Chapter 89 - Say Goodbye_In my Defense: Turret Mage [LitRPG]

Chapter 89 - Say Goodbye

The action was instantaneous. I’d expected my fun exploding sword to come out blazing hot and ready kill me like usual, yes, but its reaction to being summoned inside an actual, honest to Constance, scourge was, for lack of a better term, nuclear.

There were two explosions, really. The first, the one the sword had been in the process of doing when I’d stored it in my pocket dimension, went off with a muffled *BOOF,* accompanied by a flash of absolute agony that shot up my arm and into my core. This was followed by the loss of sensation in my entire right side. Then, shock.

The secondary explosion was much, much worse. Upon making contact with the ‘scourge goo’ inside of Myss, my brightsteel hand grenade went supernova inside the dragon’s chest cavity. The not-so-surgical hole I’d made in her chest bulged outward for a half second then erupted like a volcano, spewing blazing, white maelstrom energy in great, great quantities. For my part, I did what every other object close to an explosion does. I caught fire and shot away from ground zero like a bullet.

That’s what I was told afterward, at least. I’d been under the dragon, clutching to her chest, and reaching up into her when it had happened, so the explosion, and thus, my trajectory, was angled down into the dirt where I dug a long furrow of churned earth and scorched plantlife. Supposedly, I laid there, unconscious, while everyone else watched a full third of the scourge-touched dragon dissolve from the inside which set the rest of the dragon to topple directly on top of me.

You have defeated Scourge-Touched Ancient Red Dragon.

You have been awarded 162,796 experience points. [406,990 base, +81,398 nemesis, -325,592 non-combat class]

I woke up to Bishop Kolash’s hand on my face, that yellow glow that I’d come to associate with the Church’s healing (and curse) spells shining unpleasantly in my eyes. With a cough, I tried to flinch away from the light, but that was a mistake. My entire body was very displeased with what we’d done today, and however unpleasant the yellow glow stuff was or how weird and slimy Kolash’s palm was, I was being told on no uncertain terms it was time to lay down and shut up for a while.

“He’s awake. Surprisingly lively too, considering,” Kolash burbled.

I detected the presence of someone else at my side, and I performed the colossal feat of rolling my head over in that direction to find Samila there, holding my metal hand. She was crying… also smiling. Happy tears.

Oh, something good must have happened.

She wiped at her eyes and leaned forward until her forehead was touching mine. “You really need to stop doing that,” she whispered.

I worked my jaw until it was loose enough to speak again. Even that action could be measured on a pain scale.

“Ugh. Doing what?” I croaked.

The relief in her laugh was palpable at hearing me speak. “The noble sacrifice thing. It’s endearing up to a point, but, eventually, you’ll have to learn a new trick to impress the girls.”

I groaned. “It’s working, though. Right? I can tell you’re impressed.”

“Yeah.” She sniffed, nodding, again having to wipe away tears so they didn’t fall on me. “Yeah, it’s working.”

“Oh good,” I sighed. “Long as you’re impressed.”

“I’ve gotten him out of the worst of it, stopped the bleeds, repaired some of the bones, but his human anatomy should take it from here,” Kolash said. “I am afraid I might put something where it isn’t supposed to go.”

To see what he ment, I checked my status screen.

HP [150/309]

Status lost: Burning

Status lost: Exposure [Radiant]

Status lost: Severed Spine

Status lost: Broken Bone [Arm]

Status lost: Broken Bone [Hand]

Status lost: Broken Bone [Jaw]

Status lost: Dislocated Bone [Shoulder]

Status lost: Internal Bleeding

Status lost: Punctured Lung

Status lost: Broken Bone [Rib]

Status lost: Ruptured Spleen.

They went on like that for a while.

“See? That is what a real healer can do,” Trix squeaked from down by my feet. “Now we don’t have to force feed him for a whole day to get him back on his feet.”

“Thank Constance for that,” I said. “Bole told me what was in Undercity meal.”

“Hehe, yeah. You should have seen his face,” Bole sniggered. He was behind Samila along with Sissa and Geddon.

“Glad to have you back, young man,” Jassin said at the ‘foot’ of my little patch of land. “Are you quite done with your suicide attempt?” He wore his displeasure at my little stunt openly with crossed arms and a dour frown.

I shrugged weakly. It hurt, but not as badly as before.

Experimentally, I put out a hand to push myself up into a sitting position.

