Omen 6.14

Andy Yusung Kim

2001, December 25: Washington, DC

"Exalt down. Charlie Foxtrot down. Black Flag deceased. Glace deceased."

I winced as I felt another Wayfinder wink out. The three dozen or so drones were quickly becoming a menace. They wouldn't have been difficult to catch and destroy under normal circumstances, but amidst a telekinetic storm with countless capes and random debris flying around? Just the fact that not a single one of them were destroyed by happenstance demonstrated to me the sheer masterful coordination that the Simurgh possessed.

Then Eidolon rejoined the fray. His emerald wings generated a thousand crystal blades, each spinning like a whirlwind before drilling into the Simurgh's largest wing.

I grunted. 'At least he remembered what I said about the core,' I thought bitterly. It wasn't lost on me that whatever therapy Fortuna arranged had fallen woefully short of my hopes.

I could have sworn the bitch smiled at me then.

She raised her single remaining arm like a conductor of some grand orchestra. Every drone converged on Eidolon's crystal drill. Alexandria must have realized just what was about to happen, because she abandoned trying to deck the Simurgh and interposed herself between the drones and the drill.

It wasn't enough.

The spinning crystals reflected the lasers in every conceivable direction, scattering them like the world's most macabre disco ball. If the crystals weakened the lasers at all, I couldn't tell. Eight square blocks worth of downtown DC was razed to the ground, beams of white-hot plasma searing through buildings and people alike.

It was horrific. I'd never felt thousands of people die before. It was a paradoxical thing, simultaneously a mere statistic and yet a soul-deep awareness of the lives snuffed out by a single attack. How many was that?

"Six thousand two hundred ninety-one," Lamb whispered as she sent the newly parted souls off with a wave of her bow.

I grunted my irritation. Clearly, millennia of solitude did not help her understand a rhetorical question.

My bracelet stuttered before failing altogether, whatever AI Masamune used unable to maintain the network while keeping it updated with the influx of casualties simultaneously.

God, I couldn't wait 'til we had Dragon. Forget the Birdcage, this was what truly made her so goddamn invaluable.

I launched another attack on the Simurgh. My blade was turned away by a stray brick, but the Wolf closed his jaws around her left shoulder before he was dispersed into mist again. The Lamb pelted her with more arrows, but if my two partners were blindspots to her, she'd quickly adapted.

When the bracelet reconnected, it was to recite a depressing list of casualties. Fliers who lacked shaker abilities or weren't strong enough to contribute were already busy with search and rescue. Then I heard something that made my stomach drop.

"Metalmaru down."

Metalmaru. Steven Kajiya. He was the person who welcomed me to DC, the man who helped me perfect Petricite. His work was what I based brightsteel around. Hell, when I asked him for fossilized lizard eggs, he got one for me. The Ymelo that blazed behind me was proof of his aid. A good man with a perhaps more than friendly interest in Bluesong. I owed it to him to at least shove him through his own Wayfinder.

Another second and I stood over a dead woman who'd been impaled by a flying street sign, one that either Brickhouse or the Philadelphia contingent let slip.

It took me a second to find him. He was in bad shape, though not unrecoverable. Nothing short of death was unrecoverable. I barely glanced at the stumps that were his legs and shoved a pill in his mouth to stabilize him. Then, while people were still screaming from her latest attack, I chucked his body into the portal. I couldn't remember where it led, but it didn't matter. So long as he was on the other side, I'd see him around eventually.

"Hyunmu!" I heard Brickhouse call. Half of his brickwork armor was shattered to pieces and he clearly hadn't bothered to repair it in favor of building more walls. He was bleeding from his side though the wound was shallow. I absentmindedly tossed him a health pill.

Behind him, I could see Chevalier, Rime, and a few more I didn't recognize from Philadelphia glancing back at me.

"Is that a Ward? How old is he?"

"Eyes up, this isn't over," I grunted back, ignoring the others with practiced ease. "Have the PRT begin to withdraw into the Wayfinder. The drones are causing too many casualties. It's not worth having them stay."

