This was bad. This was possibly the worst, most dangerous situation I had ever been in. Yes, Fossor was personally worse to me. When I had been trapped under his control, it was horrific and terrifying. But even his plan, had he succeeded, would have enslaved all of the Boscher Heretics under his control so he could force the Seosten to work with him. If the Fomorians came here, they would kill every bit of life on the planet. They would wipe out every hint of life and turn all of it into biological matter to create more of their monsters. Then they would use those monsters to help them do the same into the rest of the universe. Worse, if they did it now, in this time period, the entire future would change. Everyone I knew would be dead, or would never have been born.

All of which meant I had to stop this. I was the only one here who knew exactly what was happening and what I had to do to stop it. The spell he was using to make it happen was right in this chamber. I had been sent here to this spot so I could make sure it didn’t happen. But I couldn’t move. With the floating gemstones shaped like Maestro in front of me, I was so scared, so paralyzed by terror, that I couldn’t do anything.

He wasn’t even here himself. That was the worst part. He wasn’t actually here, he was just projecting his presence into those stones and speaking through them. The man himself–the actual monster wasn’t physically present. But even then, I couldn’t make myself do anything but stand there and stare at his face. I was like a tiny mouse trapped under the gaze of a snake that had risen up over me. I forgot about fighting, I forgot about all my powers and just stood there with my staff lying uselessly on the ground at my feet. My body shuddered a little, a tiny, almost imperceptible whimper escaping me.

Almost imperceptible. But Maestro noticed. I could tell by the way the stones making up his wide mouth curled up in a mocking, amused smirk. The simple, horrible chuckle that escaped him was enough to literally send shamed tears down my face. I was nothing in the face of even a fraction of his power. “Yes. You are a simple people.” His voice rumbled through the chamber. It reminded me of that ancient Transformers cartoon movie when Orson Welles had voiced Unicron. “Whatever silly heights you may aspire to, deep in your soul you know your place. You know your creator. You are a child captured in mid-theft by a parent. And lest you feel the cut of my belt, you will do as you are told. Speak your name, so I may know your line and… adjust it.”

Everything was dark. A dark fog had filled my vision, my very mind itself. It left me unable to think of anything except for the monster in front of me. Some part of me had even forgotten that he wasn’t really here. All I could see was his face in the stones, his eyes glaring through my soul. I was weak. I was lost. My mouth opened to answer his question, before I felt a sharp pain in my palms. Some tiny part of me had managed to hang on enough to clench my hands so tight my nails dug into the skin there, stopping me from answering his question. It wasn’t much, it was barely enough to stall my answer. I was a helpless child floundering in the middle of a rough sea through a storm, the towering waves crashing over me while I clung to a tiny life preserver. My tenuous grasp on it was slipping, the deep, terrible waters threatening to tear me away from it and off into the dark, inky void of nothing. I would be erased, my soul torn from my body, while my flesh became fuel for the Fomorian war. My corporeal self would be turned to a monster who would kill those I loved, those I wanted to protect.

I had no hope, but still, for those precious momentary seconds, I stopped. I clung to that life preserver in the storm and forced myself not to speak. I didn’t answer his question. I didn’t obey his words. Terrified as I was, broken as I was by his vision in front of me, I didn’t obey. I stood silent and motionless, as it took every fiber of my being simply to halt my own words, forcing them to catch in my throat. Sweat mixed with tears covered my face, as horrible pain pounded through my head. Obey, obey, obey! But I didn’t. I was silent.

The face of the monster in front of me grew even harsher in that moment. His eyes seemed to blaze with fire, the actual stones that comprised them burning up into molten rock as his voice thundered so powerfully through the small chamber that pieces of rock and dirt tumbled down the sides, threatening a cave-in.

“Tell me your name!”

My soul withered under his anger and hatred. I couldn’t stand against him, my fingers were torn away from the metaphorical life preserver as I went sliding out under the waves, to be lost forever. My mouth opened to tell him everything he wanted to know as my tenuous grasp on the slightest bit of resistance broke under the power of that monster’s terrible anger.

And yet, even as the first sound of my name began to escape my lips, I was saved. The two molten rocks that comprised the terrible monster’s eyes were suddenly torn from its face as two small, metal creatures, even tinier than the actual stones, threw themselves at them from behind.

It was Jaq and Gus. The two of them had separated themselves from the staff as it lay forgotten on the ground, clambered up to the top of the table where the stones had been lying, and leapt together to tear the burning eyes out of the magic rock face from behind. They gave loud twin squeaks of mixed defiance and pain as they crashed into those red hot rocks, landing on the ground with them before scrambling away.