*THUNK*

The sound surprised me, not because of the ring of metal. I was used to that. It was because it was coming from the wrong side of my body. I looked down to find my entire forearm still encased in my heavy steel gauntlet. Except parts of it looked absolutely slagged. The fingers and knuckles were messes of once molten metal, the forearm blackened and deformed, more concave than when I’d last seen it. The blade I’d used to cut into the dragon looked like it had been made of wax and been rendered down until it had molded and fused with the wrist part of the gauntlet. The joint was entirely frozen.

And still there in the palm of my hand was the brighsteel blade.

“Ah, yes. We should talk about that,” Kolash said. “I did what I could with the bone and tissue damage, but that armor will have to be removed if you wish to make a full recovery. I assume you can handle that. There is also the issue of the priceless, holy relic you have clutched in your fingers.”

“That can wait, Bishop,” Jassin said. “Ryan is needed right now. Can you stand?”

I waved them off when they tried to put their hands under my shoulders, feeling the need to do this on my own. With some effort, I gingerly got to my feet, careful not to jostle my sore bits more than I needed to. What shirt I still had stuck to me, glued there with dried blood, but the pain of most of the surface level stuff was gone. A small mercy.

Once I was upright, I spared a moment to take everything in. The battlefield was a blackened wasteland. Every bit of the underbrush for at least a kilometer out was gone, replaced by soot and ash. The army was in the process of after-battle cleanup. Bonfires burned in the spaces between tree trunks, and hundreds of soldiers carried out the grim task of dragging bodies over to the pyres and heaving them on top. Meanwhile, patrols of spearmen walked in loose formations systematically stabbing the more intact bodies, making sure they were truly dead before the cleanup detail put their hands on them.

Strangely, Kuul was amongst them. He sat with his back against a mendau trunk, resting, his eyes closed, his one good arm laid against his chest. The fire inside of him seemed dimmer now but not entirely out. The soldiers gave the giant a wide, wide berth, not bothering to collect the bodies that were closest to him. If those things started to move, the goeshi would probably want to handle it anyway.

“He rests now,” Tiba said as she walked up to the rest of us, Kelub and Grorg in tow. The three of them looked in high spirits, all of them walking with springs to their steps now that they were reunited and safe. “If the tall folk keep their distance, he doesn’t bother them. I am watching, though.”

A big knot of tension I hadn’t realized I’d been carrying loosened in my gut “Tiba. You made it.”

“I make it,” Tiba replied brightly. “Sorry I am not here for the dragon fight, but Kuul gets carried away with the Black Ones. You handle it well though.”

“He always die muchly,” Trix said in a slow series of grunts, his face contorted like he was maybe having stomach pain or about to vomit-

“Wait. Did you just speak goblin?” I asked.

Trix’s ears flattened in embarrassment. “Oh, did I not use the proper-”

Tiba’s eyes lit up like someone had just handed her a whole birthday cake, candles and all.

“Trix, you speak! Do it again! Do it again!” She clapped her hands and bounced up and down excitedly. She looked so young when she did that, not like the first goblin queen in a millennium.

Trix cleared his throat and rolled his shoulders. “Uh- Ryan dies… uh… much. All time.”

Yeah, that sounded painful. I didn’t think the little guy’s throat was made for the sounds he was trying to imitate.

The goblins’ queen loved it though. She lunged forward, squealing in delight, and took his hand, jabbering at him in goblin, begging him to say something else, talking a mile a minute while Trix tried to follow. There was talk about making him a goblin too, and since she was a queen now, she could knight him, and he could in her royal retinue.

Did I just hear the word concubine? How would- What?

Meanwhile, Trix just stood there, blinking and obviously more and more lost as the seconds ticked by. He looked back at me, pleadingly, but I wasn’t about to step into the middle of this.

I left them to it.

Jassin was there waiting impatiently, frowning still.

“If you are quite done, you and I have something to attend to,” he said. He grabbed my shoulder and pointed me toward the tutorial facility and the still smoking corpse of a big undead dragon. Her chest had burst open and taken a significant portion of her back with it, and her neck looked like it was barely attached anymore, lying there curled inward like a snake.

There, in the middle of the giant cavity the explosion had left, stood Nali. Her ghostly light cast the insides of Myss in a strange, dreamlike haze. For her part, Nali looked unfased, expressionless but always seeming to be looking directly at me.

“She won’t speak with me or anyone I send,” Jassin said. “She appears to be a projection of some kind. A very advanced, very detailed messenger spell, and she has been waiting, I think, for you.”

