“You’re not–” I started, then cut myself off by bashing the monster that wore Nia’s face with my burning shield. It hissed in discomfort at the heat searing its dead skin, then skittered back reactively. I put myself between the monster and Nia, glaring at it over the bony ridge as I contacted The End.

{That isn’t actually Nia, right? Just… making sure.} I wrote, feeling sick at my own insinuation even as it was spelled out in front of me.

//NO.

//BY THE DYING STARS AND THE INEVITABLE END OF ALL THINGS, I SWEAR TO YOU THAT THAT IS NOT PERSEPHONIA.

//IT IS THE EMBODIMENT SHE ONCE TRUSTED: ENDRA OF ENDURANCE.

That somehow made me feel better and worse at the same time. Like finding out what had happened to a long-lost dog, but what had happened to it was that someone had run it over and threw it in a ditch. A true mixture of gut-wrenching revulsion, relief that inspired self-loathing, and bitter hatred all at once.

“Is it so difficult to believe that this is the real me?” Endra chuckled, gesturing down at the body that didn’t match her face whatsoever. “The bug is the person, or in this case, me. The old vessel grew useless, so a new one was required.”

My heels grew wet with Nia’s blood.

I had to stall for time. “Why should I believe you?” I asked, never once lowering my shield or sword.

Endra tilted her head to the side, so far down that her neck would have snapped. The top of her head almost touched her shoulder. It was disgusting. “I know all of our secrets, Blue. What your name is, what you really are, and the nice little recruit you came in with. You should go get her, and then we’ll dispose of Addia’s forces once and for all.”

“I’m not going anywhere until you explain what the fuck just happened.” I decreed, digging my heels into the sand and turning the glass molten under them. “Is Okeria one of Endurance’s chosen?”

Endra’s eyes narrowed, and her lips pulled too tightly over her teeth; it looked like they would cut through the tender flesh at any moment. “I just told you what happened, and I don’t wish to repeat myself. As for Okeria; yes, he is one of us. Just as you and Juniper will be once Addia is dealt with.”

I lunged forward, impaling my sword in Endra’s neck. It barely broke the skin, sizzling against the unreal resistance as Nia’s borrowed neck blackened and died. Endra shrieked and swiped at me, a blow that I caught on my shield. It felt like I’d been hit by a freight train, my shoulder and forearm crushed against each other as my bones were shattered and the desert skidded by underneath me.

Nia’s body was now as far away from me as it was from Walkalong. A trail of freshly molten glass denoted my flight and crash, my shield flickering like a candle in the wind in my mind. It was… broken? I didn’t know that was possible. I tried to send it into my interface for safekeeping, but I didn’t even get an error message in response. It just… didn’t.

My arm shattered under a foot blackened with death. Endra’s face was twisted in anger, like a halloween mask pulled the wrong way on a face that was too small for it. She yelled a mixture of guttural noises and insectile chittering while spraying my face with liquid that smelled of sweetness and rot, then raised her foot and stomped down once more. I twisted to put my shield between us, the cracks in it molten white and far more obvious than I’d expected.

Endra screamed in pain, the shards and ruin of my shield shredding her foot and lower leg to a molten slurry as she pushed ever downwards. It was what I imagined it would look like if someone stuck their hand in a blender and kept pushing down through the pain and grinding motor, but instead of blood, it was white-hot molten flesh and slag.

//WARNING: BATTERY HAS DROPPED THIRTY-FOUR PERCENT.

//I KNOW I NEED NOT REMIND YOU, BUT LOSING YOUR ARMOR MEANS LOSING YOUR LIFE TO THIS OPPONENT.

//YOU WILL NOT WIN A BATTLE OF ATTRITION.

{You don’t have to tell me that.} I thought with a grimace, pushing myself to my feet as my armor knit my shattered bones together. It felt like the heat trapped inside of them had bled out into my muscles, giving off both intense power and pain at the same time.

“How could you?!” Endra wailed, thrashing from side to side as her leg slowly squirmed and expanded into a brand new foot. “Your own Matria! HOW COULD YOU?!”

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Endra stomped down and swiped with one hand, three buzzing slashes flying towards me at speeds that Nia wouldn’t have given a second thought. I raised my shield to block them and felt a thousand impacts against the molten mess, then the rest swarmed over the top and bottom of my shield. There were so many bugs. Buzzing and stinging and swarming over my visor so I couldn’t see much of anything at all.

I screamed and swung my head downwards, putting the bugs in the path of blazing heat that none of them could withstand. I continued that motion into a roll, crushing as many of the bugs as I could under my body, and came up with an instinctive swipe of my sword at a black mass that stood before me.

“I know everything!” Endra screamed, shrinking back as my blade bit through a small layer of rotting flesh and began to burn. “They won’t accept you! You’ll die alone and useless! You need me!”

