickory spelled it out for our mutual friend. I could see his mind racing through is eyes. This idea deeply excited him and he wanted it to be true. "Think bigger, Watson. The twenties were when Powers began spreading among the masses, sure. But all great changes begin and end with singular men of God. Metaphysically speakin', you should have expected nothing less..."

Up ahead, dozens of my monstrous constructs were walking towards us. I pointed them out, trying to get us moving again. There would be time to talk later. "Some of the flesh that made it to the surface survived the blast. We need to get going before Seraph follows up with the Alchemist."

"We don't even know where we're headed?" Walter complained. "Besides, you need to tell us what the Goddamn Skeleton said!"

"We're heading to another planet," I countered. "That's all you need to know right now, child. Don't forget the way we work together."

He rolled his eyes.

It would be necessary to gather my forces and return to Earth as soon as possible. I understood what the Tyrant King was hiding now, beneath his Iron Keep. The key to sieging it would be enormous forces. There was simply no other way. Even my Power would not be enough to break through the legendary, endless defenses of the North. No singular Power could, that I could imagine. Instead, it would take millions overwhelming on every front.

Seraph knew this, and it wouldn't be long before they made their move. A great war was about to begin and there would be no better time to strike. Truthfully, I didn't know what exactly was in that cave. I didn't know who or what the Logician really was.

But I knew that Seraph could not be allowed to get to him first.