I nodded. ‘It’s called a hologram. It’s made of light. Not sure how the System made her consciousness though.”

“It’s conscious? Now that is interesting,” Jassin cooed hungrily. I could see him reassessing his previous observations, probably in hopes of recreating the process someday.

“Well, she’s an artificial intelligence, but she’s probably in a bad way,” I told him. “She’s not supposed to be like this. The scourge has done a number on her too.”

“I detect a troublesome tone in your voice, Ryan. This isn’t another problem that requires you to run off and die without consulting me, is it?” Jassin warned.

“Still sore about that?” I asked.

“It was literally half an hour ago, young man,” Jassin fumed. “Just because I put a complex explosive enchantment on you doesn’t mean I wish to see you die. The dragon was a daunting foe, yes, but-”

“You would have lost people bringing her down,” I interrupted. “I’m not apologizing for what I did, Jassin.”

That vein on his forehead did that pulsating thing again, and he looked like he wanted to lay into me in earnest. The moment didn’t last, however. His anger reached some kind of breaking point, and he ended up sighing and massaging his temple instead.

“Very well. I acknowledge that you did what you thought was right for our situation, but don’t do it again without-”

I put my hands up in surrender.

“I get it. I really do. I won’t do it again,” I assured him. He almost had to watch me die, and it had shaken him. Of all the things I understood in this multiverse, I understood that feeling. “Now let’s go make sure Ralqir stays saved.”

Leaving the others behind, the two of us approached Nali carefully. We had to practically step into the dragon’s chest cavity to get within speaking range. This close, I could see Myss’ body was in an advanced state of decay, its flesh sagging down in the process of liquifying and seeping into the soil. Thick black sludge laid in a pool all around her, and it sprouted tiny hairs that waved eerily in my general direction.

On a hunch, I waved my gauntlet/brightsteel shiv over the stuff, and it literally shied away from the gesture. I used the technique to create some space for us.

Nali spoke first. Her tone was robotic, which paired badly with her weeping black eyes and disjointed body.

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“Defiler, you may have been spared today, but nothing you do can stop this place from being cleansed. You have only prolonged its suffering.”

Jassin looked to me for translation.

“She seems pissed at me and, by extension, you,” I said. “It’s not her talking, I think. She’s speaking for the scourge.”

Someone shouted an order overhead, and I saw a rank of soldiers with spears and torches engage a trio of scourge-touched on the lip of the concrete ring. The monsters had emerged from the black pool, still dripping with ichor only to be cut down.

“We have been destroying them since the end of the battle. They emerge from the slime immediately ready to kill,” Jassin said. “They are quite a bit weaker than the ones we fought in Eclipse, however. Perhaps because it is down to the dregs of its organic matter it likes to animate.”

“Nali, why do they keep coming out of the goo like that? Wouldn’t it make more sense to wait until we were gone to start replenishing their numbers?”

Nali twitched. “The scourge does not have a good grasp of linear time. If it forms new agents now, it means that sometime in the future, it believes it will be successful.”

I translated.

“Immortals see the universe differently, I suppose. Of that I am constantly reminded,” Jassin said. “As far as I can tell, we have destroyed the majority of them that have troubled us thus far, but she may well be correct that in ten, maybe a hundred years, our ability to keep them back will be severely diminished by entropy. Perhaps the Empire will have internal turmoil. War. Perhaps just a lack of will to perform a task whose purpose was long forgotten. ”

“It’s an enemy that never sleeps,” I said.

“Precisely. Ask her what it wants,” Jassin told me.

“Nali, what does the scourge want from us?”

“For you to die, Defiler. For your kind to pay for their sin with their erasure from the multiverse. For your memory to be forgotten for eternity. For all that you have touched to crumble to dust and be cast into the void.”

“Oh, is that all?” Jassin asked sarcastically after listening to my interpretation. “Please, forgive us if we do not go quietly into oblivion, Miss.”

Nali didn’t answer Jassin, though. She just stared at me and waited for my answer.

“Why doesn’t she speak with me?” Jassin asked, annoyed.

I thought for a moment. “She’s corrupted, but I think she’s built on a base code that’s meant to be helpful for Animators like me. Maybe even after all the scourge has done to her, she’s still obligated to answer my questions.”

“This will make things hard,” Jassin said, rubbing his forehead. “Ask her-”

“Hang on,” I interrupted him. “Nali, what really is the scourge?”