The effect was broken. As the stone face tipped upwards and shrieked with anger, I felt my nearly lost soul slam back into my body. I could think again. I could move again. That tiny gesture, knocking the eyes out of that magic stone face, was enough to give me back control. Instantly, I dove for my little mice buddies, even as half a dozen of the face stones angled that way. I covered the cyberforms with my body while those rocks slammed into my back with enough force to leave deep bruising. One particularly sharp angled stone cut through my cheek, drawing a line of blood.

But I protected my mice buddies. Gathering them up in my hands, I whispered a thank you to them before letting them crawl onto my shoulders as I grabbed my staff and whipped back around in time to smack one of the incoming stones out of the way.

That had been so terribly close. I had stood no chance in that first moment. I would have told this creature everything he wanted to know. Under the force of his hatred, his power, I had broken. I would have condemned everything I knew. I couldn’t stand against that horrific creature.

But I had been saved. The world itself had been saved, not by me, not by any of the untold powerful beings who could have saved it then. No, it had been saved by two tiny robot mice who had been entirely ignored by this monster. He had dismissed them completely, and they, in turn, had given me one more chance to stop this. A chance that I wasn’t going to waste.

“You want to know who I am!?” I snapped the words, full of rage and adrenaline. “I’ll show you who I am!”

With that, I focused on summoning every ghost I could. Holding the villagers down or finding Ehn didn’t matter anymore. The only thing that mattered was stopping this monster. And I knew how to do it. All around me, the ghosts appeared. They flooded the chamber and beyond. Dozens upon dozens of the figures spread through the tunnel behind me and out through the ground itself. Those blood-filled veins I had seen weren’t just here in this chamber, they spread out over the ground, through the Earth under the whole town.

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Every ghost I could summon, all the ones I brought back with me, and all the ones from the forest were all here right now, spread around me. They covered the length of those veins in every direction. The veins carried blood, but it wasn’t ordinary blood. It was magic. Maestro had spent untold decades, possibly centuries, putting this spell together. He’d filled these veins, and those throughout the rest of the chambers like this that he had planted all over the world, with blood torn from thousands of living beings, enchanted for this purpose.

In that moment, with my ghosts covering everything in this spot, I sensed the rest of them. I could feel the other chambers all over the planet. This place was connected to them. They were all linked through this spell he was casting, the spell that would bring the Fomorian homeworld here. I could sense them all over the planet.

I could hear his voice, but ignored the words. His blind rage flooded the chamber as he sent those rocks flying into my body. I was bloody and bruised, one of the stones nearly taking out my eyes. I felt my ribs shatter under one particularly hard blow. But I ignored it. I ignored all of it. The only thing that mattered in that moment, the only thing in the world, was stopping this spell.

Stretching out through the connection I could feel linking this chamber to all the others, I focused on finding other ghosts. I stretched myself harder than I had ever stretched before. I had the power of two of the strongest, most dangerous necromancers in the universe, and I was going to fucking act like it, god dammit. And I could feel them, could feel the dead in those other places. I felt their spirits, their lingering ghosts spread through those other caves. I felt so many ghosts, all of them everywhere. I gave them power, I summoned them. There wasn’t time to ask, there wasn’t time for anything but action. This had to end right now.

Hundreds of chambers all over the planet were filled with my ghosts. I was controlling tens of thousands of them at once. My head was shrieking with agony, both from the stones colliding with my body and from what I was doing. But I ignored all of it. I shut it out completely and forced my power to do what it was told. Thousands of ghosts filling all those chambers covered the veins of magical blood as I gripped my staff tightly and spoke a single word through a mouth filled with blood from one of the stones that had collided with my face.

“Enough.”

With that single word, I made every ghost I had summoned, all of them throughout the chambers across the planet, rip apart those veins. They tore them physically, ripping the veins from the ground while simultaneously drawing the magic out of the blood. I fed all that power into my ghosts, drawing every bit of energy that Maestro had spent centuries collecting and used it to fill the ghosts to the brim. They only held that power for a moment before expelling it outward. In all those other chambers across the planet, untamed, uncontrolled magical energy became a series of explosions. The hearts and all those chambers were annihilated, the caves he had spent so much time so carefully putting together utterly demolished as everything within them turned to ash.

The heat and force of Maestro’s rage filled the chamber, almost boiling my own blood as my skin blistered under the force of it. His scream echoed through my brain, nearly driving me to my knees. He was a force of nature, a power beyond my imagination. He wasn’t here, not physically, but even this piece of him, cast across such a vast distance, was almost more than I could bear. Almost. But I bore it anyway. I stood against that power, my legs locked to keep me upright even as its terrible force fought to put me on my knees. Even as the echoes of all those other chambers being destroyed rocked back through this one, I drove my staff up, triggering the kinetic burst as it collided with the giant heart in this chamber. The massive organ exploded, blood spraying in every direction, nearly drowning me as I stood under it.

