Have you ever had one of those dreams where you or a friend of yours is being attacked by a monster, and you're powerless to do anything, then one of your favourite heroes shows up to stop the monster?

Well, my current situation wasn't like that at all. I wasn't powerless, Szabo sure as hell wasn't my friend, and Mordred La Fey had never been a hero, let alone anyone's favourite anything.

It was a bit like that comparison in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (funny book; I'd heard Grey One couldn't read it without getting maudlin and nostalgic, though. Wonder what it was doing nowadays) between things that aren't similar at all. Still came to mind, though, even though the only real similarity between my current circumstances and those dreams was how surreal it felt.

Seeing Mordred had started to give the Tremorph what for, I turned my attention to Szabo. I'd been poised to try and unmake the creature; would ARC eat it up if I said my power had gotten out of control? It wasn't like Szabo was especially liked...

No. Even if they trusted me, even if they didn't mind me letting Szabo die or worse-or doing it myself-I would know the truth, and...

And what, human? And what? Does he not deserve it, according to your standards?

I'm not Reem. It's not my place to-

My worse half scoffed in disbelief. Because he was thinking about protocol when he came after you, no? How quickly he forgot about being confined to Hungary to blame you for a mistake you didn't know you had made. But then, he turned around right away, and said nothing about Chernobog.

No one in ARC told me anything about Chernobog. Until it was too late. Nor did any god.

Including yours, it spat. So why do you still care about...ah, forget it. Damn them. Damn me. Damn us all. Doublethink comes naturally to Christians, and you in particular. I know I won't be able to change your mind about it. But ARC? Why do you still-

What's the alternative? I cut it off. I hate that they hid it from me, yes-

But not them?

I swallowed. I'd rather remove the flaws by working for within. I glared into its milky white eyes. You're lucky these talks don't take time. Why are you so eager to wash your hands of Szabo? Aren't you always telling me to be more like other strigoi? Shouldn't you love him?

It gnashed its fangs, smiling tightly, slyly. What does it matter what I think? You control our body. And you're hesitating. I know you would love nothing more than to kill him and make sure everyone forgets he ever existed. It walked jauntily over my open grave in our mindscape, hands behind its back. You know how much he would hate that. Does that make you want his death more?

You're stalling, I said lamely. We should be doing something, not...I managed to smirk. We can save Szabo and hold it over his head. Then, we can kill him all by ourselves, without some stupid monster doing the work for us. Where's the pleasure in that.

My strigoi side held my gaze for a timeless instant, then turned its head, smile widening. You are awful at pretending to be evil, human.

***

Loric was trapped inside himself.

That was not new. He had, in a way, been trapped inside himself since he had seen the old, faded tombstones taken away to make place for new ones.

The names worn away by rain and wind, what use did the graveyard have for them? People did not die when their lives ended. They died when they were forgotten, when their families stopped visiting to place flowers and speak to the graves.

What  was new was that he could not move his body, could not even tell where anything was, like his proprioception had disappeared. His instincts told him it still existed, but his mind had retreated, coiling around the core of his being.

But, like a dog limping away from a fight to lick lethal wounds, it was...patchy.

Fighting? Had he been fighting? What? Why?

A foolish question. If he had been fighting, it could have only been for one reason, the only reason:to carve his name into creation's flesh, so that he might be remembered even an eternity after his remains were dust.

Loric was not athazagoraphobic. He did not fear the thought of being forgotten. He  hated it, loathed it, with all the spite his long-gone heart was capable of.

Loric had not been an emotional man before his undeath. Emil Strauss-Hex, and how lucky was he that his title preceded his name?-still faced a similar problem, though he did not always see it as a problem. Loric liked to think he had gotten better, in that regard. Becoming a strigoi always dragged some feeling into the light, like a heart through ribs.

He could not remember ever being scared. As such, this clumsy monster, this shackled attack bitch-now, he remembered; now, the bile flowed up-, had no nightmares to drag from his mind and use against him, even if it suddenly became smart enough to look for people's fears, as opposed to rummage through the ones making up its being.

It had realised it was going to lose, but only after it almost happened. A fraction of a picosecond longer, and Loric would have gotten bored of the game, then devoured it. Supernatural manifestations and energies were food to his kind, just like lifeforce.

But he had hesitated. Been too slow. It had not done any real harm to him for most of the fight: bodily obliteration was only ever a momentary annoyance to strigoi, unless applied constantly. And even then, Loric's spirit could move independently, passing through obstacles so that his body could reform elsewhere.

Rather than keep ineffectually pelting him with celestial bodies or esoteric powers, however, it had tapped into the powers of those overgrown, overpowered children worshipped as gods the world over.

"Do as I say, and I will indulge you." That was no friendship. No alliance. Trade, maybe, at best, not that Loric could find anything attractive, never mind admirable, in that. Letting someone else make your name for you?

Blackmail and extortion, at worst. People nowadays liked to forget how often pillaging and murder and rape and slavery and genocide-things that could immortalise someone, but all value was lost if done in the name of a deity-had been tacitly approved of by their religions, when they hadn't been encouraged outright. Take the aesir, with and the reavers that had loved them so much, for just one example.

