459. 2252, PRESENT DAY. LAS VEGAS. LIA.

It was almost by instinct that I reached out, my powers flowing beyond my body, clawing at the two of them, at the impossible colors which proliferated their forms, trying to still the fight, trying to save him.

But they were far away and my range was pathetic. All I could do was watch, make impotent noises that couldn't come out of my throat, will for the giant we were riding to pluck me off his shoulder and throw me across the streets so I could intercede, no matter how badly the landing messed me up.

I didn't care. There wasn't time to care. Athan needed me and I was powerless.

He was just standing there, completely still, completely trapped, one foot still off the ground, a stride he'd never completed. He was scintillating, to my sight, surging with emotions I recognized and some which were impossible to quantify, glistening in colors I'd never seen, didn't have the eyes to see, or the reality to.

And floating some distance away, his mirror, even more removed, with human emotions only barely registering, and the rest simply alien. There had been fear there a minute ago, and now just...nothing. Nothing human left. Cold, gleaming iridescence.

A single cord drifted through the air, almost invisible except for how it caught the moonlight, and it snaked itself towards Athan's neck.

I'd seen too many of those tonight. I knew how readily they bit into flesh, I'd seen Karu's wounds, and Tower's. But not this. Not Athan.

If I had the choice, I'd have traded all of them for him. Karu and Tower could take a thousand more cuts if it spared Athan this one. I knew it was selfish and cruel of me even to think, to pray...but in that moment, as the cord drew tight, there wasn't anything else for me to do. I'd have offered God anything. I barraged him with silent, begging prayer.

But a part of me knew it was useless. If God loved us and cared, he wouldn't accept such a deal. And if he was distant and cruel, then Justice was already doing his work. Athan would die, and that was all there was to it.

AEGIS grabbed my wrist and jerked me backwards, half a grunt escaping my lips, as my arm twisted painfully.

"Lia, what the fuck?" she demanded. I tried to yell at her, tried to point at Athan. "I know! But if you jump, you'll die! Tower, take her, I'm going."

Tower held me easily, despite my thrashing. I bit him even, and he just shook his head without taking his eyes off my brother.

I felt like an idiot as I remembered to use my powers, throwing him blank and writhing out of his grasp. I fell, more than jumped, twisting in the air, feeling the cold wind of the night rushing past my face.

The ground came at me shockingly fast. I didn't have a plan for when I got to it. I didn't need a plan right now, I just needed to get to Athan.

The huge golden hand lashed out and snagged me at the last moment, holding me with a crushing grip that pinned my arms and legs, a thousand times stronger than Tower's. No matter how I struggled or lashed out with my powers, the golden hindu god didn't budge.

I was as trapped and helpless as I felt. Tears overflowed down my cheeks as though he'd squeezed them out of me. I wanted to keep looking but I couldn't see through them, and I wasn't sure if I was missing the last moments of seeing my brother, or if I was being spared seeing his death.

Death. It seemed so terrifying now that it was applying to him. Funny that I had so few problems with pulling a trigger, or manipulating people's lives to ruin. Black Shark caused death in a lot of ways that I honestly just didn't care about, even if I knew it was bad, or that I was helping bad people, it never seemed relevant. I'd done it a hundred times, to distant people, who were probably really awful people.

And now the threat of one more was just destroying me. To see Athan so still as though he were already dead, how cruel and wanton Justice was, the single string drifting so casually as though in a breeze. How far away I seemed, how powerless, how utterly and entirely helpless we could all somehow be.

The giant threw me aside, sending me rolling in a fissure-cracked lawn. At the same time, he leapt forward, and off his shoulder, AEGIS shot like a rocket.

They didn't even get close to Athan. They covered maybe half the distance, and then, like him, just stopped. AEGIS was even frozen in midair, the giant and Tower both looking ready to hack Justice to pieces.

