"Must be nice to have a dad," Emerald commented, tears glittering in the corners of her green eyes. "Or any sort of parent who actually gives a damn..."

"C'mere, you," I smothered the silver-haired Princess in a hug. "Don't fret Emmy, you're my family now too!"

"Just like the rest of the Tokimorimïtul tribe?" Emerald sniffed.

"Closer! The rest of Tokimorimïtul won't get to be my bestie at Nemendias and also my adorable mortal enemy," I said trying to cheer up the clearly distraught youngest daughter of Amadea.

"If Ems is still going to Nemendias," Agatha commented, her voice icy and distant. "They might kick both of us out for not making payments for the new semester."

"They won't," I said. "It's my fault that both of you lost your mother's financing. If Amadea refuses to cover your education, I'll just pay for it."

"I don't know if being in your debt is any better than being under Mother's wings," her voice was sharp.

"Are you still scared of me, Agatha?" I asked, looking at the eldest Amadea daughter.

"I've never not been scared of you," she said. "Yet you somehow continue to terrify me more with each action."

"Aww come on, I'm nice," I huffed.

"Yeah, Aggie, she's nice," Emerald said.

"How are you going to pay for our education?" Agatha snapped.

"I have a tribe," I shrugged. "It's a lot of hands that can do various jobs around Lomb. Plus I can sell their hair to Antoine."

"How are you better than my mother?" The eldest Princess stared down at me.

"What do you mean how I'm better... I'm way nicer," I blinked. "I don't bind people with Vows."

"Obviously not, you bind them with ideas, promises and hopes!" Agatha growled. "All I had to do was look away for a minute and now I'm bound to you by a thousand invisible threads!"

"You're welcome to leave," I crossed my arms. "You're not my slave nor are you bound in any capacity. Everyone that works for me does it of their own free will."

"Leave and go where?" Agatha's eye twitched.

"I dunno," I rolled my eyes at her. "You can sell Galissi Seven and open a crepe cafe or something. Maybe run a furniture shop. Fly to another corner of the Basq Empire and live on a mossy hillside down by the creek and raise chickens. The possibilities are endless."

"What is this hybrid girl mad about?" Acadius asked me. "I do not understand human language."

"She thinks that I'm secretly wicked or something," I shrugged.

"The All-Mother chosen-one cannot be wicked," Acadius commented at Agatha in Tokimorimïtul. "My daughter is as bright and clear as the glacier river cascade."

"You're just saying that because she made you the Alpha of the hunters," Agatha commented at him in chimera language.

"I have always believed that Juni’s spark was bright," Acadius shook his head. "She killed a nightcrawler at seven months of age and built herself leather wings to traverse the Chasm. I was afraid that her brightness would lead her to fall... but she has proven me wrong... so very, very wrong. I should have spoken to her as an equal, but regretfully I was... inexperienced in such matters as she was my first daughter from my first hearth-keeper."

I smiled at the unexpected support.

"I dedicated myself to being a good hunter," the dark-gray chimera shook his head. "The chorus of my ancestors did not prepare me for being the father of the reincarnation of the All-Mother."

Agatha's frown deepened. Her silver-blue eyes were definitely judging me.

I glanced at her in the Astral. The complex formation woven by her mother's Dominion roots was still there, buried deep in her body.

"Agatha," I said. "Stop frowning at me. You're free. I freed you and your sister."

"You did?" Emerald blinked.

"Without a soul Amadea cannot possibly take over your bodies," I said. "My action entrenched her into her current body for all eternity. In time the Dominion threads she's placed in your bodies will wear away, become absorbed into you. They're anchors for nothing to latch onto! Barrie had torn her soul into shreds."

"Yessss! I'm free!" Emerald bounced excitedly. She stared at me. "Thank you, Junes! You are the bestest!"

"Mother will undoubtedly find other ways to bind us," Agatha shook her head. "She has the financial backing of the entire capital."

"Why would she even want to bind you?" I asked.

"Because she made us," Agatha answered. "We're her property to do whatever she wishes with, just like her maids. All that talk of disowning us was just another one of her manipulations, trying to make us feel bad. Undoubtedly she wants for us to come crawling back to her, to beg to be bound on her terms.”

"Yeah, I'm not gonna do that," Emerald gritted her teeth. "No freaking way I'm going back."

"You'll have no choice," Agatha shook her head. "Mother's agents will make sure our lives in Illatius are horrible in every possible way."

"Let them try," I declared.

Agatha stared at me.