Nali’s head glitched, giving me a glimpse of her real face, the fear, the pain, but then she was back to neutral. “As the name implies, the scourge is a punishment inflicted upon humanity for its hubris in breaching the boundaries of its universe. It is a presence from beyond existence, formless, without purpose or thought, until it is brought from its natural place into reality as you know it. To you, it is hate. Hate without end or ending. Hate for you and your kind.”

“Uh huh,” I mused, surprisingly not surprised. Honestly, I didn’t have the capacity for an existential crisis right now. So, humanity had a thing from beyond that wanted us dead, supposedly for something we did. That concept was not entirely new to me. We’d always had an ‘all go no quit, advancement at whatever cost’ nature to us. Honestly, the fact that it had taken us this long to pick up an enemy of this caliber was the real surprise.

I’d deal with the implications of the threat later, on my own time, when I wasn’t staring at a holographic woman I’d made a promise to. “So, am I to assume the black stuff is the scourge’s actual form?”

“In this universe, yes,” Nali answered.

“Can it be destroyed?” I probed.

Her body burst open to reveal a horror show of bones and teeth, blood and viscera. She screamed in the voice of a thousand different forms of life. Then she reformed herself, suddenly the Nali I’d known before.

“Y-Yes, Ch- Ch- Chos- Ryan,” Nali whimpered. “In theory. The light of the maelstrom in this universe is u-uniquely suited to do so. In practice, no. There is no hope for you or any that live here to destroy the scourge. When the planet was transported here, the scouring of the surface came close, but the scourge burrowed deep inside this planet, into the spaces where light cannot touch. In a billion years, when all life on Ralqir is gone, it will serve as a trap to capture and convert sentient life that enters its domain. Then it will continue on and on until this universe is dead.”

Jassin looked from me to the hologram, his eyes calculating. He had to have been bristling with how unable he was to understand our conversation. I summarized as best I could.

The headmaster went a shade paler when I got to the part about it being nestled in the deep places of the world.

“Well, that precludes us from ever going home as the dragons wish,” he sighed. He looked genuinely sad to say the words. “Outside the maelstrom, there would be nothing stopping it from overrunning the surface too. Even as we are, we will need to be forever vigilant, lest our planet be plunged into another cataclysm. This time we lost a province. Next time it could easily be everything.”

I nodded, reluctant to speak. Someone had stolen my breath in the precise moment I finally realized what had to be done.

“We’ll be back,” I said to Nali, then grabbed Jassin’s arm and shuffled us both back to where the others were waiting.

—------------------------------

Geddon clasped my prosthetic hand in a grip that rivaled even my Ability enhanced one, then crushed me in an enormous bear(cat?) hug. “I will always cherish our time together, Ryan,” the leori sniffled. “We’ve spilled so much blood together, I feel like I'm losing a brother today. A blood spilling brother.”

“Hey,” I gasped as he squeezed the air out of me. “Just uh- remember who gave you your sword before you became a warrior of legend, yeah?”

“Oh, I’ll remember,” he said, lowering me down so he could caress the hilt of his chainsword lovingly. “I’ll make sure they pronounce your name correctly in the ballads.”

“Please do not,” Kolash burped. “It will be hard enough to keep a second fulcrum a secret without random bards spreading tales of it all.”

Trix was next, flanked by Tiba who was still holding his hand. The little vulpa’s ears drooped sadly along with his whiskers, and his rifle hung low on his hip. He was having a hard time meeting my eyes, but when he looked back at the goblin queen, he did that head to tail shudder thing I’d come to know him for.

“Thank you, Ryan,” Trix said, his voice cracking. “Thank you for… uh.” He seemed to lose his words mid-sentence.

I got down on one knee and ruffled his fur playfully. “No. Thank you for being my friend and for sticking with me when you learned the truth. Not to mention having my back on and off the battlefield. You saved my life, Trix. You’re a great warrior,” I said, my voice threatening to give out. “And a greater man.”

Trix did find the courage to meet my gaze then, eyes wide in shock at what I’d just said. Then the dam broke. He dashed under my arm to give me a full body hug. “Don’t go setting yourself on fire again without me there,” he mumbled into my shirt.

“Can’t guarantee that,” I laughed, looking up from my vulpa buddy to Tiba. “Take care of this little guy will you?”

