(Or, what Mia did during Empty Tomb)

***

Mia didn't know where the States' Drake base was, exactly: halfway through her flight, she had received order to fly through an opaque portal, after which she had been informed she was "on an island in the Pacific", where she and a few fellow agents would liaison with "certain allies eager to improve the public's perception of them", then head to another unspecified location in the Atlantic.

As Mia waited for said allies to arrive, sharing food with a few dozen dragons who had left the old world, she thought about her recent faux pas.

Lucas hadn't encouraged her to smoke, not after the initial blunt, which had been a stopgap measure to prevent her from dwelling too much on hers parents' death. He hadn't told her to stop, either, because he'd believed she was mature enough to know what she could and couldn't handle, that she'd knew what not to do.

And in the end, she'd proven both him and David wrong. Oh, her boyfriend wasn't upset with her, and Lucas probably wouldn't be for long, but she knew he'd be as disappointed as David had quietly been.

A small, stupid part of her had hoped David's strigoi side would be enticed enough by seeing her vulnerable like that to hesitate to kill her once he saw her with another partner.

Mia buried her face into her hands, sighing, causing the dragon who had extended a pipe to her to draw his hand back.

'Hey, now,' the grey-scaled, white-maned lightning dragon frowned, lighting it with a spark and taking a long drag. 'Could've just said no, rookie.'

'Wha...?' Mia stopped rubbing at her eyes, and gulped involuntarily at the sight. 'Oh. I was actually just remembering a shitty moment involving...something similar. So, thanks, but no.'

'Suit yourself.' The rai-ryu shrugged as much as his gold-streaked, serpentine body allowed. After chewing on the pipe for a few moments, mangling some of the jade decorations, the dragon took it out of his mouth, gesturing as he held it in one hand. 'Personally, I believe no pleasure is bad, as long as no one is hurt.'

'Ha...' Mia leaned against the base's wall with her arms crossed. 'Tell me about it.'

'That's what I'm doing, yes.' The dragon's long, ivory whiskers twitched as his nostrils flared with amusement. 'Don't worry. Back in my day, getting stoned off your ass meant something far more painful than it does nowadays.'

The zmeu let out a snort, which became a brief, weak laugh. 'I bet it did.'

The dragon nodded, extending his free hand for her to shake. Up close, it looked nowhere near as puny or absurd as when seen from a distance. It might have seemed too small for the dragon's bus-sized body, but it was pure muscle, like a kangaroo's or t-rex's. Not that dragons actually needed bodies to use their strength.

'You can call me Hiro,' the dragon said.

'Ah.' Fake name, then. 'After a friend of yours?'

'No, after this movie character I like. It'll still feel weird to use it until I find a fluffy robot, but we do what we must.'

Mia nodded absentmindedly, smile not reaching her eyes. 'Do you know where we're going?'

'Away from here, probably.' The dragon did not even glance at her expression. 'The Head will tell you more when she arrives. Maybe.'

'She...? Isn't Ying Lung leading?'

'Ying and one of Tathagata's avatars are...taking care of something. Too dumb to be affected through esoteric means and very...well. At a certain point, "big" becomes an understatement. They grew to full size, jumped down its throat and are now moving inside its body, slowly tearing apart the equivalents of its veins and arteries."

'Full size,' Mia repeated in a deadpan tone. 'Inside its body? They're both trillions of light years tall at their biggest.' Not to mention Tathagata could hold universes in his palm like marbles, and crush them to nothing with a twitch.

'Yes, and...? There's always a bigger fish. Anyway...' Hiro's tail looped under his belly to scratch at his chin. 'Talking about Ying, have I told you he was my mentor for a while? I've picked up some of his mannerisms.'

'We've barely met,' Mia reminded him, eyes on the horizon, looking for anything that might herald a Head's arrival.

'That's not an excuse to be strangers! Let us share things about ourselves. I'll start: I have been senior Drake agent for the Philippines for seventy years.'

'You could have told me that before I said something I shouldn't, sir. We don't exactly have rank signifiers,' Mia said, turning to him with a tired look.

'Don't worry, you haven't offended me so far. Also,' Hiro leaned forward, whispering. 'The lack of signifiers is meant to confuse snipers and the like.' Then, drawing back and speaking louder, he put the pipe in his mouth once more. 'By the way, I only smoke this when stressed. Having over three hundred million people to look after makes sure I'm a living chimney, though.'

'I'm lucky,' Mia said, looking back at the horizon. 'I only have a boyfriend so far.'

'Ah,' Hiro glanced at his pipe, then her, before putting a hand into an unseen pocket of the black scarf, rummaging under the flaming shield symbol of ARC's Drake division. 'I think you might need a smoke more than me, then. And a drink.'

'Thanks, but...I'm not really in the mood for either.'

***

Amara al-Hazred did not travel, as most people understood the term. She did not cross the distance between two locations, nor spend time moving across it. She destroyed anything between her and her objective, from spacetime to obstacles, with a thought, giving the appearance of something not quite like teleportation. Everything erased was recreated in the wake of her "passage".

The Miskatonic Head was, for once, not alone. Or, rather, she had a companion other than the voices in her head and the monsters in her void of a soul.

The raven-haired, olive-skinned woman was not human in anything besides appearance. Not fully. Her mother might have come from some nameless Arabian village, but her father had been of the Void, passing more of his nature to her than to any of his other spawn. That had intermingled with the legacy of the Mad Arab she bore in her blood, giving rise to her family's greatest creation.

