_ _ _Bim

As she understood it, working at an aid station was one of the rare few occupations all humans deemed noble. The fundamental objective of preserving human live was something all humans agreed upon, on one level or another. True there was a good deal of lawyering semantics on which human lives were more important or inferior to others, but the point remained. Her present task was the distribution for foodstuffs and the memorization of each person she supplied so as to ensure everyone got one portion. It was an unyielding policy, but a fair one.

It was also a ludicrously simple task. One that failed to occupy her thoughts.

Every few seconds, as one beggar fell back into the crowd and another moved forward to take their place, Bim's gaze rose above the crowd. The empathic link she shared with Hiiro gave off a constant background trickle of hurt unlike any suffering she'd known prior. Heartbreak, as the recent additions to her mind called it. She wanted to sever their bond, to cast aside this constant wounded longing for what could not be, yet she refrained. Not out of some misplaced sense of guilt but rather from one of duty.

Bim was here to learn and the intimate knowledge of how deeply a mortal man could be hurt without physical injury was something new. She had a duty to know how badly she'd broken him. She owed it to herself to understand his suffering for her sake. Bim could not permit herself to love Hiiro. Maybe one day decades or centuries from now, he would come to understand that but for now his soul cried out for her and she would not play deaf.

She'd done the right thing. What he wanted from her was an impossibility. Humans could cling to one another, feigning communion in their physical ignorance. There was no risk, so it was fine for the doomed mortals to play at such romanticized ideals. Immortals could not humor such folly. The risk of one subsuming the other was too great. A union could destroy them both or create something beyond either of their constitute beings. Bound in her vessel, perhaps this Bim that she was could endure such a union. Perhaps she could spare Hiiro from being devoured in his ignorance. Perhaps he was worth the risk…

But the vessel called Bim was not all that she was. This corrupt, indulgent, vainglorious thing that she is now was less than a fraction's fraction of her true self. A true self that had never known pain or love or touch. Her true self that might reject this Bim that she was rather than condemn itself to a timeless eternity of suffering and loss. To find the beauty in suffering was a uniquely human trait, one her higher self would not doubt reject.

Bim had to cast Hiiro aside to save him from herself. Maybe he could understand her actions. Maybe, if the stars aligned and the fates allowed, he could forgive her.

Her thoughts raced and all the while she doled out relief supplies to grateful mortals, each one doomed to die in ignominious solitude. Such was the human condition. A lifetime of suffering that ended with uncaring death. It was pitiful, tragic even. That was the fate that awaited Hiiro, all the better if Bim only had a few sweet months to remember him by when that time came.

A fragment of her mind imagined how great her loss would be if he died today. Another, if he died next year and another still after she had spent his natural lifespan with him. In all cases she couldn't fathom such a loss. It was something she simply could not imagine as an experience. Mathematically, there should be an equation factoring in time together compounded by comfort and pleasure in some way quantified. If there was such an equation, then it made sense that the sum value of the joy she'd known with Hirro could be inversely expressed as the utter loss she'd know without him.

The idea of such an equation made logical sense. Bim was certain that her higher self would appreciate the concept, but Bim did not. Thinking in such inhuman terms was an abstract. Love didn't come with a numeric signifier. It wasn't something that could be formulated and measured and proofed. It simply was. Love was a fundamental force in the human experience and as much as she fought it, love would not be denied. Hiiro loved her and he hated her for it. She couldn't blame him. Bim couldn't permit herself to love him back and she hated herself for it too.

The realization struck a chord within her vessel, drawing Bim's attention back to the present. She was paralyzed, her hand locked on a beggars portion as he tried to pry the food from her iron grip. Bim released the food, sending the beggar stumbling back into the crowd.

What was the point in fighting against further corruption if she was already tainted? How much worse could she make her situation? This vessel that called herself Bim was a doomed thing. It bore too much tainted knowledge, too much sin to be returned to the fold. Yet there was still the slightest chance Bim could disseminate what she'd learned and be reintegrated with herself— the slightest chance that who she was could survive her return beyond this realm.

As much as she resisted, Hiiro's suffering pained her. As much as she refused, he loved her and she couldn't deny her own fondness of him. His confession had drawn to light the words she longed to say to him. Those three words that would damn her beyond all hope of salvation. If she admitted how she felt to him, her destruction would be assured. Hiiro was alive and that would have to be enough for her.

