I knew most supernaturals with this power would've scoffed at how thankful I was for being able to be in multiple places at once, but screw 'em; they've been doing it since mankind's ancestors were bashing each other's brains in over who'd stolen the last fruit.

It was wonderful. No longer having to worry about spending too much time in one place and being absent for something else, no more being late (something that, despite my best efforts, occasionally plagued me from grade school to the day I became DEATH's Keeper). All I had to keep in mind, now that I'd gotten the hang of it, was to remember not to speak through all my selves, or do or say something that had nothing to do with what one self was doing because I was focusing on another.

Thankfully, the more I used this power, the more my mind expanded, adapting. I understood the temptation to grow, the lure of power that had kept Sofia's lucid mind under the sway of her magic, back in Siberia.

This ability let what you could've called my main self (without being too innacurate) talk to Arvhek, while another body arranged the trip to Heaven with Mia, pops, mom and Andrei, a third, wearing my ARC uniform, confronted illegal necromancers, and many, many more pursued their own missions a ross the breadth of creation.

I allowed myself a smile. I was finally, finally helping as many people as I could, and they were talking about me, too. Yes, fame felt downright petty next to what the regency of creation entailed (and boy, did I feel like a fraud being appointed by the Mover instead of, at least, elected...); yes, infamy came right along with it.

There were people saying I'd engineered all the bullshit I've been through to gain pity (ha!), others that it hadn't actually been that bad, or that I wasn't that scarred by the events. This second group counted among its ranks a number of bigots who didn't think strigoi were really people.

But it didn't matter. As long as I could help people live and die and reach the afterlife with dignity, as long as I could defend existence from the threats beyond and be there for my girlfriend and my dad and the family I'd found, I'd be happy.

And, one day, that family would grow. To be honest, I was orders of magnitude more confident about fighting the Mover forever than being a father, but that just said something about me, not about being a parent.

If I could be half the father Constantin had been, was, for me, I'd be proud.

Something long and silken passed over my knee, and I turned to see the hem of Arvhek's cloak retract to its usual length, a wisp of a smirk briefly forming on my predecessor's face, before it became featureless once more.

'Enjoying the perks?' Arvhek asked.

I shrugged, then stretched my arms overhead with a grin. 'Just appreciating what I have, Arv. The power to make things better.'

'For the plebs.'

My smile faded. 'You really shouldn't think of them that way.'

His head barely moved side to side inside his hood as we resumed walking through the blackness. 'It is my experience that, the more numerous the masses, the more childlike they are.'

'Yeah, mobs are stupid,' I agreed. 'That's why it helps to make people think for themselves.'

'Is it?' he asked, sounding curious. 'Last time you thought for yourself, your macrocosm almost ended.'

I couldn't be arsed to glare at him. Nothing I'd ever do would make up for that. 'Because I was selfish, I replied, moving closer to meet his gaze, eyeless though he was. 'Blinded by grief.'

So incensed by people close to me sufgering, I'd been easy to convince nothing really mattered in the Dream that had been.

Solarex's logic. Disgusting.

Not a day passed without me thinking about how I'd imprisoned King Sun. Was what I'd planned (too strong a word, really; creation would've ended without me having to do anything) that much better than what he'd done out of lust and anger and pride?

You could say his grief still burned, that he'd have snapped again, change of heart or not. That I should've imprisoned myself, too, or become a hermit. But, as much as it may grate, creation did need me, as did its counterparts.

The Mover's arcane moral compass meant that, while it had stopped another Maker from destroying its macrocosm, it might one day decide to let another Creator, or one of the vermin in the Ur-City, obliterate it and point at the result as proof people hadn't focused on bettering themselves enough.

Or it might take matters into its own hands, try to enact a far worse version of what LIFE had done before being sealed. And then I'd have to stop it.

Looking at the man next to me, and I used that term loosely, I wasn't sure I wanted Arvhek manning creation's battlements. He'd almost done far worse than I'd had, and he'd been saner then.

Arvhek snorted as our surroundings became what a human would've seen as a circular tunnel of stone the colour of ash. 'Oh? It was dark as coal when I did this. You certainly leave an impression, grey god.'

An image of a deity from another creation, eyes feverish and the straight razor that was his namesake in hand, flashed through my mind. 'It seems I do. So...' I paused. 'Last time you did this?'

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Arvhek inclined his chin. 'It is by no means a rule, but, at this point, it is practically a tradition. Five coincidences make a rite, I say.'

Take that statement back to Earth and watch everyone disagree? Tempting, tempting...