"I can reflect them," Rime yelled. She put words to action and tossed half a dozen bolts of frost that exploded into blooming fractals. She was a far cry from the strong, taciturn woman she'd be when she took over for Alexandria in LA. She… She looked so young…

"A pup yipping at a dragon," Wolf growled. As derisive as he seemed, I could feel a hint of approval through our bond, though whether it was respect for her audacity or humor at her naivete I didn't know.

We didn't have time. I couldn't reply before a second salvo hit us. I pumped mana into my eyes and winced as the chill almost became too much. For a brief few seconds, the world seemed to stand still, frozen, allowing me to take stock of what was happening.

Eidolon had wised up and broken apart the drill, but his crystals were still in the air and if the Simurgh specialized in anything, it was using her bullshit powers to precision-craft the most infuriating outcome possible. The lasers bounced from drone to drone, Glace's mirror to Eidolon's crystals. I saw one even hit a polished street sign and a car's rear-view mirror, only to spear a father shielding his son. Two more candles snuffed out.

Physics? Rate of dispersion? What the fuck were those?

Credit where it's due, Rime was swift to react with more fractals. Layers upon layers of glacial fractals hit the air, deflecting the majority aimed at us into the sky. Her fractals shattered and evaporated into steam after a single laser, but they did manage to mostly protect those who sheltered beneath her.

With a spin of Isolde, the Hallowed Mist joined her shield, expanding to guard roughly a third of the square we were standing in.

"Not enough," I grit out as the laser net was bounced back. It carved straight through Brickhouse's earthen shield and I watched as everyone with him was split into pieces. The scent of charred pork hit my nostrils as dozens of little flames were snuffed out in my mind.

"Brickhouse deceased," the cold, robotic voice read out.

"Into the portal!" I heard Chevalier shout. His cannonblade increased in size before taking on a mirror sheen, cleaving an oncoming car in twain. The civilians needed no further encouragement.

I grabbed one by the back of the throat and hurled her into the portal. If she wanted to break down into catatonia, she could do it where she wouldn't get turned into a Ziz-bomb.

In the absence of Metalmaru, Chevalier took charge and ordered a fighting retreat. I saw him stand as the rearguard while his team corralled as many people as he could. "We've done what we could. We're pulling out!"

More lasers carved through the air, tearing through softened defenses and collapsing every nearby building. I wondered how many corpses I'd find under all that rubble.

Not everyone was as noble as Chevalier though. I could see Wonderland and the Seattle contingent abandon the evacuation efforts altogether, opting to head into the portal themselves. Behind her, the portal closed, leaving tens of thousands of civilians behind. I felt the Wolf growl at her cowardice.

It was his writ to hunt those who fled from death. I had half a mind to let him.

"Pyrotechnical deceased. Lovejoy deceased. Unlucky Thirteen deceased. Worthy deceased. Underhood deceased. Big Jam deceased."

I winced. That was four portals out of commission. I could only hope enough civilians had made it to safety to lessen the burden on the others.

'Or they're all dead and don't need to be moved,' a cynical part of my mind added.

Then, a roar as loud as my coilgun rumbled through the air like an oncoming storm. The vibration that shook the city was a tangible force, one felt rather than heard. Every drone shot up into the sky and converged on a single point before they were dashed together.

"Whoever gave Exalt a potion deserves a fucking medal," I muttered as I landed near Chevalier to avoid the oncoming pressure wave.

"No kidding. You go on through, kid," the future leader of the Wardens spoke grimly. "You've done amazing."

"Can't. You go through, Chev. The world will need you in a decade or so."

With that, I was off again. I took to the skies just in time to see Eidolon's high stakes game of tag pay off, destroying the second to last speaker. The song had noticeably quieted by now, though I didn't doubt that it was the Simurgh setting up "win conditions" so her blowhard creator could feel like he accomplished something.

With three of the wielders of the Wayfinders dead and one turned coward, I knew that the portals they oversaw had closed as well, leaving hundreds of thousands trapped in DC. There had to be over four thousand people cramming the U Street corridor alone.

