Condemnation precludes actual salvation. Salvation is a return to Grace, in an attempt to conjugate spiritual dimensions onto the known universe. It is from condemnation, however, that Justice and Gratitude and Mercy necessitate their opposing idea. Without condemnation, any sort of behavior is permissible, regardless of the severity of disruptive consequences. Condemnation is a bitterness, though, for it is precluded by a failure to utilize some opportunity for guidance.

"They are as dust, brother." Mad Swordsman leaned on its severed arm-blade like a lectern and preached to a sleeping giant gleaming in streaks of tarnished silver flesh amid the swirling ashes and grey-yarn of disintegrated rubble.

The triangle with rounded edges that composed Unit Three Sixteen's face lit up.

"Where am I?" It asked Mad Swordsman. The standing machine, in its massive tattered brown robes swirling like pennants in the wind, was laughing sardonically.

"What do you mean? You brought me here." Mad Swordsman replied.

"This is too much like what we saw." Leer spoke from the shade of the doorway to the House Of Dust. Solomon was watching from behind him.

"Don't step out there, beyond the boundary of this place." Solomon warned him.

"I have another purpose. It lies beyond the safety of this place." Leer cast his words over his shoulder while his eyes watered at his conviction. He shielded them within his elbow from the stinging sands that swirled around his ankles like a liquid or a mist. The air was full of particles and he had to pull his scarf over his mouth and nose.

"So nice of you to join us, little monk." Mad Swordsman wheezed on its own hilarity. It found its own commentary to be very funny. It added: "Couldn't figure out what the other humans were doing in a bar at the end of the universe?"

"One of them tried to pick up on me." Leer humored the deranged empathical.

"And yet you chose to die out here under the opening skies." Mad Swordsman chuckled.

"Everything makes sense to you, huh?" Leer quickly lost his patience when he saw that Unit Three Sixteen was not getting to its feet.

"I sense your impatience." Unit Three Sixteen responded by sitting up and climbing to its feet. Leer knew it could have sprung to its feet the instant he had wanted it to, but it was moving slowly.

"Why should you do what he wants?" Mad Swordsman asked its paradoxical copy.

"Do we not all want the same thing?" Unit Three Sixteen questioned Mad Swordsman.

"I won, when you and I dueled before." Mad Swordsman suddenly interrupted and hefted its weapon, pacing oddly.

"What are you talking about?" Unit Three Sixteen asked.

"It is referring to the edge of some other reality, we hit that wall and came back. It was a long time ago, or I mean, very far away." Leer tried to stop them from their poses. It was too late. Unit Three Sixteen, although imbued with the weapon and many of the memories of Silver Swordsman, was not an instance that recognized Mad Swordsman.

"The boy is right. When we worked on the farm together, Ma an Pa always loved it when we got to wrassling. I am talking about the other side of the rainbow - kind of stuff. I whacked you so hard with a two-by-four it left the nail in your skull. Happened behind the barn." Mad Swordsman explained.

"I don't understand." Unit Three Sixteen seemed genuinely confused.

"That's why I love this so much. I get to eat this icecream twice. I will lose my first thought, if I manage to kill you." Mad Swordsman derived from its own story, a rather lucid conclusion: "When you die, I will be able to forgive myself."

"You're insane." Unit Three Sixteen stopped Mad Swordsman's first blow with its own sword. The clash of metal sang out and there was a psychic rumbling, as though Umbraeon was witnessing the treachery and was laughing in triumph.

"Less talking and more killing. I am all out of one-liners. Good ones anyway." Mad Swordsman jeered.

"You never had any good one liners. I don't need to know you from before to deduct that." Unit Three Sixteen parried and swept and dodged, its footwork was immaculate.

"You fight like an honest angel." Mad Swordsman complimented. "Like a sacred dancer you move with perfection. You have never sword fought before, have you?"

"Why is that?" Unit Three Sixteen had formed a perfect pattern to counter the assault by Mad Swordsman.

"Because you have not noticed, that I am not right-handed!" Mad Swordsman suddenly shifted the entire sword-arm it was flailing around into its replacement arm.

The whole thing was off in a split second as Unit Three Sixteen neatly cleaved it from the shoulder mount that was part of the unit's original body.

"Neither am I." Unit Three Sixteen apologized for the victory.

"You truly are not going to win. I will pick that up and hew off your sword-arm. Perhaps take a leg too?" Mad Swordsman pointed at the sparking mess in the dust that was its ruined arm and sword-arm.

"Perhaps you would allow me to repair you first? I'd prefer a fair fight." Unit Three Sixteen drew from its anima reserves and took the broken sword-arm of Mad Swordsman into the air, with energies crackling.

"Make me whole, I dare you." Mad Swordsman challenged Unit Three Sixteen. In a blue flash of sparks the sword-arm was restored.

"Our anima is equal, now. We both have almost none left." Unit Three Sixteen pointed out.

