In a pit surrounded by corpses, Devon thought idly about who she could beat in a foot race.

”All of them.” She tossed Adam in the air, willed him to fall back five times as fast, “all of them at the same time.”

She flipped Adam over in her hands. He had quite a few new scars, taken up space above the old ones. She didn’t know if that was part of what made him qualify as the Remark Of Ruin, but he certainly fit the bill visually.

“No, with one foot tied behind my back!” She nodded, pleased with herself. “Yeah, and blindfolded. Wouldn’t make a difference. I’d probably do even better.”

She threw Adam up again, and caught him in the same manner. He hadn’t said anything since Karol had transmigrated himself into The Visionary.

“I mean like, I’m basically on a level above Constants now, something as dumb as a foot race would be easy for me.”

”But weren’t you the one who suggested the foot race?” He said groggily.

“Aha! Finally talking!” She threw Adam to the farthest wall in triumph, he tore down 50 feet of supports and scaffolding along the way. “I knew you’d question me!”

Adam bobbed back like a wounded float rat. He didn’t respond. The part of her that he occupied had his usual ambient hum, a bit sharper than usual, but intentionally absent of any overt thoughts.

She crouched down on the floor and leaned her face forward. “What’s up? Your thoughts are…” She tried to come up with the word. “Spiky?” It felt like the inside of her skull was lined with needles. Soft needles, moreso a constant presence than it was a pain.

He sighed, “Several things.”

“Several things? Oh joy, and here I thought it was just one.” She shifted her balance to her hands until she was doing a planche tuck. The exercise vocab was all Adam. He was a treasure trove of physical improvement, though the work was all hers.

”First, where are we going after this?” His tone was withdrawn and patient, like he knew something she didn’t. And, y’know, he sort of did. She couldn’t even imagine what it was like to be in the Visionary. It was no surprise it had affected him.

“Well, nowhere. We gotta kill Jeavell first.” The concrete floor was cold and slick; she had a hard time keeping her balance.

“And why do we have to?” He didn’t need to say anything else. But he did. “We can’t let grudges wear us down. If you want to kill Jeavell, then we shall kill him at the source.” For Adam speeches it was brief, which was a mercy.

She responded by shifting her planche into a handstand, she sprouted a smile. “Yeah. I still want to kill him though.” Her knees shook as she pressed down hard. She was at a point skillswise where she *could* do a handstand, but not very well.

A sudden jolt in her synapses. Like being shocked awake right before you fall asleep. She fell over and groaned. Less from the pain and more from the humiliation.

”You didn’t need to do that,” she said, rubbing her neck.

”I did. You need to listen. Because, second, I saw my eternity. I saw where I came from and where I am going to. You always know I have been imbued with a glorious purpose.”

“Sure.” She loved him. He had spent half a year in her head, how could she not? But the Visionary was his obsession, not hers.

She chanced standing up, balance still felt off.

”Being in the visionary reminded me that there can be no other way. To defeat the Grand is to stop the Remarks.”

“But won’t that mean you’ll die?” She asked.

”I’ll get to sleep, what me, and, I assume, all Remarks want. It’s impossible to describe, and I would only annoy myself if I tried to.” The mental equivalent of him shaking his head. “I feel nothing but signs from you that you desire to return to Gutworth.”

“Damn right.” She got up, a clear gesture that she was ready to haul ass. Turning in a direction that felt like progress, Adam responded with a clear gesture of his own, slipping from her hand and blocking her way.

“We’re not going back to Gutworth.”

She sighed deep, gripping her thigh with one hand and rubbing her thumb and index finger to occupy the other.

“But I thought you wanted to leave the Helot?” She said, her voice suddenly high pitched and childish.

“Okay, this is why I didn’t want to have this conversation with you.”

She laughed. It couldn’t be helped, Adams deviations from his “wise but distant mentor” routine were always funny. “Okay, so really. What's the harm in killing Morgan then?”

Adam moved forward till he was right at her nose. He was so close that staring at him made her cross eyed.

“How many bones have to break till you realize we’re not invincible?”