'What is? Former Keepers walking with their heirs?'

'Aye. An initiation to mirror that done by DEATH.' For an instant, he seemed nostalgic, then disgusted. 'I walked around mine, not with him, and the conversation doesn't deserve the name, but these things happen.'

He raised a hand before I could open my mouth. 'We will get there. We cannot start with the third in line, can we? Besides, there is more to say about him than the first two Keepers - that's what happens when you work out of sight and in silence - and I prefer to start with the easy things.'

One thing we had in commong, alongside dislikkng to start in the middle. Arvhek had, earlier, confessed to once following a series of war dramas that always started in medias res and explained how things had ended up like that through randomly-spaced flashbacks.

It had been a guilty pleasure of his.

'Same here.'

Taking that as prompting, he went on. 'Army thing, you know. When I fought for the Empire under the Bloody, we slaughtered the children first. The elderly. The cripples, the ill.'

Nothing I hadn't heard of, but my eyes still hardened. 'Did you, now?'

'Psychological warfare was deemed less costly than the conventional alternative. The Marshal of Defence,' he held a hand over where his heart had once been, 'had to keep such things in mind, when quashing dissent.'

'I bet you did,' I said, unable to keep myself from sounding cold.

Arvhek did not respond until we reached the first niche, which extended into a wall as far as the main tunnel itself seemed to. When we stopped in front of it, he said, 'Do not judge too harshly, David. You have only read dry words, written by dry, dead men. I am not here to tell you stories, but the truth. You will learn much about me, too, when the time comes.'

I flashed him a fanged grin, flexing my claws. 'I can barely wait.'

'I wager you do. But, as a friend of many who understand the time and place of necessity, know I did the best I could.'

I affected a sad moue. 'Is the poor war criminal asking for forgiveness?'

'Architects of genocide do not ask for things they do not care about. One must know their desires well to go for something so irreversible.' He folded his arms. 'Sadly, my displeasure at my duty never swayed the First Emperor. I was good at keeping the borders secure, the heartworlds stable and the metropole prosperous, and that was what mattered.'

Arvhek gestured at the figure in the niche, a monument to the First Keeper that could be directed to shed light on its inspiration's nature.

The being's shape leaned towards the reptilian and the amphibian, with a long tail and limbs, scales over the vital areas and smooth grey skin covering the rest of the body.

There was something of the fish too, with small, vestigial fins extending from the joints, and the tail's end split for better swimming. Their head resembled that of a hammerhead shark, though their three eyes, glowing a soft blue, wre placed in a diagonal line.

'An Yvharn,' Arvhek said, 'from the Scholar's Midworld. No more of them to be found there.'

Sadly. The Yvharnii's exuberance, their love of life and knowledge, had only been equalled by their dislike of violence - for even that, they could not hate. It had only been a matter of time until smaller, jealous powers had allied against them to tear down their works and plunder their corpses and ruins.

The time that had passed since their exitinction was proof of how an universe's timestream did not align with that of others, even if time flowed at the same rate within them. It also led one to ponder metaphysics: it was appropriate that, in a reality as hostile as Midworld, where almost everyone struggled to survive to the point they forgot about everything else, history advanced so slowly.

'Her name was One Who Observes the Flourishing and Wilting of Existence Under Her Broadened Gaze; not her hatching name, but the one she took as Keeper,' Arvhek said. 'You will have read her mostly being referred to as Flourish in the records, for she was flamboyant.'

He sounded grudgingly approving.

'A kindred spirit, Marshal?'

'Please, no rank. I'm retired.' Arvhek indicated our surroundings with a gloved hand, the metaphorical cabbages he was tending to, like all old killers who had hung up their swords.

There were some things to be compared between the Roman Empire and the Eternal one Arvhek had helped carve out, but some big names' tendency to fade into obscurity had not been one of them for a long time.

'But yes,' Arvhek allowed. 'I did appreciate shock and awe for much of my career - occupational hazard - and so did Flourish.'

I rested my back against the wall, looking up at the facsimile. Each of its six hands was opened in welcome, while its face was split by a hesitant smile. It held little of the warmth Flourish must've had in life.

And there was something haunted in its eyes, something I doubted the Yvharn had ever showed for long.

After all, in her last moments, she'd only had time to lament what had been lost for an instant.

* * *

'I did accept,' Flourish said at the reminder of her oath, frowning slightly. 'And I did "keep" you, as long as my might and wit enabled me. But I fear I cannot, any longer.'

SENTIMENTALISM, the sepulchral figure towering above her hissed, TO COMPOUND YOUR FAILURE.