Would she withdraw if I slashed off her main wing? Or maybe if the last speaker was destroyed?

I didn't know. I stuttered as the strain of sustaining the Eternal Hunters' corporeal bodies caught up to me. Housing embodiments of death in my still very much living body was no easy task. Even now, I could feel the two older spirits bleeding into my mind. Their influence was undeniable and the more I relied on them, the more inhuman I could feel myself becoming.

I hated this with every fiber of my being, but I had to accept that regardless of the Mark, the Simurgh was beyond my ability to kill.

'For now,' I swore.

All I could do was drive her away.

"It'll cost you," the Lamb spoke, a warning and a promise in the same breath.

"Doesn't matter."

"Indeed. What is time to an immortal?"

The Ymelo blazed behind me, reminding me of everything I fought for. Cauldron stood for the greater good of man, but… but I didn't want to ignore the people before me. I didn't want to be like David, so terrified of not being good enough when it mattered most that he let countless opportunities pass him by for the sake of "saving himself." Even if it cost me, even if it knocked me out of commission, wasn't this worthwhile?

I made my decision. I chose to trust Eugene. I chose to trust Rebecca. I chose to trust Fortuna. Most of all, I chose to trust the differences I'd made.

With my decision came clarity of purpose and I gave in to the tide of the Kindreds' power. I felt the Mask become a part of me, an extension of our pact.

The two Kindred's voices blended as one, barely restrained hunger and serene discipline in equal measure. "So be it."

My soul began to strain as the Eternal Hunters claimed more and more of that metaphysical real estate. Then, I flung wide the floodgates. The feeling was akin to when I summoned Anivia, yet not. Here I stood, donning the Mask of the Kindred, and surrounded by the corpses of hundreds of thousands. There could be no better environment to act as my catalyst.

Within the temple of my soul, two pillars rose up, framing the altar of the World Rune. One bore the mask of the Lamb, the other the Wolf. I knew what this meant. When I wore the Mask, I wore the guise of the Kindred.

Now? Now I'd engraved the very same magics into my soul. Never again could I call myself human. There was no outward change, but it was every my soul that truly mattered.

My voice echoed with their haunting cadence, the growl of the Wolf, the song of the Lamb. "Round two, bitch."

The next breath found me behind the Simurgh again, paying no heed to Eidolon as he chased down the last speaker. He could play his games; I had an angel to reap. Isolde stretched out, becoming a claymore that swung with the intention of the headman's ax.

She evaded it, spinning Glace's frosted mirror with enough force to divert it the fraction of an angle necessary to get away clean.

In another breath, I shrank Isolde to the size of a dagger and lunged. I heard my footsteps strike the clouds with enough force to resound like thunderclaps.

She blocked it by slashing at my wrist with bladelike feathers.

I ignored the pain; she couldn't cut Anivia's Grace. Instead, my dagger switched targets at the last second to lodge in her shoulder. I just needed to get close enough. She thrashed, but my left hand came into contact with her largest wing, a hair's breath from the Mark.

I had what I was waiting for. Three Minion Dematerializers per day, three blasts of ensorcelled mana that would transmute absolutely any source of matter into mana to evaporate into the atmosphere. No amount of durability was enough to survive an attack like this.

Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but I thought I saw the Simurgh's eyes widen in panic.

I dropped my entire arsenal into the Mark before an overwhelming telekinetic force knocked me away.

Not enough.

The Minion Dematerializer scaled off my mass and thrice my mass was barely enough to pierce five layers of her crystalline body. It wouldn't be enough. I didn't expect it to be.

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But it scared her, and that was my aim. Here was a metaphysical attack she could not see, could not counter. For that one brief moment, I made an endbringer contemplate death.

Her focus was fully on me now and that was all the opportunity my two partners needed.

The three of us danced around the Simurgh with a coordination we lacked before. When the Wolf lunged for his bite, I saw and readied Isolde to cut her off. When she offered up her right arm to his jaw, Lamb's arrows tore a weeping gash through her breast.

