It was like being hit with a storm. Like a wind lashed wildfire smashed into him. Starbrite didn’t rise from the sarcophagus- he boiled up out of it. He rose like an arsonist’s finest work. You could hear the screaming kids trapped on the sixth floor. Only faintly- it was hard to hear the screams over the roars. Starbrite had been run to ground. Forced out of hiding. His steady feed of souls had been shattered, and his servants killed. Local reality was twisting and thrashing like a spider being lowered over a candle. He was not taking the loss gracefully.

Didn’t… Merkovah say something about a bunch of old, near-death Level Eights and Nines who were on standby to jump Starbrite when he looked weak? Boy, they would be really useful right now.

The layers of reality were trying to stack, to superimpose into one observable ‘truth.’ There was a haggard man, and an unspeakable nightmare agglomeration of soul-stuff, and a god-king rebuking his disobedient subjects. There was a floating head, and a terrible void in space that consumed endlessly. They all burned. Truth didn’t know what the particular significance of that was, but they all burned, and screamed. Pain, but more than pain- outrage.

Truth quite understood. His mind had congealed into a slab of lucid terror. It was always like this with high value protectees. Once your net worth reached a certain point, certainly by the third comma on the line, you were supposed to be untouchable. Things were supposed to go according to plan, because you had limitless servants eager to do whatever it took to make it go according to plan. And when things didn’t go according to plan? They were furious, and they took it out on everyone around them.

Starbrite took it out on everyone. Truth felt Starbrite reach into the void and pluck a string Truth never knew existed, but the sudden thrum of it changed something, a song or chord he had been listening to his whole life without noticing. Truth didn’t know what that meant. He just wanted to cry. Something so foundational, so important, was now wrong. It couldn’t be like this, but he didn’t know what was wrong, let alone how to fix it.

The burning figure snarled, and swiped his hand out again. Thousands upon thousands of symbols appeared, then spread and grew like frost on glass. Truth didn’t recognize any of them, though they reminded him of the circuit paths of a talisman. But only the paths. The nodes seemed to be missing. Then the spell rotated through an angle Truth could only dimly perceive, and a rain of bitter steel arrows flew out and over the world. No indiscriminate slaughter, each of these arrows had an intended recipient. Mere walls or wards wouldn’t be enough to slow them, let alone stop them.

The ancient monster waved another hand… and nothing happened. There was a sound like swearing, but not in a language Truth knew. Then another wave, and ten thousand motes of light flew out of the chamber. Truth wondered if now would be a good time to stab the… thing. He was desperately worried about the chord, about that plucked string, but there really wasn’t anything he could do about it. He could stab a bastard, though.

“Oh, don’t think I’ve forgotten about you.” The cloud of flames/god king/wild-eyed man turned to stare at him. “I’d call you an insignificant worm, but worms are actually useful. Worms make something of value. You don’t. You just kill. That’s it. That’s all you are good at.”

“Well… not all I am good at.” Truth’s mouth was running while his brain was trying to chip off the ice. “I’m better than decent at talisman maintenance.”

“No, you aren’t.” The cloud of fire rose over him, staring down at him. “I know you now, Truth Medici. I can see why we didn’t figure it out before. You were comprehensively killed. Even reviewing the recordings now, seeing the System records now, there is no question that you died. But here you are. A special breed of hornet this hateful nest produced to torment me.”

The rest of Truth froze alongside his brain. His anonymity had always been his greatest shield. To have it casually pierced was-

“No wonder the curse to kill you used your brother as the sacrifice. Did you know that? When you did whatever you did to sabotage the curse, you killed your brother too. Oh yes. And when I put out this fire, his soul will be mine. Yours, however, will be refined into an artifact whose sole purpose is to know pain. Every sort of pain. I will create teams of researchers whose only function is to find nuances of suffering and determine how best to make you suffer from them.”

Starbrite started laughing, the fury shaking the walls. “Do you have any idea what you have cost me? And for what?!”

“Well, be fair. You did kill me first.”

Starbrite slapped him. The giant hand hit him hard enough to send him across the room and into the wall behind him. It had been a long time since he got hit hard enough to see stars.

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“No. I won’t be ‘fair.’ One, because I don’t have to. Two, because you, of ALL PEOPLE, don’t get to talk to me about ‘fair.” And, three, because your whole pissant life exists only because I allowed it. I am the sole reason for your existence, in every sense of the word. So killing you is fair enough! FAIR? Do you have any idea how much I have suffered? How much I have given you people?”

“No. Tell me about it.” Truth was watching the fires on Starbrite. Didn’t look like they were part of him. Looked like something that was happening to him. And rich people loved to talk about themselves, right?

Starbrite jumped him. Shrank down to a mere three meters and jumped on him. Truth’s instincts had him dodging, but as he knew better than most, once the difference in physical capability reaches a certain point, any attempts to dodge become pointless. The uppercut lifted him up off his toes, smashing him into the ceiling. He was seeing stars again, and his ears were filled with tinny bells.