“But like… aren’t we?” She was joking, but… no, she wasn’t. Adam’s regenerative abilities made it so that she never had to worry about dying. “I know I- I mean, we have limits. But I bet my ADM levels are way higher than-“

“You don’t know how ADM works. We have been lucky and had allies. Now we’re alone. There’s no reason to think that luck will last.” He suddenly backed up, but she caught him between two of her fingers before he was out of grabbing distance, the smug sense of pride she got from it excused his monologue. “Hailien scares me, but she is a powerful ally, and yet she’s absent…”

”She never learned to relax. Don’t hold it against her.” She weaved Adam through her fingers, imitating the knife tricks she had seen sailors do.

“But she’s still your superior fighting-wise.”

”Crawl shit, we beat her fair and square.”

Adam suddenly flew from her hand, knocking her back something nasty.

“We succeeded in running away from her in a training exercise.” He said sternly, back to floating in front of her.

”Yeahhh?” Devon said, like a student playing at ignorance.

”So if that were real, an actual fight, we would be dead. Especially considering she killed us over and over. The only reason that didn’t stick is because she chose to bring us back. Every time, she brought us back.

Now regretting getting him verbal again, she picked up a rock and threw it up and down to test the weight. A little bit heavier than Adam.

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Using only her strength, Devon threw the rock against one of the bars supporting the complex lighting system. The rock barreled through the air with the strength of a cannon shot. It hit its target straight on. The bar snapped with a heavy thwack and when it fell so did the supports and a good thirty feet of ceiling. The wreckage flowed down like water and made a neat little triangular pile. Light streamed from a hole in the ceiling. With how chaotic the last hour or so had been, she had no idea if the hole had been made during the fight or if it had always been there. But now, the pile of debris made it accessible. So there.

“I made us an exit.”

Something was whistling on the other side of the hole. She couldn’t tell if it was a person or the shrill whistle of machinery. But it felt alive. It felt hungry.

“Well, the nightmares do not cease. Alright, lets postpone talk of the future. We’ll save it for once we can actually leave the Helot.”

“Sure.”

”You have many questions on the Remark Of Ruin, you’ve been dodging the question. But I can tell you’re curious.”

Something about those words made Devon’s skin crawl. It was unclear whose impulse it was, just as likely Adam as it was her. “Did you understand what that asshole was talking about? That was just cryptic bullshit to make him sound smart. Nothing more to it.”

“Devon.” She was driven to recognize the quickness of her heart and the way her hand still gripped her thigh. “Your body is more honest than your words.”

“Okay.”

Her vision adjusted as she stepped through the light.

The whistling came from a massive machine pumping in water from below. The light was fluorescent leds from high above. The room was white and it was massive, shaped irregularly like a carved out cavern; large holes in the ground and massive square mountains, their positioning in the room somewhat haphazard. It didn’t feel like the sort of thing made by intelligent hands. She leaned against the metal casing of a pumping piston.

“So… the Remark of Ruin. What is it even?” All she could get at the moment was surface level feelings of dread and anxiety from him. Frustratingly familiar notes she wanted to flesh out and make foreign. “I assume,” she said with a smile, “that it’s a Remark of some sort.”

“It’s a myth concerning the end of the world. There was a nursery rhyme children used to sing, about… well I would have to explain religious beliefs that I don’t think are current anymore. Suffice to say, we believed the world would end if certain conditions were met.”

“Gotcha.” This was all new to her. “I’m not familiar, but I really don’t get out much. So, what does it mean that Karol thought you were it? Should we panic? Celebrate?”

“I never took it to mean a specific Remark. It was a metaphor for something-“ he caught himself suddenly, but Devon still felt the half-formed thoughts. Images of death, an evil only Adam could stop. “I think the myth may have changed since my time. Lets hope this was a private delusion of his. People viewing us as messiahs or bringers of the end would only complicate things.”

She didn’t agree. Infamy fit her like a glove. Let them come! She could only get stronger.

”There is a limit,” Adam butted in. She sighed. Nothing she thought was left unchecked. It *had* to be questioned.

She had found a passage in the white room, or a suggestion of a passage, it was two blocks close together whose placement felt intentional. She followed it and the blind turns that followed, her hand glued to the stucco wall.

”I’m feeling something.”

So was Devon. It was a third rhythm that joined their mental duet. But its tempo was all wrong. It was out of tune, actively hurting their composition.

By the time the third rhythm was louder than Devon’s running monologue, or Adam’s steady pulse, the hallway ended in a blinding rectangle of light. Just like before, it was too bright and indistinct to tell if it was artificial or natural. It was an exit of some kind, but what it offered felt intolerable. The energy of it was fucked. A better alternative would have been to stay there and rot.