Every movement was orchestrated with the perfect, flawless grace of the Eternal Hunters. I felt my fingers burn with the familiar sting of the bowstring and my teeth ache with the satisfying pressure of the tearing bite. We teleported to the Mark, to one another, and never gave her the chance to escape us as we harried our quarry.

When telekinetic force shoved me away, I was there in the shadow of the Wolf to follow his bite with a piercing lunge. When a wing struck the Wolf with enough force to disperse him, he reformed from a nearby corpse to bite at her heels.

We fought with the ferocity of wild beasts, the grace of a divine huntress, and the desperation of mortal man.

Bit by bit, she was running out of pieces of herself to throw away.

X

Conflict Engine 03

There was an unforeseen variable, an impossibility. The Anomaly. Things were not going according to plan.

Her emergence was to be a turning point, a shock to the system that would keep things from becoming too sterile. She was to break the monotony and facilitate the acquisition of data through the prolonged suffering of the host species.

The Creator was to be the hero. The hero required a nemesis. She was to be that nemesis. In doing so, she would crush hope even as she inspired it. More conflict. More data.

Such were her drives. She could no more deviate from these drives than a member of the host species could cease breathing.

The battle had begun as it should, as she had foreseen.

Her form inspired awe, as she knew she would based on her Creator's reverence towards archaic scriptures. It was fashioned to resemble a creature of myth, a divine symbol of providence, a messenger of hope. All the better to crush it.

The day of her arrival was calculated as the day in which her appearance would invoke the greatest response, as was the location.

Her arrival was greeted with the appropriate uncertainty.

The song was a necessary diversion. By playing into their expectations, she could set the rules of this game, a farce but no less disruptive to the host species for it. She began singing when her Creator's chosen powers settled.

Then their dance began.

The den of tinkers called the Madhouse was a treasure trove of resources. It housed not just the works of current tinkers, but those who had come before and those whose works had been confiscated. Most of these were already built and tested, ready to be deployed or reconfigured by a masterful artisan. She connected to the Shard Network and began to collate their individual knowledge and expertise into a greater whole. Even with her imposed restrictions, there was plenty she could do.

The song was what the host species could hear, but it was far from the only instrument in her orchestra. Like a conductor, every single thing in the Madhouse was accounted for and manipulated with utmost precision. Even her Creator's power was given due consideration, all the better to draw out their suffering.

Then small things began to go wrong. Civilians did not die when they were supposed to. A pale mist began to obscure her vision, not enough to truly blind her, but enough to muddy the waters. The future became less clear as the orchestra she conducted began to play off key. One life. Then ten. Then hundreds and growing in number. Tangles and knots began to appear in the threads she wove.

They were minor, inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, so they did not hold her interest. They were not the first to deviate, merely unexpected. The Cycle would continue and her Creator would have his nemesis.

And then he joined the battle. The Anomaly. He fought with the ferocity and desperation she'd come to associate with the host species, but also with a strength that only the best of them wielded. Blades that parted crystalline flesh with ease. A coilgun that fired some unknown variant of plasma. The obscuring mist that clouded her sight. The Mark upon her shell that denoted her core.

The cause of the disruptions had appeared.

She struck back. At first, she fought with what she could lift, debris and cars and chunks of masonry. He evaded or sundered them all with a skill that surpassed expectations. The projections that fought by his side eluded her predictions. Time and time again, she failed to foresee their attacks. They struck unerringly at the Mark.

But in doing so, they made themselves predictable. Not through any manipulation of atoms or hyperaware processing, but through mere logic and deduction. So long as the host could be read, she had a point of origin. So long as the Mark existed, she had the destination. Thus, a line could be drawn.

The line swerved and bent, but always sought the singular destination. And so she guarded her core, repelling her attackers. She lost more and more of her fabricated body, but that was acceptable as only the core mattered.

He was keeping her from being the Creator's nemesis. Unacceptable.

With each engagement, she held back less. By the end, she had stopped using the debris around her and moved to direct telekinetic manipulation. His armor and blade resisted her grasp, as though something was eating up her power as it came in contact with that cloak. Every attempt to destroy the projections failed as they merely reconstituted themselves from the mist or nearby cadavers.