Their fight replayed in her mind over and over, twisting the knife every time. She was an alien. A devil. A monster. Their lives together would be nothing but hardship. She was fond of him and she'd done what she had to. Made the right call. She could finish her study promptly and leave this material plane without ever seeing him again. She had to hurt him to save him from herself. It was the only way. So long as he lived out his brief mortal life, Bim could fade from existence knowing this was for the best.

Yet still her mind wandered to impossible thoughts. His lips upon her own. The bliss she'd felt when sharing his bed. The divine clarity she'd known when he called her vessel's name. Her own damnation was a small price to pay for the joy of his company. If it was just her own false life on the line Bim would have cast it to the fates already. A single mortal lifetime with Hiiro was worth it. She would condemn herself willingly, but she could not let him do the same. His life was worth thousands of her own.

Bim's Tormentor materialized at her side, cowing the swarming beggars by his presence alone. Treu's traditional sneering contempt was curiously absent, replaced instead by an air of faint melancholy.

"Your subcontracted time with this company is drawing to an end. Have you learned enough, Creature? Have you discovered the irrefutable truth that there is nothing for you here or elsewhere upon this plane?"

Once more Bim's gaze fell upon the building where she felt Hiiro looking down on her. Would that she could cleave the distance between them and cast the consequences to hell, but that was an impossibility. One that did nothing to quell the torrent of desire she felt, nothing so sate the primal hunger she knew he could meet. They were too different.

"I have learned more than enough Tormentor, perhaps even too much, though I dispute your claim that there is nothing for me here." Bim answered unable to keep the longing wist from her voice.

"By all means Creature, if there's something—or should I say someone—then by your contract with my employer, why don't you go pursue it? I'd never dream of deliberately obstructing your mandate and elongating your stay in this dimension." Treu said in a playful mocking tone.

Scant few months ago she had accused him of doing just that. In all that time Treu had been immutable while Bim had undergone continuous change. Indeed the woman she was now bore scarce similarities to the inhuman creature she'd been when she first experienced the pull of gravity and the march of time. What further evidence was needed to know she was corrupted from her initial task? All this time Treu had known how her doomed venture would conclude.

"All units, prepare to bug out. We've got massive enemy movement inbound on our location. ETA two-zero mikes." Leeroy said over the radio of a nearby mercenary.

"… If I did pursue him, what would happen?" Bim asked.

"You would taint him as he has tainted you, Devil. In a blink, you would look back on a lifetime of gluttony poisoning your souls and you would know despair, Creature. In a single human lifetime you would destroy everything you came to know, everyone you care for and you would watch them die while craving a death long denied to you, Abomination. You would survive and in due time, you would learn that survival alone is a cruel thing."

"Your candor is without equal, Tormentor." Bim idly said, knowing the half-truth of his words. She would know despair in time, but until then bliss. It seemed a fair exchange. "And… And if I were to abandon my mandate? If I were to walk away this very instant from that which I crave?"

Treu took a step away from the aid station, the throng of humanity parting before him. That he could walk away from these past few months that had been her entire life shouldn't have surprised her yet it did. Treu had survived beyond a normal human's lifetime, it set him apart from his short-lived counterparts. He was an outsider among them… as was she.

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"Follow me and I will answer, my Lady." His words were devoid of hatred or mockery. He sounded somewhere between deferent and sympathetic.

Coming from Treu of all people, her Tormentor, Bim felt stunned. Had he found himself in a similar situation in years longs past? It seemed plausible. As much as she despised admitting it, Treu was a meta-human as was she, they had more in common than either cared to acknowledge.

A single gunshot rung true across the plaza, a funerary knell for a life that Bim would never know.

She followed Treu, walking away from the mercenaries and that impossible dream she longed for. It was better this way, she'd been a fool for hoping otherwise. They walked in a bubble of calm as the crowd went berserk around them, each step taking her further from Hiiro. Her death for his life, it was an exchange no devil would undertake. It was a foolishly human notion to die for something greater than yourself, to embrace death so the one you loved could survive just a little longer.

Bim knew that this was the best course of action, so why was every step a battle? She was doing this to save Hiiro! His life was what mattered, not her's. She wasn't real, she wasn't human, she wasn't even mortal! But wasn't she?