I knew it was useless, but I had to try. My sniper swung down off my shoulder, joining me on the grass, my hand finding the grip and my eye behind the sight in an instant. I racked the chamber, the heavy action of the gun letting me feel the weight of the penetrator rounds, nearly as big as my forearm. Justice paused to stare me down, his face shaking in my sights with the rattling of my breath.

I let my breath out and followed the targeting solution in my scope, lined up directly on his seething, black-flame-maned face. There was no dramatic pause, no time to think. I pulled my finger and felt the superheated flash of hot gas explode over my back, the stock slamming into my shoulder, my ears ringing with a blast I never heard.

I barely blinked. But in that instant, the image in my scope changed. He didn't move, he was floating there, mockingly, just the same. But blurry, between us, hovering in the air just as AEGIS was, was my bullet, frozen halfway to his head.

I jammed the trigger again, and then again, but nothing happened. I wanted to scream, wanted to override the gun's safeties like AEGIS had done to herself, to let it fire until the air was completely backed up with bullets if I had to, if somehow I could just force them further and further in on him until one bullet punched through his stupid face.

I wasn't ready when I pulled the trigger and the gun actually fired. I wasn't braced, and the recoil drove the rifle up and out of my hands, instantly breaking my wrist where I'd been holding it. I crumpled around my arm, trying to scream but only a seething hiss coming out. A fresh wave of tears started, running down my cheeks and reaching my chin before I heard my gun crack into the pavement behind me from its landing.

It just wasn't fair. We'd tried so hard. We'd made so many friends and allies, we'd worked our butts off. And to be reduced to this? Permitted to take whatever shots we wanted, because he was secure in knowing that we could do nothing, we were nothing, deserved nothing.

It was hopeless. And that was what he'd been building towards this entire time. All these hours and deaths, it was all for this. Every single threat to his domination was systematically broken. He would create a world where people could do nothing but fear him, but feed his muses, a world dedicated to nothing but the concept of Justice.

Still cradling my wrist, I got up and walked towards him. As I passed, I stooped and picked up a broken piece of a shattered exosuit, turning it over in my hand, feeling its weight.

As Athan had so often put it, fuck that.

For his world to work, he had to kill Athan, the last threat to his existence, because Athan was powerful and relentless, and so long as he lived, Justice could never be safe.

And I wouldn't stand for living in a world without him. I'd just be as powerful and relentless as my brother, and then he'd have to take care of me too. I'd never be one of his cattle, I'd never focus on what he wanted, I'd just remember Athan, always, forever, no matter what he did to this planet or its people, or to me.

I swung the scrap of metal through the air like a heavy sword, imagining slicing Justice's face in half with the blow.

His time-stop power had a range, and if he left me alive, if he moved on to other parts of the world, he'd have to let me go. And I'd follow him, until the end of time if I had to, ready to batter him with whatever I could. He'd never know peace until he dealt with me. If it was all I could do...I'd do it. I'd avenge Athan, with everything I had.

I wobbled on the road despite the determination in my thoughts. My wrist really hurt, it was swelling up, and the bruising looked sickly, even against my burned skin. If I cared about myself at all at this point, I should have stopped and gotten it looked at.

But I didn't. This was the end for me. For all of us, probably. Justice had a whole world of people to capture and torture, who were invariably less awful and more pliable than we were.

Bunch of stupid lunatic idiots, we were. Messing with things so far beyond ourselves. I looked up and saw AEGIS, frozen there, mouth open, dress billowing. Saga's giant, mindless and physically omnipotent, the exact opposite of her. Tower's stubborn final charge.

And me. Dragging my stupid, gangly, radiation-scarred, sixteen-year-old self over towards certain death, with a broken wrist and a scrap of exosuit, where two of my penetrator rounds had done literally nothing, still sitting in the air.

What a bunch of despicable morons. What a waste of space. I didn't know why Justice was bothering to toy with us, except that he was sick. So screwed up with muses that every single victim was important to him, even the really screwed up idiots like us.