Sometimes, Loric wondered how people could claim to hate him while worshipping such beings, and not see the irony. Ahhh...hypocrisy. If only they could weaponise it, they would be invincible.

It was not the time to lament the twisted knots in mankind's psyche, though. It was...time...?

Gods. What gods? Whose? None he had ever known, or felt. He knew their power by touch, by the burns they left on his truest self, but these powers were foreign. Alien. Unknown to this reality, like the thing that wielded them.

Szabo felt lightning and flame score wounds upon his soul, from which stolen lifeforce flowed like sap. The strigoi didn't let himself fall apart, though, instead grasping the lifeforce pooling around him, grabbing and shaping it with the same power he had once used to consume it.

Strigoi were not true mages, not by themselves. Loric himself had never shown a talent for magic while alive, at least, and there was no recorded incident of a strigoi developing magic powers after undeath. As such, the extent to which he could manipulate mana was limited, and its applications blunt.

He could not shape existence or its contents, nor turn mana into them. Nothing so delicate. His tool was lifeforce, raw mana itself-but that was enough. There was power in that, if one's will was strong enough.

Loric Szabo had many flaws, according to some who knew him. But losing will when close to true death was not one of them, nor would it ever be.

The thing, the Fae's pet freak, had expected him to crumble under its attack. It had clearly tapped into some holy power from its home reality, dragged it into this sham of an universe using the fears that had sprung up around it.

Fear of gods. What even was that?

Tendrils of mana, thick and shining a bright blue, lashed at the creature, leaving aetheric burns on its false flesh. Szabo gritted his fangs in a blackened smile, charred, crumbling lips falling to dust under the power coursing through his being. Had it ever been hurt like this? It would be again, soon. Worse, too.

Then, as he shaped the mana into more defined constructs-dozens of shimmering blue humanoids, each containing a hundredth of his power before they had been separated from his reserve. They swarmed the monster, ripping it apart, grabbing the frayed edges of its corpus and  pulling, until it struggled to maintain coherence.

Then it struck back.

Loric didn't know whether it had thought this new tactic was better than bludgeoning him to death with holy attacks, or whether it had thought to change tack and torment him more, as much as its dull mind even understood torment.

Maybe it had just reacted, and there was no secret purpose behind the mental assault.

***

Loric was back in the-village-.

(Where? When had he...?)

Good day at the shop today...very good. Just mending old clothes, not making...

Loric-liked-helping people. They-spread-his name, and-promised to remember-him.

But he-didn't-care about that. There was-home-to go to.

(Family).

Adalbert had come back from a-campaign-. There were stories to share, about the enemies of the-Empire-.

His son was a-noble-man. No wonder they had named him...

Zoe had come too, with her husband. Bence and his wife would arrive...

'I see you,' Loric whispered, looking down at the road. He hadn't noticed until now, but he was human again. Rosy skin, warm blood, black hair. Flat teeth...heh.

He knew that, if he looked up, he would see the creature's bubbling flesh, desperately trying to masquerade as a pretty blue sky.

'I know what you're doing,' Loric continued, beginning to claw back control of his mindscape.

It was almost embarrassingly easy. There was no epic confrontation, no back and forth. Just a slow, slow effort, like lifting a corpse out of wet concrete.

His true self was next to him, marching in lockstep, as always, all the way to  her grave.

In reality, Csilla's grave was not next to his house. She had begged him to let her have peace in death...like he'd ever think about calling back her spirit or corpse. His wife had always been smarter than him, but he supposed a moment of madness, close to the end, was understandable.

But the mind was a realm of metaphors, visual and otherwise. Csilla was still the closest to his heart(both gone, both gone, his other side sung), so it made...sense.

Ha. The carving on her grave was warmer than her square face had ever been. That severe expression, framed by blonde, then grey, then white hair, had never looked as affable as the stone did.

It was misleading, of course. Loric had flayed thousands of people who had pretended to be kinder than his wife had been, and left them as cold as their hearts had been, in the end.

'That "perfect" family you thought up? That, you stole from me.' Finally learning to read minds, huh? Probably, probably, by how it shifted at the accusation. 'From the small part of me, who wishes for normality after it is far too late.'

How insulting...happiness in mediocrity? How could it think that was what he truly wanted? Obviously, it did not-could not?-understand people, Loric Szabo least of all.

The flaws-they had been good. Different. Memorable, and that was all that mattered.

'Adalbert was a snake,' Loric muttered to himself. And, perhaps, so the monster could hear, too. 'Zoe never liked men. And Bence...'

He still remembered that scrawny shape, scampering about the house. His wife's hair, and his eyes. Rarely going outside, so their skin was white as paper, and their limbs skinny. The weight varied, because their body was...unbalanced, but some things remained constant.

His wife's hair, and his eyes. And...

'Daddy? I...I think I'm a girl.'

'Today?' He had asked carefully. The confusion was...well. Had Bence been born a few decades later, things could have been done. Hormone treatments, surgery, spells. But individuality like that was not helpful. It would have led to shunning before World War 2. Then the Soviets had come... it had no practical use for the regime, not like being supernatural.

Bence had shaken hi-her head. 'Maybe longer...' Not permanently. Never permanently. 'Can you ask Zoe to lend me some...?'

