"Don't," Eth said, grabbing Aida's arm as she tensed and began to thrum up her strings. "It'll be okay."

For maybe the first time ever, Aida heeded Eth, reining herself in before she did something dumb and kicked off a four-way battle.

Jaxe smirked, clearly enjoying not only everyone's attention, but Aida's internal struggle.

"What's wrong, Aida? I thought you'd-"

With a scream of anguished rage, Rega's Seneschal rushed forward and buried a knife hilt-deep into the side of Jaxe's neck. The albino Dynast managed to swing his blade and cut the Seneschal in half with a single-armed swing before he collapsed, gurgling into the trampled mud of the Tangle. For a shocked moment, everyone stood staring as both bled out. Dead Fallon stood there, oblivious.

Aida numbly walked over to him... or it. She slowly, gingerly touched his face. She knew he was dead and gone, but the shock of seeing him standing there again overrode logic. The spongy feel of his skin, his rotter reek, and the way his glazed eyes stared off at nothing snapped her back. She fought the desire to sob with a surge of anger.

"Get him out of here," she said to no one in particular.

While Aida seethed, struggling to avoid an emotional breakdown here in front of the most powerful beings in The Book, Aliasara had led her back to her people, and Stiller had led Fallon out of sight by the time she'd pulled herself out of it. By the time she came to her senses, everyone was arguing. Sava and Wake were shouting insults at each other, Hassani was quietly and earnestly trying to convince Inro of something, while some Ancient Dynast Aida didn't know was apparently trying to bribe Maxem to get the Keen army on their side. Maxem actually sat down, leaning against the legs of a grim-looking Keen and seeming to only half-listen to the increasingly-agitated Dynast railing at her.

Aida was suddenly tired of it all. As she sagged down, she bumped her purse and remembered the Earth 'nail.

"Fuck it," she said, accidentally boosting the words with her strings loud enough that everyone went silent.

"I don't think an orgy will solve anything now," Wake said, mouth quirking with a hint of amusement.

"I don't mean an orgy. I mean, the Book is boned now, right?" When they stared at her blankly, she rephrased. "It's doomed. The gods are dead, the Aj thing is out killing people and whatever gods are still alive, demon monsters are wiping out whatever's left and no one seems to even want to try to stop them except for Ink and they sound like they're setting in for a last-stand sort of situation. Why don't we just all go to the verse I came from? None of that stuff there and maybe can't. Fallon was saying something about 'nothing working there' a bunch when he came to get me."

She'd only been here for a span of months, but it felt like a decade.

"How do we know your barbaric verse is not just overrun with demons and the Aj isn't there killing your gods?" Inro said, sizing her up as he spoke.

"Us barbaric? I guess in some ways. And we don't have any gods or demons. Well, not any gods like that one anyway." She pointed to the Draggin', still laboriously hauling its mountain-sized body across the Tangle. "And I don't know if demons can come through, but I don't think they'd do great against machine guns and F16s."

"We're not going anywhere until Ebon's murder is avenged and Rega turns rule over to me so we can combat the Aj," Inro said, crossing his muscular arms. The maimed man and woman with him leaned in to talk into his ears, which led to him arguing softly but strongly with them in some other language.

"I was promised The Book until the end of time," Rega said, her head moving in a tiny shake. "I haven't worked towards this for centuries to turn it over to anyone now. If the Mother wants to abandon her verse, take her menial children, and run away, she won't be missed. But I will be the Empress of Everything, First and Last."

"Sava and our people," Maxem said, not even standing. "Directory didn't give me authority to negotiate so it's not negotiable."

After a long pause, Aida sighed. "Diplomacy fail. So everyone really want half of everyone here to die trying to get what you want?"

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

She took the jaw-clenched, tense silence as affirmation. "This is-"

The Terrle skull a ways behind them suddenly lurched and crumbled to a chorus of screams, a cacophony of bony crunches and crashes, and a cloud of swirling bone dust that enveloped everyone. Aida's people ran off that direction to help anyone who was hurt, but they pulled back as a figure made of darkness strode out of the settling dust.

In the nursing home, Aida'd watched a news story about a substance called Vantablack which absorbed all light to the point where discerning distance or shape became difficulty. She'd seen the Aj from a distance once before, but this time, up close the thing's glowing white eyes, gender-less anthropomorphic shape, and the shaped darkness of its form shot goosebumps up and down her arms.

