“Let her go!” echoed Adams' voice in his mind. The voice even overshadowed his internal screams of pain, but Atlas' only thought was to endure. Endure and not let her go. It felt as if he was holding onto a cliff, barely a few fingers on the edge, while trying to stop Hermione from falling into the abyss. All while someone was punching him in the guts.

“You idiot! You will die if you don’t let her go.” Repeated the voice, and for a short moment, Atlas began to doubt.

Tears welled in his eyes as he stole a glance at Hermione's serene face, oblivious to the life-and-death struggle unfolding. The pain rushed him in waves like the pulse of a heart, reminding him that he still needed to struggle. He tried to fight off his primal instinct of survival to stop himself from letting her go, but each moment felt like an eternity of sweet promises to get rid of the pain if he just let her go. He didn’t know if he was ruining them both, and it became as much of a fight against himself as against the almost irresistible pull that was ripping him apart. For a moment, he even felt Hermione slipping out of his hands, but with all his will, he forced himself to tighten his grip on her again. He had already sacrificed his family, his friends, and the whole universe, but he was unwilling to sacrifice her too.

He felt something cracking inside himself, and it felt as if his consciousness was vanishing. Something that shouldn’t have been possible in the form he was in, but he was too tired to think about it.

His last thought before everything turned black was that he shouldn’t let her go.

He didn’t know if just a second had passed or if hundreds of years had gone by, but while the feeling of being torn apart had vanished, he still felt terrible. It was as if the pull had just caused him the pain of getting cut by a knife, while now he just felt the pain of the wound itself. And the wound was covering his whole body. His whole soul.

He wanted to open his eyes to look for Hermione, as he was unable to feel her in his hand anymore, but his vision was covered by a veil of black.

“You fool. Do you know what you did? asked Adams accusingly, without a hint of sympathy in his voice. But despite the clarity of his voice, he was unable to pinpoint from which direction his voice was coming.

“I really expected you to be more mature. Not only did you play with your soul's outer form to transform into that useless tree creature, you also cut your soul in half and then resisted me taking you back. Do you know what I needed to do just to stabilize you? Do you know what this cost?”

Atlas felt numb to Adam’s scolding. It wasn’t what was important to him at the moment. His only concern was if all his suffering had at least managed to save Hermione.

“The energy of twenty-three thousand souls. Just to stabilize the wreck that is your soul. I should have just let you die for the shit you pulled there. But alas, you at least managed to finish your mission. That’s more than the other guy I send into that Hunter x Hunter universe. He managed to get himself killed, even though he had the best luck with the family he was born into. That peaked Atlas' curiosity a little, but he felt far too bitter to really care.

"Well, I’m sure you won’t repeat that mistake in the next universe. You have a really good timing; just yesterday, a universe started that even you, with your mangled soul, could enter. I honestly wanted to send you into a cultivation world if you were successful in your first mission. But even if you could bypass all tribulations because the universe can’t detect you, with that shitty state your soul is in, we would be lucky if you managed to survive the reincarnation, not to mention cultivating anything. Anyway, the next universe has a really flexible concept of the soul, so you should be fine. I hope your experience with magic will help you there, even though I wouldn’t say the two worlds are really compatible…”

“No!” tried Atlas to yell, but only a whisper came out. He didn’t want to hear anything about another world, he didn’t want to be Adam’s little pawn anymore, and he couldn’t care less about the multiverse.

“No? What do you mean by no? Trust me, I can’t send you into a cultivation world.” Said Adam confused about Atlas' rejection.

His reaction made Atlas' rage flare up. No matter how well Adam pretended to be human, he ultimately was not. Of that, Atlas was sure with how little empathy he showed.

“Fuck you!” said Atlas, who finally managed to open his eyes.

"Hey, that’s not really a way to treat your savior.” Answered Adam, wearing a smile, on what Atlas identified as his old body's appearance.

“Why didn’t you just let me die there?” said Atlas, angrily staring at Adam.

