Do you remember that really old movie where the heroine is dumped by the love of her life and the guy’s just like, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”? Well, of course you don’t—not even your grandmother was born when that flick came out—but I’ve been giving it some thought as of late and came to realize something pretty profound. Like, that’s essentially the whole story of my life right there, captured in that one scene. Being dumped, finding you can’t give a hoot—I can understand both sides. I’ve gained perspective. That’s the upside of living a long life, you start to figure these things out. I’m almost ten now, so I know.

Now, my life isn’t a movie, I know that.

It could be a movie. One of those real tacky ones starring a horrid CGI character that goes on to make a billion. Like the one with the giant blue space furries, that’s basically Pocahontas but in outer space, and with a strong environmental message. I fell asleep halfway through that, so don’t ask how it ends.

What I’m saying is, my life has this cinematic sort of irony going, which makes you think it was written by a jaded geek stuck neck-deep in student debt. You can see there’s a theme. There’s a message. There’s a cathartic conclusion waiting at the end, trying to assure you the journey was worth it, even though it really wasn’t. It’s like those good old movies from when they still knew how to make movies, and not like the new movies, which are all about, “hey, look, it’s that thing you saw when you were a kid and the world wasn’t so fucked up yet!” and that’s literally it, that’s the thing.

Oh, don’t worry, we’ve got some of that too!

There’s something for everyone.

As you can see, I’m working extra hard to sell that movie deal.

Raking in the royalties, singing book deals, that’s the dream.

Every protagonist needs to have a dream and that there’s mine. Then I could stop with the hero shtick, retire to a nice cozy cabin in the mountains, along with a dog, an illegitimate kid, a girlfriend with a bondage kink, and die of alcoholism, and never have to worry about saving the world again.

Unfortunately, I’m not there, but trying to save the world—again.

Oh, don’t worry. It’s just the usual. A gang of very OP bad guys trying to break the seal on an ancient evil and bring it back to life. Nothing you haven’t seen before.

You know, that thing I said about there being a theme? Actually, I lied. There’s nothing like that. Just the same nine-to-five, every day. The pay sucks, the food sucks, there’s no overtime regulation, and the colleagues? Let’s not even go there. And most of all—OOHHHHHHH that was a close one! A hugeass building just blew up right over my head! Damn. A cannonball blew straight through the top part, like a baseball pitched through a wedding cake. Like, baam! Too bad you couldn't see it. It was this belltower-sort of thing. It may have a fancier name, I don’t know. Do I look like an architect to you? Anyway, very big, massive. Sharp roof. Strong Gothic vibes. Now it’s crumbling apart. In fact, everything’s either in flames and/or falling apart. Just a heads-up for the CGI-department—you know, when they’re making the movie.

Oh god, I just suck bananas at describing things.

Better get used to that.

Okay. So let me get this straight. I’m somewhere that’s definitely not available on Playstation. I’m seeing freaking dragons—only one dragon. It’s very big. Large-ish. Breathes fire, sets things on fire.

Dear Lord, how does one game crash a whole studio?

I may or may not have taken the wrong turn at the previous crossroads.

This is my first time in Armarent, actually. You may have gathered. Up until fifteen minutes ago, I didn’t even know there was a city here. The only map I have of the place is literally older than Moses. See, that’s one big problem with these semi-medieval fantasy settings. GPS—not a thing.

Really, where in the devil’s anus am I?

I should’ve gone left. Yeah, I’m thinking I should’ve gone left there. I’m fairly sure about that now. I just blasted straight ahead without thinking and I can tell now that was a mistake. I’ve never gone straight in my life. We’ll put that on the list of my various screw-ups. Yeah, I’m doing a top ten. This goes securely around the ninth place:

Got lost in Armarent, with less than 45 minutes left till the end of the world.

No, no, relax! I’ve got this! A little detour, nothing too critical. I’ll get around. All this costs is a bit more time and 45 minutes, that's plenty. Enough time for three full seasons of flashbacks and a recap episode.

I look up.

The eclipse has begun. Up in the sky, a big black lid pulls over the sun. The remaining slim curve burns bright red. Red because of all the smoke. You know, from the fires. The fires started by the titanic, fire-breathing dragon—Are you getting the picture?

Don’t forget the rain of cannonballs and hellfire by the Kingdom’s navy. Those naval mages are giving it their all today. I didn’t think they had it in them. Guess this is the time for all of us to bring out our A-game. I like to make light of it, but that ancient evil thing is no joke, really. If I'm too late, all life on the planet will be wiped out. All of it. That's not an exaggeration, I mean it literally. Once again, it boils down to me, the hero, to—Hang on, I’ve got company.