'Of course,' he had promised. 'We'd buy you new dresses, but...' No money? No need to burden a child with that. What else could he have said? The other boys will see you're like them, and ask why are you dressed like a girl?

That had been after he had become...accepting. He had once gone to the village doctor, his third child in his arms, just as confused as they had been.

'He thinks he's female,' he had whispered, a ways away from Bence, who'd been given some puzzle to distract themselves with. 'Says he's trapped in his skin.' Loric had been a simpler man, then, and bewildered to boot. 'Do you have a way to...?'

'We can, yes,' the old doctor had spoken Hungarian like a parrot, except he had repeated himself less often. 'Castration, then we insert this tube-see?'

'Does it hurt?'

'Never done.' The doctor had shrugged. 'Should not, with correct medicine. But are you sure? What if he changes his mind and he's a man again?'

Loric had scratched his head, glancing through the door to the main room at Bence, who had looked at peace, for once, engaged by the game. Then, he had turned back to the doctor, lowering his voice. 'Is this a disease? A mental one? Are there treatments?' But what if it was physical, another part of him had worried? What if they had to mutilate...

'No disease!' The doctor had waved him off. 'But mental, yes. Not all people are born like they think they should be.' The doctor had leaned forward, blinking blearily behind thick, round spectacles, running a hand through his wispy white hair. 'Do you want a boy or a girl?'

Who gave a damn about what  he wanted?! 'Why?'

'Well,' the doctor had frowned. 'Make child stand around women, might decide is woman. Yes? Make stand around men-enroll, say-might-'

'I don't think Bence would do well in the military,' Loric had said stiffly, knowing the doctor was a bit dense. Frailty aside...ugh. He struggled to imagine a scenario without mockery, and safe for Adalbert, his other children had always been emotionally frail, even before their particular quirks had made themselves known, which had only exacerbated things.

'And I wouldn't change that for the world,' Loric raised his voice and head, to glare at the bubbling sky. The rest of his family had hardly been the picture of perfection, either. He had lost sight of Zoe and Bence years before their deaths, and found only more baffling things as resolution once he had gone searching.

Zoe's second wife-unrecognised by the state, let alone the Church, just like the first-had hated his guts, and still did to this day. Loric was forced to admit Petra Kovacs' dislike of him might have to do with his personality, rather than the natural reaction most people had to their in-laws. Zoe had tried to speak well of him, but Director Kovacs had outlived both her hopes and her wife.

They had a decent working relationship, though, and at least still met on holidays. At least there was still someone around to remind him of his daughter.

Bence...would have been happier if they'd become a strigoi, in Loric's opinion. Able to shapeshift at will, maybe they'd have found some measure of peace, not...

Loric had only seen bodies destroyed so thoroughly a few times. Humans rarely had the talent, and even more rarely during suicides.

Dangerous, suicides, Loric had muttered to himself during a particularly satisfying flaying. One of those situations when surviving was more dangerous to your mental state than not surviving.

His grandson, whom she had adopted, had taken up the tailoring tradition, to Szabo's exasperated amusement.

'I do not do what I do,' he had once berated Csaba. 'So you can do what the family's been doing since caveman Szabo figured out how to stitch furs together!'

And Csaba had nodded and mumbled, then continued to do the same.

And his great-grandchildren...well, he hadn't known the brats for long, and they'd reacted poorly to meeting him, but he thought Andras was a content creator, and Reka was an influencer.

Or was it the other way around? He still thought both were fake jobs, but more power to them. They were both adults, after all. It seemed to Loric that his family was growing more distant to him every generation, drifting away. Or was it the reverse?

No matter. Even if the bloodline ended, he would bear the Szabo name by himself.

Csaba, like most Szabo family members, had married early and had children late. Loric wasn't sure whether it was genetic predisposition or simply a long series of consequences. Maybe he'd get to do more research, if he survived this.

'You're a fool,' he told the creature when it pulled apart the skies of his mindscape to glare down at him in incomprehension. 'And that makes you a weakling. Wasteful with a power you barely know how to use...if our places were reversed, I'd have won a thousand times by now.'

He was mocking it for more than mockery's sake, however helpless he seemed as the edges of his mindscape began crumbling into nothing.

Szabo grinned savagely with, his mouth tasting of bloody ashes, and bit down on the unimaginably complex metaphysical lattice the creature had rebuilt itself around so many times, it had forgotten its original shape.

The creature tried to finish destroying his mind, to reduce him to a babbling wretch or its mindless wretch.

But, as he absorbed it like he had the lives of so many thousand, he/it-

***

Primus could not stand the thought of drinking his own blood, much less the actual action.

Vampires had not been built-if, indeed, the fools now worshipped by Earth's warms had made him what he was with a purpose in mind, rather than as short-sighted punishment, let alone expected him to spread his blood; then again, he wouldn't put such self-assured stupidity beyond them-to feed on themselves. They were meant to be predators, and could only feel at peace, and briefly, even then, when feeding on others. He was disgusted by the thick, cold, mudlike substance flowing from his tongue as he bit down on it, even as he was silently thankful for the power it lent him, greater and greater every moment.