Tiba nodded regally. “He’s a goblin knight now. First Rifle. He never wants for anything long as I live. I promise” Then she slipped underneath my other arm and squeezed me as well.

Next, was Beedy, who simply slapped me on the shoulder and grinned. He was looking a lot better after getting some treatment from the Church healers the army had brought with them, and even his smile was brighter.

Sissa and Bole came up as a pair. Bole was grinning from ear to ear, while Sissa had a more somber expression. “Take care of yourself, Ryan,” Sissa said. “And try to think before you do things. I would feel better if I knew you were out there not going off half drawn.”

“Sure.” I waggled my finger between the two of them. “So, you two, uh- You’re-”

“Yep!”

“Absolutely not.”

The two of them answered at the same time before looking at each other, an argument forming between them like a bank of storm clouds.

“No, we’re not,” Sissa insisted, eyes narrowed, daring the shorter man to contradict her. “I just don’t think he’s as vile as he tried to convince himself he was all these years. I may be wrong.”

Bole seemed like he wanted to argue there, but he did the smart thing and chose to remain silent before he could be told to shut up. He simply slapped me on the shoulder and gave me a wink, conspicuously on the side of his face Sissa couldn’t see.

Samila was my final stop.

“Hey,” I said lamely.

“Hey,” she replied. Her scales were dark on her upper cheeks but still brilliant blue next to the yellow of her eyes, though they were slightly puffy and red. “So, this is it.”

There was a lot I wanted to say. So much.

But I had a promise to keep.

I reached out, wrapped my arm around her waist and kissed her once more. This time, she’d been waiting for it. She leaned back, letting me support her weight, allowing herself to melt into me as our lips pressed together and the world spun around us. Her body fit perfectly against mine, strong and light and intensely inviting. It went on like that for a while.

Someone in the group cleared their throat.

I was the one to break off first, sadly. I pulled back but not before planting another, smaller kiss on her top lip.

Once we were apart, Samila’s eyes fluttered open, and she let out a contented sigh.

“Woah,” she remarked for the second time.

She glanced over at her sister. “You’ve got to try this. Seriously,” she called, a little breathless still.

Sissa turned away, suddenly finding the blackened horizon incredibly interesting. “No. No, I will not be doing that.”

“I’ll try it!” Geddon boomed from way over by Trix.

“I’m kidding, obviously!” Samila teased before quirking an eyebrow. “Or am I?”

I laughed, pulling her close again, this time into a hug. She laid her head against my chest, and I cradled her there.

“You taught me what it was like to want again, Ryan. I’d forgotten for a long time, but now- I want things. I want more. I’m not just the Second.”

“I’m going to remember you, Sam,” I whispered to her. “I’ll remember you forever.”

We stayed there for a while, just being together, our friends all around us. No one interrupted.

When I finally pulled away, it felt like ripping myself in two, like I was leaving part of myself with her, and it was a ragged wound that would never fully heal.

Somehow, despite how much it hurt, I was content with that. I was about to do what was right by her. By all of them.

Jassin nodded to me as I approached him, the dead dragon and the holographic woman waiting beyond.

“Goodbye again, Ryan. I’ll be watching,” was all he said, smiling warmly as he ushered me on toward my final moments in this world.

Then I was on my own, each step taking me further into the belly of the beast.

“Nali,” I said, back inside the dragon’s corpse, my voice cracking under the weight of what I wanted to say. “I want to make a deal.”

Nali’s black eyes narrowed slightly. Her lips pursed into thin lines. “There is no exchange to be made. The scourge does not have your others.” She was obviously suspicious of me, or the scourge was. She was right to be, considering our history.

“Yes, you do,” I said. “You have this place and, with it, you have them.”

“Then die and cast yourself into the black, Ryan Kotes,” Nali said.

“No,” I answered.

“There is no exchange.”

“Nali, I’m leaving this place. I’m leaving and never coming back. I’m the one you really want, not them.”

Nali was silent at that. I couldn’t tell if she was thinking or just waiting for me to continue, so I just did.

“Right now, the scourge is getting a steady flow of power from my insertion point. When I leave, that source of power is going to be cut off. There’s a good chance you’ll just wither away, impotently attempting to end this world over and over until you’re just a memory.”

“Unlikely,” Nali argued. “The amount of scourge currently in this universe is vast, accumulated over more than a thousand years. It will destroy all you have touched. It will-.”

“Or,” I interrupted with a raised finger. “Or… Have you considered where I’m returning to?”