Amara had been one of the lucky unwilling participants, really. She had been born after mith of her half-siblings, the ones that had been pushed to breed with each other in order to distill and preserved the knowledge their parents had been convinced Abdul al-Hazred had left sleeping under their subconscious.

It hadn't worked, of course. The desired results had never been reached. The line of the Mad Arab cared nothing for genetics, which meant that, while the resulting children had been deformed, it hadn't been because of incest. They hadn't been weak or ill, either. In fact, they had all been healthy, bodies and minds alike constantly assuming shapes mankind should have never dreamed of.

Amara had merely been subjected to repeated impregnation from various aliens and voidspawn, testing the limits of humanity's capacity for interbreeding. She had been strong enough to live after her spawn had eaten their way out of her, amd their caretakers had even stopped their attempts to mate with their mother. Incest clearly wasn't going anywhere.

Amara didn't regret her slaughter of her family, on the occasions she thought of it.

Her companion was a pale, redheaded New Englander-the Whateley seed had spread far, after that fateful night in Dunwich. Wanda Whateley was about as human as her ancestor, or Amanda, for that matter. Just like her, she only wore a human shape out of combat, to prevent teality from drawing back in shrieking horror.

If one were inclined to classify the Outer Gods as siblings, Amara might have then been a distant aunt of Wanda's. Nevertheless, they shared blood, however little, and knew its power and significance.

Luckily, they had realised their relation only a few years after their first meeting, after Wanda had confessed her ancestry and while they had still been at the making out stage. Otherwise, it might have been more awkward, and not just because of human taboos.

'He is still asleep, you know,' Wanda said, hands clasped behind her as they arrived on the island, blood-red curls hiding her milky, heart-shaped face and watery grey eyes from view. 'Our intrusion might awaken him, instead.'

'I know all about tempting fate and self-fulfilling prophecies, my dear.' Amara put a reassuring hand on the taller woman's shoulder. 'This feels different.'

'If you say so,' The younger Miskatonic agent allowed, though her heart wasn't in it.

Amara didn't frown at her niece's hesitation-she thought it far more useful than the recklessness they had shared a few decades ago-but she didn't like it, either. The Sleeper Under the Stars stirring at this moment was pure bad luck, or, in other words, like calling to like as the Crawling Chaos laughed.

They had to make sure he remained slumbering.

Amara took in the gathered Drake agents, acknowledging the flying bow of Ying's protege with a curt nod. The little zmeu, the one who had beought Silva back from the dead, giving ARC a new asset and several problems, was standing to the side, not mingling with the dragons. Behaviour entirely at odds with how her file said she acted around her lover, friends or...anything not entirely disgusting.

Amara preferred not to read other's minds unless necessary-it both brough back and let her see too many bad memories-but she picked up Mia's unease without even meaning to, and it had nothing to do with the mission.

Anxiousness, about Silva's reaction when her instincts came calling. Guilt, because of some recent mistake she felt had disappointed him.

Amara didn't want feelings compromising the mission. She also hated seeing young girls let something she had never felt slip away.

With a discreet pulse of her will, Amara erased the cloud of self-doubt and the shadow of intoxication lingering at the edges of the zmeu's mind. Mia didn't even realise it had happened, and, not willing herself to be immune to esoterics, was susceptible to such effects.

Some would have said it had been an invasion of privacy, a violation of free will in the name of efficiency or a heavy-handed attempt to help.

Amara would have agreed, then done it again.

Besides...if even half of what Ned said was true, Silva would need everything that could ground and tie him to humanity once he came into the fullness of his power, and this zmeu always came up whenever he talked about it.

When Mia stood at attention upon the Miskatonic Head's arrival, her eyes were a little brighter, her mind a little lighter.

Amara allowed herself a small smile. Humans always wanted what they couldn't have, and she was still human enough that she wished for happiness-if not for herself, at least for others.

'I see the Goetia quartet isn't here,' Amara said, clasping her hnds in front of her as Wanda flitted across reality to reappear among the Drake agents. 'Let us hope they will arrive at the same time as the aliens and Japan's sledgehammer, so we won't have to wait more.'

***

The Reptilian Collective had never gone to war in its current incarnation. Certain skirmishes might have left the overworlders believe they knew their full capabilities, but they did not. The reptilians sent to Mars before the Cold Madness had been the equivalent of a few drunk construction workers, the Unscarred an excavator (the Shaper had read reports of an incident involving a vengeful human going on a rampage in a bulldozer, and the comparison fit). Even its return during the Headhunt had been a favour to the Global Gathering, not the beginning of a mobilisation. That would have been unwise, and escalated things needlessly.

The quantum reptilian could not be easily equated to anything, but that was only to be expected.

In the youth of their species, back when they still reproduced naturally, the reptilian had stripped their homeworld bare, in wars with the nascent Unity Stellar and the tribes that would eventually form the Honoured Kratocracy. That had been billions of years ago and trillions of light years away, beyond the universe mankind saw.

The reptilian who formed the core of the Shaper had led her people to victory-a victory so final and disastrous no species involved had been willing to continue. Seeing red, the reptlian had returned to her palace and beaten her harem to death with her bare hands, hissing in anger at the civilisation falling apart under her nose.

When her wits returned, she led the survivors into space, to search for a new homeworld. The reptilians found Earth before life appeared on it, and deliberated upon a course for their species until the first single-celled organisms formed.