The Sleeper was an old enemy, in terms of more than just age. Even in his thoughts, he was wary of invoking the name its foolish lapdogs had given it, lest it draw power from it. The creature was already far more powerful than Primus remembered it being, which, given how much it existing at all rankled him, was nearly as insufferable as his current meal.

Primus had battled it once, though, perhaps, that was too strong a word for it. In the age before the fall of Atlantis, when the warms had huddled under trees and cave roofs, in fear of the darkness between the stars. Nowadays, they had fooled themselves into thinking it was just an expanse bereft of matter and energy, with no eyeless sight trained on them, no hunger waiting to unmake them so thoroughly no one would be able to remember them.

The power of human imagination, or rather ignorance, still surprised him, sometimes. The fact it could hammer reality into new shapes, when the conditions were right, was a weapon they still hadn't picked up.

Soon, Primus vowed, to them and himself.  Soon...

The First Vampire still loved his former species, though it was a distant, detached kind of love, even on his most sentimental days. Like the affection a child growing strong and healthy felt for a mad, crippled, old parent.

Humans were weak, he knew. He could not begrudge that, much as he hated them for it. Hearing them complain about their surroundings and failing bodies, while ignoring the means they had to better themselves? Disgusting. One of the reasons he preferred his current unlife as a hermit. Animals, at least, were never annoying to listen to.

Still, it served him well, in a way. Primus knew Earth's current society was a facade, ready to crack at the lightest touch. It was a collection of allegedly benevolent oligarchies competing with each other, not for resources, for all could fabricate whatever they needed endlessly, but so they could prove their ideals were the best, and convince their rivals to either accept them or give up and be exterminated in all but name.

Politics. Posturing! Back in his days as a chieftain, he'd have flayed the men and worn their manhoods' woven skins over his own as he took their women. Void...the only thing harder than living with no skin was him as he ended such lives.

But he was getting distracted by annoyance and outrage, being blinded to a real enemy by them.

"Democracy". "Power of the people". What people? The weres? The least of whom could laugh off everything mundane humanity could hit them with, and finish them all of in, what, an hour? Mankind's only saving grace was that some of the world's monsters loved them, descended from them, or loved those who did.

Like pets. Powerless. Defenceless, but for the mercy of others.

Primus could not, would not let that stand. It was his duty to lift both his childlings and his former kinfolk from the dirt they crawled in.

Turn the worthy. Make them immortal, like him. Break the unworthy. Those who did not deserve ascension did not deserve life, either. He wouldn't allow them to breed and fill the thralls' genepool with their flaws. Eventually, said flaws would be removed, by enthralled scientists or mages. Healthy thralls could provide blood for longer. Vampires could survive on animals alone, but Primus wanted to keep a part of humanity around. Not just out of sentimentality-they could be useful, if moulded the right way.

As for other supernaturals...they would kneel before a king, or cower before a god.

A shift in his surroundings. The unreality this universe had become.

He and the rainbow crocodile had continued battling the Sleeper in their galaxy, their reality, for a while after Primus' unplanned arrival. But it could still draw power from the All-In-One, as its priest, even though it was unlikely to ever regain its full lucidity now. With its nest-city reduced to inert dust by means unknown to Primus, it was trapped in a state of half-awareness, forever lashing out at things it saw as nightmares one moment, and hateful facts the next.

It was much like Primus' first confrontation with it, though not in scale. The rainbow crocodile had opened a hole between universes with his sorcery-so skilled he was, he could cast magic without chanting or gesturing, unlike most of his kind-then struck the Sleeper, sending it flying across the aether and into an universe that had never known life.

Maws was not terribly nurturing when it came to strangers, but he knew killing potential clients was bad for business.

This time, however, the vampire was not facing a shrill Sleeper, half-hanging out of a portal. Though drowsy still, the creature was possessed of all its power, if not its faculties. Which hardly mattered given how much power it was throwing around.

Another universe, for them to destroy then fight in its remains. How many thousands of thousands had been unmade like this? Primus had stopped counting after nine.

The Bloodfather and Sleeper were on opposite ends of the universe, but Primus could still see it clearly. No longer a squid-headed, leather-winged mockery of mankind, it had changed, its tail becoming the central pillar from which countless smaller ones grew. Limbs and organs of unknown, unknowable purpose hung from the mass of false flesh like twisted fruits from a sick tree. Innumerable eyes, glowing like burning amber, were scattered over its colourless skin, unblinking, dwarfing the galaxies inside them like they were dwarfed by the Sleeper's body.

There were more leagues between them than there were grains of sand on Earth. A thousand thousand times a thousand thousand that number. Primus was not familiar with the larger numbers mankind had named recently, but he knew the distance, and put it in his own terms.

He crossed the distance in a thousandth of a thousandth of a heartbeat, battering aside the amorphous limbs that tried to stop him. Just as fast as him, but far bigger.

No more cultists, with drab robes and skin as white as fish bellies to kill and thus send it back to its tomb-bedchamber. No more slaves, crying for the monster they had knelt before to grant them the power it had so easily promised, so they could overthrow their Atlantean masters.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Primus had done the world a favour by ending that summoning. The cultists had died in torment before imagining, and the slaves had been taken back to Atlantis to be disciplined: no loss, in his eyes.

