‘I gnaw upon the very roots of this reality, and by storm and starlight I can taste her rage– she will watch it all burn before she allows you even a moment's rest boy.’

Cerridwen had, in her foolishness and folly, led them all to their deaths. No salvation would await them this day as it had done in days prior. Today would be the end of the war, and the beginning of a new world.

In truth, Alexandria hated her for it, for making her relive this day across more than one of the Cycles. Most of all, however, she hated the scents of war. Salt, sulphur, rot and decay– all mixing and mingling into some grotesque abomination. It was on this day, across the many versions of this day, that Alexandria gave into the irony of her vision being stolen from her. Thankful for the fact that the Ave’Armentum hadn’t been working yet, lest she would have to witness carnage renewed.

Some small part of her wondered if it would now become a curse.

The grasslands around them smouldered. Rolling hills once green were now stained red with the blood of thousands. Distant mountains were sundered by the force of the magics and oaths unleashed upon the arid fields around her. Alexandria grimaced at the cost of a war of her own making. She could hear the sounds of already rare trees crackling and bubbling, the heat of her warmachines having turned the steppe around them into a bonfire. Her heart ached at the thought of such destruction at the hands of things she had created, but the rationality of war outweighed her need to feel good about herself. Somewhere along these grassy plateaus would be his spires, each reaching into the sky and tearing holes within. The entire battlefield would be washed in ruddy red light. Far off, between the mountains and the hills she could hear the clashing of humanoid and beast, the battle had moved beyond the point in which she stood, the armies of their enemies having retreated back towards the malignant towers of their roving city-base. Even here, she could hear the chittering and chattering of the amalgamates of his army.

Alexandria could vaguely guess where it was that she stood based on the humming connections in the back of her mind. Small parts of her essence caught and captured in different wondrous creations above her. If the Astrovamora, and with it Skav’Darej, was over her, it meant she had some catching up to do, it would likely reach the battle before she did. She had come to realise that this cycle had been odd all around.

The sound of approaching footsteps and clanging armour drew Alexandria from her thoughts. A familiar gate, a familiar pace. Cerridwen was.. Why was Cerridwen back here? Odd. The woman approached, and even without eyes she knew Cerri’s face as well as she knew her own, so well in fact that when she laid a hand upon her friend's face, she was surprised to feel a new divot running across it– it was new, judging by the way she flinched. She pictured the woman in her mind. Russet red hair, fair skin, brilliant golden eyes, rounded ears. Although now the image was completed with the new scar, running from her forehead to her chin. Cerri’s voice was surprisingly shaky when she finally spoke, the seconds of their terse reunited silence almost dredging into minutes.

‘’This cycle will be the last I hope.’ She said, her shakiness bled away into something sharper, more precise. ‘I can’t say I was surprised to find you back here– but we must push forward a little more.’ Cerridwen grabbed her arm, and began to move.

Alexandria sighed to herself, muttering a curse in a tongue long forgotten, ‘Light protect your faulty head. I can sense his presence from here, he carries more blight with him this time than last– why would this be the final cycle when the threat has only grown.’ She rubbed at her face, her visage wavering under the strain of trying to figure out her friends' mental gymnastics. ‘I’m unsure if the Ave will be able to collect us all this time, in fact.’

Cerridwen remained silent.

Cerridwen was silent, for the rest of their rushed walk in fact. The lack of noise allowed subtle realisations to crest Alexandria's mind. Cerridwen, their lord commander in war, their frontline soldier and leader of great armies was nearly half a mile away from the fighting. Not only that, but she was talking about this being the end of the cycle… Alexandria shook her head, wrenching herself from Cerri’s hands.

‘Cerri.’ Alexandria said, her pace dropping. ‘What aren’t you telling me? Why would you entertain the thought of this being our final cycle?’’ Alexandria could physically feel Cerridwen's discomfort hit her like a great wave.

Her voice followed shortly after, the shakiness having returned.

‘The Clergy came to me nearly a year ago, to tell me about the original rifts, how he hadn’t just found them but had started creating them,’ She began, ‘and you know how they can be! Ever since they moved into the lower rungs they’ve been ranting and raving about this and that… but recently– a couple months ago, they came through my glass door and refused to leave until I spoke to them.’ Alexandria couldn’t see what she was doing, but she heard the sound of skin on skin. Cerrridwen was nervous, scared, beyond belief. ‘They were frantic, they kept going on about the fact that he had discovered some new way to corrupt us across cycles, marring us in ways that wouldn’t be effective at first, but would hinder us so badly down the line that his victory would be all but eventual. They showed me that he had found something in deep space– beyond the horizon line. A rift that functions for him, like the Ave does for us. We would be losing our only advantage. Stemming the tide, instead of fixing the problem.’

Alexandria took a troubled breath, her mind whirring, ‘Cerridwen you told me, told us, that he had only recently discovered the rifts. You told me that he didn’t HAVE the ability to create new rifts. Now you’re telling me that, not only was him finding the rifts within the last few months a lie, but so was everything else you told the nine?’