At that point, the reptilians swore off their warmongering past, vowing to become scientists and observers. Reproduction became a matter of genecraft, sexual characteristics a things of the past as more efficient methods of creating new reptilians were sought and found.

When the cultovorous aberrants-the ones the overworlders called 'gods'-took an interest in Earth, they made a deal with the reptilians, to keep the world stable. The Collective agreed, and, for millenia, hunted and put down any danger to the Syncretic Treaty, assassinating the worshippers of alien gods before they could start cults or infiltrate those of Earthbound deities, using their devices to remove deviations from reality before they could etch themselves into mankind's collective unconscious.

And yet, even with the conflicts between gods, even with the Shattering bringing the supernatural fully into reality, the Collective had never gone to war.

But it looked like it might have to, soon enough, if the strange Unseelie's attack was any indication.

The Collective'a realm might have been built with Earth's core as a foundation, but phase-shifting meant it existed detached from the rest of reality, with an untouched core visible to everyone not inside the artificial phase, which contained a separate core, covered in arcologies connected by wormholes and tunnels that spanned thousands of kilometres of molten metal.

It couldn't have been any other way, really. With how many octillion stars the Collective had stolen from across creation, their realm surpassed their native universe in size, while spatial folding simultaneously kept it smaller than Earth.

The reach of science. If only the aberrants could stop trampling over physics for one moment, they could even teach mankind how to do this. Alas, they all seemed more interested in ways to violate leverage and conservation of mass than learning how reality truly worked in order to achieve nigh-identical results.

The Shaper shook the Unscarred's head as it watched its armies form up. It had grown attached to its creation in the last three greater cycles, bot literally and metaphorically. Humans. Truly, it had contemplated simply destroying them the moment their ape ancestors had started walking and using tools, but they had grown on it. Like moss.

At the start of 2030, the Collective had consisted of eight hundred-eighty octillion reptilians, only a fraction of which were ever seen in the universe, for there was no need.

The average, unmodified reptilian could move over half a dozen times faster than sound, and strike with enough force to level small towns or shatter hills. Extensive genetic modification had removed the capacity for pain, fear or exhaustion, though that could easily be adjusted, if needed for certain experiments. And, like their animalistic, Earthborn cousins, they could see heat, stick to any surface or regenerate, as long as even the smallest chunk remained, though being ground into dust necessitated outside help for recovery to be achieved.

That would not be enough for the upcoming extrauniversal aberrant invasion, let alone-every analyst agreed, much to the Shaper's unease-the much worse incursions that would follow it. It would not be enough against the Unity Stellar's inborn control over the universe's fundamental forces, or the Honoured Kratocracy's hyper-reactive metabolism, which could push them from 'mere' planet-breakers hundreds of times faster than light to far greater monsters, without, it seemed, any upper limit beyond a conflict's duration.

It would not be enough against the Multitude of Minds the alien humans called Grey One had been once part of, before its telepathic link to the whole had been severed by an aethernautical experiment.

The Shaper watched through its yoctomachines and the Unscarred's unblinking pink eyes as the Collective's soldiers were fitted with power armour by the drones that outnumbered them trillions to one, and which would follow them to war.

The armour's yamadium yoctotubes increased the wearer's strength and durability to the level of the Unscarred, or a baseline Kratocrat. Their reflexes hovered just below lightspeed, for the Collective still couldn't go faster than light without wormholes.

Generators usually used for the generation of the Collective's method of interstellar travel were fitted on and into the armour, right next to siphons that greedily drained the energy drawn from the Collective's trapped stars and through the micro-wormholes in the armour. Enough power and heat to blast Earth to ash was absorbed and stored every second, for there were certain aberrants immune to either heat or blunt force out there. The drones charged up the same way, if in far greater numbers, scanning their surroundings for signs of more Fae.

None came.

'Today, we go out into a world that has been slipping into madness for as long as we have known it-longer, in fact. We must not, cannot and will not let the tides of insanity and ignorance snuff out the flame of reason. The beings we share our world with have remained our friends, even after the event that shattered both their and our image of ourselves. We shall repay them.'

The Shaper wasn't usually one for long speeches, or any, for that matter. It supposed it was letting the enthusiasm of its first mind's youth return. 'There are things coming to this world that would destroy all life with their mere presence, or in their unthinking thirst for mayhem. We will not let them win.'

There was no applause, lukewarm or otherwise, nor any sniggering at the unprepared speech. The reptilians merely parted their fanged maws in acknowledgement of their greatest scientist, put their helmets on, and marched into the myriad wormholes opening into other, hostile realities. At the same time, they activated the rationalisers in their armours: for as far as the wearer could perceive (perception that spanned worlds, between reptilian senses and armour sensors), active application of aberrant powers or equivalents-"magic"-could not be used.

There had been some suggestions to name rationalisers "antimagic field projectors", but the Shaper had refused, declaring it would have been gauche. Its irritation at the rationalisers' failure to supress passive aberrant powers-regeneration, senses, physical prowess and the like-might have played a role in that.

More soldiers than there were stars in each passed through every wormhole, accompanied by enough drones to drown galaxies. Satisfied that the first wave had successfully departed, the Shaper made the Unscarred teleport outside the phase-space and on the island whose coordinates Abnormal Combat and Research had sent it. Behind it followed ten thousand soldiers, each accompanied by a hundred drones.

Liaising with ARC, especially given the ominous hints in the message, was always useful.

***

Ritsu Yamada wore an ear-splitting grin as he slowly lunged across the Pacific, black slippers barely touching water.