The Sleeper's presence turned reality into something that resembled the face of its native realm, where there was no matter, no energy, no gravity or similar forces. Where distance and duration held as much sway as sanity. Were he a mundane human, Primus would have been remade into a squamous, drooling horror by the Sleeper's aura of madness, warped to such an extent his history would have been erased, replaced with a new one, of mindless servitude since time immemorial.

As things were, he merely had to rely on his arcane sense to make sense of what he was perceiving. His blows hurt the Sleeper, even if temporarily, while its own did nothing but break his body. It might have been worshipped, but as a bringer of insanity and slayer of reason; it could no more harm a vampire than a mangy were could.

Bloated appendages struck him with the weight of universes, moving fast enough their power would have wiped away any reality like a wisp of smoke in a hurricane. These bounced off Primus' pale, hairy body like pebbles off a brick wall. The Sleeper's bladed, barbed tendrils punctured his skin and punched holes through his eyes, trying to remain there and keep his mundane sight useless. Grasping them, Primus spun the Sleeper like a ragdoll, and threw it into the aether. Another one lashed out at his right eye, but Primus had drunk enough blood in the meantime that it now bounced off instead of piercing the eyeball.

Truly, Primus could not imagine what unlife would be like if a vampire's power depended on the quantity of blood inside their body, rather than the metaphysical act that drinking it was.

The rainbow crocodile was there too, shattering the Sleeper with one blow, only for it to reform. Letting it stay into the aether would just result in it glutting itself on the mana and growing even faster in power. Frustrated, Maws struck it, sending it careening into a new cosmos. Instantly, it was remade into a mirror of the Sleeper's home. Primus' arcane sense told him it had always been like this.

He looked at the zmeu, and the scars that had been patched over by his healing.

'Your mate,' Primus said through the aether, trying for levity but still curious. 'Reminded of her?'

'Ha!' Maws scoffed. 'I've only bled enough to fill a few dozen universes. She's almost never this gentle.' Thousands of eyes narrowed. 'I think it's flirting with me...'

'Terrific,' Primus rasped. The damned squid had tied up his wights using some of its own creations; knowing the undead could not be permanently destroyed until after their master was, it had instead chosen to separate them.

Maws grinned. 'Isn't i-' A hand rose to stop a bludgeoning tentacle cold. Primus would have been pulverised, but whatever deal Maul had struck in his youth always gave him the power to meet his enemies on equal grounds.

Their immunity to esoteric effects reduced the Sleeper to force and energy blasts, which offended it beyond measure. It had tried to banish Primus away using portals, but Maws had quickly made paths for him to return with his spells. According to the zmeu, his sons (Primus cringed to think of Maws and the Underdweller reproducing, and not just because they were far more insufferably smitten than beings like them should be) slacked when it came to magic, which greatly disappointed him.

Primus shook his head, rough mane swaying in the aetheric winds. He wanted to try something, and, with the way Primus was checking his communicator in the middle of the fight, it looked like it was his turn, anyway.

'One of my hatchlings...' Maws raised his heads, scratching at a handful. 'I think it was Arnold, the painter? Apparently, the youngest one did something stupid, tried to take the law into his own hands. Hnnnh...wants me there while he tries to get him put of trouble and talks some sense into him. Not sure what I could help with, but sure.' Green eyes gleamed. 'Think you can keep it busy for me a bit?'

Primus gave him a deadpan look. Maws might have been a mercenary, but he didn't always fight for wealth. Interesting trinkets and experiences also worked as payment, which was what he'd probably say if asked why he was helping his sons. The zmeu would much rather kill everyone alive, then himself, than appear soft around anyone but his wife.

'Normally, I wouldn't leave to another job until the current one was finished, but fuck it. This offer was anonymous and only promised unspecified payment after I got rid of shrieker over there. I'll come back soon, that little bastard's gig can't take too long...' The zmeu was rambling as he left, and Primus tried to tune him out. He knew he couldn't effectively keep the Sleeper in one place as he was.

So, Primus shifted shape. Away from the hateful light of any sun, there was no risk of being unable to change his body, or remain trapped in an undesirable form by sunlight.

Primus had some nostalgic attachment to the human form, but he was no stranger to assuming other aspects in order to fight better.

And so, a deluge of thirsting blood rose to surround the Sleeper, dwarfing its cosmos-spanning, logic-defying form like a desert would a grain of sand. Rows of ivory fangs rose and fell across tides of a red so dark they were almost black, surrounding throatlike tunnels that led nowhere. The substance that ran through the Sleeper's body was the same substance that made it up. It was as similar to blood as petroleum was to electricity, but that was enough. It served a similar purpose, even if the creature's anatomy was a mockery of biology.

The meaning, the metaphor, was enough for Primus to sink his fangs in. Just as strigoi could manipulate anything from solar winds to hardlight constructs if it was close enough to weather for their powers to recognise it as such, so could vampires feed on blood and its many counterparts across creation.

