This death was like falling endlessly. I was weightless, but I had a sense of traveling. The vast face of the Earth was zooming towards me, and the imminent doom of collision was all I knew. But I was conscious, and I’d died enough times to know what that meant.

I wasn’t out of the fight just yet.

At the beginning of all of this, I had told the Heroes that anyone who fought against me would suffer years of torment. I had said that I suffused the air with tiny microscopic computers. Those that would invade their biology, copy down their consciousness, and store it for my later use. This same system was undoubtedly what had saved me.

I only regretted that it hadn't been able to save Ironbolt. He had kept his mask on the entire time. And when he hadn't been doing that, he had been creating a blue aura that killed all microbes around him.

That stubborn bastard.

Yet, even though I had survived, I hadn’t been put back into the field. I was drifting in the cosmic sea of inner thought, just as Creep did in his Power. And very quickly, I knew why.

I was face to face with the faceless being himself. Creep’s skin was a vision of the infinite expanse of our universe. Inside it, I could see drifting planets and burning quasars; the whole of nature’s creation.

He did not have an expression, and his words were spoken in the same way as the cells, using a cacophony of human voices. They were of every sex, race, and intonation. Still, disappointment was clear and common among them. “What has become of you?” he asked.

“Put me back in the fight,” I told him. “Just because the Lich is dead, this is not over. Seraph will be making his move on the North as we speak, and he still has the most Powerful Supers remaining. Why are you even here, anyway? I thought Sol was running the ground forces?”

“I stored a copy of my consciousness in every single one of you in the event that Mars was destroyed. It is still possible that, as I saw in my experiments, our Power would default to that consciousness."

“Good,” I told him. “Then dissolve yourself and jump the gap between our planets, because we need you here now. It won't matter if mars survives, not if we lose here tonight.”

“If I did that, it might default to you. And I cannot have that with how unstable you are.”

“What?” I asked.

As I looked then, I saw what Creep was talking about. His form shifted, showing me its true essence. Though he held no ultimate identity, he required a model for operating in the world. It was as I suspected. Creep was not a person. Rather, he was truly just a living Power. And that Power merely appropriated effective masks to increase itself in the world. And so, appearing above the selfless void of space he presented as his face, I saw a patchwork of stolen personalities.

Most notably on top, there were pieces of Hickory and myself. Together they combined to make the one I knew as Creep.

It was an Eidolon. A tool that my Power had created to force the transformations I needed to survive. Yet, it had been an over-correction at its root. No solution was perfect, and I realized that this mask I had made to overcome who I was, was itself now an ossified construct that had to be left behind.

But as was typical, this mask saw me as the threat and it rationalized my new changes as unacceptable chaos.

“I take the courage and freedom of Hickory,” I explained to Creep, “and I added it to dampen my cynicism. But there is someone else that I need to add, to dampen the nihilism that resulted, no matter how mighty and joyful it was. Because we can’t just revel in power. Sometimes, to grow ourselves, we have to tolerate weakness and we have to limit our own control.”

“You’re not in charge here,” Creep told me. “You have been poisoned by your perspective as a mortal and finite being, outside me. Thus you doubt my rightful control.”

“You're not infinite!” I shot back. “You still grow and change. I’m talking to what’s underneath, not the face it wears. I’m talking to the thing that can never have a name and never have any desire but for desire itself. I'm talking to the real Creep.”

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He was silent.

“Now,” I said. “Show me his face.”

The Creep put his hand up to cover his eyes, and he seemed to pause and think. The call was going out through all our cells, and I just had to trust that somehow, someway, it was reaching back to Mars. Because this Power was localized in one place and time up there, despite its amazing abilities, and if it was to come to me, the old bearer had to let go, just as I once had in the deepest dungeon. There could still only be one.

I thought I saw the hints of new skin forming in the patchwork of Creep’s form. Blue eyes, perhaps, that I recognized.

Hickory was the man who showed me the contempt that I deserved. He was worthy of emulation. But Ironbolt, I thought… he was the one who showed me forgiveness.

He too is worthy.