"Slowly" in the sense he crossed hundreds of kilometres every second, as opposed to hundreds of thousands, as his human form could when he was actually exerting himself. But there was no need for that yet.

The Yamada heir wore a black sleeveless shirt, with the Goetia's division symbol, an inverted pentagram surrounding a shield, in white over his heart. His hakama pants were also black, as was the headband pulling back his shoulder-length hair, which was currently an electric blue with yellow highlights.

One thing Ritsu really appreciated about ARC was that, as long as you wore something black with the organisation's symbol, you were more or less tacitly allowed to customise your uniform. It was like being being in the Marines from One Piece! Except they weren't fascist assholes serving a bunch of inbred fucks puppeted by a secret king.

Um. He hoped.

'Why do the pricks always get the cool outfits?!' Ritsu lamented to himself, arms raised to the skies. At the speed he was going, it was only his control over how he interacted with the world that allowed him to heal himself.

Shaddup, Shuten-doji growled inside his soul. Ritsu could practically feel the oni shifting his fat ass as he turned onto the side.

Nevertheless, he shut up.

 Drink, the oni added, seeing his partner was being tractable today.

Shrugging, Ritsu raised the sake gourd he wore on a leather thong around his neck to his lips, taking a small gulp. The gourd couldn't be broken, and it constantly refilled itself, which made it perfect for his...their fighting style.

Dammit. Why couldn't he snag something cute, like his colleague, as opposed to an overgrown, old oni frat...boy? Man? Geezer?

Ritsu himself was forty-four, but he had a feeling Shuten-doji had been an old man since birth.

'Trouble in paradise?' Miguel Fernandez asked as he ran alongside him, small grin widening as his coworker flipped him off.

The probability mage wore a three piece suit, black except for the white coattails and gloves. His dark-skinned, bearded face was made for smiling, as he told everyone who asked him why he did it so often(especially when he was quietly laughing at the person asking him), and his curly raven hair somehow swayed in the wind, despite the fact it should have been blown backwards by the sheer speed.

'Fuck off! We don't all have the luck of being married to our partner, alright!? Not that..." Ritsu gestured at the flaming heart tattoos on his biceps, containing the words "Laugh. Love. Leave". 'I'm made for that kinda life!'

'Not with  that attitude...' Miguel's demon purred as she half-slipped into reality to float alongside her husband, who smiled at her, squeezing one of her clawed hands.

***

Sklaresia had been born in Hell, after Lucifer's rebellion. The purple-skinned, six-armed demon had displayed an aptitude for healing only a few centuries after birth, which, coupled with her tolerant temperament, had seen her assigned to a shelter for the rebels' traumatised, wounded veterans.

Of course, even her powers had been unable to heal the emptiness at the core of their being, resulting in countless millennia of being at the mercy of demons with appetites rarely as mundane or harmless as lust or sadism.

Now, the demon was on a dingy side-alley on Earth, trying to reconstitute her corpus after a narrow escape that had nearly destroyed her-which, at least, beat the assured destruction that would have resulted from remaining in Hell.

Klare wasn't sure in which country she was-she hadn't aimed for one. Going by the aetheric currents, probably somewhere in Chirstendom...did they still call it that?

The human who approached her, dressed in a shabby pair of jeans and a ratty denim jacket, was flipping a coin-a rather blunt statement about the nature of the magic dripping off him.

He probably considered himself slick, too, Klare thought with an amused smile.

'Oh? Hello there, darling. Why is a pretty lady like you crying on the ground?' Miguel asked, tilting his head, brown eyes crinkling with concern.

Sklaresia laughed weakly. "Because I'm too hurt to stand. But I'm sure you could help me, stranger. Perhaps by giving me your name as a start, so I know who to thank."

'I'd rather give you some mana, so that you could finish healing yourself,' the mage said carefully, catching the coin between his right hand's thumb and index finger. 'And then, maybe you could tell me what happened to you.'

'You're not going to try and banish me?'

Miguel shrugged. 'You haven't started destroying everything, despite choosing not to hide yourself. That's strange enough to warrant some...well.'

'Perhaps I am merely biding my time.'

'Perhaps. But I'll take that chance.'

Miguel was a pettier man, in those days. It was not long before he challenged her to a contest that would result in the winner owning the loser, half coveting her power, half terrified at the thought of her being hurt again to the extent she had been during their first meeting.

Sklaresia had been touched enough by his concern for her wellbeing that she had let him keep his free will. And, over the decades, their contract of ownership over mind, body and soul-'I see you care for both me and this world. As long as you are mine, I shall fight for it.'-had become something like a marriage vow.

Then, Tamar Thousandhands had found them, and offered them a place in his division. He was interested in an apparently healthy relationship between human and hellspawn(and, perhaps, just a little dismayed at the unhealthy ones between humans), wanting to see if it could be replicated.

***

'Oh, get a room, you two.' Ritsu rolled his eyes. 'I don't even swing that away, and Shuten-dumbass wouldn't be my type if I did!'

Then, without another word, he accelerated, covering the last few thousand kilometres of the journey in a fraction of a second, leaving the couple behind.

Miguel frowned at the tide Ritsu had left him as a present, then reduced the chance of it existing to zero, causing the water to fade into nothing. With a pulse of will, he oncreased the chance of him being spontaneously teleported to the rendezvous point to a hundred percent, causing an aetheric current to sweep him away and to the island in an instant.

Stolen novel; please report.

Sklaresia looked at her husband's magical trail, shaking her head and sighing fondly. 'Boys...'

