"There is one true ideal in the universe, that is, the light of knowledge."

The perfect sphere of a material that was neither crystal nor liquid nor light, neither matter nor energy, made of neither particles nor waves, seemed to shine with an inner light. It cast shadows of strange shapes against the white walls as a hundred hundred sculptures of various sizes and shapes gleamed like so many holiday ornaments. The light was reflected and refracted, split into beams and multicolored hues whose superposition cast ever-shifting concentric waves of gleam and gloom.

And then the sphere was no longer a sphere but a hole, a window to the beyond. Looking through it she saw not a distorted image of the wall behind it but countless visions of distant places. Some had existed long ago but no longer. Others were firmly rooted in the present, whether they occurred the next room over or were distant beyond the count of men. And a tiny fraction of them yet still infinite in number had not yet come to pass. Such was the function of the sphere; to connect to and reveal wherever there was light, to illuminate histories forgotten, reveal secrets of the present, or taunt with glimpses of the world to come.

The endless torrents of visions spun into each other, forming an endless silver sea that should have been impossible to grasp with any detail whatsoever. Yet it was also within the function of the sphere not merely to grasp far-flung information but make them known and understood to its wielder, truth realized. An endless ocean of facts pressed against her thoughts like the crushing pressure of abyssal depths sought to crumple a submarine like a beercan underfoot. A computer would have crashed as every last bit of data storage was filled in an instant then exploded from the heat of that memory being constantly rewritten. Most people would have fared no better, brains of chemicals and shifting ions just as incapable of handling the output. It was a natural side-effect of the sphere's function, but also an effective security measure against unauthorized access.

Having more than crude matter on her side, the young blonde girl could glimpse into infinity without being annihilated. Such many supers might handle; interpreting what they saw from a human frame of reference was a fair deal harder. It took a superhuman level of focus to sift the visions relevant to her interests from the rest; it took even more, even with her powers being designed for handling information, to see what she desired.

"Show me not what was or will be, but mine own family."

Anne's words echoed all around, countless vibrations interacting with innumerable particles, shifting the world in patterns of complexity beyond her understanding yet through the guidance of her powers doing so in just the right way to alter the world to her own desires, if only a little. Her mentor could harness the randomness of the microcosm to rearrange a battlefield with a wave of her hand, create a storm with a word or set up events for years to come with a brief conversation. Anne was but a mere novice in comparison, only able to control the randomness in a single room. It was why she used artifacts like the sphere instead of acting directly but with the right preparation tools could be just as powerful as any more direct phenomena. Humans had won dominion over the Earth with tools and their bare hands, after all.

What had been a storm of random images became a streamlined vision of an older, taller, curvier blonde whose face was almost identical to Anne's at a casual glance; her older sister Maya. Dressed in a costume fit for a comicbook superhero she was flying through the blighted lands around the invaders' arrival point, doing superhero things; slaying legions of undead, leveling many miles of broken, twisted terrain, battling giant monsters and throwing them into space. Were they able to see her as Anne did many would view her sister as the invincible vanguard of the dawning Age of Heroes, a goddess of the new world every bit as grand and glorious as those in ancient legends.

Anne did not need her truth-sense to see the falsehood of such views; she'd lived enough years with Maya to know her faults. Moreover she felt that this idea of new gods, one altogether too many supers eagerly embraced, was both hollow and dangerous. The invaders had been powerful too, their leader so much greater than any super on the planet he'd tower above them like a grotesque Goliath to their tiny little David. But as anyone knew the ending of that particular legend, Anne felt compelled to look in on her sister when her danger sense ability had started blaring like a trumpet.

So she'd fired up her little imitation Seeing Stone and sat back to watch. Impressive at first, Maya's actions soon became repetitive and even boring. There were only so many times you could watch imitation Supergirl throw a kaiju into orbit before your hands started itching to change the channel, and Anne drew the line at one thousand, three hundred and thirty-seven. She'd never been a fan of comic books or superheroes; she liked her fantasy with a more classical lean. Besides, if it had been movie the vision would have flopped before you could say Detective Comics.