Flourish's spine straightened, despite the looming Archetype's glare. 'I have never shirked my duty.'

HAVE YOU NOT? 'TIS THE FIRST TIME I HEAR, DEATH replied acidly. CERTAINLY, YOUR SPECRACLES HAVE FRIGHTENED SOME COWARDS INTO PRESERVING THE SANCTITY OF LIFE, AT THE COST OF SCARRING THE SUBSTANCE OF CREATION...it slammed a skeletal hand against a corner, shaking DEATH Keep to the bottom of the Spiral Atrocious. BUT THOSE WOULD'VE LOST HEART SOON ENOUGH, ANYWAY.

It spreads its arms, its stance and slim form reminiscent of a raptor opening its wings. AND WHILE YOU SIMPER ABOUT PEACE AND UNDERSTANDING, THE TRUE MONSTERS RAMPAGE ACROSS EXISTENCE! BUT YOU WILL NOT RAISE A CLAW AGAINST THEM, FOR "CONFLICT IS THE DEATH OF VIRTUE"!

'And it shall always remain so,' Flourish said. 'If you will not let me use the powers of my office to preserve my people. I do not need them.' Her hands tightened at her sides. 'I cannot let so much be lost! Release me, and may you find the attack dog you seek.'

SO MUCH, DEATH repeated disdainfully. ONE SPECIES FROM ONE UNIVERSE. HOW MANY TRILLIONS OF TRILLIONS HAVE DISAPPEARED BECAUSE OF YOUR GUTLESSNESS?

DEATH's hand encompassed the aether, the echoing crypt it had become. LOOK AT THEM! SENT TO A GODLESS ETERNITY BECAUSE THEY DID NOT EVEN GET THE CHANCE TO DEVELOP FAITHS! CRYING OUT IN MINDLESS TERROR, LOOKING FOR AN EXPLANATION, AND WHAT AM I TO EXPLAIN?

Flourish closed her eyes tightly. Already, she could feel the coalition encircling the last remaining fleet of her people, in Midworld, but she would not weep.

'I return your boon,' she said, 'and I will no more trouble you with my failures. In exchange, I would ask for one last thing.'

AND WHAT IS THAT?

'Preserve a part of me, the smallest part that can think and speak, so whatever poor fool you choose to serve you next knows what came before, and what duties await them.

NOW YOU CARE ABOUT PRESERVING THE SOUL? DEATH laughed darkly. VERY WELL. VERY WELL, KEEPER MINE. RETURN HOME, EMPTY OF POWER AND FULL OF HOPE. TALK YOUR DESTROYERS INTO SURRENDERING. THIS WILL NOT BE THE END FOR YOU.

The last Yvharn to die did not begrudge her people their choices, for she had made the same ones. She did not even begrudge them the moment some contemplated turning on her for not managing to return with power, pondered hurting a thinking being for the first time, before their better natures won.

Flourish had no hatred for her killers, either, even as she faced them standing in a pool of molten flesh and slagged bone that had once been her wife and the daughters they'd taken in as if they'd been theirs.

She pitied their greed, however. But that, like the Yvharnii's other sentiments and words, was no defence.

* * *

'Know, then,' Arvhek said, voice bitter, 'the cost of not knowing when to strike back. Flourish was given to whimsy and crafting: she wrought beautiful things, she changed her body into many others - you will see her spoken about as if male, in some stories - to learn how others lived, but she was too gentle.

The previous Keeper brought his hands together. 'I have killed many such folk. Was the moral victory worth it? When the scrap of spirit left of Flourish told the Second Keeper about how she'd lived in peace, was there joy in her voice?'

His shoulders drooped. 'That, I think, only she could say.' His gaze was murderous as he looked at me. 'But I would have butchered those petty bastards to the last, virtue be damned. I wouldn't have died a lamb.'

I mulled over his words, head lowered, as he looked away. The Scholar, when he'd learned of my plan and helped make it reality, had been almost ecstatic at the value of what helping the Mover remember itself and its past creations could accomplish.

Like the Yvharnii, he sought knowledhe as well, thiugh he had never been one to shy away from doing harm. His life hadn't let him be gentle.

But, despite that...he'd stuck by his friends, his crew. His lover. He'd kept his mind together, when memory and sanity threatened to leave him. Despite so much seemingly encouraging him to give up hope and become an empty shell, or a monster.

And he'd never, ever thought about letting everything be destroyed because the world was cruel to those he loved.

It was funny. I'd never met anyone with greener eyes, nor him anyone more jealous...