Beating her batlike wings, the demon sped after him, the light briefly catching her long orange hair and black ram horns before she slipped into the aether.

***

'We are not going to Atlantis, are we?'

To Mia's surprise, she hadn't been the one to ask. Instead, Rockfall (she had noticed dragons mostly named themselves after elements of nature, much like zmei used their features. David hadn't blushed upon learning her zmeu name, but only because he couldn't. The memory always made her smile) had been the one curious.

The brown-scaled, emerald-eyed dragon was dozens of kilometres tall even on all fours, his mouth alone dwarfing the mountains he often devoured, only to replace them with new ones. People didn't know whether he spat new rock in place of the eaten one, or if he recycled it, and most didn't want to find out. Or dwell on the matter.

Amara did not look at him when she replied. 'Of course not. Besides the Watcher's allergy to outsiders, nothing we can do would be helpful if they faced anything they couldn't handle.'

Rockfall nodded, relaxing slightly, as did everyone else. The relief only lasted until they realised where exactly in the Pacific they were going.

'That's Point Nemo,' Miguel said as they approached the sunken city, toying with a silver coin.

Amara nodded. 'Close to it. Both interpretations are almost correct, by which I mean, completely wrong. The city is indeed the farthest from any landmass-that is, it is the farthest from "the human world", what we perceive as the order of reality.'

Wanda, on her aunt's right, swept her gaze across the ARC agents. 'The Fixer's efforts mean we can talk about eldritch abominations and invoke their names without fear of madness, mutation, or other repercussions-but that only applies outside their domains. Most of us are immune to such effects, whether passively or by willing ourselves to be. Nevertheless, I would advise everyone present to avoid namedropping.'

'Bushido will meet us above...beneath the city. Or, perhaps, parallel to it.' Hiro, on the Miskatonic Head's left, clicked his tongue, bushy white eyebrows scrunching together. He was a creature of the natural order, which meant such places fell outside his comfort zone, and not only literally. 'As will the reptilians. They are both the ace up our sleeve and our getaway.'

Soon enough, all signs of life, whether marine or airborne, disappeared, as did the clouds in the sky. What had been an overcast day became a moonless, cloudless night, the sky lit by sickly-green stars, each seeming larger and brighter than the sun. Yet, somehow, they still filled the sky in their thousands, casting no reflection in the utterly-still ocean beneath.

The water, flat as a mirror, was also a sickly-green, though it became darker and darker as one looked deeper.

The shapes standing above the water had no place here. This did not deter them.

The Unscarred, its right arm and torso replaced by a mass of yoctomachines that mimicked the lost flesh's appearance, stood at the forefront of ten thousand armoured reptillians and a million drones, armours and machines alike changing colour to blend in with the environment, to the point they would have been invisible to a baseline human's naked eye.

The Unscarred bared its fangs in an approximation of a smile at the agents' arrival. The Shaper still found it strange that humans were reassured by what most species saw as a threatening gesture, but only a fool would have considered them gullible rather than strange.

'Greetings, aberrants! We have good news and better news!' the Shaper said, raising the Unscarred's arms, claws splayed, in a pose that suggested madness rather than joy. 'The good news is that the rationaliser project is complete!'

Mia saw Hiro and Amara nod at this, and wondered if that was some experiment meant to make the Shaper make sense.

'The better news is, everyone you see here,' it gestured at the reptilians behind it with one hand. 'Have volunteered themselves to test it in a hostile aberrant environment! We do not know whether the collapse of this non-euclidean location will destroy them, or if they will merely emerge unharmed into rational reality, but it matters not, either way. We can always make more.'

The reptilians whispered to each other in agreement, praising the value of new data as far more useful than their lives. Mia hoped those buckets on their heads didn't let them see her blanch.

'Silence, callous alien!' Bushido roared, jabbing an accusing finger at the Unscarred, his other hand clenched into a fist before him. 'Neither of those should be considered good news to you! While Nippon benefits from the self-destruction of your foul kind-the fate of all our enemies!-you should not express your joy at such cold sacrifice! Your loathsome nature will only make mankind exterminate you once you reveal it!'

Bushido paced across the water as he criticised the Shaper, the naginata and rifle slung across the back of his white samurai armour clanging against each other. His snarl matched the grimacing ivory mask he wore, and he slammed a fist into the red sun on his chest as he finished.

'You!' he then turned to the ARC agents. 'Do not think you flagless degenerates are in anyway superior to these lizards! Especially you, Ritsu-you shame your grandfather, family and country every instant you wear that "uniform"! I should execute you right now-'

'Bushiiiiii,' Ritsu groaned, tilting his head back and rubbing his forehead with the heel of his palm, eyes closed. 'We've had this discussion before.'

'And we clearly must speak again! The instant I am done sending that squamous bastard back to sleep, I will rip your throat out with my teeth!' Bushido promised, before cutting a portal into R'lyeh with his naginata, and leaping in.

The Unscarred's eyes became red after a few moments of staring. 'We were not sure he could do that.' Then, it turned to its allies. 'Our people will remain here while we purge the city and execute our plan. Then, once it is safe, they will enter, activate their rationalisers and...after that, we shall see.'

'If there are no more distractions...' Amara began. Faintly, the sound of steel folded a thousand times tearing through eldritch false matter could be heard from both above and below. 'The Drake agents are here for their raw power, as is Yamada. Hiro, Fernandez, you two will bring the stars down when the time comes. Mia, you will aid them.'