Finally, I collapsed, falling to the blood-filled floor. It was done. The chambers were destroyed. And I had done more than simply break his spell. With my Necromancy, I had tainted every chamber he used, I tainted the very ground itself. Even I didn’t really understand the exact specifics of what I had done, or how I knew to do it. But I knew the effect. He couldn’t use that spell anymore. I had commandeered the connection he had created linking all those chambers across the planet and used it to grab hold of all the power. All that magical energy he had gathered together to bring the Fomorian home here, I had taken for myself. I turned it to my own Necromantic energy and used that to taint the soil throughout all those places against that specific spell. Now it didn’t matter where he planted more of those chambers. If he tried that spell again, the planet would completely reject it. I had created what amounted to an anti-spell and spread it over the entire world. Nothing he could do would change that. He could never do that again.

But I had nothing left. I was empty. Even as I felt Jaq and Gus huddling against me, squeaking frantically as they tried to get me to move, I couldn’t do it. I was done. I could feel that monster’s eyes narrow at me, could sense his power growing. He was coming, the real creature himself. The stones that had been his face spread apart, forming a doorway. The portal appeared, and I could sense his arrival. He was coming through, bringing himself to this spot so I could feel his terrible wrath.

He would kill me, I knew that. But by the time he was finished, by the time I had felt every bit of his rage, I would be pleading for death. The pain I had felt throughout my life would be nothing compared to what he would inflict. I would scream and cry, and he would delight in every bit of it. It would not make up for what I had taken from him, but he would do everything he could to try. He would inflict agonies on me that no one in this universe had felt before.

And still, I couldn’t move. My fingers twitched as I saw his real face, that flesh and blood version of what I had seen in those rocks, appear in the portal. I saw his hand extend through it as he reached for me. I felt his power and his terrible, terrible anger. I knew it was over. I knew I was gone. But if this was what my life had amounted to, if this was what everything had been leading toward, giving me what I needed to stop him in this time, that it was worth it. If it meant I created the future I had lived through, a future where we as a society stood a chance against the Fomorians, then it was worth it. I accepted my fate, I embraced what was to come, no matter how terrible. Because my friends, my family, and everyone else would live.

And then, as those terrible fingers brushed my bloody face, clawing several lines down my cheek, I felt another presence appear in the chamber. A voice spoke sharply, “No more.” And then a powerful blast of heat and telekinetic force slammed into the creature who had been coming through the portal. He screamed in rage as he was sent backwards through it once more, and then the stones surrounding it were torn apart, the portal shredded.

Ehn was there. He was the one who had appeared and stopped Maestro from coming through. He turned to me, reaching down to pull me by the arm. With unfathomable strength, the man hoisted me up and turned before we both vanished from that chamber. The next thing I knew, we were out in the open air of the village, before he set me down on my feet. I wobbled, my strength still basically gone, but managed to stay on my feet.

“Flick!” It was Percy. She was there, embracing me tightly. Behind her, I could see Cerberus laying on the ground, panting heavily with each of his heads. All the villagers were sitting around, looking confused and clueless. The priest was nowhere to be seen. Dead, hopefully.

I was alive. It took me a few long, precious moments to realize that. I had been standing there with my arms limp at my sides as Persephone held me tightly. Finally, I felt a weak sob escape me as I moved to hug her back as tightly as I could. I was alive. Against all odds, in spite of everything, I was still alive. I was here. Maestro didn’t have me. The terror of what could’ve happened, what had almost happened, shook me to my very soul. But I was here. My eyes closed as I hugged Persephone even tighter while great, powerful sobs shook my body.

I was alive. I was safe. Or at least as safe as I could be. And I had stopped that monster from bringing the Fomorians here.

And yet, somehow my connection to those chambers, where those spells had been prepared, lingered somewhat. Enough that, as I closed my eyes, I saw one of them where Maestro stood. He stared at his own claws, claws that had blood on them. It was my blood, from where he had scratched my face. He brought the claws to his nose and sniffed before giving a terrible smile. His voice was dark. Somehow, he knew I could hear him.

“I know your blood. I will find your progenitors. I will find the child who becomes your forebearer.”

It was me, I realized in that moment. The whole reason Virginia Dare had been hunted even before she was born, the reason those myths about her blood bringing destruction had been spread. The reason all of that had happened throughout her life, the reason she had lost so much.

It was all because of me.