Garth sat down on his couch, put his feet up, and turned on the magical TV, cracking open an imported beer.

This particular kind was made by a dwarven worshipper of Beladia, and widely considered among the best in the Spheres.

“Oh, god damn,” Garth muttered in ecstasy, putting on an episode of Adventure Time. Work was done for the day, now it was time to relax. The Core was back in Grass’s keeping, providing Garth’s Command center with a sizeable upgrade, neither Tad nor Alicia were in any danger of dying. Caitlyn was humming away on a new idea. His X-ray vision button was missing.

He had a couple weeks until the shit hit the fan. Probably.

All was right with the world.

Alicia came out of her bedroom, squinting against the light. That’s what a mana overdose hangover will do to ya. She was paler than usual, her crimson lips slightly pink, with a greenish hue to her cheeks, and circles under her eyes.

She looked like she felt awful.

For the first time since he’d seen her, she wasn’t wearing tight, revealing clothes, and instead was wearing essentially an extra long t-shirt for sleeping, the cloth tenting around the tips of her breasts, concealing the rest of her body.

She squinted at the TV, then at Garth, and his beer.

“I’m not sharing. You’re too young for alcohol anyway.” Garth said, redirecting his attention to the T.V.

If I’m immortal, doesn’t that mean I can teach people how to make cartoons again, then wait the hundred years or so it’ll take for them to get good? Garth pursed his lips. Maybe things were looking up.

Out of the corner of his vision he saw Alicia silently climb onto the couch.

“Mana O.D. is not good for you, You should – oh, okay.” Garth was about to tell her to go back to bed when Alicia climbed up on top of him, snuggled up against his stomach and went back to sleep.

Garth tried to keep his attention on the cartoon, but his eyes kept falling down to the girl snoozing peacefully in his lap. The t-shirt had caught against him and worked its way up her thigh, revealing the very edge of her underwear.

As tempting as that is, I don’t think she’s in a good place for that, physically and emotionally. Despite having made that decision with his rational mind, Garth’s body responded appropriately.

“You’re poking me,” she muttered, her eyes still closed.

“Is it uncomfortable?”

“No. It’s warm.”

Heal.

“It’ll go away in a few minutes,” Garth said, petting her soft black hair with his glowing hand and taking a sip of his beer. Hopefully a heal would help her deal with the symptoms. She groaned appreciatively as the healing light encased her body, and fell back asleep, snoring lightly against his chest.

There haven’t been many moments in my life that I realize are perfect as they happen, but I think this might be one.

What was the last perfect moment? When the girls were about a year old, and Sandi and I left the girls with Mrs. Banyan and went on that camping trip in Oregon?

Splashing Sandi in an Oregon stream.

Natalie forcing me to hug her goodbye for the first time when we were teens.

Garth could remember each and every moment with perfect clarity, as if he was reliving it. A specialized sort of time travel.

Garth glanced down at Alicia, still petting her hair. He was finally starting to organize and accept the loss of his loved ones, so maybe there was room for another.

I wonder, on a scale of one to ten, how evil scientist I should go ensuring this one stays around awhile?

To be fair, Sandi had outlived him, and not the other way around.

Garth went to war with himself, vanquishing the urge to make clones or bind her soul to something, seeing as that would be an epic breach of trust. His sense of right and wrong had gotten a bit...detached, but that one was easy.

Not that far gone yet.

Insurance policies could come later. In the meantime, he needed to advance her training to the point where she could become a peer rather than a protege.

That, and if she learns to stop the aging process right around 25... give her some time to fill out a little more.

Garth wasn’t a total monk.

Tad strolled into the living room, toward the T.V. He spotted Garth and Alicia on the couch and promptly spun on his heel, went to grab a bite to eat from the kitchen before fucking off. Tad was a bro.

Mrs. Banyan, on the other hand, was not a bro.

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“Garth. There’s something you should see.” She said, power walking into the room through the wooden wall.

“Can it wait, like, an hour or two?” Garth asked. I was having a perfect moment here.

“Not really,” She said, grabbing the remote off the coffee table and changing the channel to Emilio’s feed.

An army the likes of which Garth had never seen was marching through a massive shimmering portal just outside of Santo Descanso. It was wide enough to accommodate hundreds of men abreast, and they marched through, streaming thousands of men, siege weapons and war animals each minute.

They were dressed in glittering gold armor and marched in perfect sync. It seemed like Jim had committed a significant portion of his military to this particular endeavor. Whether it was for him, or for Leanne, Garth had no idea.

“Oh.” Garth said. “Well, shit, think they’ll wait until tomorrow to attack?”

“I doubt it.”

Garth sighed, lifted Alicia up telekinetically, then laid her down on the couch, conjuring a blanket for her.

“Get the deep-range band.” Garth said.

“Already have it.” she said, pulling the thick status band out from behind her and offering it to him. It was clunky, but it was a powerhouse that could connect to the Ethernet through any kind of interference.

It kinda reminded Garth of a Pip-Boy.

Garth made sure the contraption was powered down before strapping it on his wrist. Wouldn’t do to start the fireworks early.

Garth glanced over at Mrs. Banyan, whose brows were knotted with worry.

“It’s okay, Banyan. The worst thing that could happen is we all die, and you get to meet your mom.”