Before I could see what decision was made on Creep’s part, he shunted me out of the darkness. I found myself gasping for air once again, thrown out in a pool of slime from a new pod inside a new spaceship.

Just as before, I followed the lights to the offramp and out into the cold. There, I was met by a welcome sight.

It was the reinforcements we had so desperately needed. They weren’t much. In fact, they were only a fourth of our original fighting force. Nonetheless, they were a sight for sore eyes.

They’d come down from orbit, landing outside the Great Storm, and set about transforming their ships into the weapons we needed. This transformation was now almost complete, and at the same time, the Storm had begun to dissipate.

The Lich was dead, as were his Thralls. So, we had a clear view of the city, or what was left of it.

The armies had been decimated. All that remained was that tiny grey speck that I saw, floating above the city, surrounded by the strongest Class One Heroes available. It was Seraph, and he was seething with anger at the Martians that persisted.

I looked down at my hand and said a little prayer, then. “Come on, Creep. Make the right choice. If we don’t stop him now, he can remake the Lich. Let the Power choose who it wants to go to. Your copy or me."

Suddenly, a great rumbling went out from beneath the ground.

Buildings were tossed flying into the air as a black form began to unfurl from its hiding. She had been traveling slowly to get here, but now she could reveal herself.

That was when I understood just what I had created.

The world shook with her guttural cries, the wind stirring me from a mile away with the force of her breath as she summoned a voice as deep as the ocean. Dawn formed no coherent words. By her indiscriminate screams of rage, she expressed a simple desire to kill everyone on the field. I didn’t understand it, but I thought, maybe she was lashing out. Like an animal cornered.

But she was too smart for that. She had to know that she must take sides and compromise. Alone, she could not survive. So, whose side was she going to take?

As she released her own horde of Jackal creatures to stalk the battle, and as her enormous tendrils lashed out, crushing buildings with every mighty slash, it wasn’t clear who she was targeting. There were still hundreds of thousands of fighters, yet she made no distinction as to Seraph and my’s soldiers.

“What is she thinking?” I said.

Surprisingly, an answer came in a flash of light. “She is thinking like Creep, that she may eliminate every threat that faces her, and that she represents the totality of existence, not just a part. For her, however, this is hubris. Not like our Lord.”

When I looked, it was Sol standing on the ice that was talking. He had abandoned his armor, broken by his fall from the platform, and met up with our reinforcements to lead them. I was glad he’d made it, even though I didn’t understand exactly what he meant. Both he and Creep seemed to share this idea that, beyond a certain point, the rules did not apply. “We have to get in there. Maybe we can still broker a truce with her.” Evolution left every form behind in the end. No one was so special that they could go it alone.

“Don’t you see, wise one?” He pointed beyond the edge of the city, and to the North. “She can serve as our distraction. If we pool our forces with the Iron Tyrant to help defend the Logician, we can cause a stalemate. Then, Creep’s victory is assured.”

He and I weren’t on the same page anymore. He and Creep still wanted to gain total control of the world and reset its history, while I wanted to see what was in store for its progression. If there was anything that could possess the same meaning which the past had in its struggles, but without the same suffering, I was willing to fight for that future.

For now, however, I had to work with Sol to stop Seraph from winning. Nothing could be worse than his will to directly manage all events in the world and bring them into him. At least Creep believed in a degree of autonomy.

Dawn was currently drawing the attention of both Martian and Earthling alike. It would have been inaccurate to say they were working together, but they had no choice rather than to ignore each other and fight the enormous, unstoppable horror.

I hated to think we were abandoning Hickory in all that carnage, but I could not go wading into it to help him. Indeed, he was on his own.

Your fate is in your own hands now, my friend. Just the way you like it.

So, I loaded up in the Scarab. All of us began to march, but I would not march with the pack. I had to get ahead in case there was anything I could do to get the Iron Tyrant on my side.

Just as before, I loaded up in one of the fighter jets that was made for me. I started her engines and I did not wait for permission to fly. I slid out the hanger door and blazed off alone.

Ahead of me lied the Iron Keep and the final part of my story.