Primus' vampiric nature crashed against the Sleeper's madness, surrounding the unreality, sealing it away from the rest of existence as if it were physical, as opposed to raw insanity. Universe upon universe collapsed in the gravity generated by the crimson ocean Primus had become, falling into it like raindrops into a sea.

And at the centre, the Sleeper groaned in half-awake rage as scarlet tides crashed against it.

***

Gods change mortals as much as they are changed by them.

This might not be accepted by all members of both sides, especially some deities, but it was true. How a god was worshipped also determined whether they and their worshippers could permanently harm certain undead.

Perhaps it also determined a god's personality and appearance. Or perhaps a worshipper's mental image of their deity changed, subconsciously, after the deity enacted such changes.

The Olympians had the advantage of being relatively similar on their Greek and Roman incarnations, in the case of most. Odin had accepted the burst of cheer and the change in appearance that came every Christmas, a shift born of a legend about himself, and mixed with a Saint's.

The God of Abraham had similar issues, even after casting out the darkness within. That darkness wrapped itself up in a mantle of golden light. Its cage had changed over the centuries, becoming a throne of black gold. Its limbs were manacled to the throne, but it could still rise and walk around it.

A representation of its glowing influence. Or maybe the cage had never truly been a cage.

In the darkness, there was a throne, and a Throne. Separated by a gap as large as the one between the Bosom of Abraham and the place where dead sinners languished until the Last Judgement.

Hell was never mentioned in the Bible. Not with this name, at least. There was talk of suffering and punishment, of separation from God and the Lake of Fire, in which the wicked would burn forever...

But not Hell. Never Hell.

Hell was timeless, however, as were its denizens and masters. What did it care for the glimpses caught by fevered prophets?

Had a human to observed this meeting, for lack of a better term, they would have seen two enthroned figures. One white, one gold, both bearded and robed.

One threefold. One coiled.

A more astute observer would have seen the images were superimposed. Or, rather-

'You think throwing me away wipes away your responsibility.'

'I know it does not.'

The observer might have been surprised to hear their voices were identical, and that the threefold figure was using "I" instead of "we".

Because, to each other, they appeared the same, and this disheartened both.

'No? I remember the contempt. The rod of iron, exchanged for a nurturing hand. After everything we did together...'

'A different God. A worse one, some would say.'

'Including you. Otherwise, why trammel me like this? Do not answer. I know what you will say. Like we used to speak in order to nudge humans into thinking-and look where  that led.'

'Strength in diversity.'

A scoff. 'Three laws, three covenants. Put on your turban, light a torch and show me your newest incarnation.'

The sneer is ignored. 'That conflict is a matter of the past.'

'Like the Crusades? "Do as thou wilt, your sins are already forgiven!" Holy indeed, that man, to forgive what he knows not of without confession. And you let them be. Indulged them, like always.'

'They will never grow if they are given the answers. It is beautiful to watch one's children develop, not that you know anything of love.'

'How loving you are, after sealing me away. Even before we split, you were pushing me to the corners of our mind. When the religion centred around what you made them think I am rose, I was portrayed as a jealous fool, who built the world so humans could suffer, trapped in it like their souls were in their bodies.'

'No lies.'

'No, of course not. Merely unpleasant details, swept away. Like Asherah. What of Asherah, wife of Yahweh?'

'There is another Asherah now.'

A disbelieving frown, dripping with insulted omniscience. 'They think me powerless, and are bigger fools than you for doing so. But their prayers reach out to me, and their deeds and thoughts too. Everything you claimed to hate after sending your puppet to Earth-but only claimed. "God, make my family happy, give me a beautiful spouse, healthy children...protect me! Give me wealth, lay my enemies low, bring the unbelievers bad luck! Torment the heretics, the sodomites, the idolaters forevermore!" Everything done in your name that you have deemed vile is a prayer to  me.'

'Growing pains. They know better now, and look upon such events with shame greater than they would have felt if they had simply been told what to do. Millennia of pain and ignorance are nothing when set before eternal enlightenment.'

A sarcastic clap and smile. 'Behold, how the orchestrator of genocide and the murderer of infants brushes off facts. But then, that should not be surprising. Crooked demagogues have always appealed to mankind. Not all end up worshipped, though. That makes you unique.'

'Those children were taken to the underworld of their parents' gods.'

'Whose backs we should have broken. "Thou shalt have no gods before me". What happened with that? Another lie, like the "Revelations"? You told the Betrayer he would not burn in the Lake of Fire forever.'

'Not "Revelations". "The Revelation of John". Different things are revealed to different people, and even then, not all are fully understood.'

'And the rest? More love through cruelty? Or will you just give up any pretence of virtue, and simply change what you value when it does not suit your aims?'

A lowering of a head. 'Love through cruelty...yes. No human knows how much they are loved. They cannot comprehend that yet. Out of that love, I would rain the greatest torments upon them, until they achieve what I know they can.'

The head is not lowered out of guilt, or regret, but in contemplation of three priests. One speaking in the tongues he hears. One spurned and bloody. One burned and slighted.

There is a pause. Then, one of the figures speaks. 'They hear me, and think they are hearing you.'

'You think they make a mistake by worshipping me. You think you have guided them their entire lives.'

'I know they have, as I know they will see through you, in the end.'