There was slightly too much desperation in Endra’s voice for someone who apparently had god-like power. I shifted and lurched into a feint with my sword, twisting to dodge a clawed hand that reached out to take my shoulder from my body and slammed my shield into Endra’s chest. She wailed and chittered in unison as the destroyed piece of gear ripped and melted her body, then slammed me back with the beat of two massive insectile wings.

“Seems like you need me.” I said, barreling back towards Endra. She kept screaming and throwing blast after blast of blade-like insects towards me. There was no strategy or anything in her attack, just a primal desire to keep me away from her.

Fire really had been the right choice. I hid my sword behind my shield and shifted it into a spear, pulling back from my charge at the last second to dodge a wild two-handed swipe from Endra, then put all the power I could muster into a thrust towards her neck.

I didn’t expect it to land, which made the impact that much more of a surprise when it landed. Endra gasped in surprise, grasping at the shaft of bone that jutted out of her neck and the blade that had stubbornly lodged itself within her windpipe. I let my old instincts take over as I let go of my spear and whirled around, slamming my shield into the butt of my weapon to lodge it even deeper into Endra.

For an Embodiment, she didn’t react very well to pain. Her shrieks and cries became more insectile than anything, and as she fell to the ground she began spinning dark black threads around herself.

“Fuck no you don’t!” I yelled, slamming my shield down onto the Embodiment. It was met with wings that it churned into slurry, but they’d done what they set out to do. Endra was perfectly enclosed in a cocoon that I couldn’t damage no matter how hard I tried. And I tried pretty damn hard.

Sweaty and worn out from the fight, the fire in my bones, and the effort I’d exerted trying to destroy Endra’s safe space, I finally turned my attention to Nia’s body. Armor could heal all wounds as long as it was active, but as I ran over and gently rolled Nia over on her side, I didn’t see a single piece on her at all. Nor did I see any light in her eyes, nor feel anything but a terrifying coldness against the burning inside of me.

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Is there anything I can do?” I muttered, opening my interface and scouring it for anything that might be useful. Of course I didn’t have anything, and even if I did, there was no coming back from an unarmored death. It was… the end.

{You can fix this, right?} I asked The End, feeling more desperate than I’d expected. I… really didn’t want Nia to die. Especially since this all felt like it was somehow my fault. {You told me to come here and save her, but I can’t do anything against an Embodiment. What do you need me to do?}

I waited for a response for far longer than I knew was safe. I sat there with Nia’s head in my lap, her dead eyes staring up at me while her blood steamed against my burning armor. Silence.

{Please. Help me help her.} I begged, tears welling up in the corners of my eyes as harsh reality pushed its way into my understanding. {You said I could save her. Help me save her!}

//I’M SORRY.

“God damn it.” I whispered, tears splashing against my visor as I leaned down and pressed my forehead to Nia’s. “God fucking damn it.”

A small indicator appeared at the bottom of my vision, but I didn’t notice it for a good minute thanks to the tears. When I eventually did, hope blossomed in my chest as I recognized Nia’s symbol she’d shown me in confidence. It only lasted as long as it took me to open my interface and read the opening line of the message I saw.

//To whoever is reading this, thank you. I know I didn’t have many friends in life; so few in fact that I am not writing this with the thought of ever passing it on to anyone, but if you are reading this, thank you for bringing a spark of something to an old woman’s life. Enclosed in this message is everything I’ve learned over my decades of experience, and will hopefully aid whoever you are in your own pursuits.

“Fuck.” I breathed, blinking to disperse some of the tears that were making it difficult to read.

//If you truly ended up trusting me, I ask that you open the attachment marked ‘full’. If my trust was one-sided, however, I will understand if you only open the option marked ‘information’. I can’t imagine a scenario where I would trust someone enough to do as I ask of you, but I suppose I can hope.

There were a few more paragraphs of pseudo-legal warnings and rambling tangents about how Nia wasn’t ever going to trust anyone, but the simple fact that I was seeing this showed how untrue that had been. I went to press ‘full’ without hesitation, but noticed that the scroll bar on the side of my interface wasn’t quite fully at the bottom. There was a gap at the end, probably only enough for a sentence or two, but I wasn’t going to waste any of Nia’s last words. I scrolled down, and couldn’t stop the sob that escaped from my throat as I read the last thing Nia was ever going to say to me.

//If this is you, Sebastian, I hope that you are seeing this a long, long while after I’m typing this. Or not at all, preferably. Endra is coming. I can feel it. I hope against hope that she won’t use me as a vessel, but I know better than that. The declaration of war was just announced, and I do not have time to rewrite everything, and if you see this in its unedited state…

//I’m sorry.