"I protect my friends," I said firmly, baring my sharp chimera chompers. "For every action there will be an opposite reaction. If they give me a finger I'll bite off their hand at the wrist!"

"You cannot possibly match Amadea's current wealth or the creative malice of the bastards she employs," Agatha sighed. "Now that Mother is no longer protecting me, I fear my life will become a thousand times worse. Yes, if I was a daughter of a simple merchant I could have opened a cafe, go elsewhere, have a mundane, relaxing life... alas, I was born an Amadea. If you think that Mother will take it easy on us, you are sorely mistaken."

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Emerald gulped, worry filling her eyes.

"Gosh, you're ever so gloomy," I wrapped Emmy in my arms.

"The storm of consequences is coming," Agatha said simply. "And I have no choice but to be by your side because standing alone will leave me swept and carried back to Mother with my body battered and my spirit broken."

"I think you're being overly dramatic," I said. "Stop terrorizing your little sister with theoretical doom and gloom. It's the end of summer. Let's put on some makeup and enjoy the city. Precogs can't track me... so as long as I lead our party neither of you can be located."

"Which puts you in the position of power over us," Agatha said. "If I didn't know better I'd presume you set all of this up to benefit you."

"That's ridiculous," I sighed. "Like I said before - I don't want power for the sake of control over others. I just want to have a nice time with my friends."

"You took two thousand chimera under your control. You made them believe that you're their All-Mother," Agatha pointed out.

"I took control of Tokimorimïtul to help my family," I said. "Without me becoming the tribe's guide some other cendai like your mother would take over and likely end up abusing them or eating their souls. My solution for Tokimorimïtul obviously isn't perfect, but it's the best thing I could do for them."

"Right," Agatha sighed. "I suppose I'll just have to trust that you're not a dead god from Inaria planning to consume our sanity."

"I'm not," I crossed my arms.

"So you say," Agatha muttered. "And yet, I feel like everyday less and less sanity remains in me."

I couldn't help but snicker at her words, which didn't make me any less of a sanity-consuming deity in her eyes. Thinking about it made me laugh even more. I descended into a hysteric fit of giggling so hard that tears burst from my eyes.

"What's so funny?" Agatha demanded.

"You are," I said, wiping my face. "You're seriously worried about me being a cosmic, sanity-consuming deity like that's a real thing."

"Anything could be real with you!" Agatha shook her head. "Whenever I'm near you, my life is a constant battle against delirium!"

"Stop," I heaved, waving my hand at her trying not to laugh again which was making my broken ribs ache. “I can only take so much nonsense!”

"Erm, Juni?" Emerald poked me in the side. "Divine manifestations that can feast on emotions can be real, no?"

"Sorry," I rubbed my face, blushing. "Most of my life, I lived in a world without magic. Honestly, all of this magical bullshit seems quite nonsensical from my point of view."

"Explain how you're doing impossible things then," Agatha demanded.

"Wish I could," I spread my hands. "All I have are theories."

"Let's hear one that makes me feel better," Agatha said.

"Erm," I scratched the back of my head. "I'm really old so the Builders of Andross are helping me out?"

"The Builders of Andross are helping you because you are old?" Agatha mulled. "No, that doesn't make any sense. Do you even know any Builders of Andross?"

"Not personally," I said. "I sort of briefly interacted with Infi… the umm, manifestation of the End-Gate. She seemed like she liked me. Pretty sure that my knife was made by her. She told me that I should… try not to die."

"So, you can do impossible things because a manifestation of death, the thing that killed everyone on Andross likes you?" Agatha raised a silver eyebrow.

"I… erm, I guess?" I said.

"How do you know that she's not using you to end countless worlds?" Agatha inquired. "Your fortune can't be defined right? Maybe it can't be defined because you keep turning parallel worlds into dust?"

"Jeez, way to rain on my parade," I huffed. "Just when I was feeling good about myself you imply that I'm a planet-killer!"

"You have a knife that can kill anything," Agatha pointed out.

"Anything I can define fully," I said. "I can't just stab Andross and make it disappear! It's too big!"

"You don't need to stab Andross to make it disappear, you just need to open a gate to Inaria," the eldest Amadea Princess said.

"Fair enough," I frowned.

Was I a tool of Infi? A killer of worlds? A stupidly stubborn urbexer that didn't know any better than to turn the key when presented with a mysterious door?

My frown deepened as I nervously caressed my broken wrist. I had stilled the pain away, but the fact that it wasn't functional anymore was bothering me.