Ironic, that the only reason he was murdering everything was also the reason he was keeping us alive.

I felt my body stop, not even like I'd hit something, but simply...stopped. I tried to blink and realized I couldn't, my tears frozen on my face, my eyes permanently locked on my feet, where I'd been staring at them as I'd had all these self-pitying thoughts.

Saga was still out there, useless without her powers working on him, and Karu was unconscious in some random house, but otherwise we were all united again. A big, happy, frozen, doomed family.

Somehow we were less pathetic than I'd thought. Without being able to look around, I could still see through my powers, could still pick out everyone's hue. It surprised me that somehow, nobody was scared. Tower, especially was furious, AEGIS was sad, bittersweet and melancholic. I was just a steely grey, of determination or resignation, I couldn't be sure...but nobody was scared. We were at our end, and we knew it, and as much as we'd tried to fight, and would continue if we could...everyone was kind of okay with just...coming up short.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

It's like I thought before. It wasn't fair. We were playing at a huge handicap and lost. No shame in it, just...just the uncomfortable truth that everything was over now. We could have done better, could have stopped this, could have saved everyone and ourselves.

But we didn't.

I wanted to tell everyone how much I loved them, in the end. But of course, there were a few reasons now preventing me from speech. I hoped they knew anyway. Saga did, at least, and maybe she could relay it to the others before we passed.

I hoped I was next, after Athan. I didn't want to continue living after he was gone. I wanted to be there, when he was arguing with Saint Peter that he should be going to the other place, and maybe the angel and I could double-team him into taking his rightful spot in heaven.

I wonder a moment how Justice would do it. Maybe the same wire, or maybe one of those hundreds of grizzly, morbid, painful ways he'd employed on the others. I guessed it didn't really matter, that I'd wind up in the same place either way. I hoped it would be fast.

I remembered again that I had powers, and, as a sort of last caress, reached out to everyone and soothed them as best I could, letting them at least be calm, normal, themselves, at the end. Athan's didn't...quite work...as I don't think his emotions were exactly his own. But I also wasn't trying terribly hard, I was being gentle after all.

Just a shame Justice wasn't in range. Almost pulled the plan off, in this backwards way. God, that'd have been great.

With the color washed out of them, they mostly disappeared from my sight, and it felt like it was just me, Justice, and Athan now. For all his gloating and posturing, I could still sense fear in Justice. Made me want to grin. He knew he'd been outmatched by Athan, knew that Athan's powers meant death, if he got them off. I realized a lot of this hesitation and torment wasn't just for showing off, he was being very deliberate about how far he stayed away.

Even at the end, what a pain in the arse my brother could be. I wished I could giggle.

And then my mind seemed to go blank, and my stomach dropped from under me.

I felt like I was standing on the beach and the tide just kept going further and further out, exposing stretches of sand nobody had ever laid eyes on before, as a distant rumbling informed of the tsunami to come.

Things...weren't the way they looked. Justice wasn't just hesitating, wasn't just scared...I wasn't sure I'd ever seen him hesitate. I wasn't sure he even was hesitating.

I felt hope filtering up through me, and cursed it. I didn't want to be wrong. But if I was right...it was impossible. But it wasn't! It really was happening, wasn't it? Holy cheese on a biscuit!

I wished my eyes were pointed at Athan instead of the ground. But Tower had his eyes on him, and Saga had her mind open to Tower…

I jumped headfirst into Saga, startling her with a mental yelp, but as she realized my presence, she welcomed me in, coddling me with doting affection like an older sister, more gentle than she'd ever been.

"No, you idiot!" I yelled at her. "Athan!"

[I can't talk to him. I can't go in him. He's taken over by those muses.]

"Not his mind, his head!"

Through Tower's eyes, both of us could now see, and with Saga's guidance steering our consciousness--

[Oh. My. God.]

"He's AMAZING!"

[How is that possible?]