She hardened the very air and struck him down, only to find that he could teleport to her. He appeared wherever she was not looking. Had she relied on organic eyes, every lunge and strike would have been lethal.

Then the one called Metalmaru was struck down. Not fatally, but it brought her relief. The Anomaly had chosen to save another rather than continue harrying her. She could go back to being the nemesis her Creator demanded.

Then the Anomaly returned, stronger and faster than before. She could see the strain on his body through the minute tensing of his muscles. Rage. Fear. Desperation. Hope.

All these things drove him to feats of greater daring. His movements changed. Before, they were that of highly trained martial artists from the host species. They were controlled in a way that spoke of routine and discipline. A repetition that could be extrapolated. Now, he moved with a wildness akin to a beast. He became harder to read, as though the mist that made up his projections began to make him up as well.

The Anomaly struck the Mark, three lasers that dematerialized layers of crystal. Surprise. Confirmation. His attacks were insufficient to reach her core, but he proved that there was more to consider than just his blade.

Then the apparitions struck. The wolf head bit down on the back of her neck, a killing blow on any organic. It was only meant to hold her still for a moment. She twisted and let out a telekinetic blast that dispersed the mist, only to have the wolf reconstitute itself, none the worse for wear.

The lamb's arrows pierced deeper still, deeper than any attack that the host species should be capable of. She could trace these shafts of foreign energy, but only by reacting to where her sight became a void.

Dangerous. Her arrows came concerningly close to her core. Were it not for the strain so evident in the Anomaly's body language, she could have ended her.

For the first time in her short existence, she knew fear.

Impossible. Unacceptable.

She had to flee. She could outlast the Anomaly if she could keep her distance. She shot off with no regard for the sound barrier, leaving behind shockwaves that ruptured an insignificant host. The wolf head emerged from a mangled cadaver, fangs dripping with drool as he aimed for her core.

Her last arm went to it in sacrifice.

Another body. This time, the lamb. She was quick to place cadavers between her and the ovine. Arrows could be blocked. The chase could be continued.

She was in full retreat. Her head hung by a few slivers of crystalline flesh. Her arms were long gone. Most of her wings had been torn away by the canid head. The host species let out cries of triumph, as if this feat was theirs to claim. As if this body mattered.

For the first time in her short existence, she knew irritation.

The futures of these entities were locked to her. The Anomaly was moving even now. But… perhaps… not the past? She had not foreseen a need for such measures, but information was critical. So, she looked back, back along the threads, back to the Anomaly before he was the Anomaly.

The Mask. It mattered not that she could not fathom its function, only that she could understand its value. She saw him put it on, the boy called Andy. She saw him become the Anomaly.

The Mask had worth. She targeted the Mask.

A telekinetic slap to disorient him. A thousand and one projectiles so he could not discern her aim. He struck them down. His sword became two blades, connected at the crossguard. Scissors. They spun like a windmill and parried most.

What he could not strike down, the ovine did for him, its aim and speed far beyond the Anomaly's.

A stalemate. She had to withdraw. Too many factors had deviated from her predictions. The final speaker was destroyed by the Creator and she fired off a token whirlwind in his direction to express her "displeasure." She was preoccupied with escaping the Anomaly though.

He was running out of time. For what, she couldn't say, but the strain on his body was evident to her. She could leave to process the data she'd collected and prepare for future appearances.

She looked into the history of the one called Andy and devised a plan to force him away from her. All that was required was that she impose a choice upon him, the cost for waylaying her so. Three tendrils of telekinetic force set three wheels in motion.

X

Andy Yusung Kim

I grit my teeth through the pain of hosting the Kindred. Maybe I was too young. Maybe my body couldn't process this quantity of mana yet. Maybe I should stick with one type of mana rather than trying to blend ice, death, and a host of other elements. Or maybe I just wasn't used to this yet. I didn't know.