“Hey, just because you made a little mistake doesn’t mean I would just discard you. Do you know how rare a soul like yours is? I have only found two people like you in the whole multiverse in the past eleven years. I mean, it were a few more years here, but you get the point. So, when I told you you wasted a few thousand souls, I just wanted you to not do it again. With the destruction of the universe you were in, the energy of 5.594.577.801 souls was distributed across the multiverse. Taking a bit from that wasn’t really that big of a deal, so there's no need to think that dying is a better option.” Atlas had to gulp down. He knew that people would die if he succeeded, but hearing that almost 5.3 billion people had died was something different. He had killed all of humanity, a whole world, a whole universe, and for what? He felt like he had to puke, but his soul wasn’t capable of something like that. Just the feeling of having something in him that he needed to get rid of remained. He saw his parents face flashing in front of his face, his mother’s playful but stern voice, his father’s hearty laugh and the feeling of love he spread when he told his stories, Neville’s shouts when he wanted to convince himself that he can do something, Shamus’ ecstatic explanations when he blew something up, Dean’s arguments about how Football was a much better sport than Quidditch, Amy’s fanatism about quidditch, Leona’s eager questions when it came to the animagus transformation, Harry’s annoyingly stupid confidence that they could really defeat a dark lord, Jason’s attempts to get him to socialize with other muggle kids, even Ron’s snoring and also Ethan’s overly confident explanations of magic. He would hear nothing of that ever again because he had killed them. Because he had judged that they were less important than the multiverse. And then there was Hermione. He asked himself if he was an evil person because he thought that everything would have been fine or at least bearable if he just managed to save her, but in the end, he had even let her down.

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“Leave me alone. I don’t want to destroy another universe. If the multiverse is so important, then just work harder to find out what is causing this mess and stop it. And don’t you dare to manipulate my mind again.” Said Atlas and stared Adam with a not-so-small amount of hatred. He could have... He probably would have found another way to deal with Ethan. There were different options. He had just failed to see them because of what Adam did to him.

“Hey, you can’t blame me for that. I just made sure you wouldn’t abandon your mission halfway through. How do you know, by the way? I was sure I erased your memory.” Said Adam more confused about how he remembered than really apologetic.

“You…!” gnashed Atlas his teeth, and if he could have moved, he would have punched Adam in the face.

“Hey, calm down. You know I’m right. An besides it was just a small poke in the right direction anytime you became complacent.”

“I could have saved her! I could have saved many more if I just had the time, you bastard!” yelled Atlas, ignoring the pain he felt while doing it.

“You could have failed if you waited. More universes could have died if you had waited. And besides, your little girlfriend is fine. I just put her in stasis over there. I thought you wanted to explain the situation to her yourself.” Said Adam convinced he was in the right with what he did.

“What she is alive! I need to see her!” said Atlas, completely forgetting the fact that Adam had implanted in him a weak but unnatural need to save the multiverse. He tried to stand up, but the pain was unbearable. He still tried to force himself to move.

“You know, the pain will be less in your other form. The pain is just a self-reflection-induced phenomenon of the soul as it tries to conform to the usual reaction your body would have shown in that state. With a bit of training, you can abandon this instinct, and the pain will vanish. Even though you should try that when your soul has somewhat recovered. Maybe in forty or fifty years. Because, as much as it's painful, the soul also tries to mimic the body's natural ability to heal, which makes it easier to stabilize the state you are in, even though the actual healing effect is almost negligible. You haven’t told me how you knew. But if I guess it was the heroes doing, right?”

Atlas didn’t wait for an answer and transformed into his animagus form. The pain did indeed disappear, but that didn’t mean he could move freely. His limbs were increadibly stiff and dried out. It felt as if the smallest movement would cause something to break off in his once-flexible bowtruckle form.

“Can’t move? I guess even with the flexibility your soul gained through that ritual, your soul is still too damaged. Let me help you.” Said Adam and with a wink, he was pulled through the white, infinite space. It didn’t feel as if he was walking, flying, or moving at all, but he saw how the small dot in the distance got larger within seconds.

There lied Hermione on the white floor next to something that looked like a mutilated corpse of himself. At least that’s what he thought until he saw the bare flesh move a little, as if breathing. He looked a little like Voldemort when Harry was in Limbo, but bigger and more mutilated. It was as if one had skinned a man and then beat the corpse with a baseball bat. It was a grotesque picture to see his other part of the soul lying next to Hermione, who luckily looked completely unharmed.