Inside, I was beaming ear-to-ear, more proud than any human ever had been. The wire wasn't wrapped around his neck, it was halted in the air, as much as he was. All of Justice's focus and all of Athan's were both bent on that single thread, vibrating it in place, drifting taut, caught between two impossible forces that only its own magical unbreakable nature was keeping it from shattering.

Except it wasn't just hovering. It was, by millimeters, retreating. Athan was slowly, ever-so-slowly pushing him back. Forcing the wire away from his neck. And I realized, I'd helped. We all had. We'd thrown ourselves into the time-lock power, diverting Justice's attention away from the wire, demanding to be frozen ourselves, insisting on his focus, as he held himself aloft, as he conjured the string, as he forced it forward.

Athan was standing there, the entirety of his will on pushing that thing back. And he was winning.

No wonder Justice was afraid.

The minutes stretched out into an eternity, the tiny wire moving by fractions of an inch, always drawing further and further from Athan's exposed neck. Pulling him further from death, buying him more distance.

And more time. That was the tsunami of thought which came crashing in. That was the realization I had that made Saga gasp.

"That's right," I affirmed. "I can still use my powers when my body's frozen. So can Athan. That's how he's pushing back right now."

Saga's mind stared at me in bewilderment. [Then what's keeping Athan from just...annihilating Justice right now?]

"That wire. If he pulls any attention towards attacking, it'll shear his head clean off."

[The wire...that's getting further away? That's…]

"Yeah. If he gets enough leeway...Athan will be able to attack."

[And if Justice attacks first?]

"Then his concentration on the wire will break, and we've already seen who wins when they're both attacking."

Saga's eyes went wide. And then, she grinned as well.

[Holy shit. He's gonna win. We're gonna win.]

"We're gonna win!"

My heart would have been slamming in my chest, I would have been dancing on the spot, flailing my awkward white-girl teenage best, screaming my head off to cheer Athan on, if I weren't frozen in time. But I couldn't do any of that, just scream in my head and hope that somehow, through the time-stop, through the distance, through the muses, he heard me.

Maybe he did. The line slipped another inch. And then another. The black flames on Justice flared with redoubled intensity, but all it did was slow him down for a moment.

And then, in an instant, all hell just broke loose.

The thread snapped. And with it, the air shattered into fractal distortions as a thousand blades made of lightning crackled into being. Waves of electric current pulsed and sizzled, and arcs jumped from body to body, even as Athan remained completely still.

His opposition rose but was cut down as quickly as it formed. Waves of fire, stilled. Physical barriers, ripped to pieces. Walls of illusion, of gas, of shimmering energy, cut through.

Justice fell back half a step, and the moment he did, I came free. AEGIS, my bullets, and the giant continued forward on restarted momentum and immediately became stuck again.

And I joined them, throwing myself back into the time-stop to demand from Justice whatever attention I could, my cruddy improvised sword swinging.

It was too much for him, and suddenly we were all moving, Justice shooting away through the sky, and Athan after him without so much as a pause, streaking like a lightning bolt, with another thousand lightning bolts screaming in his wake. Now and again, Justice was nearly caught, flaring up the time-stop power to buy him a little space, but it wasn't working.

Athan had longer range. When Justice slapped him to a standstill, the swords came in swinging, lightning fell from the sky, buildings tore themselves out of the ground, imploded in on themselves, and cracked the heavens with a blast louder than the constant thunder.

The rest of us could only sit and watch. AEGIS was chasing them, but even with her speed, she couldn't keep up. I was grinning and bouncing, and Saga was holding my hands too tightly.

None of us were the least bit prepared for him to suddenly swing back around, diving under Athan in a suicide squeeze, lightning raking through his rapidly-disintegrating form, as the wreath of black flame exploded towards us, tendrils clawing and raking at us, like some desperate, final bid to take us down, even if he was to perish.

I was...unprepared. Incapable of moving away from something so fast. It just looked like a storm heading straight for us.

