You are in danger.

"No shit!" I shout in alarm, barely managing to avoid the Fat Man's gigantic fist from squashing me. If I'm sounding grumpy at the moment, my heart could have spoken up much earlier, preventing this entire mess from happening. Just saying.

We were smothered by hostile reconciliation field.

"No one likes a master of the obvious." I grumble back, managing to find my footing despite the miniature earthquake caused by the Fat Man's fist. I instinctively reach for my casting focus before remembering that sometime during the narcotic funk, I had been disarmed.

"Talking to yourself already?" the Fat Man snorts, "That's the first sign of desperation."

My opponent performs a lazy kick, trying to swat me aside like a bug. I quickly breaking into an evasive roll, causing the giant's attack to miss by a fair margin. Basic training for the win. The Fat Man breathes harshly, gasping as he straightens his bulk. The reconciliation might have given him the might of a titan, but the man was still a lard ass and totally out of shape.

If only I didn't reach up just to his ankles.

The soul gem array burns like a star filled sky and the Fat Man engorges himself on the light, his breathing stabilizing rapidly. A million tiny halos coalesce around his turgid mass, uniting into a single massive pyre. The sheer power the Fat Man wields is utterly awesome, suppressing the voice of my heart into stunned silence.

"This is true power. A reconciliation completely under my control. Fully beholden to my will." the Fat Man declares, his booming voice nearly bursting my eardrums, "Not what the bottom feeding Sensorium can muster."

"Keep talking asshole." I snap, quickly making a break to where Ned Ted Fred's corpse should be. The Fat Man might have made the corpse invisible but that didn't mean the corpse was no longer there. My hands grope across empty space before closing in on what I had been looking for.

Ned Ted Fred's remaining sword.

With a hard pull, the weapon smoothly slides out of its scabbard, shedding its invisibility. I point the blade at the Fat Man, steadying myself for the next clash. We might not be evenly armed but now I've got fangs of my own.

"Oh? What do you have got there?" the Fat Man sounds amused rather than threatened.

"Someone sounds scared." I mock, making quick jabs with the weapon, "Afraid you'll get a nasty scratch?"

The Fat Man's halo explodes outward, washing over me. The sword begins to vibrate in sympathy and to my horror the weapon actually begins to shrink in my hands.

"Oh shit!" I throw the sword aside, now no larger than a tooth pick. The halo's intensity builds, weighing down on me like a sack of bricks. Its like I'm caught in a deadly vice, crushing me into powder.

We will not allow this.

"Finally speaking up again?" I groan as my vision begins to sway. With dawning horror, I understand what's happening. I'm shrinking as well. The Fat Man is trying to reconcile me out of existence. The sword had already disappeared, regressed into oblivion.

His power is great. Thousands of potentials. Thousands of lives at his command.

"Tell me something I don't know!" I cry out mutely.

Perception creates reality. We perceive our pain, our fear, our desire to live. Therefore we exist.

"And nothing can take that away from us!" both myself and the voice of my heart cry out in unison.

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

My heart opens, unleashing the empty yawning void within. The raw animal desire to keep surviving, to deny the reach of my destrudo. A howling gale tears through the field of artificial stars, rabid and unrelenting. The Fat Man's face turns an angry red as a section of the soul gem array begins to sputter asthmatically.

"You don't get to impose your reality on me!" I shout out, the invisible shackles snapping. I quickly regain my original size as the Fat Man's halo recedes in panic.

There's a loud bang as several soul gems explode in a cloud of smoke and sparks. The soul gem array begins bleeding acrid vapor and the Fat Man staggers as if he had been punched right in the face.

Botched reconciliation. Part of the Fat Man's array had collapsed on itself. But he still has several constellations worth of soul gems to carry on the fight with.

"Should have known it would not be that easy." the Fat Man snarls, a trickle of blood leaking from his nose.

This is a battle between Awakened.

"Yeah. Carol refused to accept what she was, but this guy is different." I agree with the voice of my heart.

The strength of an Awakened lies not in his muscles or in whatever class skills he possesses.

"It lies in his skill at reconciliation." I complete the statement.

You know the battlefield. Now face your enemy.

"I'll make you feel so much pain," the Fat Man screams, "that you'll be begging for death!"

The individual pinpoints of light sharpen, anchoring themselves firmly into fatso's body. His halo begins to undulate with a restrained intensity, like a caged animal ready to pounce. I dart to the side, hoping to reach my discarded gear before the Fat Man readies his next attack.

"This place is mine to control!" the Fat Man roars, "There's nowhere to run!"

A mass of iron spikes tear their way out of the ground, mercilessly piercing my body. The pain is utterly excruciating and tears begin flowing freely down my eyes.

Hang on. I must hang on.

"How much more can you take?" the Fat Man laughs as the spikes begin rotating like drills. I feel my insides get torn apart as the ground up meat, my meat, begins to spray everywhere.

I don't ... don't want to give up. But the pain ...

There is a way out.

"Out with it." I whimper weakly, watching with morbid fascination at the pieces of my body get sent flying to the ceiling.

Embrace our destrudo. Accept the fated end.

"How does that help us?" I howl like a wounded beast.

Reconciliation cannot oppose established fact. It must always be at least plausible.

"Like Debra and her furry fetish." I nod vaguely, tongue lolling, blood splattering my face.

Accepting our fated end as established fact will mean that we will not die today.

"Because we will die in the train station with our head blown off." I groan again, the drills digging endlessly away into my body.

It will guarantee our present survival. And perhaps -

"There is no perhaps. There would be no turning things around. We would be guaranteeing our own demise at a later date." I shake my head, mad with pain yet thinking more clearly than ever before.

The future means nothing if we cannot survive the present!

"We cannot win." I mutter dully, "The Fat Man is an impossible opponent for us to beat. Too much power and potential."

So quickly do what is needed.

"We must die. So that we can live again." I grit my teeth as the Fat Man's laughter echoes throughout the room, "We will deny our destrudo, no matter what."

I swallow hard, my decision made.

"Now, let go." I say to the voice of my heart.

But -

"Let. Go." I insist.

An empty hiss escapes my throat as my entire body relaxes, sinking deeper into the spikes. A halo rises from my wounds. My own halo. As my consciousness begins to dim, I realize that I'm running on what are probably the last few seconds of my life.

"And so that's that." the Fat Man snorts derisively, "Not that the end result was ever in any doubt."

A lance of pure light lunges out from the array, hooking my halo with ravenous appetite. So this is it then. I'm going to be devoured. Reconciled to become part of the Fat Man. But there's one thing I've learned in my time as an Awakened.

The venue, no the battlefield of the reconciliation is always decided by the victim. The one advantage the victim has against the predator before the moment of final defeat.

"Carol, you gave up before the real battle between us even started." I chuckle to myself dourly.

With the last specks of my will, I harness all my focus, pushing forward a vision of the past. One of the first visions I ever received as an Awakened. A vision of another place, another time.

But of the same people.

-----------

"Uh, so I'm sure everyone's really excited to meet today's guest -" the emcee licks his lips as the overweight developer settles in beside him.

"So without further ado, I present to you the lead developer of that game we all love -" the emcee hurries through the canned introduction as the Fat Man blinks owlishly in confusion, looking worriedly about the room.

"YOUR GAME SUCKS!" I yell at the top of my voice, charging through the crowd and lunging at the oily Awakened.

Our duel now truly in earnest.