‘I…’ Cerridwen heaved a sigh and lightly touched Alexandria's shoulder, ‘No, Lex. That’s what we told you. The rest of us knew the moment I did. I bound them in an oath, to prevent you from ever finding out until I told you myself. The Palastilan had a plan, so I decided to follow it.’

Alexandria’s rage was a rarely disturbed and often nonexistent creature, but something stirred in the pits of her stomach. The smell of burning earth and ash became pungent as her rage became palpable. They had lied to her. All of them. She balled her fists, fingernails drawing sticky blood. ‘Cerridwen you stupid bitch.’ She left blood smeared on Cerri’s armour as she struck her chest. ‘If you had keyed me in I could have made dozens, no, hundreds of different choices! I could have halted the cycle early to find a way around it, I could have… I could have done so much… so much more.’ Alexandria felt her rage melt away, replaced by a bitter disappointment.

Cerridwen's voice became stoic, hard to read, ‘We had to ensure that one of us survived wholly. The entire plan hinged on someone with enough knowhow making it through onto what comes next. I have no other choice!’

‘You have had every chance to make a different choice you stupid narcissist! You would damn everything we have worked for, everything I have strived for, for what? What assurances do you even have!’ She pushed her again, but this time, Cerridwen didn’t move.

‘Lex I don’t expect you to understand– but I do expect trust. This is the right choice.’ She said.

Somewhere far away, closer to the fighting, she could feel the Ave stirring. Skav’Darej had come down from the sky and was close enough to the ground that she could feel the ebbing of its power; they were nearing the end of the battle– she would have to get closer to the Ave to act as its focus.

‘Evanti’els eyes,’ She muttered, turning to walk away, ‘We’re doomed if you don’t allow me to push forward towards the Ave– abandon this foolishness, we can discuss this plan of yours in the next cycle. I will commit it to memory once the Clergy divine it once more.’

Alexandria was halted in her movements, Cerridwen's gauntleted hand catching her shoulder with a firm grasp. The Ave continued to power up, it wouldn’t be long before it had aligned. Foolish woman, Alexandria thought.

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‘Cerridwen.’ Alexandria spoke, her voice fuzzy under the weight that now permeated the air around them, the Ave concentrating and focusing magic across universes. ‘Cerridwen-avakatoshi what are you doing?’ She tried to break free, throwing her weight away from Cerridwen, but the woman remained firm, holding her in place. Alexandria stopped struggling, ‘Why would you doom the cycle now? What could possess you to commit such idiocy!’

‘You will understand with time, I hope.’ The Ave was almost entirely powered up, the minutes Alexandria thought that she had became shorter and shorter, falling past her fingers, but Cerridwen continued to speak, ‘The Cycle will continue, just not as you know it now– others will take up our mantle, or perhaps others will push forward. There are no certainties but one, you will survive.’

‘Cerr for the love of the stars, explain yourself! What have you done? What’s happening?’ Alexandria wrenched her shoulder away with a grunt, again turning to leave. Cerridwen not trying to stop her gave her pause. She waited for a reply.

The terse silence between them dragged further and further as time seemed to slow. The first stages of the Ave’s activation, without her as a focus… Alexandria didn’t have time for this.

Cerridwen's voice was coated in grief.

‘The Ave’s been moved out of Skav’Darej, the twins did it while the battle started– while you were down here away from it. The plan… is to let it activate within the realmic rift. The rest of the nine launched what I heard to be a successful frontal assault not long ago, his armies having been routed. I was meant to be there with them but… I didn’t want you to be alone when it all happened. We knew you would fight us, if you knew what the plan was. The Ave is your greatest creation I…’

‘You didn’t trust me. You didn’t trust that you could convince me to see things your way.’ Alexandria’s voice wobbled. ‘I don’t know what’ll happen if the magic of the Ave interacts with his perverted rift– but I would have. If you had given me time to study. I could have increased our chances. I could have disproven or proven it to have worked I could ha–’

‘No. You couldn’t have.’ She said. ‘You wouldn’t have entertained the thought of someone else's plan working where yours would have failed. We already know what it’ll do. That was the foundation of the plan.’ Cerridwen took her arm once more, moving her only a couple dozen feet before they stopped. ‘Top of the hill Dove, we just need to get to the top of this hill.’

When they stopped moving, finally at the top of the hill, the air around them grew still and heavy. Alexandria felt as though she had been transported very deep underground, her lack of vision compounding the feeling– only the grass around her bare feet told her that she was above ground, although even that she questioned. All around her the world became devoid of magic, as the Ave was activated.

A wave of cold air smashed into Alexandria like a storm wall. The sounds of battle bled away into nothing, decay and smoke alike washed from her nose by the brutality of the nothingness that followed the wall of wind. Despite creating the Ave, Alexandria realised that this was her first time experiencing the Instant. She didn’t have time to process it as the world around her shifted. Whatever they had done, it wasn’t acting as the Ave had done in times before. Cerridwen, somehow still with her in this transitional liminal space, moved her hand to interlock with Alexandria’s. She was shaking. Alexandria was still connected to the Ave. She could feel its magic working, lines of thought and purpose moving out before… stopping. A second force had taken over, one Alexandria couldn’t sense beyond sparse and fleeting flicks within her mind as its magic pressed up against her own.

