Enna's eyes snapped open. To an interested observer (had there been any), they could have been seen to be faintly glowing, emitting a cosmic light which hinted, with the greatest subtlety, at the shine of distant galaxies. Gentry, still staring at Orton's corpse and struggling to adjust to the fact that he was no longer the bearer of the Elder Sign of Solomon, did not even notice.

He had one fraction of an instant in which to make a fairly momentous choice; to attempt to retain control over any of his bound demonic servitors, or to banish them all at once before any of them could get out of control. Gentry was both very smart and very prudent; he did the latter, immediately and instantaneously. He staggered, very slightly, as he reeled with the unfamiliar sensation of being alone within his own mind, body, and spirit; but he was resilient and powerful.

"This is nothing. I don't even need the Sign. I can still salvage this."

Extending his arms, he groped outward through the night with his vast power; though his grip upon the multitudinous universes into which he had sown the seeds of his triumph was tenuous and fraying, it was still there, still whole for whatever fleeting moments remained before it disintegrated into a chaotic mess of unrelated coincidences. There was still one way to make this work.

Bringing his hands together into a mudra, Gentry opened his heart to the void.

The winds swirled around him; a great clap of thunder pealed down upon them both. And the sky above them, which moments ago had been clear and slightly star-studded, split asunder as a great glowing rift of white luminescence appeared and cast its unearthly radiance down upon the island of Manhattan. Where the light fell, the city changed; cars became low humps of stone, buildings became towering spires of crystal. The bustle of sleepless activity became a glassy stillness as the citizens of New York City froze in their tracks, becoming silent statues in an immutable tableau. Binding the whole of existence within his aura into his desire, Gentry gave form to his Internal Domain.

He doubled over, gasping from the exertion; he was holding together a million, billion universes by sheer effort of will. But, slowly, the strain eased; as he brought himself into congruence with the fractal shape of his desired probabilistic manifold, the exertion became manageable, then easy, then entirely intuitive. He sucked in a deep breath, held it, then let it out slowly.

A sound behind him startled him, and he whirled around, alert for danger; Enna was staring out over the city, facing away from him. He relaxed. "I must confess, I quite forgot you were here." He dusted off his vest and tie, frowning at the discoloration where Orton's projectile had passed through, then looked up at her. "Dare I hope you are learning, however belatedly, of the folly of opposing me?"

"Not at all," replied Enna, still facing away from him. "My friends would tell you -- if either of them were still alive -- that I'm not very good at learning anything."

He boggled at her, confounded. "I'm afraid you have me at a bit of a disadvantage; your point, whatever it might be, escapes me."

She was silent for a moment. "I want to know one thing, John."

"'John'?" He blinked, surprised. "Very well then, 'Juliette'. What is it?"

"I want to know why." she gazed out over the dead, sterile landscape. "Power is just a means to an end. People seek power to protect what they have, or take what they want, or get back something they've lost." She turned, gazing into his eyes; he blinked, astonished by the sudden strength of her gaze. "It doesn't have any meaning in a world where you're all alone."

He shook himself and recovered; his face turned stolid and imperious. "I don't owe you any explanations, my dear. And I'm afraid you lack the capability to compel one from me."

She looked away, her gaze clotted with evident sadness. "That's right. 'Power is authority', I think you said."

Gentry nodded, raising one hand in a clawlike gesture. "Just so. But I won't let it trouble you for long -- out of respect for the time we shared, if nothing else."

She smiled. "Well, that's gentlemanly of you. But I suggest you save your chivalry."

"Oh?" he paused. "Why?"

In response, she raised her left hand delicately; slowly and with great deliberateness, she showed him her empty hand, then snapped her fingers decisively with a loud report.

The force which struck him was titanic, colossal; he rocketed backwards off the building, shot nearly a half-mile through the air with enough velocity to (very briefly) break the sound barrier, and crashed with explosive force into another building on the opposite side of the island. Every kinetic ward on his person disintegrated instantaneously, and it was only by the virtue of the dozens of additional spells he'd cast on himself during his fight with Orton (and his subconscious control over all the matter within his internal domain) that he was not instantly blasted into red paste. Awed, he gasped for air as he fought his way upright out of the rubble and cast around for his bearings.

In the frozen vista below, Enna strode towards him; her pace was steady and resolute, despite the impossibility of covering the distance between where she'd been and where she was now in the few instants that had passed. Gentry stared, utterly agog. "How are you doing that?"

Abruptly, she suddenly right there, inches away; he jerked back, shocked, as she glared with terrifying fury up into his face. "I don't owe you any explanations either, asshole."

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

"I say!" Gentry gestured, opening his hands and clasping them together; the world around them warped and shifted, forcing them apart as buildings and earth swirled to encage Enna in a sphere of glass and rock. He let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "I don't believe a gentleman should raise his hand against a lady, but you are making me reconsider my position."

"Oh, you'd better reconsider it hard." Enna swept her hand up and clenched her fist; every physical object within a hundred yards exploded into shards and powder, linked by the conceptual resonance of their shared solidity to the noumenal principle she had just crumpled like a sheet of paper. "Not that it's going to help you, you murdering fuck."