"Perhaps we should pursue this contest at some future point. I do feel gratitude that you repaired me to my old self. I was tired of dragging my better half in the dirt." Mad Swordsman suddenly lunged without warning at Unit Three Sixteen.

The weapon was driven into Unit Three Sixteen. "Why?"

"Well, it is nothing personal. I just like me better. That's all." Mad Swordsman withdrew the blade and kicked its opponent to the ground. It raised its restored weapon for the killing blow. It came down in a blur and ended indented in the opposite sword.

"You leave me no choice." Unit Three Sixteen leapt to its feet and drove the other back, but their blades were locked together, each having cut into the other.

Unit Three Sixteen's blade was microns thinner and stronger and as they pushed it was cutting deeper. It would result in the blades breaking, but not before Mad Swordsman lost their contest and would die. It was how it would have gone, how things might have ended.

Adinett was among the survivors in that last variation of things. She had followed Leer out and cried out for them to stop fighting. She blamed herself, taking responsibility for Mad Swordsman. Her tears ended their clash without further damage.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"You idiots!" Adinett chastised the two giant robots. "We face utter extermination, possibly moments from now, and you two are trying to kill each other? I thought empathicals were wise and benevolent, at their core. What are you two? What?"

"We're sorry." Unit Three Sixteen apologized.

"I am not sorry. I only do what is funny. It is right and good to be hilarious." Mad Swordsman declared.

"I will take that as an apology, coming from you." Adinett watched her own Silver Swordsman with suspicion in her eyes.

"What would you have us do?" Unit Three Sixteen asked.

"There are two empathicals, the greatest of all Machine. Surely the two of you can cause something useful to occupy this space and time. You have no ideas?" Adinett was still a little drunk and swayed strangely. Her voice had carried loudly and was heard upon the wind by a man who was made to smile at the sound of her words.

The sound of an industrial carpet arriving made everyone turn and behold someone's arrival. Adinett started to smile in the swirling dust storm, squinting expectantly. She knew of one man who would come to Casark. Upon his carpet he had brought something.

"Aidan!" Adinett rushed towards him. She couldn't help but express herself by kissing him.

"With a kiss I am greeted. Perhaps there are hours left in this world." Aidan held her for a moment and then revealed his bringing. "I have brought a third empathical, Telamon. Although not compatible with their emotitronics, able to contribute its heart to their cause."

"I love you, I mean, I love it." Adinett sighed, still a little drunk.

"When this is all over, I shall stand beside you in all things." Aidan swore to her, poetically.

"Our souls know that we are the last to pass into the next world." Adinett referred to her own poetry right back.

"You two promise to die together? We all go to our deaths." Mad Swordsman sounded strangely lucid.

"I do." Aidan nodded, taking her by the hand as he said so.

"Nothing before is now. Now, he is a good man that I gaze upon." Adinett smiled, the stinging sands made her squint, but she was smiling.

"Let us utilize the power of three of Machine." Aidan touched Telamon and the sleeping giant awoke.

"Should love prevail, it will only prove that the path was never about pain, but about achievement." Adinett had one last quote of lovely thoughts. Aidan nodded and kept his face smiling back for her. Thinking positively was more that vital. The low energy of their empathicals needed anima.

With that in mind he offered her another embrace and kissed her back.

"You do not prepare us for battle." Telamon objected. "But I am certainly optimistic. Hope is good energy."

"Draw something for us?" Adinett's eyes were shut and her voice barely audible over the winds.

"Certainly the drawing of one closer to our hidden language is the best we could do. If I could forget my first thought I would be like a god in what I knew about icecream and probably sherbet as well." Mad Swordsman hinted at a possible solution.

"This idiot again?" Telamon complained.

"Mad Swordsman is right. We must draw on the presence of someone who can translate our first thought into faith. Without such a spark, Umbraeon's darkness will consume all of existence." Unit Three Sixteen proposed.

"You wish to draw a human?" Telamon asked.

"Not just any human. The one who we thought gave numbers..." Unit Three Sixteen was explaining when Aidan interrupted:

"You mean Falcone? You think he could save everything by feeding you all some esoteric digits?" Aidan almost sounded like he wasn't objecting.

Adinett nudged him to be supportive.

"I mean. If you think it is a good idea." Aidan agreed.

"We will use what anima there is left in us and draw Falcone." Telamon determined the plan.

"Too bad the pig ate all the icecream earlier and then glued my arm back on." Mad Swordsman pointed a finger at Unit Three Sixteen.

"You cannot draw anything without being intact. Better to use a lot of anima and have a second participant, even if we are reduced to very small amounts of energy." Unit Three Sixteen explained.

"I confirm that. More participants create a stronger drawing than just more anima would. We are better off with those repairs already done. It is a shame that I do not have such repairs, since I am a more reliable combatant." Telamon added its own opinion.