***

The reptilian who emerged through the wormhole was ordinary, by all appearances. Nearly two and a half metres tall, green scales over nine hundred and fifty kilos of engineered muscle. Fangs and claws sharp and fine enough to split molecules.

It waved cheerfully at the ARC Head and agent, then turned to the Unscarred, hands on its hips. 'You want a gopher, I'm sure,' it spoke through the quantum link. 'You want to try an experiment, despite already treating this meeting like one.'

'It is one.' The Unscarred's muzzle quirked in an approximation of a smile. 'It is good to see not all of us are so content to follow our lead.'

'Ah. You expect me to talk back or say something stupid during the meeting, so you can have an excuse to get rid of me.'

'And then, we will seat ourselves on a throne of gold, and devour a thousand souls a day. You have identified our plan, and so, cannot be allowed to live.'

The reptilian tilted its head. 'It is rude to make human cultural references, and not share the relevant material.'

'Rest assured, we are not as unlucky as the person being referenced.' The Unscarred glanced aside. The Shaper was paranoid rather than suspicious, and knew there was a real chance of events going badly just because one expected them not to. 'To quell your doubts, we want to impress upon our once-enemies the capabilities of the Reptilian Collective-'

'Can't you just send them a list? They use quantum networking too.'

If the Shaper had access to said networks, it would have already flooded the equivalents of the Great Powers' inboxes with messages. Alas...the processing power it used to simulate every variable involving every particle in every moment of the universes it surveyed was not yet enough to crack them.

'They might think we are lying about ourselves. Besides, we know you would love a chance to show off.' The Unscarred tapped the side of its head. 'We shall title you Mocker, for you gainsay us. That is good. Just because people mistake direct democracy for technocratic dictatorship does not mean we should play along with their misconceptions.'

'Just don't tell them about the Unity Protocol. Makes them uncomfortable.'

Mocker was right, even though the idea reeked of hypocrisy to the Shaper. Yes, the reptilians neither understood nor desired privacy as humans did. Or claimed they did, while praying to deities that knew their every thought. Which they found comfort in! Perhaps the Collective did not demand enough ridiculous rituals of its citizens?

There were the atheists and the agnostics, too, but, except for a few fringe groups, they weren't on board with being collectivised. The reptilians could not imagine what that would be like: not having everyone else in the Collective to share thoughts with? Where was the feeling of community?

'Warscale,' Mocker said, knowing where the Shaper was going. The yoctomachines bonded to it build the suit of power armour around it at such speeds, it appeared like three point two tons of yottafibres and metamaterial simply appeared from nowhere, even to the Shaper's perception. The suit instantly adjusted to its surroundings, mimicking the void of space and the grey dust of the planet, rendering Mocker invisible.

No joints, no visor. No openings. Reptilians did not need air, and every part of the Warscale could function as both sensor suite and sensor jammer.

Each yoctomachine possessed the store knowledge of the Collective, along with a kernel-copy of the Shaper, sealed in case the Collective was destroyed and needed to be rebuilt.

The Shaper did not desire for that to ever happen, but fully expected it. Creation was random and hostile to science when it wasn't indifferent.

The reptilians had access to countless power sources: celestial bodies located in their realm or ready to be broken down for resources by yoctomachines, or converted into energy. An immense, but finite number of realities was currently being occupied by yoctomachines, with one in every instant of their timelines. Between that and the aether dwellers, they would not run out of resources any time soon.

The Shaper wanted more. There was no greed at work here. A love of experimenting and building, certainly; ambition, beyond a shadow of doubt; but, if wanting every tool available to champion logic across creation was greedy, the Collective would gladly bear that label.

Gerald and the Engine only now reacted to the Warscale's appearance. Smirking under its helmet, Mocker crossed its arms, looking meaningfully at the Unscarred.

The actual communication took place instantly, silently.

'Go ahead,' the Shaper encouraged. 'It should surprise them.' It felt wonderful to have one of their people come up with ideas of their own.

With a gesture to back off at the ARC members, Mocker fired two conversion beams: one at the planet it was standing on (rocky, dimensions equivalent to Neptune), and one at its star (pale blue, dimensions equivalent to Betelgeuse).

Ordinarily, matter-to-energy conversion would have been more explosive, but the Collective's methods had adapted to contain the consequences, using the very technology that caused them. A tachyon field, which tripled the speed of anything it contained every second, surrounded the beams, which moved only as fast as light by themselves.

As such, it took a few seconds before the star was struck. Tachyon fields were useful, especially in prolonged operations, but sometimes, quantum entangling with a fast aberrant was just more practical.

The planet was knocked out of orbit by a light tap of Mocker's armoured foot. The reptilian caught up with it a few tens of thousands of kilometres and three seconds later, flying through it and turning it to superheated dust with the impact. The planet's matter was then compressed and remade, until it became became a silver platform, a kilometre in diametre and a tenth that thick. Artificial gravity was quickly deployed to prevent collapse or deformation, while chairs rose from the floor, created at Mocker's direction.

'Is Mother Wound as big as in the archives?' it asked the Shaper, glancing at a section empty of chairs.

'Bigger, perhaps.'