A withered green hand stuck out from the light and beckoned forward.

”You should follow the nice stranger, Devon,” said her own voice.

She looked down to see a mirror in the ground. There was a version of her, all smiles and bangs, her hands behind her back in that classic Devon way. The reflection was more real than her. Was she being upstaged?

She turned around to leave. Another Devon blocked her. This one standing against a flat white wall. They had suddenly become boxed in. “Don’t fight it, Devon.” The reflection said.

She punched herself. Her hand bounced off of it. It was hard as a slab of crystal, like punching a mirror.

“Oh!” Her image chuckled and put her hand against her mouth. “I should have said you can’t fight it.”

“What is-“ Suddenly the wall with the laughing reflection pushed itself towards Devon, the reflection reaching out to her with a shrill giggle.

On instinct, she ran. The only path available was that square void of light. The walls closed in as she approached, her body being compressed against hundreds of images of her own face, all laughing at her. She barely squeezed out in time before the two walls smashed into each other with a deafening crash.

It was quiet now.

She was in a white plane, nothingness stretched out on all sides contradictorily.

The absence of everything was everywhere.

The rhythm of that third mind still pulsed happily, making it clear they weren’t alone.

“Where… where are we now?” She said.

“Still in the Helot,” Adam said, his strong voice compensating for the phantom hum they both dealt with.

“Still in the Helot,” he repeated. Same cadence and everything, like a record being replayed. It didn’t feel right. Nothing did.

”Okay.” She said, tapping her chest. “That’s- that’s good.” Everything looked the same. Screw orienting yourself with landmarks, it was hard enough to tell where the floor ended and the walls began. “But where are we exactly?”

“It’s someone's Remark… It’s all smoke and mirrors… mirrors…” His own rhythm faded a bit as he kept muttering those words over and over.

Devon ran again, the echoes of her footsteps pointless and mocking. “Okay, Adam. Please stay with me. We’re in the Helot, that's good. Thats fine. How do we get out?”

”Mirrors… mirrors… what would I see if I stared in a mirror. Mirrors, mirrors.” He droned on and on, the third rhythm changing its tempo to accommodate him, urging on his madness. It was louder than both of them, it’s player more skilled.

With a scream she threw Adam. He sailed fifty feet before dropping like a stone. Fuck. She skidded to a stop and picked him up.

She tried snapping. It worked on humans. He stayed inert, lifeless. She couldn’t hear him. “Adam, I’m not sure if this is the Visionary, this third voice in us, or just…” She exhaled hard and moved on. “I need your help Adam, I really fucking do.”

If Adam could hear her, it didn’t show.

In the far distance something clanged. The echo hit them before the image did. It expanded in width for a while till it was close enough for color to register. A thick red curtain, approaching like a wave on the horizon.

For the third time, she ran.

Heart pumping, blood vessels contracting, it was a lot like the countless times she had been scared before she met Adam, the only difference being that her body was more efficient in expressing her fear. The curtain ruffled behind her, metal scraping against marble in a pitch that kept ascending. It was gaining.

It was accelerating. And now she was alone.

”You’re not alone, Devon.”

She tripped. The floor couldn’t be blamed, it was the nerves. She rolled and recovered in a way that had become second nature, glancing up in time to see the curtain engulf her.

Things were dark for a moment. She tried to move, and found she couldn’t. She was sitting in a chair and her limbs were bound by something heavy.

She heard music. Silly music. Like the theme song of an insipid diversion show.

The lights turned on, she was in a room with walls of curtains. The floor pattern could only be described as tacky. A checkerboard pattern in varying shades of greens, whites, and pinks.

Jeavell Death stood in all his scumbag glory in a surprisingly sharp white suit, proving that the rumors that she cleaned up nicely were true. Flat rectangles in the same tricolor scheme floated high above, their surface filled with cheering Devons. In front of her were three podiums, each had a Devon that was slightly off. Exaggerated caricatures that seemed to exist only to mock her.

The harsh sound of feedback as Jeavell spoke. “How can you be alone when you have these three beautiful contestants to fight over you? With one of them being lucky enough to walk away with your hand in melding, while you will walk away with a brand new ego, guaranteed!”

The crowd of Devons went wild, confetti came down from nowhere.

“Mirrors, mirrors, mirrors…” Adam droned.