"It won't matter for the drawing. Mad Swordsman is the same as me and I am a stronger component in our efforts. You are still valued, but it is probably our better investment, for the drawing. I do agree that you are the more formidable in combat, though. I have the vague reconstructed-memory where you must have faced me, probably defeated me." Unit Three Sixteen wasn't the exact same Silver Swordsman, but was imprinted with whatever it could determine were likely events in its personal history. It was simply guessing, in other words, and it was a very good guesser.

"You didn't fight back. There was very little honor." Telamon recalled, complaining.

"The cost of victory must have outweighed the cost of defeat. I couldn't participate in such a battle. I was defeated from the start. Furthermore, there was no purpose in resisting or damaging you." Unit Three Sixteen explained, guessing at its own reasoning.

"Apology accepted. I do admire my own form and wouldn't want to see my pretty face get a scar from battle. Oh no." Telamon replied.

All three Machinekind laughed.

Then they began their drawing. Moments later, Falcone was kneeling in a swirling globe of white smoke that blew away as he stood. He was a massive man, a body builder that was thousands of years old. Alive again and in his prime, just before he had died, around the time when the Temple Of Humanity had fallen.

"I'm back." he winced at the stinging sands. He looked around and saw the three dead robots. They had used all of their anima, to ensure success. It was the only way, apparently.

The winds began to die down. The entire sky was dark.

"Oh no! What have we done!" Aidan shrieked and cringed at the night sky. Adinett held him and raised him back up.

"Look again." she said.

Aidan looked again and saw the stars and clouds. It was as though Umbraeon had never torn open the skies. Umbraeon was gone. Aidan said so, several times.

"No. That cannot be." Falcone said. "And these were the last of Machine. Except me."

"What do you mean?" Leer asked. "Are you Apostate?"

"I don't even know what that means." Falcone shrugged. "But I am Grail, a thought among Machine. My mind, it contains the knowledge of how to restore the Temple Of Humanity and even how to recreate Silver Swordsman. We will need its help. This time, perhaps, we shall offer it a shield for its free arm. It will need it. You see, Umbraeon mirrors my existence. If I am a mortal man of flesh and blood, restored to life, then it is something that can be compared to me." Falcone exposed what he knew and what he planned.

"So you have the thought of a Machine in your mind and you plan to bring Silver Swordsman into this world to fight something we have just unleashed." Leer countered. "Apostate."

"If that is the definition of Apostate." Falcone nodded.

"We will help you, then." Leer decided. "I want to help."

"He's right. We are the Apostate, or were. We brought you here and apparently, somehow that displaced Umbraeon." Aidan chortled.

"Not entirely." Falcone argued. "The awful power that we knew as Umbraeon still exists, and now in more concentrated forms. Monstrous forms, in shards of Umbraeon."

"So these monsters, these Shards Of Umbraeon, we get ourselves a Silver Swordsman and we can kill them?" Adinett asked.

"There are two problems. One, we cannot 'get Silver Swordsman' as it is dead. We need a new one entirely, and that means we must first restore the Temple Of Humanity, among a few other difficult steps. The second problem is that they cannot be killed, or rather they cannot die. At least not in any permanent sense." Falcone detailed.

"So what are we going to do?" Adinett frowned.

"We'll go directly to the Temple Of Humanity. I can make that industrial carpet get us there. We'll begin there, with whatever is first thing." Falcone sounded confident.

"How did Umbraeon disappear?" Aidan asked.

"There is a problem with it, moving in reverse through sequence. It was in their so-called first thought. They knew they had to do something here, and it only took a spark. Now I am here, Umbraeon isn't yet. It moves backwards, while we progress." Falcone spoke slowly, almost mystified by Umbraeon, himself.

"They mentioned their first thought." Leer recalled. "At least Mad Swordsman did."

"I am their first thought. The spark of their intelligence. They cannot ignore my directive, even when I tell them to ignore that I am directing them." Falcone reminisced oddly. "At least that is how it was at one time. Those days are gone. I am human now, although I am still myself, I am aware of being Grail, while you see Falcone."

"You're not Falcone..." Aidan said and asked and was surprised.

"No. Falcone carries me, is my vessel, purely by choice. I am what Falcone brought into himself. I am the originator of the emotitronics and of GAIA, and I plan to restore both of those things. I will need your help. We only have one shot at this. I have no way to alter time, there are no second chances." Falcone was walking towards the industrial carpet. He began making some modifications to it with its repair kit.

"It would be hard to believe, except your arrival dispelled the ruined skies and Umbraeon." Adinett followed Aidan as he quietly walked towards the industrial carpet.

"This is the last flying vehicle on the planet. In existence, probably." Aidan said. "You know what your doing?"

"I'm modifying it to override its limitations. It won't make many more trips. Is that a problem?" Falcone wondered.

"No, we need it to take us halfway around the world. Let's mod the hell out of this thing." Aidan smiled weirdly. He was starting to actually feel hopeful - deep down. It wasn't the superficial pretend hope he had peddled to the robots.

"That's the spirit. With anima like that we'll at least have fuel for it." Falcone grinned.