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I, John Finnegan McCarthy, am most assuredly in over my head.

Now, apocalypses (apocalypsi? Or is it apocalypsides?) weren’t known for holding your hand but this one sure as Hell and Satan’s hairy pucker coulda been gentler some.

Carrying Noah’s unconscious body had been no mean feat, what with my esoterica weighing me down like an anchor of solid steel. Funnily enough, it was bone-deep exhaustion that allowed me to transport Noah in the first place.

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Entity: [Omniglot//Moonscorched]

Sphera: [Golgotha], [Luna], [Empyrea], [Mercuria]

Para-class: [Red-Aphelion]

Esoterica: [Adamant]

Hubris: [Shouldering-The-Crucifix]

Reliquary: [-]

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Esoterica: [Adamant]

Ignosis: [The esoterica of {Adamant} derives from the sphera of {Golgotha}, {Luna} and {Mercuria}; establishes a commissural tract in the implanted entity matrix between the ontological concept of skeleton to the platonic ideals of metal and immutability.]

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Hubris: [Shouldering-The-Crucifix]

Ignosis: [The hubris of {Shouldering-The-Crucifix} derives from the sphera of {Empyrea} and {Golgotha}; establishes an antipodal ligature in the implanted entity matrix between the ontological concept of burden to the platonic ideals of immutability and vulnerability.]

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The longer I carried the cross in my bones, the longer I could armor myself in the adamant skin of my soul. The more tired my flesh, the stronger my spirit.

Hubris and esoterica were necessarily diametrically-opposed but not entirely antithetical or at least not anathema—there was a give and take to them that allowed you to do things otherwise not possible with only a single half. Were it not for the inverse immutability clause of [Shouldering-The-Crucifix], I wouldn’t be able to leech adamant from my bones and pour it over my skin.

Give and take, I told myself, repeating the mantra over and over again to pull one more step from the pits of my flagging willpower. I would later realize that Michael had offered multiple times to carry Noah instead, but my doggedness made me just as deaf as Eli’s single-mindedness made her mute.

My steps dented the earth beneath me, each one heavier than the last. I shouldered-through as I had since the eclipse that signaled God had abandoned Man. Once upon a time, I might’ve believed in the grand plan, as a good Eiru-Catholic boy should.

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Now, I knew that we were entirely alone and under the whims of beings beyond our understanding. If there was a God, He was a right bastard, that’s for sure.

I returned to the outcropping of stone that served as our refuge and laid Noah down. He was in a sorry state, white bone erupting from beneath his blood-stained, chocolate-dark skin. I was the reverse of that titan of a man, my pale-as-first-snow complexion at odds with his. Where his power made him immediately strong, mine required build-up.

As I stood near him, worry for his health making the exhaustion all that much worse, I saw his flesh begin to reknit. Mary had given us a lesson on supersymmetry and metaphysics, so we knew that we’d recover from all but instant death; it didn’t fly over our heads given our admittance into M.I.T., the single best Ivy League on the East Coast of the USCV.

The night passed by without much fanfare—the [Amalgam] evaporated without the moon supplying more of its mercury. As the name suggested, the anomaly required a catalyst to be able to assimilate bodies of metal into its own; the movement clause of its hubris also applied to heat, if more broader in scope. These factors expedited its leave-of-absence, driving any surviving blobs into the darkness of the underground.

Most likely, any Mercurian anomaly would cease to be before the next moon. The in-between phases didn’t confer any benefit to a sphera—only [Empyrea] got the preferential treatment, being able to transform us until we each assimilated a paradox-idol to form a reliquary.

The Remean-Vespucian titan woke up before Maria, onyx-black eyes opening blearily.

“Ugh. This is worse than a hangover migraine after a spring break bender.”

Right on time—with Mary down on the count, we’d need all the strength we could muster.

We were gonna raid a world-wound.

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The touch-down points of the converging realities were two-way streets: Outsiders could enter into our world and so we could also enter theirs.

We waited until nightfall, until the rings that spun around the moon opened their eyes and lit up the dimensional apertures with pillars of subliminal fire.

The closest one was a world-wound into [Antedilluvia]; an alternate reality that split off from our own timestream some eons ago.

Once we got close enough, braving the metalless ruins of concrete to get there, I reckoned that we didn’t even need the help of the [Termina].

A titan’s finger touched-down upon the earth, its flesh bare and skinless and fungal and ancient. It radiated paracausal energy like a nuclear core, the paradoxical static washing over our souls like a steel brush over skin. The black-alabaster lightning of paradox struck along the liminal wound inflicted upon reality itself, interplanar friction so dense that platonic concepts combusted into physical existence.

We felt the mycelium of the [Ark-Of-The-All-Life] breach through the ether in between worlds, ravenous to add to its collection of creatures. It festered at the edge of existence, looking for paths of least resistance to poke through the threshold with its [Fingers] and invade.

“Well, since you have his name, I think you should go first.” I clapped the back of our Remean titan, almost sending him sprawling from the weight of my bones. He scowled back at me while I grinned.

Couldn’t explain why but getting a rise out of him made me feel a certain way.

“I’ll need you guys watching my back to stand a chance at toppling that sonuvabitch.”

I smiled even wider, my metal teeth reflecting the light of the five-eyed moon.

“I’ll take the dubious honor of that burden right off your back, no problem.”

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