All I knew was that the Kindred were wearing on me. It was like a constant pressure, a sense of impending doom that could be felt like a physical force. Even as we drew nearer to her core with every strike, I knew that I had minutes at most.

And then the bitch made me choose.

I didn't realize what was happening until it was too late, so caught up was I in trying to get that one critical strike. If the Lamb and Wolf noticed, they cared not. So many things were happening at once. With the destruction of the last speaker, everyone thought this could be it. This could be the death of an endbringer.

I didn't know what made Exalt charge in between the Lamb and the Simurgh. Perhaps he was so consumed by the battle-high that he went for the only objective left. Perhaps he was desperate to be noticed, the need to prove himself overwhelming his sense of caution. Or, he was just horrifically unlucky and the Simurgh threw him between us while masking her telekinesis as his own power.

I'd never know because he went the way of all mortals who faced the Lamb.

His entrance was downright majestic, a massive, horizontal tornado as wide as a building with him as the tip of the funnel. It was like something out of an anime, an honest to God wind spear. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought such an attack might have worked as well.

But I did know better. I saw where it was headed. Unfortunately, his arrival disrupted the delicate dance that the Kindred and I were performing. It wasn't much, a slight distortion of the cloud beneath my feet, but that fraction of a second was all it took.

I was too slow. I couldn't keep him from striking the Simurgh, or the Lamb from striking him in short order.

"Exalt deceased," I heard at the exact same time as I felt his candle be snuffed out.

"Foolish," the Wolf growled.

"But brave," the Lamb remarked dispassionately.

That was the cue, the straw that broke the camel's back. It started with Exalt, but his attack was the signal for everyone to pile on the injured endbringer. I tried to say something, to stop them from throwing their lives away, but my voice was drowned out in a sea of excited capes. I felt my muscles tear and my soul clench. I didn't have the strength to sustain our delicate dance and maneuver around them at the same time. I knew then that there was no way I was killing the Simurgh today.

Then something shot up into the air from the remnants of the Madhouse. I saw a streak of metallic silver for the briefest moment before it detonated on the biggest cluster of blasters. A black and blue portal exploded outward, consuming most of them. A bare few were fast enough to get away and the flash of blue light that jetted outward told me Legend remained as elusive as ever.

'Warptek.' The former Madhouse tinker had died in Hyderabad conducting relief missions on behalf of the United States. He'd moved to Milwaukee prior to my arrival in DC, but some of his tech had to have been in storage. Could the Simurgh make his tech when he was no longer alive?

'Of course she can. 2009. Haywire,' I thought grimly. 'She wouldn't even need to make anything, just break it the way she wants.'

I didn't know where that porta led, if it led anywhere at all, but I did know that they didn't arrive alive. The flames being snuffed out as they crossed the event horizon was proof enough of that. Of the names the bracelet read off, I recognized only Cloudstreak.

Two more streaks of silver floated in the air before she lobbed them down at the grounded heroes.

One headed for the Phoenix contingent working with Bluesong to protect her Wayfinder. The other, the Guild members running search and rescue in what used to be Outreach's section of the city.

Keep hitting the Simurgh in some vain attempt at striking the core, with so many suicidal idiots in the way. Save Narwhal, who I expected to do great things. Save Bluesong who was an immensely capable tinker just a step shy of Hero. The Simurgh forced me to choose and that was no choice at all.

In the end, it was sentimentality that moved me. The Phoenix contingent likely contained someone I knew. I genuinely looked up to Bluesong for the life she'd led. No, this was a foregone conclusion.

I vanished in a flicker of mist and reappeared next to a corpse of some young girl, dragging both the Lamb and Wolf down to the ground with me. Pained spasms wracked my body and slowed me down for a fraction of a second. I couldn't keep it from going off. Cutting it would make it worse. Gritting through the pain, I flooded my eyes with mana and saw the world crawl to a stop.

Royalle hadn't noticed, busy as he was yelling at a crowd of refugees. Oathkeeper saw and her storm-clad sword was already starting its arc through the air, hoping to knock it off course. Redbird, the very first Protectorate cape to introduce me to the Phoenix Wards, was too busy using his feathers to lift a man with a head injury through the portal.