To be mortal was by definition to be subject to death. When Treu destroyed her vessel, Bim would likely not be embraced by her higher self. This fraction of a fraction that was her consciousness and essence would cease to exist— destroyed to prevent her from corrupting her higher self with things best left unknown. She would be obliterated in mind, soul and body. There was no distancing herself from that truth.

Bim would die, by definition that made her mortal.

Her feet stopped trudging forward. Treu spun on her instantly. Bim could hear intermittent gunfire in the distance. Why did it matter if she wasn't human? Why should her imitated human body stop her from pursuing happiness? If she was going to die as all mortal things did, would a brief lifetime of shared with the man she loved be such a curse?

"Treu, have you every known love?" Bim asked, unable to tear her mind from Hiiro and the sound of escalating gunfire behind her.

"What does it matter if I did?" Treu asked, his tone still uncharacteristically gentle. "All things are temporary. All things will be silent in time as all things will end, such is the inevitable conclusion of this fragile dimension composed of seething vacuum, finite matter and infinite time."

"Again you throw my own words back in my face. Are my actions still guided inhuman ignorance? In a month's time would you thrown these words now back at me once more?"

"Your present ignorance is far more human than not." Treu answered.

The distant sounds of conflict drew nearer, more intense. She felt Hiiro plucking at our connection, searching for her. He was concerned, not of the clash of arms or for his own wellbeing but for her. He hated her yet still he'd risk peril to save her. Bim felt the urge to do much the same. She may be mortal by the strictest definitions but she was far more durable that Hiiro was. He'd get himself killed trying to save her while she was busy doing the same for him. It was absurd, so pointlessly human that she found herself smiling. Love was blind to reason.

"It would seem I'm not the only one." Bim stated idly, gazing back towards the man she loved.

"You know where that choice leads." Treu said, asking a question without asking in that annoyingly human way.

"I can reasonably speculate." Bim answered.

"You can never have what you want. You know that."

"It seems probable."

"So why?" Treu finally asked. "You have power and time and a mind capable of making use of both. Hiiro is insignificant. In time you can have as many lovers as you'd like and you will outlast them all. You could discover untold truths beyond human comprehension and ascend beyond to rule the nether-realm! Do you truly understand what you're throwing away for a single mortal man with a spark of power?"

He spoke truly yet in that moment Bim didn't care. If Hiiro got himself kill then her sacrifice for his sake was pointless. They were two fools throwing their lives to the fates in desperate pains to save the other. If either of them would just walk away things would be easier for them both yet love was blind and mortals are fools.

Treu was correct. A devil would have heard is logical rationale and been swayed. Had he spoken to her so candidly months prior, Bim would have seen the wisdom Treu had garnered through decades of plighted existence. In some small way, she agreed with him now but still, she could not disregard Hiiro. Despite all that had happened and all that they'd said and all the cold hard sanity in the world, Bim could not deny that she still craved for her Hiiro as a flame craves for air.

Bim took a single step back towards that expanding chaos, that impossible dream, but Treu's massive hand seized her arm. She was going back to help, to save Hiiro even if they could never be together. Even if saving him now meant suffering for it later. She turned from her destiny to regard Treu with eyes steeled by regal conviction.

"You know the truth in my words and still you would deny it?" Treu asked.

"A single lifetime with Hiiro is worth more to me than a million lifetimes without him. I would rather embrace mortality by his side than rule a desolate dimension alone."

"I was hoping you'd say that." A wicked smile split Treu's mask of compassion. "Ordinance pod Terminus to my location."

Treu wrapped her in a colossal bear hug, enveloping her as a starved predator might embrace an abandoned infant. His hands slipped through her clothes and pseudoflesh as if neither were there and grasped the sigil embedded within her. It had happened so fast! He held the physical representation of her soul anchored to this material dimension in steely hands bereft of mercy.

"This iteration of you might believe so, but I doubt the rest of your being is as understanding of such human weaknesses. I hold your soul in my fist B̶͍̌i̶͉̅͝m̵̭̼̒'̶̙̙͑̑k̵͚̿e̶̫̿l̴̢͔͒a̵̘͉̒̌ỉ̷̡̼̀ḓ̶̓̈́h̶̢̢͒̕z̴̡̀͋͜a̷̤͎̓̂, and I release you."