Nali frowned thoughtfully. “You are returning to your home universe.”

“Right. ”

“Explain,” she demanded.

I spread my arms invitingly. “Come with me.”

Nali blinked, froze for a moment.

I wiggled the bait a bit more. “My home universe, where there’s billions of humans just like me. Come with me, and you can inflict yourself on all of us. Supposedly, we’re the ones that deserve it, right?”

Nali seemed almost taken aback. “This is- This is out of character for you. You preserve the lives of others. Why are you doing this?”

“I want you to spare these people,” I said. “Ralqir. Spare them for a while. Maybe come back little by little when more Animators take their tutorial. But for now, come with me. We’ll go back together and leave the people I love in peace.”

“It is possible to do as you say. It will likely mean your death,” Nali said slowly. “The scourge does not trust your word.”

“Does that matter compared to the opportunity I’m offering? Please, spare them and come with me to the place where your true enemy lives. But!” I chastised before Nali could open her mouth again to accept. “Nali comes too. She’s got to have some kind of anchor around here that keeps her consciousness alive. Bring it to me. Then we’ll all go together.”

The eternal evil bent on my species’ destruction contemplated my proposal for a full minute.

I and the world around me waited.

“We will have our exchange, Defiler,” Nali finally said. Then she turned and began to climb the broken concrete remnants of her building, no time wasted, no more hesitation.

I took a big, courage gathering breath then I followed, clutching the brightsteel in my hand and keeping it close. I resisted the urge to look back at the people I was leaving.

The burbling tar slid away, keeping its distance from me and my relic, slurping as it retracted back into the ground. When we reached the apex of the ring overlooking the bubbling lake of scourge stuff, the smell was nearly enough to make me swoon, but I held out. I only had to hold out for a little longer.

Waiting for me, just at the edge of the pool, was a fist sized ball of white glass of a curiously familiar nature, though the color was different from the ones the Dark Lord used.

“This is what you ask for, Defiler. Take it and enter the pit. The scourge will do as agreed.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “All of it?”

“All.” Nali gestured to the white ball.

I bent down to pick it up. My good hand was still encased in the remains of my melted gauntlet, so I had to use my prosthetic to grab it and press it to the flesh of my upper arm. Another flex of will, a slight twisting of the mana to get the Ability to work this way, and it was gone. Unlike the Dark Lord’s memory bauble, this one went right into my storage space, maybe because it was willing.

Nali’s projection winked out.

I stared down into the black, shuddering at how it seemed to invite me in. My insurance policy ground against the bones of my hand, and little licks of flame sputtered over the surface of the visible steel.

I am Ryan Kotes.

The surface of the pooled scourge reached out to me as I took my first step forward. Then the next.

When it touched my skin, I was taken aback at warm it was. Warm as me.

I am Ryan Kotes. Nothing in this multiverse is like me.

It was so sudden, so fast I didn’t even see it move. It exploded from its pool and stabbed me with a hundred different probosces that pierced my skin and wrapped around my bones, and then I was pulled under.

Reflexively, I tried to struggle, but there was nothing to struggle against. My hand where I had my brighsteel lashed out, tried to slash at what had me, but I was no longer in control. The black shrank away or I was pulled to the side so that I never made contact. Meanwhile, the horrific, rot tainted tar entered my nose, forced its way into my mouth, my ears… my eyes.

I was sinking. Fast. The pressure grew exponentially. Down, down lower and lower into hell.

The scourge rushed into me, penetrated my insides, ripped its way into the place where my mana lived and filled it until it ruptured.

There was no light that could penetrate down here, I knew, but things were dimming all the same. At some point, I felt the scourge there, the magnitude of it. It was everywhere, not just inside of me, everywhere. It was me. I was it. We were in the pit, the soil, the rotting corpses on the pyres, the roots of the trees, the people, pooled in caverns deep in the crust of the planet where nothing had ever ventured and lived.

No longer.

We pulled, pulled ourselves inward, into this vessel, this husk of organic matter and magic circuitry that called itself human. We would become an instrument of destruction unlike any its kind had ever seen. We would burst into the vessel’s universe and reap entire worlds, spreading, silencing, one by one until all was still and the curse of humanity was finally obliterated.

No. I…

My thoughts were fuzzy, fleeting, but I still had the frozen pond at my center. From it, I derived courage.

I am Ryan Kotes. Nothing in this multiverse can take that from me.

But then, despite my bold words, I was swept away.