'But I don't know what that means,' the zmeu protested. 'What am I supposed to d-'

Amara was suddenly in front of her, looking straight through the material of her cloak's hood to meet the zmeu's eyes. 'You will know when the time comes. Speaking of what you must do will make its success unlikely, but do not worry. I know of your expertise in making constructs. And, after all, is breaking not easier than making?'

Mia bristled at the Miskatonic Head's smile, resisting the instinct to try and kill her, or at least show her fangs. 'Yes, ma'am.'

***

The slimy, green buildings rose from streets that led nowhere, into the empty sky or the abyss beneath everything. Windowless, they sometimes grew sideways from or into bigger buildings, pulsing and throbbing in response to a slow arrhythmic heartbeat.

Rectangular beams of green light shone on random spots on their facades, giving the impression of windows. But this city's inhabitants had never needed eyes to see, and never would.

And above, dizzyingly far above but simultaneously far, far too close, to the point their heat was stifling, the stars shone, somehow bigger and brighter than in the mundane universe, slowly moving, aligning to awaken the Sleeper.

The starspawn-Cthulhi, some had called them-stumbled drunkenly to their clawed feet and hooves and tentacles, lurched forward on appendages that had no name in any human language, and no shape any human eye could discern.

Mia saw this all. The false limbs, twisting through three dimensions like slugs caught in glass, trying to break free; the un-matter of their bodies, colourless yet showing all colours. Bodies bigger than any mountain and smaller than any newborn stumbled on streets that twisted and looped into themselves.

There were more starspawn in their father's city than there were particles in the universe mankind recognised as theirs. They did not tire. They did not hurt. Their merest touch could unmake mountains and turn islands into the impossible landmarks of their home.

And they all dearly, dearly wanted the stars to be right, so they could throw open the gates and sing madness, until everything came apart.

Mia raised both arms to stop a punch that would have flattened the Everest, rocking back into the air. As long as she willed herself to resist, the starspawn's touch could gain no purchase on her. It still turned her uniform into a cloud of babbling quantum foam, leaving her naked.

The beardlike tentacles on the starspawn's face parted to reveal a triangular beak twisted into an idiot grin. Its thoughts battered at her mind, the clash between them and her resistance blasting buildings the size of islands to pieces, or turning them from blocks of stone to thick, viscous liquid, to choking gas to plasma.

It wanted her, the starspawn said. That was, it wanted what she represented: a world not truly touched by their kind, to be reshaped as they saw fit. They viewed Earth as some kind of breeding sow, Mia realised, or maybe an unfertilised egg. Images of what the starspawn would turn her into, once it broke her will to resist, and fill with its children appeared the air between them.

'Sorry, squid,' Mia said, splattering a mountain-sized hand with an elbow and flying above a trio of grasping tendrils. 'But I'm seeing someone right now.'

The Cthulhi's laugh erased the conjured images, the air across the street, and the space around them, leaving them floating in a colourless void.

Time disappeared, but Mia's wings beat where a human would have been unable to exist, let alone act. A firebreath melted trillions of tons of slippery flesh like candle wax, but the starspawn just chuckled wetly, remaking itself around her. Its suckers grasped her body as it flowed over her face, up her nose slits and down her throat, whispering discordantly as it caressed her mind. Once they mated and her mind broke, there would be no need to fight back anymore. It would plant its seed inside her right now, it declared.

Yeah? Mia thought back with a snarl as her body heated up. Go fuck yourself first.

The starspawn became steam, and, before it could recreate its body, Mia tapped into her connection to zmeu country, dragging it out of the void and into her domain. With a pulse of will, she created a constant burst of mana around it, ensuring that, no matter what it tried to turn into, it would never escape.

Mia grinned as she flew out of the void and tried not to think what had nearly happened. Around her, the dragons had managed to craft a herd the starspawn into mana cages, while Hiro spun to stop the continent-sized amalgams trying to crush him. Every touch of his claws burst masses of flesh that outmassed Asia, while his lightning breath turned them to steam, webs of brilliant sparks growing from his mouth to place the Cthulhi in a loop of constant destruction.

Miguel focused his magic to try and reduce the chances of the stars aligning to zero, and sweat ran down his temples as a force far older than his magic inexorably pushed him back. Sklaresia dashed in and out of being around her husband, burning every starspawn approaching him to nothing with black hellfire or devouring their bodies faster than Mia could see and exhaling thick green smoke.

Back to back with him, Wanda Whateley let her human mask slip, and billions of Cthulhi shrieked in disbelieving horror at the sight of a monster far greater than they had ever been. At the sight of her shapeless true self, minds infinitely more resilient than a human's broke, and the starspawn tried to escape, to hide themselves. Some stomped and thrashed, making dozens of kilometres of rock ripple, but they were transfixed by her will. And then, the heiress of the Dunwich Horror opened the layers of her form like a flower, and billions of screams died, as did the screamers, bodies becoming inert beyond the scope of their regeneration. A sound, between a slurp and a dry gasp, filled the city, then the corpses were gone.

And, while Amara held back the bulk of the starspawn, unmaking swathes of them with every successful thrust of her will through the shield of their combined alien minds, Ritsu, Bushido and the Unscarred faced the city's master.

***

The Sleeper walked through a dream of madness.

In every universe it had seen bloom into being before shriveling to nothing across the vigintillions of years of its existence, there was a always someone or something mad-insane, angry or both- enough to oppose the inevitable.