Unfortunately, instead of slowly fading at the lack of threats her danger sense kept blaring like an air raid siren so Anne kept watching. She had to turn down Lizzy and Bert's invitation to all-powers-allowed, zero-gravity football. She skipped both her paleo-anthropology and religious iconography classes. She even had to summon food straight to her room instead of having lunch with all her friends on the station, because a strange premonition kept telling her the worst could happen the moment she looked away. When one's past experiences of 'the worst' included extra-dimensional zombie invasions, mountain-sized demons trying to destroy the world, estranged abduction-happy relatives and eight-hour-long lectures on surveillance ethics, taking risks was a fool's errand.

Then, after an entire night of watching her older sister punching monsters in the face, the threat her danger sense had warned her about finally revealed itself. A crackle of what looked like lightning but was actually insidiously destructive black magic shot out of a veil of magical obfuscation, hitting her sister in the back. A wizard their group had fought many times before, the same man Amanda told everyone had been killed during their last battle, seemed to be very much alive. And then he blasted Anne's sister again, then threw her into a boiling tar pit full of giant monster.

The young girl turned the Seeing Stone off, walked up to a part of the wall in the back of her room that appeared to be entirely blank and lay a hand on it. Just like its blankness, its metallic construction was misleading. The whitish metal receded under Anne's touch, her fingers sinking into a cool, frictionless liquid until they grabbed a much more solid ring. That she pulled with all her strength, but no amount of physical force could move it for its weight was more than physical. Against it she pitted not muscle, superhuman or otherwise, but her desire for it to move. The harder she willed it to respond the greater its resistance as the very moment of the pull stretched and stretched until it ponderously, grudgingly started to shift under her continued determination.

In the real world it took but moments to drag a person-sized casket of crystal out of its liquid prison; for the one doing the pulling it took subjectively much longer. When teaching her this spell Anne's mentor had suggested she set its duration to one Cycle of Creation, proving that insanity was not the sole domain of regenerating, British-sounding aliens. Instead she'd set it at one week of maintaining both pull and willingness to retrieve it. Many people far stronger than Anne would have given up out of boredom or frustration, for the more powerful one was, the less patience they seemed to possess.

"By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe."

As grandiose pronouncements went, that one was close to the top. For some people it could even be true; for the blonde girl using it to open her super-secure storage box would suffice. The lid of near-indestructible crystal clicked then popped open, revealing several archaic bits of equipment. A simple rod the length of seven spans, inflexible and unyielding. A straight, double-edged blade, long as a yardstick and sharp as sharp could be. A chiton that seemed to glare fiercely more than the light its polished thread reflected should make possible. A shining breastplate like the purest silver and polished crystal both. A pair of sandals, impossibly light and perfectly sure-footed. A cloak like warmth and fierceness made cloth. Last but not least a helmet that was all but invisible, except for a single crystal shining with light upon the brow.

Those tools Anne put on one by one and when she felt adequately armed and armored for what was to come, she quoted and cast.

"Knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven."

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The entirety of the young girl became information, which was light, which resided in all things. Then with a single step she left the space station and high orbit behind and with the next she came upon the place of her birth and with both feet took possession. What had once been a small but vibrant town in Florida was now a blasted wasteland, only a few dismal ruins still standing in memory of its prior existence. Most of it was twisted growths and jagged spikes and roaming monsters, with a giant pool of boiling tar where the Invaders' stronghold had once been. The pool shook and sloshed like a kicked bucket while a tall, gangly man sat on a conjured chair upon its northern bank and watched while eating conjured popcorn. Anne rolled her eyes and walked up to him, rod and sword held at her sides, ready but not yet raised.

"Greetings, Wizard, and opposition," she loudly said from about a foot behind his back, with the hilarious result of him leaping off the chair and almost falling face-first into the tar pit.