“Sure. I’ll tell you all about it. FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! You think I’m stupid? You think I’m dumb, you piece of shit? You like fighting? Here, I got something for you. Why are you dodging? I thought you loved throwing hands!”

Truth was trying to block, trying to weave the punches, but Starbrite was just too fast. He either went around his guard or effortlessly broke through it. Truth could feel his kidneys were shot after two hits. Another two broke ribs directly over his lungs. Starbrite wanted to make this hurt. Truth caught a glimpse of something when the ragged man appeared. Not the god king, but a man in filthy robes and worn out sandals. He knew that thin face and those rabid eyes. He saw them on the junky he beat to death by the canal.

“This world was your big chance, huh?” Truth grinned through bloody teeth. “This is where you would make it. Where none of the gangsters could catch you and beat you. Again.”

Starbrite smashed him up into the ceiling again. This time a foot made of blue-green flames folded him in half on the way down. Funny- the fire didn’t hurt him. Spell resistance again? The gut kick sure hurt like Hell.

“Gangster? You think I give a shit about gangsters? You blind, stupid, son of a bitch! What do you think a Nascent Soul is?”

Starbrite paused, glaring up at something Truth couldn’t see. “Yeah, I said it. Nascent. Soul. Oh, you angry? You going to do something about it? Maybe send some little juiced up gutter rat to try and stop me? Maybe your pet humans in Siphios? It didn’t work any of the other times you tried, did it?!”

Wait, what? Truth knew that Siphios had made other attempts on Starbrite’s life, but-

Big hands grabbed him up off the floor, wrenched his head around. “I want you to know this. You know what? I do. I want you to know exactly how meaningless this all has been. Nascent. What does the word Nascent mean? I know your school was trash. I know the inseam and favorite pornography of every single person who ever attended, or taught, or mopped the vomit off the floors, at every school you ever attended. I know every person who ever lived in that termite mound you grew up in. Did any of them ever tell you what nascent means?”

Truth wasn’t sure any of them could even pronounce nascent, and was about to say as much, but Starbrite slapped him instead.

“No. They didn’t. Because none of you fucks ever bothered trying to elevate yourself. You kept pissing the floor until the battery-acid urine etched a hole in the concrete, then you decided to live in the hole because who would turn down free real estate? Then you kept pissing, and screamed that I was drowning you. Fuck you.” He slapped him again. “Fuck you.” Another hit. “You know what nascent means? It means “coming into being.” It means being born, you shit-eating moron.” Another hit. “And if you had enough brains to not drown taking a shit, you would be asking yourself, ‘born into what?’

Truth called the Tongue into his hand, tried to jam it up under Starbrite’s ribs. The old monster saw it coming a mile away; smacked his hand hard enough to send the sword flying and breaking Truth's wrist in the process.

“Fucking animal. Can’t think your way through a problem, so you stab it. Over and over and over again with you animals. You insects. You eat shit, make messes and when anyone disturbs your towers of filth, tries to make something good and decent and meaningful, you come swarming out.” Starbrite punched him in the nose. He could feel it break, almost lying flat against his face. He couldn’t even gasp in pain with the broken ribs.

“Nascent. Soul. A soul that has been born. Which means that what you have inside of you right now isn’t even alive. Not even a real soul yet. You hear me? All that stuff inside you? It isn’t even a real soul yet. I’M THE ONLY REAL PERSON ON THIS ENTIRE PLANET, AND YOU THINK YOU CAN KILL ME?!”

Truth gasped out a laugh. He couldn’t help it. Everything hurt. He was going to die. Starbrite was going to kill the sibs if he managed to put out that fire. His mission was, in every sense, a failure. Failed at the final step. But it was still funny.

“A human is a person with a real, embodied soul, according to you. But look at your soul. It isn’t even yours.” The sound was wet. Choking. Hard to speak with all the damage. Starbrite signaled his disagreement with another punch in the mouth.

“According to me? No no no. According to the angel you grew up running around on. Look at that stele. LOOK AT IT!” Starbrite wrenched Truth’s head around. “It’s older than I am, by thousands of years. There was no chance anyone on this rock was ever going to reach Nascent Soul, and you know why? Because once you were a real person, the angel would have to take you at least a little bit seriously. You understand? You getting this? All these stellar eminences that treat you like shit, GOD HIMSELF turning his back on the planet, why?”

Starbrite started punctuating his sentences with slaps. “Because. None. Of. You. Are. Real. People.” He flicked Truth into the corner. “You are little clay dolls carrying tiny fragments of something so much greater inside of you. Not a single one of you morons knew what to do with that spark… and then the choice was taken from you. You got to be clay dolls forever, until Sariel decided to tidy up his toys. And you know why he did that? Because I was winning. I was getting strong enough to call the shots here.”

Starbrite crouched over Truth, flames licking out from his eyes and seeping from between his teeth. “Congratulations! You managed to stop the hero from saving the world. You must be very proud.”