Inro roared, twisted and yanked the stone rod he carried apart, and charged towards the thing, suddenly carrying a blade made of shadow. Hassani shouted at him to halt, but he seemed beyond hearing or reason. His clay-smeared followers surged forward in his wake and their sudden movement startled the Legionaries nearby. Suddenly they were clashing on the fringes as Rega's cluster of string-armed Dynasts blasted handfuls of them away as they retreated towards the Legion camps.

Maxem and her tank-knights hustled off faster than Aida'd ever seen her move back towards the Directory base. Eth clung to Aida, shaking. "I don't want to die."

Aida peeled her off, annoyed. "Then don't do the thing that gets you killed."

"I have to. If I don't, everything Imminent have done across all time will be for naught."

Inro reached Aj and swung, but Aj suddenly moved with a sideways leap fast enough to swirl a vortex of dust behind it. The woman with Inro hurled a clay-coated stone from a sling at its head, but it slapped the stone aside, spinning it off into a cluster of Aida's people where it detonated like a grenade. Hassani ran right behind Inro, drawing the huge blade she carried that seemed to be crafted or carved from faintly-luminescent white ice. Something about the way she moved made her look like the Aj - everything too perfect, too fast, too smooth.

A stray squad of Legionnaires ran towards Aida, Eth, and Ghillie shouting "Rega" as a battle cry. As Ghillie's needles appeared from her suit, Aida stepped in front of her. Out of spite, she sent them hurling away with a string-boosted shout back of "NOPE!"

Feeling strangely detached at the sudden explosion of violence, Aida wandered towards the fight against the Aj numbly, wondering if the Thorn was destroyed. Apparently, yet another Thorn existed elsewhere since no one had seen Inro and his people show up too, but it would be quite the exodus to get her people there while a multi-sided war apparently just broke out.

The Aj seemed to generally be defending itself, completely destroying any of Inro's warriors who drew close enough to attack it with a punch or kick that hit them like a Mack truck; the force of the blows severing limbs, pulping torsos, and hurling them dozens of feet in spite of whatever protective properties the paint seemed to render against the blows of Legionnaires. One such flying torso crashed into Inro, tumbling him back into a crowd of his warriors.

When Aida was close enough to see clearly through the dust but hopefully far enough away to avoid catching a hurling body to the face, she noticed Eth and Parathas walking towards Aj, Parathas talking quickly and Eth trembling violently. She couldn't tell if the hand Parathas wrapped around her shoulders was for moral support, dragging her, holding her up, or some combination of the three.

The Aj suddenly stopped as Parathas stepped back and Eth stepped forward. Hassani's graceful sprint dodged swatted grenade-rocks and hurling bodies. She skidded into blade-reach of the Aj at the same moment Eth arrived within touching distance of it.

Its words sounded inside Aida's head, bones, who knew what all. It spoke with no mouth, perhaps not even words, but Aida understood it completely as it looked at Eth.

You are a one

woven through with time-stuff

threaded back

to the beginning

of the end.

"Yes," Eth said, her voice barely audible and seemingly puny compared to Aj's 'words.'

If the Chronosite

is to be bound

and your kind

to become possible

Aj must interlace

and interface with-

"I know," Eth said.

Aida grinned involuntarily as the frail-looking teenager cut off a god-demon-angel mid-sentence. She startled to see Ghillie standing at Eth's side, nodding to her reassuringly. As chaos and battle amplified about them, Aj casually slaughtering any warrior who came close and flicking grenade-stones away as casually as if waving off flies, Hassani held her blade out to Eth. Eth took it, pressing her hand against its blade as Aj walked forward and touched the other end.

Eth screamed, vibrated, glowed, and, just when it seemed she might explode or fire off like a rocket or who knew what, she toppled over into Ghillie's arms. Hassani snatched up the blade as Aj turned and began to walk back the way it came past the wrecked Terrtle skull. Ghillie pressed her forehead against Eth's.

"Eth, no!" Aida shouted, rushing to Hassani's side. She knelt in the mud beside Ghillie, staring down in horror at the smoke curling from Eth's empty eye sockets.