"Fuck!" the Wizard shouted and turned around, a staff materializing at his hands. "Who are y- oh!" He looked Anne up and down, his eyes shifting from artifact to artifact before staring at her face with suspicion and annoyance. "You're one of those brats, aren't you? Where are the rest of your little friends?"

"If you're referring to the Valkyries, most of them are asleep." She shrugged in feigned nonchalance. "How unobliging of you to resurface way past our bedtime."

"You're ruining my fun. Perish." A jagged bolt of black lightning shot out of his staff. It grounded itself in Anne's shining breastplate, its ruinous magic shattering and deflecting into a dozen smaller bolts striking random targets nearby. One of them came within an inch of the Wizard's own head.

"No sacrifice? No circle or incantation? You'll have to do better than that," she scoffed and raised her rod and blade, pointing them at the other super in challenge. "Also, you're messing with my sister. Only I am allowed to do that."

"Insanity becomes wisdom; death becomes life. Here is where illusions are poisoned, and all categories and conceptions are deconstructed until nothing is left."

The world seemed to pause as the Wizard uttered an incantation, the universe holding its breath as the magic manifested. Ruins, jagged spikes and the bones of monsters bled all around them. That blood was black and burning, the ground sizzling and melting into slag in its passage. The ruinous sludge pooled together and bubbled upwards into a pair of inverted legs, then a bulbous torso large enough to belong to a giant. From it sprang countless arms, none of which had the same number of elbows as they twisted through distorted, geometry-defying angles, but all of which ended into eyeless catlike heads whose enormous maws gaped wide, seeking to devour everything in sight.

Reality screamed at the presence of a Gamchicoth Qliphoth and a tidal wave of terror and hatred crashed against Anne's mind. Nightmares of hunger slipped through to twist and consume affection and good intent, to shatter the minds of mortal men for miles around. But there were no men here, only monsters human or otherwise, and Anne had glimpsed Infinity. Even if that had not been enough to face the Devourer, her cloak sheathed her in enough energy and eagerness to overwhelm its corruptive aura.

"While mercy and grace go beyond what is required, it is in truth's light that no lies abide."

The Qliphoth charged and Anne met it with a sword shining like a star, its impossible straightness and transcendent sharpness slicing into the warping of reality that was the Devourer's body like a burning branch through a spider's webs. It screamed with its a thousand thousand eyeless maws, countless arms severed and burning away at her every swing with no end in sight. For whatever they might appear to be Qliphoth were not material things of finite dimensions and no more could they be killed than could a shadow. But shadows could be erased by light or have their source unmade by other means and under the judgement of her blade the fiend was ended.

"I am mighty Time, the source of destruction that comes forth to annihilate the universe. Even with all your efforts, all arrayed against me shall cease to exist."

The blonde girl scowled as the Wizard butchered one of the most misquoted texts in all of human history for his spell of crude destruction. All the space between them was leached of all color in an expanding wave. Ruins, spikes, bones, twisted vegetation, even the ground itself cracked and flaked away unto dust under the weight of centuries, millennia and more seemingly passing in moments. It was not really time though but entropy and ruin, only one half of the equation of change and progress. Like all the Wizard did it was twisted and foul, a corruption of the awe-inspiring wonder and creative force that was magic. Again and again Anne's sandals pushed her into leaps and bounds that were seemingly instantaneous, her slightest shift propelling her beyond the expanding wave of ruin again and again and into safety. But entropy could neither truly be outrun nor was it an evil stopped by safety and peace.

"Let there be Genesis, for creation is Truth and I am its humble servant."

The crystal upon Anne's brow glared. Its light pushed back against the wave of annihilation, refuting entropy through ex-nihilo creation. Brighter than a torch. Brighter than lightning. Brighter than a star. Brighter than a thousand exploding suns. In its wake colors returned to the world, dust turned to fertile soil, grass and flowers sprouted when there had been wasteland. The Wizard's spell exhausted itself trying to return to nothing that which sprouted from nothing and was undone.

BOOM!