Sneering, he attacked; he reified a blade of poisonous green steel, a reflection of the Espada de las Borgias which struck dead any creature it wounded, and drove it towards her in a spiraling thrust in the blink of an eye; she parried it effortlessly with the palm of her empty hand, manifesting an Art so subtle and masterful that his blade shattered into pattering droplets of water before he could even register what she'd done. Leaping back, he raised both hands and called down the Ten Talons of Trismegistus in a meteoric shower of searing sorcerous impact; Enna waved her hand nonchalantly, and the blinding motes of power simply swirled around her like obedient puppies before disappearing, leaving behind delicate flower petals which drifted away on the breeze.

"This is impossible," roared Gentry, casting spell after spell at her with in a frenzy of assault. "This is my world! Mine! I RULE HERE!"

"This world is all worlds," spat Enna, smoothly countering and overcoming each attack he hurled at her with staggering skill, "and you're a pathetic child, a man-baby, a..."

She stopped, understanding dawning across her face. "Holy shit, you really are."

In service of my goals -- goals, I would wager, you could not begin to understand -- any sacrifice is worth the cost. "That's what this is all about. You're throwing a tantrum."

There has to be something human in you. Once, perhaps. Her face twisted with revulsion. "All this death, all this mayhem... it was just selfishness."

Whoa, somebody's got mommy issues. "You're literally willing to kill everyone on Earth to pretend..." -- she choked, half-laughing -- "...to pretend you can go home to your mommy." She ran her hand across her face in stunned dismay. "I can't believe I slept with you."

Gentry shrieked, rendered incapable of speech by a tsumani of pure, insane anger; he leapt at her, making howling sounds like a beast, and attacked with every ounce of his vast and powerful arts. He flowed with the forms of ancient martial arts, striking with lightning-fast kicks and punches; she flowed around them with an elegant, primal grace born from a peerless understanding of motion. He wielded the flame of stars in his hands, seeking to burn and scatter her like ash; she met him with infinite space and coldness, deftly countering his infinite heat with the absolute zero of timeless negation. He furiously wrought the space and matter around them, seeking to crush or twist her into vulnerability; she met each attack head-on, striking the very center of his force with perfect precision each time to counter every attack.

And then, when she had taken his full measure, she fought back.

Her first real blow defied his imagination; he reeled, stunned, as she seemed to raise up the entire world and smite him with it. She conjured the idea of mountains and wielded them like a great hammer; she crushed him under continents, drowned him under oceans. He flailed, grappling for control of the paradigm of his domain, but she mastered him like a child; gripping the cosmic threads which bound him to his own aura, she wrested them from him, one by one, and cast them free to take their place unhindered in the natural world once more. Piece by piece, she stripped the moments of his triumphs from him; blow by blow, she restored the progression of events he had sought to twist into the shape of his desire, turning his internal domain against itself to alter his own timeline in a way that would never have been possible in any other place or time. And when she had battered and tossed him in the sea of her power for so long that he no longer knew whether he was alive or dead, she cast him up, gasping, to cling to the shores of a reality he barely recognized.

Gone was the crystal city, the high tower; gone too was the rooftop terrace, with its trappings of wealth. They were in an alley, a dingy passageway beneath an overpass, which smelled of urine and garbage and the fetid waters of the Harlem river. He squealed, hiding his face behind his hands; hands which, he realized with horror, were covered with tattered rags. "No! No!"

She kicked him, firmly but with no real injurious force, in the ribs. "Get up, you goddamn sonofabitch. I'm not done with you yet."

He shrieked and gibbered; rising to his feet, he attacked her with glowing swords and jets of flame, but they were feeble and shattered against her aura without even needing to be defended against. And finally, eventually, he wrested the last drop of his power from himself and flung it defiantly against her, where it disappeared without a trace into the limitless sea of her puissance. Broken, he flopped on the filthy asphalt, gasping like a landed fish.

She squatted down, staring into his eyes; but nothing she found there satisfied her. She sighed and stood up, turning away. "You're not even worth killing, John. You ruined so much more than you will ever even understand, but in the end, you're nothing. You're not even garbage. You're shit."

He choked and gurgled meaninglessly, but she ignored him. "And it didn't even have to be this way; even shit is useful, John. You can use it as fertilizer; you can let the seeds of a better world sprout in it. You had every opportunity." She looked down at him sadly, unable even to hate him. "And worst of all, I'm pretty sure your mother would be horrified at what you've done."

"No. No. Oh, no. No no no no no..."

Gentry squirmed and writhed on the dirty street, unable even to stand; he scrambled on all fours, like an animal, away from her, staring at her with terrified eyes as he shivered up against a low wall at the edge of the passageway.

She glared back at him in disgust. "I don't know why you're running away from me. You did all this to yourself."

He gaped, stricken beyond words; his mouth kept moving, but it was only continuous denials, sobs, and strange squeaking sounds. She glared back at him, hostile but forbearing. And then, abruptly, he was gone.

At first she blinked, wondering if he'd somehow had enough power left to shadowport away; a flask of alchemical solution, perhaps, hidden in a pocket. Then the splash from far below made its way up to her; without thinking, she ran forward to peer over the bulwark.

Far below, a soggy shape bobbed and drifted, crashing against the concrete walls of the canal; whether he'd jumped or just fallen, she didn't know or care. She did allow herself, for the briefest of moments, to feel pity; but it wasn't a feeling she dwelled upon for long.