Entropy won. Civilisations fell, worlds collapsed, stars burned out, galaxies came apart. It could not be stopped. Just as minds broke when faced with the freedom fools called madness, the lie that was reality could not stand before it.

The Sleeper knew the constraints many of this universe's inhabitants chafed under: the doubt that plagued their minds, the desire for things, the worry about perils, the need to reason and find out why and how.

The Sleeper pitied them. Soon, it would break the chains they did not know they wore. Bathed in madness, they would never think about anything again, and their bodies would become malleable, changing with every passing impulse. Freedom, and bliss. It just needed to wake up...first...

The lethargy that gripped it was fading, moment by moment, and so were the shackles of its power. A body whose head would have parted the waves while its taloned feet touched the seafloor strode across its city. The house in which it lay dead but dreaming contained the Sleeper, however its body changed.

Even as it grew large enough to hold the Earth in one hand, the city never got smaller...

The Sleeper's eyes darted about under its twitching eyelids, but it was, still, only half-awake. No matter. The three that stood across it could not stop what was coming.

'Halt, you gibbering idiot!' One of them, wearing the Archetype it slavishly worshipped like a mantle of chains, screamed. The weapon it hefted might have appeared mundane and primitive, but the Sleeper knew it could hurt its manifestation.

The thing in white dashed forward, as fast as light, its blade cutting a twenty thousand kilometre-wide gash across the Sleeper's chest. A twitch of a finger destroyed it, its matter removed from the cosmos, but it willed itself back into existence, its power exploding dramatically as it returned the Sleeper's favour.

A body larger than some gas giants, and far harder to destroy, became chunks of gore as the thing's blade struck, only for the pieces to fuse back into the whole instantly.

The next hit-for the Sleeper's mastery of reality and unreality was useless against these three-broke the white screamer in half, sending the pieces flying, but it healed as it ran back, power flaring to match and surpass the strength of the limbs that flailed at it. Hits that would have obliterated the thing an instant ago landed harmlessly as the thing's archetype recognised a challenged and reacted accordingly.

No matter. The Sleeper was a priest of the All-in-One, and it could increase its own power on a whim: a reflection of the cause it served, of freedom from logic and the dictates of creation.

And yet...the white screamer's power did not have a limit, beyond the fact it returned its vessel to the baseline once a conflict ended. They could rip each other apart until the end of time, and achieve nothing.

Another one, this one bound to a being made from the substance between realities, leapt at the Sleeper. It dashed about its body, punching and kicking continent-sized holes into its skin, fast enough to circle this world several times every second. The Sleeper's eyes, which saw time from all sides, and so much more, noted the bonds of affection that tied this two-faced thing to the white screamer.

Absurd. What were the chances of these irritating mayflies being affectionate?

The runner's second face slipped over the first, body more than doubling in size, short, wiry fur bursting from its skin as its teeth lengthened into tusks. The thing grew hundreds of times faster, and every hit that landed on the Sleeper's growing body ripped open wounds that would have swallowed planets.

That was not the worst, however. The two-faced drunk from some sort of container as its ran about-childish; did it feed by suckling?-, and every gulp made it dozens of times faster and stronger. The more it ran, the more it drank, until its rate of growth was on par with the white screamer that constantly tore its torso apart.

'Why the fuck is it so hard to hurt!?' the two-faced one bellowed, slurring slightly. 'A steamboat split its head open in the book! And why is it getting stronger?'

The third thing was also white, but shaped like a lizard and controlled by reckoning machines. It landed on the Sleeper's head, shattering holes the size of planets with every strike as it flitted about at lightspeed, teleporting when the Sleeper's tendrils dashed at it too far for its body to move. It was also trying to teleport the Sleeper away, perhaps drop it into deep space or the path between universes, but to no avail. Its form was proof to such tricks.

Why were they trying to stop it? Besides the fact that it was impossible, did they not see the joy it would bring? Its mere existence, when awake, could shatter billions of minds and warp the reality of whole planets. All their worries would be washed away when the Sleeper remade their world.

'I also know how it is like to desire a new home, after the first was lost,' the lizard spoke as it tore at the Sleeper's head. How presumptuous. What did this infant, with its mere five billion years of existence, know? "That said...get off our planet, aberrant."

***

The Shaper, tapping into its connection to the Collective's machines, opened trillions of wormholes around the Sleeper, each leading to the core of a star, dousing it in heat, while two bigger ones, opening into singularities at the hearts of black holes, opened under its feet and above its head.

The Sleeper walked through the plasma as it wasn't there, ignored the gravity and unmade the wormholes with its passing, shattering them like glass. Bushido and Ritsu still tore at it, the former roaring with bloodlust as his power pushed him further than it had in decades, while the latter downed litres of sake with every gulp, matching his grandfather's old friend in growth.

But it was pointless. Nothing they did could permanently hurt the Sleeper, and it would grow stronger, eventu-

A backhand hit the Unscarred like a concentrated supernova, sending it flying through millions of kilometres of rock. The hit itself caved its chest in, while the impact that carved a star-sized tunnel merely scraped off some scales. More yoctomachines entered through micro-wormholes to repair its body and form a spherical shield around it, thickening and thickening until the Sleeper's hits bounced off.

It was time to end this.

***

'Fernandez!' Mia called as she flew at the mage, trying not to look at the thing that walked through the city, unstoppable, never slowing, never speeding up. 'I know what we must do!'

'I'll protect you,' Sklaresia growled, jaws parted as lava-hot saliva dripped from her fangs. 'Get on with it.'