“That doesn’t make me feel a lot better. In the afterlife, there is no growth, no new life.”

“You might be right,” Garth said. “I guess I’ll have to make sure this turns out good for us, then.”

***

It is an integral part of armies to line them up, get them squared away, give them a speech, and send them to war. Formations are just par for the course.

Garth hung out a mile above the earth, less than a speck in the sky, lazily waiting for the glittering rows of soldiers to come to attention.

Finally the massive hole in the air closed behind a train of supplies to feed and maintain and army of thousands. The last wagon had a massive wooden platform on it, and half a dozen burly men picked it up and carried it to the front of the rows of heavily armored men, where it was backlit by the setting sun. it was time for the rallying speech.

Control weather.

Oooh, pageantry, Garth thought, beginning his descent, trailing a whirling vortex of clouds behind him, forcing his way through the air, forming a spout behind him. From a distance, he would look like a tornado touching down out of an angry sky.

The handful of specks on the podium looked up, probably warned by their soldiers.

One of them raised their hand and a shimmering field of tightly knit mana encompassed the entire army.

Grass, gimmie some penetration.

The shield was stronger than anything Garth could have made by himself, and definitely stronger than anything he could have chewed through with his own mental strength. It was Teflon.

But… aim a couple thousand beams of compressed light and scrambling Space mana at small parts of the shield and follow them up with supercharged swordfish, Things get pretty fluid.

Brilliant blue lasers converged on the shimmering barrier from the mountainside, converging to heat tiny spots to the point where physics ceased to work. They struck with pinpoint accuracy moments before dozens of sky-blue Swordfish plunged out of Garth’s swirling cloud and tore through the barrier, blowing the platform to tiny bits and paving the way for Garth’s entrance.

Garth sent his spores ahead of him, rapidly contructing a new, incredibly gaudy platform that drew gold out of the earth to plate itself, seconds before landing on it.

Control weather.

With a thought, Garth blew away the dust that had been kicked up by his entrance, giving every single soldier a decent line of sight to him, and allowing Garth to see the people he’d upstaged.

He spotted Jim getting to his feet, surrounded by his underlings. Still wearing that obnoxious eight-pack breastplate. Hopefully he wouldn’t interrupt a man while he was talking.

Clarion Call.

Just for the hell of it, Garth adopted an irish accent.

“You have been chosen to reveal our existance to the world!”

Garth’s voice blasted outward, reached the ears of every single gold-plated buffoon as he tossed aside his disguising enchantment, skin turning purple.

“You will witness what happens here today, and you will tell of it later! All eyes to the front!”

“Really, Boondock Saints?” Jim asked, wiping a bloody nose with his thumb. “I hope you don’t mind those being your last words.”

“I couldn’t resist.” Garth said so quietly, only his brother could hear it.

“Now you will receive us.”

Garth flipped the switch on his deep range status band, sending his pre-recorded message across the spheres, and alerting the Inner Spheres as to his exact location.

Garth couldn’t deal with any one thing by itself… but all of them together?

Bcc: everyone in The Inner Spheres.

There’s a guy claiming to be Castavelle De’Chestaland’s apprentice, Garth Daniels, on the 2859th layer, planet Earth, just outside the 3502nd outpost. He uses a lot of plant magic, says he has a book that shows where to find the archmage. It’s called Starfall: A Treatise on the Origin of Gods. Little brown booklet, about the size of a man’s palm, but he says it talks to him.

Maybe my problems will solve each other.

Jim looked down at his status band in mild confusion for a moment, before looking back up at Garth, realization widening his eyes.

Garth burst into a giggle moments before Jim snarled and leapt up onto the stage almost faster than Garth could follow, slamming him to the gold-plated floor of his platform.

“What the hell did you just do?”

“I think you know.” Garth rasped.

Grass, could you…

ON IT.

Tiny beams of blue came from the mountain and burned a dick and hairy nutsack on the side of his brother’s face, causing him to reel back, clapping a hand on his cheek. Jim glanced over to the mountain and tore his hand through the air, fingers curled into claws.

The East side of the mountains, some twenty miles distant, erupted in flames, from horizon to horizon.

Oh, dang. I can’t let this opportunity go to waste

Seizing the opportunity, Garth jumped forward, channeling an ungodly amount of mana through his palm and slapping Jim’s injured cheek.

Heal.

Garth made sure the healing was just clumsy enough to leave big, white, scars.

“Ahahahaha! It’s permanent now!” Garth howled with laughter as Jim watched him, horrified, and maybe a little teary.

“Damn you!” he shouted, kicking Garth away hard enough to break his ribs.

That’s new, Garth thought, flying fast enough to rip through the air. His bones weren’t supposed to break. How much strength does this guy have?

Garth hit the dusty earth and dug a furrow in the ground before tumbling a hundred yards in a tangle of limbs. He pushed himself up with a pained groan as his body tried to correct itself.

“Where is he!?” a grey-blue shinta wearing glossy black robes and wielding a shimmering sword that looked like flowing quicksilver shouted, descending from a white portal in the sky.

“The Pan-Ua Clan will have its revenge!” screamed a woman in a high pitched language, as a phalanx of heavily armed corio marched into the dusty desert through another portal.

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something about this feels familiar.