"I don't know what you and your friends are talking about," Acadius voiced. "But I think that you need to stop doubting yourself, daughter. Trust in the spark of the All-Mother. She chose you to lead us to a brighter future."

"Dad," I sighed. "I don't know if I am the All-Mother."

"Of course you are," the gray chimera shook his head. "No other could have done what you did. No other could have challenged Eunice or offered us so much. You stood up for us, offered us guidance when the tribe needed it most! We were slowly dying, losing our strength. It took you to tell us what we all knew, to free us from our illusory shackles!"

I looked into his yellow, hope-filled eyes.

"Never forget what you did," Acadius said firmly. "Listen to your heart and move forward one step at a time!"

"You don't think that I am secretly guided by the personification of death, dad?" I asked.

"No," my father shook his head. "If I were to evaluate all of your actions over the years... You are guided by the personification of freedom!"

Something clicked in my head at his words. Infi wasn't the voice of death. Endy wasn't a knife, it was a key!

"I, um, I think I get it," I said, turning back to Agatha. "Infinity, my patron from Inaria, is the personification of liberty. She wants me to liberate the debitors of Undertown. She wants me to free the Vow-bound maids."

"If you kill everyone in Undertown, that's one method of liberating them," Agatha commented.

"Look," I said. "It makes perfect sense. Infi hates limits. She's the concept of Infinity! Chains, limits and boundaries piss her off! I can wield Endy because I despise chains too. Eunice told me that she gave this knife to other arcane-ghost filled chimera before me, but it would not respond to them because she magically bound them into obedience.”

“I see,” the eldest Princess mulled.

“As long as I fulfill the mission of ‘liberation’, Infi helps me out,” I said. “She is undoubtedly watching me… from the End-gates or whatever. Maybe she has an Astral manifestation that’s observing me. I’m just an ancient soul stuck in a chimera body - without my Eurekan patron helping me out I’d already be dead and buried. In fact… I am already dead in two other worlds!

I glanced at my chimera father and then looked at Agatha again.

“Breaking the rules about flying, freeing Tokimorimïtul, unbinding your mother’s soul, accidentally destroying all of Andross - these were all permitted, assisted by Infi… because they were all acts of liberation. There’s no doubt in my mind about it now - my meeting with all of you, the fact that I ran into Inspector Lambert first and not some other corrupt, less cooperative constable… all of these actions were either ridiculous luck or maybe they were due to probability being slightly skewed in my favor by Infinity! As the avatar of the End-gate in Undertown, she must hear the prayers of the downtrodden, bound humans on the daily.”

“An interesting theory,” Agatha mulled. “So you don’t think that the goddess of Undertown and the inhabitant of the End-gates is evil? You don’t think that what happened on Inaria was bad?”

“It’s obviously bad, but I don’t think that it was Infi’s fault. I think that what happened on Inaria and is still happening is a war,” I said. “Concepts killing concepts. Machine life fighting machine life. The infinite city of Eureka isn’t dead - it’s being ravaged, devastated by an endless war between endless things. Revolutions have a price. Liberty has a cost if there are those that oppose it.”

Agatha frowned at me.

“Installation Rozaline… is just a little mote in the eye of god, a little island of sunshine and kittens surrounded by the raging sea of death. Don’t you get it? Andross is a peaceful place hovering in the eye of the endless hurricane,” I uttered, looking up through the glass roof of the glider at the infinite planet above us. “What’s happening here is but a microcosm, a muddy, minute reflection of the unending battle invisibly raging up there. Infi said that all Eurekans are still alive… If we can’t spot them on the surface of Inaria, then it stands to reason that they’re most likely trapped in a war between living concepts. Maybe they're dying forever and being endlessly brought back to life somewhere deep inside of the infinite city over and over and over.”

“That’s… pretty horrifying,” Emerald said with a shudder.

“Yeah,” I rubbed my broken arm. “It is… the best we can do is enjoy our little island of sunshine and try not to rock our boat too hard. I don’t know how I can prevent Amadea from binding Illatius in laws… but I have to try.”

I looked at Endy.

“An all-ending knife can’t bring down an infinite wall… not without horrific consequences,” I said. “But… I think that’s why I’m here, why I wield Endy. I have to balance my actions, think ahead and rely on my friends. I have to walk on the edge between granting freedom and plunging everyone into the abyss. I have to make sure that Illatius doesn’t end up as a desolate wasteland in the process of freeing it from the chimera cendai. It won’t be easy, but now I know what’s at stake now and I’m beginning to understand who the big players are.”