Bluesong was playing some sort of device shaped like a flute. I knew it to be a highly sophisticated piece of hardware that helped her manipulate fluid dynamics. She used it often enough to demonstrate how she could use it to stop bloodflow. I suspected that her sector of the city would have the highest survival rate.

I saw where the portal was to land and my heart leapt to my throat. Stingray. Penelope. She was here despite my every warning otherwise. I told her she wasn't ready. White hot rage warred with worry in my mind until I realized why she was here: me.

The Atlas Gauntlets were made to provide a forcefield using the mana reserves in her soul, but that was meant to handle cave-ins and kinetic impacts, the recoil of their immense striking force. They weren't made to handle dimensional anomalies.

In another heartbeat, I was by her side. The bomb began to glow and spark. In this moment of slowed perception, I could clearly track every arc of electricity and watch as Warptek's hardware destabilized before my eyes. I'd never swung Isolde faster. Waves upon waves of ice covered the bomb in layers of frost, but I knew before I struck that it wouldn't be enough. It was long past the point of needing a coolant.

Even as my body seized with pain, I pulled on the last card I could play as one of the Kindred. I was an aspect of death. The end of all things. It was our right to reap, our duty to guide the flow of souls. But… But for an instant, a single breath that stretched for an eternity, I also had the authority to reject, to postpone my duty.

I embraced Farya's power like I'd never done before. I held her tight and threw my very soul at her feet in the hope of fueling this technique. The World Rune blazed like never before and I felt my soul flood with power I couldn't hope to contain.

"One instant. One breath," I whispered. "That's all I want."

"So be it."

I felt her reach out. Her soft, fuzzy hand clasped my own and we spoke as one. Our voice came out a whisper, but with an undeniable authority that rang throughout all existence and froze one of the fundamental aspects of the universe. "Lamb's Respite."

A ripple of pure life spread outward from my position like a stone thrown into a pond. Wherever our power reached, there was stillness. Two words. Two words made Death take a pause. Two words made that undeniable cog of the universe stop.

The serenity of it all was captivating.

Then the dimension grenade went off and consumed everything. For a moment, my vision shifted and I was overlooking a snowcapped mountain range. Then I stood over a desert. Then, a peaceful glade. Then, a volcano. Then, the overwhelming pressure of the ocean depths surrounded me. I was everywhere and nowhere, tugged in a dozen different directions. I saw Stingray and dozens of civilians get tossed about alongside me, their eyes widened in shock and mouths opened in silent screams.

They drowned. They fell. They burned. They were diced apart and died a thousand deaths in a fraction of a second, before their brains could even begin to process pain.

But they lived. Their bodies recovered instantly for they needed them to live. They could not die for I refused to claim them.

And then it was over.

Author's Note

Welp, the battle's winding down. Finally.

I… I don't think I can write the Simurgh too well, but I decided to try anyway. I wrote her from the third person perspective because the first person "I" implies a sense of self and I'm not sure if she has that strictly speaking.

Are you surprised? Frustrated? The Simurgh has plot armor? Yeah, she does. Full stop, she does. She was never going to die on her first appearance, and certainly not during Andy's first endbringer fight. As hilariously powerful as Andy is compared to most of Earth-Bet, he's got limits. This was never the kind of story where an OP protagonist steamrolls everything in his way. Becoming Kindred basically gives him a super-Saiyan form, but it comes with a heavy toll on his body. He's still a child and his abilities very much reflect that.

Also, Lamb's Respite is stupid. It's broken. It's exactly the kind of bullshit power perfect to close out this battle.

I legit rolled to see if Narwhal survived that last attack from the Simurgh. She did, by detonating it prematurely with a well-placed barrier and staying out of its range. Lucky, too, 'cause I would have felt weird killing her off after Andy hyped her up a bit in the story.

Thank you for reading. To reach a wider audience, and because I enjoy a more forum-like setup to facilitate discussion, I like to crosspost to a wide variety of websites. You can find them all on my Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/fabled.webs.