The zmeu nodded gratefully, then turned to the mage. 'The stars have to be right-but they also have to be here. Otherwise, Ct-the Sleeper,' she bit her tongue. 'Will have nothing to awaken to!'

'Are you going to blow them up!?' Miguel asked, head swivelling between the three fighting the Sleeper and Amara as she finished off its children.

'No! I'm gonna make them go away, but I need your help! I need this to be a guaranteed succ-' Mia ducked as a severed tentacle tip, larger than Earth, was sent flying from the Sleeper's face by Bushido's swing.

'Right..'" Miguel swallowed, then grasped Mia's hands as she began dragging the stars into zmeu country. The things flared up in indignation as their false minds smashed into Mia's, surfaces bubbling up as they sent beams of heat at the zmeu, only for Sklaresia to blast them to nothing with hellfire.

Halfway across the street, Wanda cursed as she saw the stars using the way they were being moved to align. 'Amara!' she called to her aunt. 'Leave the horde and call in the reptilians, or we'll lose!'

'Are you mad!?' the Head replied, holding back a lance of psychic power that would have cut the Milky Way in half. 'Who'll stop the-'

'I will! Call in the reptilians, NOW!' Wanda shouted, skittering across broken buildings and leaping through loops formed by floating streets.

'You'll die, you stupid girl! You'll be left here, alone with the...the...'Amara glanced at the Sleeper, and Wanda saw tears gleaming at the edge of her aunt's eyes.

'I know,' she said softly. 'I love you.'

Amara sniffed. 'I love you too, you idiot.'

Amara left a silhouette of darkness behind as her niece leapt into the middle of the remaining Cthulhi, breaking their minds and bodies by the billion even as a few survivors tore wounds into her form with blasts of psychic and slithered inside them, trying to fill her body body with their spawn, though contact with her being alone was enough to painfully unmake them.

Amara did not look back to see Wanda die-her niece would not have wanted that. Instead, as she destroyed the stars that Mia dragged into zmeu country, her power bolstered by Fernandez' magic-there was no knowing what letting them linger in such a mana-rich environment could lead to-she thanked whoever was listening that her Wanda would die like a heroine, not a trapped rat.

And then, when the last was gone, she swept up everyone into her arms, letting a little of her true nature show in order to grab them all, and tore open a hole out of R'lyeh just as the Sleeper began slowing down, then toppling.

The reptilians flew past them as they escaped on plasma thrusters, not even waiting for the Shaper's command, followed by the drones. The portal Amara had opened collapsed on them they activated their rationalisers...as did the city, breaking apart and falling out of reality, dragging its sleeping master-for its was bound to R'lyeh as long as it slumbered-along with it.

***

When Mia got back home, tired and twitching at everything slimy or even vaguely-tendril like, she did not necessarily expect David to welcome her. Missions could last longer than anticipated without everything going tits up-which, according to Constantin, her boyfriend's had.

'I did not understand everything,' the priest said softly as he rubbed circles on her back. 'They jumped me when I was coming from church, asked me why I'd taught David to be a speciesist murderer...I didn't know what they were talking about, at the time.'

Mia didn't say anything, fangs grinding as she followed Constantin into David's house. 'My son is not guilty of this-I refuse to believe that,' the priest said heatedly. 'I don't know the whole story, but God willing, I will. I...I just wanted to warn you, Mia. People might come to ask you questions...if they learn you and David are together. I'm begging you, do not get angry at them-'

'For they know not what they speak?' Mia grinned sardonically as she sat down on the couch she and David usually used. 'Yeah...I got it, Costi.'

The priest nodded. 'We must be prepared for anything. The Lord showed me a future where David is feared by Christians as a Devil-worshipper with the eyes of a pagan god...it didn't make much sense. I know my son is...has been touched by powers other than God's. It matters not, as long as his heart is true,' Constantin said, sitting down next to her and taking her larger, scaled hands into his calloused ones. 'And...I am going to ask something of you, my dear. Call it a father's selfish concern,' the priest laughed weakly to himself. 'I think it would help David's heart to stay true if you were at his side. He is...' he lowered his head, eyes dark. 'I cannot say, exactly. But he is trapped, both literally and in his mind. He believes everything that happened is his fault-even if he didn't do it, he could have prevented it.'

'David, blaming himself for things he can't control? Say it ain't so!'

Constantin cracked a small smile at her look of forced incredulity, patting her hands. 'And...if you happen to desire someone else during this ordeal...please let him know. Let him down gently, just...don't try to hide it from him. If you did, he'd blame himself even more, and we can't have David hog all the guilt!'

Mia smiled despite herself, hugging the old man. 'Is this the part where you tell me not to hurt your son, or else?'

'You are the last person I would need to tell that,' Constantin said, hugging her back. 'Andrei probably would, but...you know how he is.'

Mia nodded, kissing him on the cheek. 'And where is David now? Can I see him?'

***

'...Hey, Mia. You're probably wondering how I got into such a bind.'

Mia smiled at me from across the warded, reinforced window. 'I'm just happy you can still joke, love. You're just as strong as I expected.'

Strong...me?

'Why don't you tell me what happened? We have time.'

Don't...don't start crying in front of her, too...

'David...?'

I'm  sorry...Mia, pops, Oberon...everyone. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry I'm not fearless like you, Szabo. I still have nightmares, for all that I don't sleep.

I...I'm sorry I didn't die with you, mom...

'David!'