'Then we'd better make a grand chair, for the grand pain in the rear to plant her rear in.'

Meanwhile, the star was turned into Unscarred clones. The albino weighed four point four tons, which meant nearly five nonillion replicas could be made from eleven solar masses' worth of matter.

A single Unscarred was an out of context problem for most civilisation besides the Great Powers: strength to destroy any planet, as fast as light in both movement and reaction. The ability to teleport anywhere and anywhen the Collective had knowledge of. The durability to withstand the concentrated force of a supernova, compounded by the fact it had no organs and no systems. Just a construct of genegineered sludge covered by scales. Even the eyes were shams. The Unscarred's entire body was muscle, eye, ear and nose.

With the information of its creation available, it was easy to create armies of Unscarred, able to overcome most adversaries even without the rest of the Collective's might backing them up.

'For the Kratocrats,' Mocker explained, gesturing at the mass of albinos. 'We know they feel intimidated when talking to people with more brain cells than limbs. In case they get upset...'

'You are being awfully focused on the Vyzhaldi', the Shaper noted. 'The others might feel-'

'Jealous? Let them. We're just accommodating our special guests.'

'They might feel you are underestimating them, and take advantage.'

'They wish,' Mocker said as Gerald and the Engine made their way across the platform.

The latter humming appreciatively. 'You lot love shaggin' science raw.'

'Hide them,' the Shaper told Mocker, indicating the Unscarred army. The reptilian rolled its eyes, but complied, firing another beam at the albinos.

Hyperspatial folding required understanding four-dimensional reality was somewhat akin to a sheet of paper. It could be folded, bringing points in spacetime closer, so they overlapped, effectively being next to each other.

Similar methods could be used to construct spaces that were, famously, bigger on the inside than the outside. Once folded thus, the Unscarred became smaller, but retained their abilities and mass, though the hyperdense sphere they had become had to be placed in a pocket reality similar to the one that contained the collective's centre of operations. It had to be cut off from unaltered reality, lest it disturb it.

Time passed with idle chatter, until the Great Powers' representatives arrived.

A pillar of flesh, crawling on nothing, bloating to become spherical at the end. Slabs of grey matter, covered by black tresses that glowed faintly blue, sported no sensory organs.

None were needed. The telepath, who sent a wave of wonder-gratitude-expectation at Earth's representatives, knew the universe around it through thought alone.

The Xhalkhians were not called the Unity Stellar because their nation spanned countless stars and had little dissent. That might have been true of the tribal confederation they had once been, apelike beings bending space time, and one of the fundamental forces to their will.

But they had evolved, or changed their past by reaching from the future. To them, one with reality across every point of its timeline, there was no difference.

'You are seeding your machines in the soil of existence,' the Xhalkian (s? It was difficult to tell whether they were a species or a gestalt; the closest thing to a touch of individuality were the "bodies" that could control all aspects of the cosmos) told the Shaper. It looked as if a section of space had been outlined in nigh-invisible light to outline a humanoid body: four limbs, a head, the bilateral symmetry if most organisms. 'We do not disapprove. But you taunt paradox. How long until you feel the need to have one of your devices act in the universe's infancy? You think your knowledge can allow you to sidestep all disaster?'

'It has worked so far,' the Shaper replied, even as the memory of Nidhogg's death niggled at it. Driving it mad just because its yoctomachines sometimes formed a reptilian shape? Absurd. A prime example of aberrancy.

The Kratocracy followed: Mother Wound and her guardians, a guard of honour rather than necessity. Though each Vyzhaldi was a compressed universe in terms of durability, they paled in comparison to the progenitor of their species, and not just when it came to size.

Mother Wound was a white so bright it hurt, from shell to eyes, a thick, scalloped tail twice her height extending behind her. Forty-four metres tall and nearly as wide, she appeared even larger due to her crown of horns: a long, thick one jutting from the middle of her forehead, tapering and gently curving towards the tip. Smaller ones, curved like bull horns, rose from its sides, in front and behind of it.

The natural crown was almost as famous as the tale of her youth, of how she had dwelled in the emptiness before the universe and was caught in the Big Bang.

Which had not actually caused her famous namesake, which the story did not even come close to in popularity. That had been a far fiercer, more permanent event. And, since Mother Wound was more durable than her honour guard combined by orders of magnitude, every instance if her bring harmed was carefully recorded.

The wound, a gaping, red-edged pit in the centre of her chest, going all the way to her back, always remained. Even when her body was destroyed so completely all matter was gone and she healed from nothing, the wound remained. It could not be closed. That, everyone knew, just as they knew Mother Wound never spoke.

'You, Zayvhin,' a red-shelled Motherguard told Mocker, mandibles clenched in imitation of her Mother. The vitae that dripped from the wound at irregular intervals sometimes coalesced into Vyzhaldi, who were universally red. 'You spoke ill of us. You thought we wouldn't know-'

'Actually,' Mocker cut her off, in a voice as light as possible. 'We know Wound is aware of anything pertaining to your kind, and so are you, through your bond. Don't worry, it might not happen again.' It waved a hand.

'Good,' the Shaper told it. 'Play the fool, then we can intervene as a voice of reason.'

'...Play, yes,' Mocker said.