“SHOCKWAAAAAVE! HAILSTOOOORM!”

There, back, done.

Sorry about that. Had a little elf problem to take care of. Not fond of guests without a visa, those guys. They’re a lot like Australians. Talk funny, hate bat soup and foreigners. Also, unlike Australians, these madlads are immortal. Immortal Australians? Imagine the horror!

Oh, by the way, those up there were my super special magic spell names. Did you like them? I made them up myself. Yeah, that’s right, I’m actually a mage! Not the kind that’s over thirty and plays Fortnite, the kind that kicks serious ass. A hero, a spy and a magician—that’s me.

You don’t strictly need to yell to make the magic happen, but it makes me feel like a total badass when I do. So I do. Every time. You’d do that too, if you knew magic. Don’t lie to me.

Okay, here, let me tell you how those moves work. I have this thing, I simply have to explain my techniques to the audience. I have to do it, or my head explodes. Okay, so Shockwave is like this massive wave of pressure, air going super fast, wide area. Knocks people off their feet with a thick motion blur. Highly cinematic, looks wicked good in slow-mo. Pretty much my signature move, I spam it all the time.

Are you taking notes?

Hailstorm is more complicated. Very high level. I didn’t unlock that one until part three. In fact, I’m not going to even try to explain it. You muggles wouldn’t understand. Either way, it’s great for turning crowds of people into popsicles all at once. Or, making a knock-off Frappuccino. Or, when you want to roleplay Frozen with your sister, whom you may or may not have the hots for. I don’t have any sisters—biological sisters—and maybe that’s a good thing.

Ah, here we are. Back on the right track.

Past the exhibition of frozen elf corpses, down the lane of smoke and ruin, spreads a black sea. A mile-long suspension bridge spans over the restless bay water and connects to another land. At the far end of the bridge, behind the dimly seething jungle of magic barriers, lies a city unlike any other in the world.

The City of Light, the home of the eternal goti. There's our endgame.

Now I’m going to be super special and won’t tell you how this story begins.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

I’m going to tell you how it ends.

It ends on the far side of the bridge, with a murder.

Unlike Gone With the Wind, this isn’t a story about awkward love. This is a story about red hot revenge. Like all good JRPGs, it ends with deicide—the death of an evil god and its nefarious henchmen that caused me to lose everything I hold dear in this life.

That’s right.

“I’m here to kill Aiwesh. That’s my mission. I’ll kill you, even if it’s the last thing I’ll ever do.”

And I’m going to do it with about a million pop-culture references along the way.

Who am I?

You can call me—

A : XXX : YY : ZZ : QQ

As the Cube breaches the barrier into my cerebrum, assimilating synapses, overwriting neurons, my rapidy extinguished mind catches fleeting glimpses of non-linear time.

0 : 152 : 03 : 48 : 10

“——You are the Warrior of Light,” I hear Vysania whisper into my ear over the steady hum of the radiator.

She rests her head against my bony shoulder and her soft cat ear tickles my cheek. There’s none of the usual cold edge to be heard in her voice now. It sounds gentle and warm, naked in its unguarded, vulnerable sincerity.

“You are the one,” she says. “As I knew all along.”

I can’t bring myself to meet her eyes, but stare at the black window and produce a feeble denial.

“I’m not. I’m nobody. I’m just Zero.”

I inhale the scent of her flaxen hair, the sweetest, most intoxicating scent there is in the world, and wish the room would stop spinning. It’s at moments like this that I should be tough and dependable, I know that. But it’s always especially at moments like this that my courage and self-confidence turn to noodles.

“What's here is hardly ‘nothing’,” Vysania tells me, her arms around me, and I feel a bit better.

I say nothing and just hold her. I move my gaze from the nightly window to the wall, where the wavering lamp light casts our combined shadows. Instead of their blurry, wobbly outlines, I watch my life unwind in front of me like an old film tape. An 8 mm-wide strip of PVC.

How can you still have such faith in me, after how far we’ve come?

Knowing all those times I failed you and everyone else.

Knowing all those people I couldn’t save.

Knowing who I am.

Knowing what I am.