The lake of tar behind them exploded into a titanic ball of nuclear fire, the blastwave of its birth pushing against both Anne's and the Wizard's defensive spells and artifacts. Within the rapidly forming mushroom cloud tentacles as thick and long as suspension bridges writhed as their alien flesh burned and sloughed off in great half-molten bits the size of buses. The Wizard scowled and made to run, but Anne rapped her rod against the ground.

"Nope!" she shouted as the force of the nuclear explosion folded around them into a dome, leaving them untouched but also sealing them inside. "You tried to kill my sister. You don't get to flee before she expresses her displeasure about it."

"Insufferable child," the old man spat back, hurling more bolts of black lightning at her at a furious pace. Some she dodged by stepping to areas of peace and safety. Many shattered against her armor as before, their ruin finding no purchase in its integrity. Others still she sliced out of the air with the judgement of her sword. "Die! Die! Why won't you die?!"

"Oh, there are many reasons," she said, giving him a shit-eating grin as he huffed and puffed from exertion. "But the truth is you suck as a wizard, Wizard. How many times did you run from the Valkyries? For all your human sacrifices and foul deals, even a novice like me can delay you until your appointed end catches up." Anne glanced at the immense tentacled horror in its death throes amid the slowly cooling mushroom cloud. "She won't be long, now."

"And when your sister comes, I will greet her with your corpse!" he spat and started casting, his body smoking as he burned a major portion of his own life-force as a sacrifice to this last spell. He'd probably be weakened for months, maybe even years, but he was powerful enough that such a sacrifice could grant him enough power to win or possibly escape... if only he had not been such a shitty wizard.

Human sacrifice? Raising the dead? Summoning abominations from beyond reality? All so destructive and dreadful and banal incarnations of evil sorcery with not an ounce of creativity and imagination. All they could do was break things, which they did extremely well as long as there wasn't anyone around with the proper counter. But Anne was a creator and a diviner. She could forge answers to situations as long as she knew they were coming, and with half her magic being about information she usually knew when they did. So when the Wizard put all his power into one final fuck-you curse, she raced his spell with one built on her second-favorite quote.

"All Truth is but shadow, and aspect-Shiva destroys the great illusion. The ultimate essence of being, upon which all others are built, collapses as the Way is foreshortened and the branches of Yggdrasil wither and die."

"I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content."

A blast of nothingness shot out from the Wizard's upraised staff, collapsing reality as it spread at the speed of light. Anne met it with her upraised rod already swinging. Ruinous curse met creative thought and both clashed together as if they were real things. The Wizard had declared it first; everything was illusion. But if he could make it so, then Anne could declare that said illusions were equally real; whether their amount of reality was zero, full, or anything inbetween was ultimately irrelevant. And if his stupid null-blast was just as real as her stick, well, why couldn't she beat it back with said stick?

So she did just that swing after swing after swing, parrying and deflecting and pushing back physically as if both she and the Wizard were wielding physical weapons. Thus she Conaned her way through his bullshit spell and his bullshit plans and his bullshit nihilism just as Robert E. Howard had intended, until she struck a two-handed blow with her rod against the Wizard's staff. The staff broke, the spell ended, then she whacked the bastard in the head until he passed out, as was right and proper.

Maya flew in about a minute later, suit torn and burned, limbs and face full of slowly healing cuts, burns and bruises, but victorious over her Japanese anime foe.

"Heya, sis," her older sister greeted her with a fond smile. "You got the wizard? Color me impressed!"

"Someone had to do it after you, Amanda and Jerry bungled it up," Anne huffed then fell back to the ground, completely exhausted. "I'm officially cancelling your awesome older sibling card, by the way. Henceforth you'll be known as the-annoying-sibling-whose-errors-must-be-fixed."

"Eh, nobody's perfect, not even me. I'm still prettier, though," Maya shot back with a snicker. "Wanna go for ice cream after we secure the Wizard?"

"You're on," Anne half-grumbled in response. If she poked her cloak just right, it would probably remove her exhaustion.

If not, she could always sneak into the Valkyries' potions stash.