I felt extreme cold wash over me, and then something sharp. Tower battered one of the black tendrils off of us, but where he touched it, even he was sliced up and bleeding profusely. The other tendrils honed in, reaching for us, flying towards us at impossible speeds.

And then, he stumbled. The tendrils raked the ground, the body and flames falling forward, rolling in a seething, uncoordinated mass, losing speed, still trying to clamber towards us but disoriented, slowed. In the midst of the black flames, I saw something white, and thought it was lightning.

Justice shrieked, and the sound of it made my ears and nose trickle blood. I had my feet under me now, and Tower and Saga and I were all running...but not fast enough. Justice wasn't flying anymore, but was skittering, the tendrils like spider legs, dragging him towards us, blades flashing, Athan coming up behind but not there yet.

He staggered again. And then again, shuddering, another ear-piercing keening, causing a pain so sharp and sudden, and a deafness so absolute in one ear that I was sure the sound of it had torn my eardrum. I was staggering myself, falling over myself and my broken wrist and the broken ear and blood.

And then he was on me, rearing back, screaming like a predator. I had time to look up, to blink, to see the hazy outline of the shape of his flesh, drifting in the black sea of fire.

In the middle of him, I saw it, his core, the still-bleeding slashes that Trish had left on his chest, the human bit of him left, around which all this blood and darkness was bound. And embedded in that chest were three shining silver daggers, throwing knives. Familiar ones.

As though waiting for him to rear back, three more landed, thump, thump, thump, burying themselves to the hilt in his flesh, making him scream again, and I had to hold my head, cradle my other ear with my limp arm. He was distracted, but the claws were moving.

I wasn't trying to be heroic, I wasn't trying anything. I was just lashing out before he got me. My foot went out and kicked him, right in the hilt of one of those daggers, slamming the blade deeper into him.

It was like a reflex, the bladed tendrils reaching for the wound instead of for me. They sliced through my leg like it wasn't even there, clutching at the silver dagger now streaming blood. He gasped.

I felt a disorienting jump as my powers kicked in and suddenly I was watching myself eviscerated from outside, the blades punching right through me...through the double of me, as I stood adjacent.

And then there was white silence as Athan got in range.

Annihilation. Just pure...complete...eradication of Justice and everything about him. The tendrils flailed as they disintegrated, the keening cut short as the medium of air around him was torn into nonexistence. The gleaming silver daggers and the bloody heart of the beast...just shadows in the light, and then nothing at all.

And the flames, the black flames, ringed in light, they wavered. They spread and proliferated through the light, like the light itself was catching fire. But the more they danced and grew, the more insubstantial they became, spreading further and wider and more invisible, until I wasn't sure I saw them at all.

Then it was gone. He was gone. They were gone. My body double was gone. All that was left was my brother, floating in the air, pulsing in unknowable emotion, fierce surges of it, looking down at all of us with an impassive expression on his face.

I wanted to scream. Wanted to shout. Wanted to jump up on what was left of my mangled, broken body and cheer with everything left in me. But even as I started forward, as I ran to hug my big stupid brother who had come through for us again, like he always had, something held me back.

I turned and found the glint of silver, and nervous eyes.

"Dragon?" I asked. Or...tried to. My lips moved, and I guessed that was going to have to suffice. I wanted to ask why he was still tense, why he was holding another knife, why he wasn't screaming his head off like we all should have been.

He shook his head minutely, his eyes never lifting off my brother. Warily, almost afraid to turn my back, I followed his gaze and wondered just what we were looking for.

And then I saw it, as Athan reached out and pulled a collapsed building aside, lifting what I thought to be dusty bags or something from the rubble with his powers. Until I realized, the bags were moving. They were people.

He rammed one of the thousand floating swords through each of them, his emotions flaring with unknowable color.

And then the other thousand blades fired off in every direction, each diving into the ruins, into the rubble, into the wrecked lives that remained, and the people who held them.

Fuel for the muses that consumed him.