Knowing I didn’t do any of it because it was the right thing to do, or because I believed in the beautiful ideals Irifan used to have, or because it made me feel good inside, or even because prime time anime has brainwashed me to idolize heroes of justice. To be honest, I hate anime. And I don’t play video games. I only watch Let’s Play-videos on Youtube, and then pretend like I’m one of the gamer girls to win sympathy from lonely losers while deeply loathing the whole geek culture.

But though she knows me well enough, Vysania doesn’t let go.

Even when I was at my lowest, she believed in me. Even when there was no reason to, when everyone else doubted me, she never stopped believing in me. Though she sometimes had a really funny way of showing it. And I’m finally going to have to admit this might be the real deal. The fluffy dream I chased for all nine years and eight months of my whimsical existence. The stuff of the movies.

But if it really is that, then I should make sure, right?

So, with hesitation, I open my mouth.

“Hey, Vys...”

“What is it?”

“You know how the world’s going to end by November?”

“Yes?”

“You know how we’re looking at a fight we probably can’t win. And even if we do somehow pull off one more miracle and set things right, we’re likely to never see each other again.”

“Uh-huh?”

“And you know how I’ve always felt about you, and I—it doesn’t look like you hate me that much either. So…”

“…”

“Would you be entirely opposed to a threesome?”

6 : 234 : 07 : 19 : 04

“——Why are you always like that?” Sephram yells at me over the sound of thermal explosions. We take cover behind the chalked corner of a shaking house as fist-sized chunks of rock rain down around us. The blue light of chemical flames flickers and coils on the alley wall between undulating shadows of smoke.

Ah, I love the smell of cheruleum in the morning.

“Like what?” I ask the guy. “Insane? Well, that one’s easy; I was nuts from the start! And the goddamn crulean dreadnought making things explode everywhere around us isn’t exactly helping! One shot a little too close and they’ll be scraping us off the pavement! In fact, we nearly died a hundred times over just in the last fifteen minutes! All because of that stupid 8-ball you have in your fanny pack! And you ask, ‘why am I like this!?’ I’d start by asking, why am I not even worse than this? Because I have no idea!”

“…They were right,” the handsome bastard grunts and shakes his head. “Vysania and Endol. It was too soon. You weren’t ready yet. If you keep it up like this, this life is going to break you.”

“Well, fuck you too!”

All I can do is laugh.

I have to laugh, so I wouldn’t cry.

Did I ever even have a real choice? Technically, maybe I could’ve said no. I could’ve done like Clark Gable and moonwalked right out of the set, but instead of the very end, I could’ve done it in the beginning. Maybe things would’ve been better that way?

But how could you do that and live with yourself?

If you had power—if you had real power—and knew you could take away the suffering of so many hapless people out there, and look devilishly stylish while doing it, could you just turn your back on it and say, “nah, none of my problem”?

Maybe somebody else could, but—maybe there was something wrong with me all along. Like Foo Fighters says, I’m not like the others, and I knew that from day one. So I decided, hey, let’s give this hero business a try!

2 : 262 : 19 : 53 : 29

And believe me, I tried.

6 : 234 : 06 : 24 : 31

And I tried.

5 : 263 : 11 : 10 : 19

And I tried.

8 : 328 : 17 : 06 : 55

I tried my very darndest to do the famous “right thing.”

But, at the end of the day—

0 : 000 : 00 : 00 : 01

——What exactly IS the right thing to do?

Æ : I€Z : $$ : ?? : ###

Okay, okay, stop right there. Time out! Stop! What the hell’s going on? Who were all those people? Who am I? What’s with the random numbers and letters? You weren’t supposed to see that! I'm so confused! It’s all happening out of order, none of this makes any sense, it's cut up like goddamn Memento, AAAHH HELP ME I’M GOING INSANEEEE!

Nah, sorry, just kidding.

It was all on purpose.

The situation is fully under control, no panic. Trust the plan!

Take my word for it, this will make so much more sense on the second readthrough.

It’s just a popular gimmick these days, starting where things actually end, and mixing in a bit of this and that from everywhere between. All the pretentious hacks do it. Because starting from the real beginning and making things pan out properly in the chronological order is just too easy and boring. You need quick hooks and intrigue to grab the attention-deficit audiences of today.

No, I’m just fucking with you. Don’t get upset! Step away from the back button!

Now that we’ve successfully filtered out all the zoomers and those who unironically use the word “cringe” to describe things, we can resume diligently from the actual beginning, and take this ride nice and slow, one baby step at a time.

Only, in this case, where things begin is probably even more confusing than anything that comes after.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.