“You owe me one for that. The universe’s Will slashed out at me with its last breath because I took her soul. If it wasn’t already collapsing, it could have been really dangerous.

Atlas couldn’t answer him in his Animagus form, but it wasn’t important to him at the moment. He reached out with arid claws to touch Hermione’s face. She looked so peaceful. As if she was just asleep. If Atlas could have cried, he would have. He was just happy that she was fine. At least until he noticed something. He immediately transformed back into his human form because he knew in his current form he could neither do something nor ask for help.

The pain overwhelmed him and the moment he saw his fleshy hand he realized that he probably looked as bad as his other half. Perhaps a bit better because Adam had fixed him up a little.

He still collapsed to the ground due to the pain.

“She isn’t breathing. She isn’t breathing!” he said, biting through his pain.

“Weren’t you listening? She is in stasis. Frozen in time. Naturally, she isn’t breathing.” Said Adam.

“Wake her up; I want to talk with her!” said Atlas, lying next to her on the ground, staring at her.

“That won’t be possible, I fear, at least until we talk about a few things.” Said Adam, his voice colder than Atlas had ever heard from him.

“What do you want?” asked Atlas angrily.

“Oh, it’s simple. Just continue to go into the universes I sent you to and kill the heroes. Even if you don’t want to save the multiverse, I intend to do it, no matter the cost. If it means forcing you a little, I will do it.” Said Adam not as cold as before but deadly serious.

“So you will keep her hostage while I run around becoming the greatest mass murderer in the multiverse, while you keep me with promises of just one more till the time I fail? Why don’t you kill us both directly.” Opposed Atlas.“So you will keep her hostage while I run around becoming the greatest mass murderer in the multiverse, while you keep me with promises of just one more till the time I fail? Why don’t you kill us both directly. Or just put in my mind that dying for your stupid plan is the best thing that could happen in my life” Opposed Atlas.

“Oh, I won't. I could force you into a universe if I really wanted to. But then again, a slave is not a productive worker. And believe me when I say that I don’t want to treat you badly. As long as you do your job and I’m able to do my own, we can be best friends. I really did it the first time because I thought you would have qualms about killing at all. So if you want to, I can send her down with you. The other option is to send you down twice. Your other half can inhibit its own body, learn, and grow on its own, and as soon as you reunite here, you gain the knowledge and experiences of both parts. You would quickly become more powerful and could go into two universes at the same time. So why should I not do that? What does she have to offer to double the time you would need to grow to that point?” explained Adam and asked with a neutral voice.

Atlas was a bit overwhelmed by that. Just imagining having two selves for a second made it clear how useful that could be. But without a second thought, he decided that even a million selves wouldn’t be worth it if he had to spend his life alone. Especially if the burden of killing so many people, 5.3 billion people per universe, possibly more—keeps stacking faster and faster. He didn’t know how he should be able to manage that. Would he fight till only a single universe was left? Wouldn’t he be as bad or worse than whatever caused the universe to die by that time. Even the realization of having done what he did still hadn’t hit him for real yet. This number of deaths is just incomprehensible to him at the moment.

“She is smart, she learns fast, she is brave, she thinks ahead, and she makes me stronger. Stronger than any amount of souls could do. Strong enough to do what you want from me.” Said Atlas decicevly, not wanting to linger on the guilt that was creeping into his consciousness if there was something more important to do for now.

Adam stared at him for a second.

“Good. I will take your word for it. But if the next universe proves that her assistance is negible, or you slow down too much because you think that spending a few years as a happy married couple or something like that is worth the destruction of a few more universes, then I will put her into a stasis while sending you down alone. Is that clear?” pressured Adam, glancing at him intimidatingly.

“Yes.” Surrendered Atlas.

“Good. Now to the next universe. I expect you to be ready to go down there in at most two weeks. I will give you the information about the universe that I have, but this time we will talk about a few things before you go down there. I watched you from time to time, and your preparations were mediocre. You won’t always have the luck to have a sadistic, powerful mass murder at your disposal. You need to improve yourself faster.” Berated Adam, and Atlas just nodded.

"Good, now that this is clear, are you ready to talk with your little girlfriend here?” ended Adam their discussion.