The bubble they inhabited was empty, once more.

Cerridwen’s grip began to lessen, Alexandria scrambled to hold onto her, unknown fear creeping into parts of her that it didn’t belong. A gentle hand caressed her face mournfully. Cerridwen spoke into the void. Her voice held no substance, yet travelled regardless. The weight of her intent was strong.

‘Live.’

The silence of the void became a rush of bitter howling winds.

Alexandria’s head was filled with the sounds of billions of screams. Lives upon lives snuffed out in mere seconds. The end of the instant had come, the death of all things. Yet it grew quieter and quieter, as if she was moving away– no, she was moving away. Something was dragging her down. Something was pulling her out of the bubble, through the buffer, further and further towards familiar warmth. Inch by inch her vision returned, fuzzy and then clear. Her skull pounded– her skull pounded. The sensation was so viscous, so demanding, that she wondered how it could exist at all.

In an instant, it was gone.

Alexandria floated in a lukewarm ocean, infinite in every direction, monumental in its size. It swayed gently, the surface filmy, clinging to her skin with a desperation unfathomable. When she raised her hand from the water, she saw nought but shivering flame. Her eyes cleared further, her vision returned in full. The atmosphere of the space hit her almost in conjunction with her returned vision, as if her mind had refused to accept where she was, until it had no other choice. She had been dragged down to the flodu’cremapec.

The Abyss.

Her panic was only cemented when it made itself known.

Far off and rapidly approaching she could see it now. Two massive humanoid arms, muscular and heavy, pushed the water aside with clawed fingers, each one protruding from a rakish boney hand. Attached was a large, sprawling, segmentented snake-like body. Each segment was covered in a chitinous armour, overlapping with the one behind it– far off, perhaps a mile away, perhaps a thousand miles away, she could see its tail, and the long scorpion-like point that adorned it. It had no head, instead, a beak hung limply in its place, the bottom jaw swinging open as if only barely connected, half forgotten. At the very back of its maw, a singular pale white eye the size of an island. It spasmed and shifted and then went entirely still.

The being had stopped within an inch of her. It was somehow simultaneously continental in size, and miniscule in nature. An eldritch being that would fill your mind with forgotten knowledge, and leave you to collapse within your own insanity once you had been reintroduced to the mundane existence of a three-dimensional space.

Alexandria’s entire body began to shake, it took every ounce of her being not to convulse and drown in its presence. Not to let the ocean around her swallow her whole. The being shifted downwards, the beak – the head – of the beast gently pushing through the water until only metres remained between her and the eye. It regarded her with what she assumed was... curiosity.

When it spoke, no words graced her ears, for the beast had no mouth in which to cast them. Instead thoughts and experiences filled her mind, so large in scale and abstract in grandeur that it threatened to engulf her entire being. Wordless, and yet deafening, she could feel her mind crumble under its weight.

‘ It is not yet over, Herald of Artifice .’

Alexandria’s own voice felt infinitesimally small compared to what sat in front of her, but she spoke anyway, the words stuttering and disjointed. ‘Who are you? Was it you that brought me here?’ The darkness around her, the shadow of its maw, grew darker as she spoke.

A finger tip beneath her hefted her up closer to the eye, forcing her perspective of the beast to change as it grew infinitely larger. ‘ I h-HO-hol-hold you here only… A Small/Tiny/Miniscule amount of ti me. Your com panions they DE E E emanded this. This is their plan. ‘ It paused, contemplating her second question before speaking once more. ‘ I am. A L IN D WY RM. I am. Inpecfinuc. The PALE white WY R M. I am. Eurtreurembi A n. ELDER E V I L. YOu r sisters cal l me. Sek. ‘

Alexandria nodded. ‘Why am I here, Sek. To what end am I held here.’ Her voice found a renewed vigour. As if knowing the beast's name had allowed her to comprehend its being, had forced her to realise its extent and existence in a way quantifiable to her mind.

Sek seemed to laugh, the noise like the crumbling of a mountain. ‘ I am to H OL D you until the tim e is right and your enemy is. KN OWN once more. S L E E p now, for much time must pass. Much time. No time. Every time must pass. Sleep amongst the b on es of those betrayed. S L EEE P amongst my fo rm and allow me to. PROTECT/Defend/NOURISH/Acclimate you.

You

Must

SLUMBER ‘

Alexandria could feel her body become enveloped by his flesh. Her feet were slowly sinking into him. Hands, fingers, bones, legs, each one wrapping around her, each one made of him, dragging her further and further down. She had no choice, no will in this moment. All she knew were his final words.

’ How E X C I T E D / Jubilated / Thrilled I AM– Will be– to see his. Comeuppance. Plots and plans. You must be R E A D Y to face his hor d e. His… Corruption. YO U MUST B E

R E A D Y

You must be warned, be prepared to.

Rage, burn

Provoke fight,

consume.

Encompass, deny,

ruin, demolish.

D E V A S T A T E ‘