Bim was dumbfounded for a split second before the world shrank away from her perceptions. It was as if she had been viewing her existence through a pinhole and now the woolen blind was pulled from her eyes. She saw and she understood without consideration, she simply knew. Time still marched ever onwards but her mind was overclocked from its languid human facsimile until even the seconds dragged on. Bim blinked her eyes with preternatural alacrity looking to see what Treu would do to her next while she was still immobilized by sensory overload.

Treu's murderous embrace was twofold, each hand placed strategically. The trice-damned sigil embedded within her pseudoflesh was being crushed in his iron grip, something she had secretly longed for which now threw her to the brink of despair. Bim was better versed in the constraints of this physical reality now. She knew that a creature such as her could not exist unanchored. She was a destructive anomaly yet so undeniably vulnerable too. The vessel that called itself Bim was a fraction of a fraction something like a star god and without a dimensional anchor and something to conceal her presence, she was also a helpless feast for any number of extra-dimensional entities. Not least among then, herself.

This had been Treu's objective all along. Extract what useful knowledge could be gleaned prior to offering her up in a moment of weakness, like so much poisoned bait to draw out a true monster.

The sigil within her fractured and crumpled to ash. Bims awareness exploded outwards, beyond the constraints of flesh or light or space. Her expanding mind brushed against thousands of low-order angels feeding upon the prayers and human souls of this world. Her consciousness pierced the veil between dimensions as if it weren't there and despite herself, Bim felt relieved. It was a small thing, the connection to her home plane, yet there was no denying wash of normality she experienced. Such a connection did not go unnoticed by her home plane's denizens. Bim threw her will into retreat but the damage was done.

Her awareness returned to her vessel just as Treu slipped the final bond from her throat. The silver torc clattered to the cobbled street and power flooded Bim. She was no helpless fleshling prey! She was a demi-god made manifest. A Devil descended to walk the worlds of mortal men. Her vessel was alive with energy, her mind drunk with it. She was a vessel of Order in a place of Chaos, she walked the Enemy's lands and every protoplasmic fiber of her being compelled her to pursue the only war.

Bim resisted her instincts. She had to be small, to be slow and helpless and weak and invisible. She could destroy this place of the Enemy without effort! Millions of mortal minds were as sand in the wind, compared to the singular vast expanse that was Bim unburdened and yet she fought her own nature. Bim must not draw the great clash here where even now Hiiro was being such a damned fool to save her.

It was too late.

This fragile reality she found herself in shuddered in savage delight and the atmosphere wept thick clouds of blood red. The empathic link between Bim and Hiiro sprouted a cancerous new pole as a third party gained interest. For kilometers in every direction the harsh light of Nexo Isla's twinned suns grew dim, the bulk of photons all being diverted towards a growing gash sundered between dimensions. The wayward vessel that called itself Bim knew dread as it felt the truly alien mind that had spawned her clawing its way across the breach.

A young goddess that had never before need to be constrained to time or space or name. An entity beyond human comprehension that knew little of this fragile dimension so many had ascended from. It was an ignorant alien thing that hung its impossible mass of broiling undulating crimson-black a hundred meters above the plaza where mortals slaughtered those frozen in terror. No name could encapsulate it. It was Bim's doom and for a fleeting all-too-human instant Bim decided she would not die to a nameless thing.

Bim named her doom, B̵̳̥̌̃u̴̬͝n̶̝̳͒e̸̡̬̒͒.

Time? Space? Matter? These all meant nothing to B̵̳̥̌̃u̴̬͝n̶̝̳͒e̸̡̬̒͒. With the slightest flicker of thought B̵̳̥̌̃u̴̬͝n̶̝̳͒e̸̡̬̒͒ deigned retrieve its wayward daughter and glut itself on her learning. Only then did the disparate attentions of an entity beyond time coalesce into the ephemeral all-consuming Now. A strand of consciousness reached out from B̵̳̥̌̃u̴̬͝n̶̝̳͒e̸̡̬̒͒ to extract months of understanding and it would not be denied. There was no protesting it, no stopping B̵̳̥̌̃u̴̬͝n̶̝̳͒e̸̡̬̒͒ from sifting Bim's like an open book. A single instant and it was too late. As one and neither, in a million voices that reverberated throughout this point in time and space, they knew each other.

In their knowing, they screamed.